[00:00:00] Luigi Prestinenzi: Welcome. This is the Sales IQ Podcast. My name is Luigi Prestinenzi, and I'm on a mission to help salespeople be the best sales professionals they can be. Each week, we'll bring you a different message from thought leaders from around the globe so we can help you master the art of selling.  

Welcome to another episode of the sales IQ podcast. I'm your host, Luigi Preston, India. And as always, I am pumped to have you join us today. This week, we are joined by Sean finder, serial entrepreneur. Who has built multiple startups, led sales teams across a variety of industries and co-author of the B2B sales handbook.

Now, Sean is the CEO of auto close a platform, helping sales professionals, automate parts of the sales cadence process, which interns helps them generate more warmer. And close more deals. I am pumped about today's session as we're going to talk about the characteristics of high performers and how to really get the most out of your prospecting efforts.

Can't wait to dive into today's session. So please welcome Sean to this.

[00:01:13] Shawn Finder: Glad to be here. Luigi. Yeah.

[00:01:15] Luigi Prestinenzi: Awesome, man. We're pretty pumped actually. I'm actually really excited about today's episode. Um, so yeah, so today it's all about, you know, talking about lead generation sales, um, the high characteristics of high performance, and I'm really pumped to have you on, on today's show me.

[00:01:31] Shawn Finder: I'm really excited to be here. I've heard a lot of your, uh, your shows and I think it's going to be a, it's gonna be a fun one for your audience that's for sure.

[00:01:39] Luigi Prestinenzi: Okay. So first things first, obviously, um, I've read you, you know, doing a bit of research on you before coming onto the show and understand you were on the road to become a pro tennis player and made a change in your journey and became an entrepreneur.

I'd love to hear about this and what made it motivated you to, to build a career in, in sales and, and.

[00:01:58] Shawn Finder: Yeah. So I'll give you a quick 401 on, on how I started. So, um, as a young person, I was, uh, I was one of Canada's best net, a world ranking in tennis. So it was, uh, uh, one of the national on the national team here in Canada.

But I also competed an ITF, which is a world level, um, until I was about. 18. Um, so that's the kind of where you, you have to decide, do you want to go and be a professional tennis player or do you want to go the education or then at that point, you know, we did add a Canada here. We didn't really have. Um, I guess professional tennis players are making a living off tennis.

I mean, now we have two of the top 15 in the world, but back then we did, some of them came up to me and goes, well, here's your choice of shun. Um, a you can continue to try and become pro and if you don't become pro you're most likely going to become a tennis coach, which is not a bad thing or B um, you can go the education route, go get your MBA.

And at that point, the sky's the limit and you could not rely on. Um, so knowing that, uh, Canada only had a few people that ever made a living off tennis, I went to the education route and I look back now and sometimes I wish I was went to professional tenders.

[00:03:09] Luigi Prestinenzi: And so. Was this, something that was attracting you to, to business?

I mean, your mum said, you know, you could go down the path of possibly an NBI. Um, was there any other profession that you were contemplating or did you always know that if tennis wasn't the path, it was going to be a world in, in sales and business.

[00:03:30] Shawn Finder: Yeah. So I had an interesting path that, so once I stopped playing tennis at age 18, I ended up, um, teaching tennis.

So I was teaching actually a lot of the Toronto maple Leafs, uh, kids tennis, like max Domi. Who's now a hockey player and I was teaching only the kids tennis. And what happened was I was always interacting with people twice my age. So when I was 18, 19, I had to know how to relate and talk to successful people that might be in their forties, thirties, late thirties, forties, and fifties.

And what happened was I got into such the social scene of teaching tennis and competing that when I actually took my MBA in finance, um, I ended up thinking like, I didn't know if I wanted to do finance because you'd go work at the big banks. And if you said hi to somebody and was just always behind a computer and nobody would talk to people.

So at the end of the day, what I did was I, you know, I took my skills and all this stuff I learned by communicating and networking with such, you know, high-end people in trucks. And that's kind of what geared me towards, you know, starting in the business and, and being more, um, engaged in networking and starting a business from scratch, then going to the, to the nine to five, um, finance route and did in downtown Toronto, '

[00:04:40] Luigi Prestinenzi: cause, that's, uh, you know, obviously finance sales.

I mean, there's a lot of correlation, obviously if you're shelling finance, um, but that is a big shift, right? So, um, Talk to us a bit about start of your career and, and, you know, what are some of the roles that helped you build your capability in sales?

[00:04:58] Shawn Finder: Yeah, so, uh, so what happened was I was, uh, I was working actually, I started off in more of an operations role.

Um, and then someone goes, you know, it's dealing with your personnel, you gotta be in sales, any hired me, um, to help, uh, a computer, a computer company, could your software company I'm grow their sales team. And when I was there, I realized. I was managing a few people in the sales team and the data that we had was so inaccurate.

So I would buy data for the sales team. They would use the data and they would spend so much time calling people that the phone numbers were wrong or emailing people that no longer work that I said to myself. I'm like, if this is what salespeople are struggling with, I mean, why hasn't a company. Less volume data, but higher quality where, you know, you're going to actually hit the mailbox and, you know, you can get that person on the call.

So what I did was, um, when I was working at VP of sales role, um, about five years after my MBA, it's about eight years ago now, um, I started building a data company on the side. So I started building a data company where I was saying, you know what, I'm going to build a high quality data company. So sales reps that I was using or working with will end up being able to.

Good quality. And I grew that company in four years, we worked at fortune 100 companies. Um, and the whole goal was, um, to provide high quality data. And that's where we started before I even started auto close, um, was, um, building high quality

[00:06:24] Luigi Prestinenzi: databases. Yeah. And that, that business successful. Is it still going, did you exit, are you still paying.

[00:06:31] Shawn Finder: Yeah, so that business, I still go. So what happened was after three years, um, I had to come to the conclusion, should I pay the Canadian government, a lot of money in taxes or should I do and build another app and do some research and development. We were, we were working in preferred vendors of, you know, VMware's Rogers and some of the bigger companies in Canada in the U S and my clients were saying, we love your data, Sean, but we don't know where to email it's no, you have to get your data.

We have to find somewhere to email it. It would be great to have it all in one solution. So what I did was, as I've done with all my businesses, I don't build a product based on what I want to build. I build a product based on what my clients want. So my clients want an email platform. So we built. That actually has the exchange leads database inside the platform.

So now you have the sales engagement tool, but you have the database that is white labeled from our data company inside articles. And we're still do a lot with the data company. We still have the same team that's out in Eastern Europe. It's validating the data, um, keeping it clean and maintaining it and still work with fortune 100 companies here in both Canada.

And. With the, but so they both now are inside one roof. However, we still sell the data as a separate service.

[00:07:42] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. Fantastic man. And just on that, you're talking about auto close and you know, you move from that data. Now you've got a platform that helps all under one roof, as you've just said, what's the mission behind order close?

Like what are you trying to achieve?

[00:07:57] Shawn Finder: So, what we tried to do with auto close is put everything for a sales person. And when Rick, so salespeople, what do they want to do? They want to make money. They want to make commission. They want to hit their quota. So what we've done is we've built a sales engagement tool that allows you to not only email from our 28 million content.

But you could also automate your follow-up send personalized videos and everything inside one roof. So you basically can go in and in four simple steps, you can create a campaign you can pick through our database, 28 million prospect search, who you want to use. Figure out how many emails over how many days you want to send them, press go.

And you can travel from Toronto where I am today to Australia, to where you are, Luigi and throat, that long flight auto closes running and sending emails and prospecting for you all. Um,

[00:08:45] Luigi Prestinenzi: automated. Oh, that's sick. So it's essentially, uh, you know, it helps nurture that, that sequence cadence component to get a warm up.

[00:08:55] Shawn Finder: Exactly. And what we've recently done is we've put like, um, like a feature like Calendly, for example, which is a great tool for, um, booking meetings. We've just recently, actually this week, um, we just implemented where now you can one click. So inside your email campaigns, just put your Calendly. So you can actually automate the entire thing until.

That meeting and you can pre-qualify them in that could account only. So when you get on that 30 minute demo, um, they've already been pre-qualified, you know, how many employees they have, you know, what tools they're using, you know, how many people are in the organization, all that kind of stuff. And you, you go to your Calendly, go to the demo, you go on zoom or any of the other tools you're using.

And it's all automated. We're trying to automate the entire process for the sales. And that's

[00:09:36] Luigi Prestinenzi: pretty awesome, man. And on that, you must say, given that you got 28 million late or 28 million, you know, details in the system and you've got, you know, hundreds and hundreds of different people using the platform every day, you must get to say, or get some insight into the type of campaigns and engagement through.

Um, different cadence tools, et cetera. Do you mind sharing, um, you know, what you've learned throughout this process and what campaigns, you know, do cut through?

[00:10:07] Shawn Finder: Yeah, a hundred percent. So I think the biggest problem with salespeople nowadays is, and I'm sorry to say this word, but they're kind of lazy. Um, you know, people will send people.

[00:10:19] Luigi Prestinenzi: I think we've always been lazy, man. I just, you know, if we can cut corners to find that deal, we'll cut

[00:10:25] Shawn Finder: corners, right. A hundred percent and automating is one thing. But when you're, for example, when you're cold calling. You called call somebody once or twice and you say, oh, they're not interested. Move on.

But the honest truth is between nine to five, everyone is busy. Everyone nowadays, especially is getting hundreds of emails a day. So you can't give up after two calls, just like when you're doing an email. We have people that use our platform and they send two emails. I'm like, you're not going to get that reply from especially a C-level person or an it person until email five, six or seven.

And what I teach people is, you know, you've got to analyze the days of the week. What type of person are you emailing? Like if you're emailing someone, that's an it, for example, I T at a big company, what they're doing throughout the day, Burning throwing out fires. They're so busy with different users, onboarding new, new, new employees, et cetera.

Your better time to email them as either at 6:00 AM or 6:00 PM or trying to Saturday and Sunday, but people will email twice and they'll just give up. Don't give up. Cause I will tell you, I reply to most emails on a 15 mile. I like to see a sales person that is persistent. So my tip on that would be, be persistent and don't give up and don't be, um, don't be too, I guess you can be lazy, but don't be too lazy.

[00:11:43] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. And I'll say that, you know, I do say that off the cuff. I mean, we, we are big believers in, you know, Professional sales, you know, having this is a profession we're not empty suit. And, uh, you know, we don't cut corners, but ultimately you're right. Salespeople are genuinely with so much thing that we've got to do.

We sometimes try to find the easy route to the outcome that we're looking. Um, but just going back a step, cause I really want, this is awesome because that cadence, I think one of the biggest challenges that are fine and I'll talk to sales people, you know, hundreds of salespeople all the time about this particular topic, it's, it's when to give up when to keep going versus, you know, when do I disqualify an opportunity to disqualify lead, right?

And I had this exact topic discussion with a group of guys yesterday. Based on the data that you're seeing is there. Cause I know there's a lot of different metrics being thrown around, um, that contact point. Is it five attempts? Is it 10 attempts? Um, what is the data showing you?

[00:12:40] Shawn Finder: Yeah, so there's a difference between, I guess, a cold prospect and I call it like a warmer prospect.

So a cold prospect would be, you know, for example, say you go into my database and you email a cold person. I would say you want to do, you know, six to eight. Um, Follow up meetings over about 30 to 45 days with those people. Now, when, when I, when you say, you know, give up, I would say this, I would say one thing that works well is in your last year.

You know, it'd be like going and asking a girl on a date after the first day and go, do you want a second date? Yes or no? Yeah. Do almost the same thing with, with, with an email on your last email, say, Hey, I've sent you a few emails now, would you mind letting me know if a I'm missing the mark or B it's not your budget or see you're currently under contract with our competitor or D like at least get there, or, or, or D you're not even interested at all.

Like, it's better to get to me. No, I'm not interested in. People will like, for example, if people email me that and, and they say, are you, I have people that email me for auto close and it's my competitor direct competitor emailing me. I'm like, you know, first of all, you haven't looked at what I did, but I'm not interested I'm in the same.

So I think by going in for the hard, yes or no at the end, really works with. Yeah, no, for a warmer prospect. Now that might be somewhere where you're throwing them through like, um, maybe like a MailChimp or a marketing campaign. And they're you, you you've ranked them as like a, a four or five star. So they're, they're not, I guess I'll leave, but they're, they're starting to put their hands up.

I would then go in with four to six emails and those ones. Would be almost, you know, first one discussed their challenges and value and then almost go right into, you know, customer success stories and how you've helped people in their industry, or, you know, how you have a client that is similar to what they do, et cetera.

But I would say that the warmer prospects, you could be four to six and six to eight for the very cold

[00:14:36] Luigi Prestinenzi: prospects. Okay. And just on that, I do you say, like, obviously they're from an email perspective, but do you hear from your clients. When they combine phone or text or, you know, LinkedIn in that cadence that they get, you know, more of an optimal outcome through that

[00:14:55] Shawn Finder: process.

100%. And I, and I actually do a lot of talks. And speaking on this is the one thing that is amazing and it works is a little bit of social. Now when you're selling something. It's all about touches. So for example, if I was going to sell you Luigi, and I send you a cold email, you might not respond, but if I sent you a cold email and then three days later, I send you another email.

And then one day later, I add you as a connection on LinkedIn. And then three, four days later you get an email and then a few days later you get like, you know, I like something that you post on LinkedIn, or I comment on something or I share something. I could almost add four to six touches in that sequence.

Yeah. But doesn't. Get you on the phone or have you do anything? All you're going to see is on your mobile phone or your desktop. You're going to see Sean finder like this. Sean finder shared this Sean finder comment, this, so the next time Sean, find your emails, you'd be like, I've heard that name of an eight times in the last five days, who is Sean finder?

[00:16:00] Luigi Prestinenzi: Okay. So it piques their interest. It's interesting because Tony Hughes, I'm the author of combo prospecting talks about those multi touches, um, and how important they are through the, um, you know, through that cadence process. Um, I want to ask as well, when you sending those emails, you know, again, during that sequence to the customer, How do you create the content that gives them value?

Because as you know, we've got to exchange value with the customer to get any form of commitment. And, and I love the Anthony rhinos concept about this. Um, the first commitment we need to get from the customer is a commitment of two. And we can't get that commitment of time unless we exchange some form of value.

So for a sales professional, listening to this episode, who's going shit, I'm only sending you one or two emails. Now I've got to increase my cadence. Um, what should they do first? To create valuable content, because if you go to your B2B sales handbook and I haven't brought that up yet. And you know, because this topic is, I think is a, is a very important topic, but you talk about the content that we have to put out there.

So can we go back to the start and say before building my sequences, what should I be doing to create valuable content that I can exchange with them during that email sequence campaign?

[00:17:16] Shawn Finder: That's a great question. So a few things. Whenever you have to know your buyer, you have to know your, you know, who, who is buying your product.

Now you can say, oh, well, it's, uh, it's a sales person. Well, is it a VP of sales or director of sales, a head of sales or a sales rep because each one has been, has a different, um, what I call it pain and a different game. So each will have a different pain or gain. So for example, you know, for example, let's say CEOs CEOs at the end of the day, they want to make more money sales.

Want to get demos. So your content that you send, these people must be correlated with your buyer's persona. So here's an example. Um, say I wanted to reach out and pitch auto close to, um, uh, a national sales manager. Yep. Okay. My first line and I'm telling you, the first line is the first three seconds of that email is crucial because especially nowadays when people.

72% are actually on their phones, reading the emails. They're only going to see that first line. So everything you have under that first first-line people aren't even going to read or hear or see unless your first line is catchy. So a national sales person, my first line might be this. If I told you Luigi, that I can save your sit, your regional sales managers, five hours a day as a product in prospecting.

So that was a national sales manager. Who's managing eight regional sales. She's thinking. Wow. If you could actually see each of my sales are five hours in prospecting, they could be closing more sales. I want to learn more. Okay. So that might be a. No more, none may be a pain that the national sales manager.

But if I was reaching out to the C level person, I might say, if I can save you or triple your revenue, I would talk more about more of a cost and price because the CEO, they don't care how you do it. They want to know whatever they're paying for. It gets them in ROI. So your messaging is different depending on who you're talking to.

And that would go for sales or an introvert versus extrovert. So you have. Who you're selling to at all times, even before you start a cadence or a campaign.

[00:19:20] Luigi Prestinenzi: Okay. So just to confirm what I'm hearing, it's really know your buyer and the buyer persona first and foremost, understand the pain that they're going through and what they, what they've got to gain to engage with your platform or to you with your message, then create the right narrative that compels the reader to want to know more.

[00:19:41] Shawn Finder: A hundred percent. And the one thing I will add is as important as your first line is I would actually say your subject line is even more important because if you don't have a good subject line, you won't get the open and they won't even read your email. So spend just as much time coming up with a compelling or short, simple.

Um, subject line to get that buyer, her to open it because once they open, at least you have that first three seconds to give

[00:20:06] Luigi Prestinenzi: that pitch. Okay. Fantastic. And, um, for our listeners, maybe we can set something up if you have, you got an example of some really good, um, you know, outreach emails that you've developed that have, that have really cut

[00:20:20] Shawn Finder: through.

Yeah. So what I've been working on, um, and I, I use regular. Very short and simple. So, um, quick follow-up, you know, hi Luigi. Um, I might do sometimes like company plus company, but an interesting one I did recently and it was for a conference, but you can do this without a conference is saying like first name.

And I always put the first name cause you want to keep it personalized. So they, they feel that, that even though you might be sending it to 30 people, it it's going to that one person. It feels like it. But I said, can we have a virtual. And I find that using the word virtual coffee worked really well because coffee to people seems like, you know, it's like most of them in the morning, it's like, it's a rush.

It's very social, it's relaxing. It's not going to be pushy. It's more like let's have a virtual cup, let's have a, you know, can we have a virtual coffee? And then in my message, or can we have a virtual coffee to discuss your challenge of a, B and C? And it's almost like people are willing to give you 15 minutes just because I mentioned the word.

And my subject line and it it's worked really well, especially I'm getting meetings booked for a conference here in Toronto at the collision conference that's happening into.

[00:21:29] Luigi Prestinenzi: So virtual coffee. Okay. Only, you know, I'm going to give that a crack, man. I'm going to give you that a crack I'm going to, um, cause I, you know, part of my role in what I do outside of the podcast, um, I'm trying all different outreach attempts, both on social call, you know, a whole, whole variety in.

So I'm going to, I'm going to try that and I'll, and I'll give our listeners the feedback. Um, so this has been awesome. So, you know, I wasn't expecting to really dive deep into the world of cadence, but I love, I love the concept of cadence because I feel that. You know, it doesn't matter how many marketing qualified leads.

Uh, sales team gets, they never enough. And as sales professionals, we've gotta be able, you know, we've got to have the skill to generate our own sales qualified leads. Otherwise we'll go hungry. So this is, this is a very, very important topic from, from my perspective, um, I, to sort of, before we continue down that path, I'd love to go back to you authored the B2B sales handbook and, uh, you know, where did the inspiration.

Come to, you know, in developing that, that book.

[00:22:33] Shawn Finder: Yeah. So, um, what happened first was we, we looked at, um, inside, you know, we have about 4,000 clients in auger, close now. And we looked at in our, in our chat and we looked at our support and what we did was we analyzed what are the most common questions that we get from our clients.

And some of our clients would be like, um, can you help me with our template? Um, can you help me with this? Um, what are good subject lines that convert should we use social? And what we did was we built the handbook around the hundreds and hundreds of questions and feedback that we get from our clients.

So, you know, when people say I don't, you know, a lot of people want to use our tool, but they don't know what to write to somebody because you can give it, you, I can give you the data. I can give you the software, but if you don't know what the templates. So that's why inside the platform, we actually built templates for our clients.

We have about 15 to 18 templates they can use depending on what their call to action is. So originally that was how we got it. And, um, and we had, our first book was called the 27, uh, sales excellence, um, which we launched, uh, late last year. And it was very successful. And we thought, you know what, let's build this handbook.

And originally it was going to be for our clients. But then we said, let's give this to the entire B2B community, because if it can help our clients, you can help everyone. And the date, even though, you know, we do a lot of, we do have competitors that have similar platforms. My job and my role and what I want to do is help SDRs, help salespeople sell more and make more money.

So, so we built the handbook for everybody. Um, it has includes, you know, I think templates, subject lines, um, words of wisdom from some of the top influencers all over the world, um, in sales and we just put it all into a. Um, and took a little bit too much time for my marketing team, but to design it and stuff.

But, uh, so far it's been very successful. And as you know, at the same time, while you're building a nice book, it gets you a lot of leads and, and also, um, brand awareness, which is, which is great nowadays, especially for. Business and personal. Yeah. And I

[00:24:36] Luigi Prestinenzi: really liked the way you've put it together and what we'll do, we'll put it in the show notes so that our listeners can get access to it because it's got a lot of valuable content.

I love the fact that it breaks it down into three key areas, um, about BD brands, step up the game and lifelong learnings. Um, you ever to sort of talk a bit about why, you know, why you broke it into those three sections?

[00:24:58] Shawn Finder: Yeah. So the re cause what we did was we realized, especially with us, we have, you know, there's different.

People who are part of our buyer's persona. And we actually did an exercise to see who are our buyers, what are their pains and gains? So why we did that was because SDRs and head of sales and VP of sales will each. Different things of interest, different things that will help them be successful. So we didn't want to write a book that was just strictly for STR, do we want to write a book that any salesperson can open, even though it's a little bit longer than I would've liked it to get a hundred plus pages, but every salesperson go in and open and depending on where they are in the organization, they could start at one chapter, but as they expand and grow as a sales person, another lesson or another chapter might be important to them.

[00:25:46] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. And like I said, I've, I've really enjoyed engaging with it. Um, Sean, because it's got, um, you know, it tells me where I can get some good podcasts, um, blogs, uh, also talks about being the brand and it's got some real simple techniques about how to use social, to help engage and, you know, um, and how to share content, et cetera.

Um, which I absolutely love one of the things I, and it's not, in my opinion, I believe, you know, not just selling B2B, um, but a lot of this stuff. Is is, is, can be completely transferred into the world of selling to consumers as well. Because a lot of the concepts of sales, I feel, um, you know, if you master the art of selling, you can quickly adapt it into, into the world of consumer sales as well.

So it's got a lot of valuable content in there, Samantha. So I appreciate you sharing that with me before the show. Um, my one L. You know, and how this is why this is connected to sort of that cadence process as well. You talk about, you know, getting yourself a coach. Why, in your opinion, is this an important part of becoming a successful sales?

[00:26:53] Shawn Finder: Sorry, getting yourself.

[00:26:54] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. I mean, you've got, you know, you, you know, get a coach. Um, I think there are references that in, in, in your book, um, in your opinion, because I think there's a lot of debate around, you know, getting a coach versus doing training and training's not worth it anymore. There's a heaps of misconceptions out there on the world of social.

Um, why in your opinion is getting a coach important to become a high-performing sales person. '

[00:27:22] Shawn Finder: cause I think with anything you could always, you want to learn from people that have been successful in the past. So, um, you know, it, it really gets back to my kindness, Curry, like, you know, if I started just trying to play tennis by myself, would I have been successful?

I didn't have the same coach for 15 years that knew. The new, how to take a tennis Clare from the age of 11 to the age of 18, to be a professional tennis player. So it's the same thing with sales. You want to take an SDR that is, you know, dialing and, and, and doing all of the STR stuff and convert them into St.

Account manager. At some point, then convert them. You want to also always show that you can there's growth, especially in sales there's growth in Korea. And in the personal life, there's always growth. So by having a coach, um, we'll allow you. To really, um, expedite your, your sales career, but it also give you the skill, teach you the skills you need to get to the next step, because people, if you're going to be STR the rest of your life, at some point, you're going to want to either a learn something different or.

Do a little bit more. So I think having the sales coach to move you in and continue up that ladder, um, is, is very important. Especially if you're trying to, you know, one day move from an SDR all the way up to say a VP of sales,

[00:28:38] Luigi Prestinenzi: et cetera. That's such good advice. So I really appreciate you sharing that with us and Mike.

As a, you know, as you building a capability, building those become that high performer, when you're in tennis versus, you know, in sales, what are some of the characteristics that you brought across from your, you know, career in tennis that has helped you become the sales professional you are today?

[00:29:09] Shawn Finder: Great question.

I will tell you the one thing, competitive sport. Helps in sales is competitiveness. Yeah, because I, when I used to play tennis, I used to two things I used to, I used to love to win, but I also used to hate to lose. So now when I bring that to the sales, it works both ways. You know, people go, what are you, do you love to win?

Or do you hate to lose? I'm both. So when I'm in sales right now, and I see I can steal market share from my competitors. I love it. I love stealing market share. I love working on ways to get them marketed. So it's competitiveness there now hate to lose. I hate to lose business to a competitor. Therefore, um, you know, if I'm going up against, you know, one of my number one compares like an outreach.io or a SalesLoft or any of them, um, I lo I love the competition and I'm not one of those guys.

I never put my competition down in any call. You'll never hear me say anything bad about my competition, because I don't want, I don't want to put down my competition to win the business. I want to prove to my. The value and how we solve their problems and their challenges with our platform versus Archibus because our competitors do stuff better than we do.

We do stuff better than they do, but day it's very competitive. So I would say the number one thing from tennis is competitiveness. And if you're going to be successful in sales, um, you gotta be competitive because if you're competitive, you're going to get a lot more sales that you're going to make a lot

[00:30:30] Luigi Prestinenzi: more money.

Yeah. Oh man. I feel, you know, we've competitive. Comes all the, you know, the subsidy, you know, the drive, the determination, the perseverance, because you don't want to give up knowing that, you know, you've got that set strong desire to win and, and, uh, what I've found in my career that even when. Um, you know, I've got that competitive streak.

Sometimes it just doesn't, I just don't get the result, but, but it inspires me to go harder and harder so that I can, you know, I can continue to compete cause I'm um, so I really, really appreciate you sharing that with us, man. Um, and I've definitely taken that as a, as a key highlight from our conversation.

Um, and just for the listeners that, you know, that don't know that whole, that world of, of, um, outreach, you know, the businesses. Sean has talked about SalesLoft and outreach.io. Um, they're they are significantly big businesses right there. I think their unicorn status posts of him, if I'm not correct. Yeah.

Yep. Um, so, you know, he's, you're, self-funded still, or you've got external capital coming.

[00:31:33] Shawn Finder: We are self-funded. So that's why it even makes it more of a challenge for us to compete with those guys. Um, we, we bootstrapped it from our first data company, uh, four years ago, um, and invested into autoclose. So we are bootstrapped from the ground up.

Uh, we didn't take any funding, but, um, you know, listen, I don't, I don't, as I said, I think they both have great platforms, but I think there's room for more than two, uh, Outreach platforms in the industry and, you know, um, I think, uh, it's a challenge for us to go up against them, but at the end of the day, um, I've been competing my whole life and, um, I bring on any challenge.

Absolutely

[00:32:09] Luigi Prestinenzi: loves that, man. That's the mindset, right? The mindset of, uh, of success. Yep. So, man, if I'm going to ask you so biggest influence in your career that that has shaped you to who you are today and why

[00:32:23] Shawn Finder: biggest influencer in my career. I would probably say my tennis coach when I was younger and the reason why he was the biggest influencer, because he's the one that always taught me to continue to push and to continue to deal with adversity.

And, you know, um, being in, you know, you might, I might not have been the most athletic tennis player, but I had a heart, so, you know, to compete hard. Um, so I would say my, my, my first tennis coach who actually was my tennis coach, my entire career from day. Never left him. Um, he was the biggest influencer and, and also, um, you know, when I started to get in those teen years where I was, um, I guess a little bit, um, of a, of a handful to deal.

Um, he, he kept me and introduced me how, you know, at a young age, how to speak and talk and deal and work with people twice. My age, which I would say to this day is one of the best skills you can, you can start young, um, even early on in your career, but be able to talk to somebody that's three times your age or two times your age, about what you're saying.

It'll only help because people want to be able to speak at the same level. And, uh, and nobody wants to be, um, be speaking to like a kit. So you want to always make sure that you have that maturity, um, as your buyer, um, when you're dealing in sales.

[00:33:40] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. That's fantastic, man. That's really insightful, mate.

You know, that whole, uh, deal with adversity and compete with the heart on. Absolutely love that, man. Um, and if you could go back in time and do it all over again, what's one thing you would do differently.

[00:33:57] Shawn Finder: One thing I would have done differently. I would have started becoming entrepreneur from the day I left my MBA.

So I had about six years in between that. Um, I learnt a lot, but I think, um, I wish I was six years younger when I started my first business. And if I had to go back in time, I would say this to petition. This is to people that want to be an entrepreneur. When you have an idea in your head and you think it will work.

Try it. Yeah, you can, you can speak, you can try it for not too much because I had ideas. I don't want to get into it, but there was a lot of ideas that I had when I was a lot, very young, um, that now are businesses like full businesses are going billions of dollars and I had the same similar. So you want to make sure when you're young, you take advantage of any idea.

You have try things when you're young, because when you're older, you have a family and et cetera, it's tougher. So try things when you're young, if you can, when you get into school or while you're in school or on the side, Do something you enjoy and, and, and if you have that idea, jump on it and give it a try.

[00:34:57] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. That's awesome, man. Well, man, this has been awesome. I've absolutely loved our conversation. Um, I think, you know, we've probably got another opportunity to chat again, cause that whole sales cadence, we can talk for hours, man. So, um, I really enjoyed having you on today, but could just, before we finish up.

What is one thing that our listeners can do immediately after listening to this podcast that will help them, you know, find more deals, close, more prospects.

[00:35:28] Shawn Finder: Yeah, I would say two things. I would say first I would get a good read of the B2B sales handbook. It's a free, it's a free book that you guys can read.

So read that book. It'll get up, put your yourself in a good mindset, a good, um, a good, uh, good feeling when you're doing campaigns. And then you can go to our website auto close.com. Sign up for even a four 14 day trial and try a few cadences test, some subject lines, test some campaigns, but try and use the stuff that we teach you.

The templates we teach you in that B2B sales handbook. Try it in the auto close and, um, and feel free to reach out to me personally. Um, my email Shawn@autoclose.com. S H a w N auto close.com. And you could ask me any questions you have about this, this podcast we did today, or any questions throughout your 14 day or anything from the book?

Um, I'm always available to all my clients. Um, so feel free to reach out to me.

[00:36:20] Luigi Prestinenzi: Nah, man, that's sick. And we'll put all that in the show notes. We'll put a link to the handbook, um, link your LinkedIn profile and, uh, you know, make sure that everybody can, can go in and get the wisdom that you've you've, you know, have, have developed for yourself to make you so successful and have made thousands of other salespeople successful as well.

So really appreciate what you're doing for the, for the sales community, man. And, uh, thanks for joining us.

[00:36:45] Shawn Finder: Thank you so much. Uh, and it was, it was a, it was a pleasure to, to do this for me Luigi. Thanks, man.

[00:36:56] Luigi Prestinenzi: what an episode that was Sean possesses, all the characteristics, high performers possess he's competitive driven and has a hunger for success. What I enjoyed about that episode is the connection Sean spoke about from his time as a. That the behaviors, which made him successful at tennis can be so easily transferred in the world of sales.

So my challenge to you this week is what are you prepared to do to create that mindset for success? How will you becoming an athlete of sales so that you can be the best sales professional? You can be.

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This episode was transcribed digitally, some errors may be present.