[00:00:00] Darryl Praill: My name is Darryl Praill. I'm your host and you, my friend, well, you and I we're gonna go on a journey every single week, talking to the industry's most accomplished sales legends, as they share with us, their tips, their tricks, their techniques, and their tactics to becomes sales rockstars. You simply need to do what they're doing and you will achieve similar nirvana. If you like to laugh, you like to be entertained, if you'd like to go off on tangents and tell stories, you're going to love what you're going to hear next. Sit back, relax, it's going to get real.

It's another week here on the Inside inside Sales, honest question. How many of you. How many of you listen to this show religiously every week, put your hand up. There's not enough hands up. What the hell's up with you folks. How many of you listen to this periodically? You listen to it once in a while, perhaps just you know, based on the title.

Is it based on the title, which ironically there's a sales lesson there, right? Because we always tell you the importance in email, the most important thing is your subject line. That's what prompts them to open it or not just like in LinkedIn. The most important thing is what happens before the read more that prompts me to stop and dwell and consume or move on.

So, what I'm hearing you say is pre I'm not listening to him every single week because you have to work on your actual titles. You have to hook me better. Is that what you're saying to me? If that's what you're saying to me, fair enough. I accept that criticism. And it's a, and I do that on purpose just to make my point about the importance of subject lines.

That's my spinning job. What do you think of that? The point of the matter is, I dunno if you're aware of these kids, We are approaching. We are approaching 200 episodes. We are now officially in the 100 nineties. That's right. We're in the 100 nineties, the countdown is on the episode 200. We started off this show originally.

I think it was once a month. and then we quickly said that's stupid. And we went to once a week, but you do the math. It takes a long time to get to that mini episode. So I'm, I'm pretty excited. I mean, my math says that's almost four years. It's crazy. And I look at people out there, who've got like 600, 700 episodes and I'm like, oh man, so much respect to them.

And the effort they've put into this, but it is, it is a process. It is a slog. And the funny part about that is. When you have that many episodes, it's like, Which ones are the good ones, which ones are the ones that you go back to over and over and over again. I love asking that question. I relay that question.

I'll say what's your top episode? What's your favorite episode that you've listened to? Or what's your favorite guess? Or what's your top three guests that you like us, that we have them on? What are they talk about? What are the topics you like that we've covered that kind of stuff. And I find. You know, insightful.

I mean, we try to cover everything. So when you get those answers, I'm not necessarily gonna change the topics and the guests I bring online, but it's always interesting to see what resonates with people in, you know, the kind of content. It's probably not unlike how, when you sell, when you sell, you've got a, you've got these inventories, these repositories, right?

You may have repository. Of openers you use on a phone call, you may have a repository of email templates or frameworks or, or, or messaging. You may have a repository of content and that you pick and pull and choose from all these repositories based on the application. I always think of that as the best of now, these are my go-to sales scripts.

This is my go-to piece of content. That's what, it's all. Well on that same spirit, I was really inspired almost. I don't wanna say it, cuz it's gonna go to their head. Almost proud of the gig that went down. Not too long ago. It was growth month. Put on by Autoklose now full disclosure. I was the CRO at VanillaSoft Autoklose was under my purview, but I had nothing to do with this growth month.

Took place after I left in Growth Month, featured 47 speakers at doing 45 talks. So think. 45 talks over the course of a month. It goes back to that repository. You know, of those 45 talks. I consumed them all. What are the talks that impacted me the most? What are the talks that I need to say that. That is a nugget that I need to incorporate into my daily grind and to make myself 1% marginally better or share with my colleagues or bring back to management.

What are the top nuggets? Of those 45 sessions. If I were to go back to anybody and say, listen, I listen to all 45 sessions, but this, this my friend, you need to go listen to these sessions. They'll change your freaking life. But look at 47 speakers. That's a lot of wisdom there. Again, we're gonna approaching, you know, episode number 200, which means I've had 200 speakers, but in one month they had almost a quarter of what I've had in one month.

In the second of me years to. So that's a boatload of smart people in a very concentrated space. So there's two ways we can handle this. I can send you over to auto clothes.com or to vanillas off. I'm sure you can probably find it from both places and you could go and listen to those sessions on demand and you probably should.

You probably absolutely should. In fact, you may wanna go do that after today's podcast, based on what you're about to hear, or you can say nay nay. I want the cliffs notes version of that growth month. I want the best of the best. I wanna know what are the winning elements in that repository of content. And I say that my friend, it's a fantastic idea, which is why I brought the man behind the mic.

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[00:06:39] Darryl Praill: The host who sent out all the invites to all 47 speakers and asked them to RSVP. The individual who was desperately seeking validation since I've left, because he recognizes he's nothing without me. The one the only, and by the way, if you're not following him, you should Ollie Whitfield the leader of the growth marketing movement there at VanillaSoft Ollie my friend, how are you?

[00:07:08] Ollie Whitfield: That was a glowing intro, but apart from one bit, which is totally wrong. But but yeah. Nice to see you again, sir. And, and good to be back. I think I was, I was on the podcast probably 90 something episodes or, or around the 100 park. So it's curious timing. I'm now quite close to the 200, I'm thinking maybe I have to come back and interview you something kind of hardcore like you did with for the one hundreds I think if I've got that right.

[00:07:32] Darryl Praill: You got any ideas around, I've been thinking about that one, starting to think, I'm wondering, do I bring Benjamin back for number 200 and we do it again, or do I go a completely different route? And for those who have missed it an episode 200, 100, what I did.

Was I turned the tables instead of me interviewing my guests. I had my guests interview me, but I needed a good guess who would actually tr mistreat me and abuse me and not try to suck up to me. And of course that is UK's most hated sales trainer Benjamin. Denne he great show, go listen to, if you wanna get a good laugh, but what, what do you think guys should do for episode number 200?

And by the way, folks listening, if you have an idea, hit me up on Twitter, hit me up on LinkedIn. We love your ideas. I'll though. You're the head of growth. Like you're the man, this is what you do for a living. What would be an epic approach to truly celebrate episode 200?

[00:08:19] Ollie Whitfield: I think knowing you the fluff leader that you are, you need some sort of hot fire, quick fire question scenario where you're gonna get, for example, cold calling or cold email, and you're gonna have to answer, but there is no true right answer. You're gonna kind of have to make up your reasoning, but you're kind of always gonna be wrong, which is true because it's you, but also true because you know, there's a, there's an argument for both and I think it's gonna trigger a lot of the people listening.

It's gonna be. Thought provoking want, you're gonna get a lot of comments on it, where they disagree with you passionately about a lot of the things. So I think that could be a kind of pre spin on sales and marketing or something like that. How's that sound.

[00:08:54] Darryl Praill: I really like that idea that could be really kind of fun, but at the same time, you'll also inspired me with something you just said there, that I can go down different paths.

So this is us keeping you guessing folks. We don't want you thinking that, you know, what's happening. We want to be surprised. You kind of inspire me another, another consideration above what you said. We could do a modern version of the dating game, where I act as the hiring manager and we have three individuals whom I can't see, of course I ask them questions from behind the curtain and these are three sales candidates, or at least fictitious sale candidates.

And I have to ask them odd questions to hear their responses, to see who I want to proceed with the hiring on. I can say something like, sir. What's the most. Controversial thing you've ever E mailed to a prospect. And what was the result of that and how did you measure success and then would say, oh, I measured my, I sent my phone number and I, and I managed to Entice a young, attractive individual to spend quality time with me.

And I closed the deal and the commission was really big. I don't know. You see what I'm saying here? It's a completely inappropriate session, but it could be interesting. I don't know, or not. This could be a totally bad idea.

[00:10:05] Ollie Whitfield: I think that sucked. No, that that would be quite good. If you had the visual, that would, that would make it really come to life.

[00:10:13] Darryl Praill: And on that note, it sucked. All right. So this is what I've asked Ollie to. I said Ollie, with all those 45 talks, I would like you to come back and gimme your top takeaways. And this is what Ollie has done. Ollie has come prepared in rapid fire session. We're not gonna give him any more than, oh, I don't know what three minutes each, maybe three minutes each.

I should get my phone out. We could ask you to make this a timer thing and really bust some let's have some fun. This is new. He didn't know this was coming. This is happening in real time. I'm gonna get my timer out. When I said for three minutes, you you question me, I got it. No problem. Three minutes per topic, and then you'll hear the recording happen.

So I said, Ollie, I need to know what your top takeaways now I'm thinking. He's gonna gimme the top three, maybe the top five of a full month's worth of content at growth month. Instead he says, Darryl, nay nay, I'm gonna give you the top six because I go even I ain't odd. Okay. There we go. That's all you need to know about Ollie right there.

So top six takeaways, you have one takeaway you've broken the standard of categories for us. So if you're curious what the categories are, folks categories are as follow. Prospecting sales skills, brand acquisitions, which is not necessarily a sales topic, but Hey, it's all part a growth month. That's part of growing bootstrapping and leadership.

Six takeaways. Are you ready to go? And we'll do one at a time. I'll set the time. I'll say go, and you do your thing. You ready?

[00:11:50] Ollie Whitfield: I can do that. You want to pitch in, or you gonna go straight to the three minutes?

[00:11:53] Darryl Praill: No, we're doing straight this time. My pitch in will be between little bits, little sound bites.

So you get three minutes max. Okay. God, the first one is on prospecting. Mr. Ollie Woodfield, head of growth from the VanillaSoft, the man himself, the legend. You should follow him. If you don't. He's active on Twitter and on LinkedIn, let's talk prospecting go.

[00:12:15] Ollie Whitfield: Right? So the hot thing at the moment, especially in cold email.

It's frameworks and that is not templates, or if you're English templates, templates are where something's prewritten you might change a couple of words, handful of words, within the entirety of the email, maybe name, company, role, something like that framework is how to write where to write and what to say roughly.

So you might have, for example, Josh Braun's one, which is TTTT. Which is if I'm gonna remember it now trigger event, third party validation, teach me and tell me that's his four sentences in how he writes his email. So those are sort of, according to the sessions, mine, a bunch of the speakers were talking about it.

If you're not really writing to a framework, you are free styling, kind of difficult, and you get things all jumbled up in a jar order. Not quite so funds to read for cold calling. Bit of a mixed bag, to be honest with you. A lot of the speakers were telling me they can't live without the script, but they don't necessarily stick to it.

Some were telling me, you know what, I've never used the script. I hated them. What I got from that is it's probably good to start with, but then once you build your unconscious competency, you move away, you become sort of your own style basically. And, and you. Some of it much like the email you use some of it, but then you can move away and do your own kind of thing.

That's what I got. Mr. Pro. How, how far are we on the timer?

[00:13:30] Darryl Praill: Wow. You used a grand hold of a minute and 20 on that one. That's impressive. That was it or said another way. You were really fast and don't read into that, but you. Feel free to read into that. So with that said every, every other is going, did he just say what I thought he said?

And then they're giggling I love the framework thing. I have tried and tried and tried to tell reps to do this. And I find it's something they absolutely resist, even though they know it's there and you give it to them and you give them examples. And it's not that they resist. They go, oh, that's great.

And then they go and write the emails and totally ignore the frameworks. Are you seeing that? And if so, what's your response to people who do that or, or, or what? I mean, it's an open mic, open topic. Yeah. A little bit,

[00:14:20] Ollie Whitfield: Seen it, heard it. A lot of the time when you're talking about this stuff, you hear, you're kind of in the crowd with the people who agree.

So they're kind of gonna say, yeah, great. I love it. Let me try that. And anybody who I've ever heard talk about it has succeeded or at least seen an improvement when they have tried. The thing that I've had to try and do. If, if we're seeing maybe even agreement or even disagreement, I try to use it and show that it actually worked.

And then it's not just like someone saying you should do this. You should do that. It's a little bit of show me, tell me type of thing, instead of just telling you, I've actually shown you here is how it worked here is exactly what I said. It worked in this way. Maybe not as good as I thought better than I thought, whatever it is just as transparent as possible.

So that's, that's I haven't had to do too much of that, but that's what I've done.

[00:15:05] Darryl Praill: So some really smart people, he mentioned Josh Braun check him out below Belal Batrawy another fantastic example of an individual who's really really solid. This one another example whom we have coming up on the. The next let's call within the next 10 episodes.

Some I don't wanna give it all away. We'll be Sam McKenna. She's phenomenal. She's no, you know her for show me, you know, me another example of individual also kinda on the show and the next, shall we say 10 episodes? Jason Bay Blissfu l Prospecting if I recall. So those are people you should check out folks to get your ideas of takeaways.

And if that's not enough, you can go back to growth month at the auto clothes or the minimal soft websites. And you can watch those sessions in their entirety. But I also know. That both Ollie and I did some content on that too. Maybe a webinar or something. So check it out. You'll like it. Okay. My friend, that was it. You did awesome under prospecting. Now we're gonna do sales skills. Your top takeaway after 45 talks at growth month is what

[00:15:59] Ollie Whitfield: Pretty much LinkedIn and video are king queen, prince, princess, and everything in between at the moment though one of the big things Brynne Tillman talked about, and she's a, a specialist of LinkedIn, she knows everything.

She's the. She was telling me, look, it's, it's a bit different now than it even was maybe six months a year ago. And maybe even today on the day we're recording this. A lot of people in my feed are talking about, Hey, don't post links. Don't be the first person to comment in your own post. Any of those things they're really catching onto the sort of tricks that people are doing.

Even the whole, you know what I'm talking about? Right supposed and it has one line, then it has three line breaks, then another line, three more line breaks. And then another line that carries on like that they're even ironing that out. So pretty much, you're just gonna have to find your own voice. It sounds incredibly cringy.

And just, I don't wanna even say the word authentic because it's just, yeah. We know, like I should be myself. Shouldn't I. But that's pretty much what seemed to work. And if you think about it, if I were to become, let's say YouTuber, what would I do? Well, do I become like a football, soccer, YouTuber? Do I become a gaming person?

I don't know. Do I become a marketer? Why don't I just do me and whatever things of that I want to do, you know, if they're gonna like it, then they'll, they'll like it and they'll follow it. They're much like you were saying at the very. You don't listen to every single one of these podcasts, because you're gonna pick and choose what you want.

But you're probably here because you like Darryl for whatever reason, I'm kidding. Of course. But you kind of pick and choose because you, you trust him to do a good job when you wanna do it. So that's kind of the thing there and video it's it's still not really that popular, like despite contrary like you see it all the time.

You hear about it all the time everywhere. I, I see vineyard bomb bomb. It's still so, so small in the grand scheme of things, some people are amazed, amazed to see a video when you send them it. They can't believe it. It's never happened before. I probably had three in my life and I'm within the little bubble where video is so prevalent.

So maybe if I get a really senior job, I'll get more, but I still don't think it's gonna be that much. Video is still very, very underutilized. Exactly.

[00:17:57] Darryl Praill: Two minutes. Look at him showing on no bud. Huh? You're doing well, man. You're doing well. Yeah. So where do I start? LinkedIn, you want to look up a fellow name?

Richard Vanderblom Vanderblom at B L O M Vanderblom. And he's out the Netherlands every single year around September timeframe. He releases a report. I think he's said it three or four years now. Where they've done a, a boatload of analysis trying to decipher the latest and greatest algorithm of LinkedIn.

And that's why you see people saying they'll be the first to comment. Don't edit it for an hour. Et cetera, you want, you want three hashtags? Unless you're creator mode, then you want four or five hashtag. The, that goes on and polls are popular because the algorithm values dwell time videos only have a nominal bump in reach unlike a couple years ago where videos had a massive bump in reach and you were seeing a lot of videos happening.

So, and that's for your regular posts. So Richard VBL very, very good. In fact, I just shared all of his content here with the crew at ults and we're a social media platform and they hadn't heard of Richard. And they were like, oh my God. And my sales reps were like, freaking out on it going, this is incredible.

I'm like, there you go, boys and girls, so great stuff on the, on the Sales skills on the LinkedIn as for a video, I've had this conversation over and over again. So the downside is you have to be connected to send a video or an audio message to somebody. Okay. Which is why your connection request. Can't just be a connection request without a personal note.

And the personal note, can't just be, Hey, I sell widgets. It's gotta be something relevant and contextual and hyper personalized that compels 'em to accept you cuz you feel like we're kindred spirits and then you can send 'em a video and the best part of a video it's good for prospecting, but even better when they start to ghost you or they become unresponsive.

When you send an audio or a video message to them, it's like 90% of the time they respond outta guilt. So like, yeah, I know. I promise to get back to you. Hasn't happened and like you, no one's doing it and it still blows my mind reps. Serious question. We tell you all these tricks, you nod your head, you say yes, and you don't do it.

Send it in on social media. Tell me please. Why don't you do it? Because this is pure gold. Every single expert out there. We mentioned Brynne Tillman. That's a good example, but there's lots of people out there who are just like Brynne's one example. You can get Daniel Disney, another example you can get Vivica von Rosen.

Another example, the list goes on, check out these people. They will make you experts when it comes to video. Check out the folks at video. Tyler Lessard's a good example. But there's many, many, many too. So there you go. Those are sales skills. Now we're gonna go to brand brand your top takeaway unbrand. You have three minutes go, okay.

[00:20:41] Ollie Whitfield: We didn't actually have too much on this. It was mainly personal brand. And then one about sort of company wide brand, but the personal brand thing, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this investing a lot of my time energy and the team is helping me. It's still difficult.

And I think one of the big things that I really took away from, from the sessions and, and sort of trial and error in my own work for this, it's not really working. If I don't have a stance, I'm, I'm not a commentator on the market. Really. They don't really exist because everybody is biased. We all work for a company.

We all have an agenda cuz we have to sell something cuz otherwise if we don't, we don't really have a job. So you can't really play that neutrality voice unless for some reason, You're able to, for a unique set of circumstances, that's not really anybody's circumstance. So you gotta have a spin. You gotta have a, like a take I'm.

Sometimes I'm cynical. Sometimes I see things and I have a negative point of view on them and I call things out. Sometimes that doesn't work so good. Sometimes if you are the opposite and you think everything's wonderful, if you're are that fanboy or girl, and there's a funding round going around some company, you've got one connection at and you are going crazy about it, that can get you some far, but you know, you have to have some substance of behind that too, at some point.

It's really important to have a take. And there was a piece by Lead IQ a while ago. There VP of marketing or, or chief evangelist. Now Ryan O'Hara wrote something about brand archetypes and an employee to go and read that it gives you nine sort of characters if you will to play. And it's not that you should be artificial about it.

Pick the one that's closest to you and how you actually are as yourself, out of work everywhere else in your life. If you can live to that and you can speak like that and you can post like that and you keep that up. You get known for it. And that's when people like Darryl or his persona where he's he's, you know, he thinks he's funny and knows things.

People pick up on that and they know what he's about, and then they know what to expect. And when you come back and you get the same thing again, it's good. You feel validated and you feel like you can trust him more and you keep coming back. It's the same type of thing. If you resonate with that negative tone or that really positive tone or the expert led tone, whatever it.

You'll come back. So if you have that in your personal brand, you're onto a big, big start. Wow.

[00:22:46] Darryl Praill: Look at you. I mean, you were over two minutes, two minutes and 10 seconds. You're getting progressively longer time. You hit all six. You're gonna run outta time, but right now you're doing well. My friend let's talk about personal brand.

You as a sales rep are likely competing against other reps and other companies and those other reps and those other companies may have greater notoriety or made greater brand. Presence kinda like, you know, we know Coke, we know Pepsi. Who's three, you know, from Ivan might go Dr. Pepper. Okay. Who's who's next?

You know, you see where I'm going with this one? I don't know. So if I'm wanting to enter the drink, the soda drink game, I need to build up a brand and to do that a personal brand, a corporate brand. And I need an attitude. I need, I need something that's uniquely mine. Coke is the real thing. All right. What is yours for me?

My Twitter handles opinionated. So you'll see a lot of honest, straight talk in what I do. The second thing for me is I'm a bit, as Ollie said, cuz he was totally fanboy on me is I try to be a bit of a funny, smart ass in your face. Stupid. I don't take myself too seriously and I like to put people's but laugh laughter and smiles to people's faces or they can roll their eyes and I'm equally happy about that one.

And then the last thing I do my personal brand is I intentionally have spiky hair and a white beard and blue glasses that are distinguishable as I'm scanning through the timeline. All those are elements, very intentional elements of brand. In fact, if you even look behind me in my video, set up, you'll see how my room is somewhat staged between lighting and prop.

To be distinguishable brand OIE does the same thing. So that's what branding's all about so that you stand out so that when you do reach out to these people, even though it may be a cold call or a cold email or a cold connection request, they're already familiar with you and who you are and what you stand for.

And they're like taking that call every single time. So, or if they're not sure they then go check you out online, cuz you called them or you emailed them like holy smokes, this individual. You know, ballers, I gotta get in contact with this fellow. I like what they're all about. Personal brand. Huge. Okay.

We're halfway there. Halfway there. Let me pull up a timer again. It closed on me. Okay. I'm ready. Here we go. Three minutes. Next topic is acquisitions go.

[00:25:08] Ollie Whitfield: All right. So we had a few talks about this. Not all of it is particularly relevant to a salesperson in most parts, but what I did find and what our sales team did actually point out to me as.

There's so much that you don't see about the story that a founder spins afterwards and what ha what actually happens. Like genuinely speaking, what is true within a company at any given point. And that's just, you know, fairly obvious if you're struggling or if you are not gonna meet, pay around next month or you're running outta cash or whatever it is.

That's not good news. You don't project that. In fact, one of our speakers who I won't like name for their own sake, but they were talking about something completely else. And the day after the talk, they were on Twitter saying that they barely made payroll. And they'd only just hired two people two months before that.

So that just tells you how difficult it actually is. As a founder, you can't even say any of these things because it looks bad. People start to doubt you and all these things. So there's so much that goes on behind the scenes. You wouldn't. One of the stories that I had. And I'm so lucky to have met har Paul, who, who, who you've gotta go and watch his session.

The story of his company getting acquired is outrageous. He was about a week away from total failure. He'd borrowed like his parents money loads of times, like, I mean, months on months on months on months living at home with no rent. I think they even remortgaged, I think potentially it was looking really bad and they were trying their best.

They gave it as, as long a time as they could to try and sort it. It got to seven days out. And the one thing that turned it around, he made one phone call to one deal we'd been chasing. And he just said, honestly, Jane we're about to hit the wall in seven days. I really think there is an amazing case for us to work together.

I would hate for it to go up and smoke, but I understand if the timing isn't right. It, what do you think we should do next? And she said, give me two minutes. I'll call you back. Signed agreement. Done. Not every time will it work like that? Obviously, and from that moment, he went crazy. The whole company just blew up, but I think that was a huge moment for them.

And about a year later, he was in LinkedIn's office and they bought him. But you didn't hear any of that. All you cared about was LinkedIn acquired him. There was so much before it. So I think the one thing to just remember when you're trying to talk to CEO, president, founder, whatever it is, especially early days, companies, there's a lot more going on that you would even picture and it's not to insult the intelligence of any salespeople at.

It's just that if you haven't been there just like me, I haven't been a founder. You haven't got a clue, even without knowing if let's say you have been a founder, you don't actually know what's going on on their side too. It all might look great. Yeah, sure. They're hiring, but what else is going on? And that's, that's part of your deal cycle.

That's part of their decision making around you. And you're never, you might not even get told that stuff. So I thought that was worth sharing. It's so interesting. How much more happens than you would ever be told unless you hear it from a, from a session like that?

[00:27:54] Darryl Praill: I love what you just said there that's killer. And the fun part was was he more exciting? Was he took two minutes? In 50 seconds to say that. So he's getting dangerously close to the three minute mark. So with that said, let's carry it on. Let's talk about again, is we talk, Ollie was talking about founders and, and, and how their back was against the wall.

Well, the other side of that equation, if it's not acquisition, it's about bootstrapping. So my friend let's talk, bootstrapping, go.

[00:28:22] Ollie Whitfield: All right. So same type of thing. There's a few things that salespeople may not have been exposed to or told when it comes to selling to someone of that kind of statu in those early days.

When you're bootstrapping, obviously cash is king and queen and prince and everything else, it's finite. You need it. And you can't live without it's. Any purchase is a massive deal. Even if its small one thing. That thing that I really learned from this, especially when companies start to get go, when they start to see a bit of success and things, look.

Doubling down on one particular channel, which is working is just so obvious you can't help, but do it. And honestly, if you're gonna do anything else, you kind of, it's a gamble. Like, you know, if you, if you see something's working great, you, your natural instinct is let's go down that rabbit hole as far as we can milk it for, and then we'll work out something else when we're sort of profiting from that problem is if you're trying to sell something, that's not that one thing.

And it can be very. So for companies that I've worked for, it could be all kinds of different channels and methods and tactics and whatever it is almost random. And you don't know until it happens. And that's, that's the beauty of business. But if you're trying to sell something different, you're almost gonna get ignored, even if it is the next best thing, even if they are 1% away, even one day away from that thing, not working anymore.

I remember very well back in the day talking years ago now Facebook used to be brilliant for marketers used to be able to post on your company page and it would go everywhere. It would go virals. And then one day without no warning click, it's all gone down to like 5% reach from a hundred something.

It was crazy. And a lot of people didn't know what to do. We have, we had no warning, but just like any founder, you won't get any warning when your market changes or anything like that. And when you're trying to sell a secondary way of doing things, a different alternative, a strategy, a. you're, you're really up against it.

So there's, there's always that you're kind of fighting against deaf ears on that a lot of the time, but that was what I found kind of interesting. And then there was a few things about marketing, always going wrong. There's a few classic things that that founders of an early stage always do wrong.

But maybe, maybe we can talk about that another time, just for the salespeople listening, not to to tell 'em all about SEO, but that was the main.

[00:30:22] Darryl Praill: Two minutes and five seconds. You're getting you're, you're pulling back. What's really interesting about the whole bootstrapping thing is it's no different than when you're selling.

Right. Everything you're doing is, is like, how fast can we go? You know, I can't afford a VanillaSoft plus a Gong plus a Zoom Info, plus a Seamless AI plus a salesforce.com. So what can I do to really, you know, kick ass and achieve my goals? So love, you know, I'm trying to help you understand. Well, a lot of what founders go through as they try to grow is no different than what sales reps go through.

As they try to grow. You're both trying to achieve the same thing, which is you're trying to break through the noise of the market. You're trying to get market acceptance and you're trying to hit, you know, aggressive revenue targets. So you can then, you know, figure out how to, you know, paint your Lamborghini.

Is it a blue or is it in a green or is it in a yellow? Who knows? So the bootstrapping thing is totally related to sales folks. Believe it or not, but finally. We're gonna end the conversation on what Aldi learned after 45 talks and 47 speakers at growth month when it comes to leadership go.

[00:31:30] Ollie Whitfield: All right. So this one's particularly pertinent to me, lots and lots of talks on it. And I've been finding out sort of the hard way, if you will. Some of the things that, that our speakers talked about, one of the massive, massive things is yep. Have a leadership style, have an ethos about how you wanna do things, have a way of working. And be strong on those. Those are your key principles.

You shouldn't budge. And as long as they're not too extreme or different to what the, the team might have been used to beforehand, that's, that's your golden thing to, to like, put, put your hat on, basically around that every single person on any team, especially if you're a first time manager or leader.

You have to adapt. So me particularly, I am extremely like driven for certain reasons, but not for others. I'm really, really loyal for certain reasons and not for others. So if you, if you give me loads of praise, that doesn't really do that much to me, if you're negative towards me too much, that doesn't do anything for me and I'm disengaged again.

The next person next to me to my right might be the opposite. And the person to my left might be the same as them. The whole team is very different. And if you're trying to do a one size fits all for the team and how you work with. It's not really gonna work. It might be okay. It might be close enough for some, but there'll be some who it just doesn't work for.

And that's the first time manager's thing that you gotta work out the hard way. Luckily for me, a lot of the talks that we had were they gave away specific examples of that. And a lot of them were about like running a sales team for the very first time, your top rep, who's a lone Wolf. They go and do their own thing.

You deal with them differently than you do with the person who needs lots of handholding and lots of constant feedback. Lots of coaching doesn't mean that either one is better than the other. That's just how you have to work. You do have to pick your battle sometimes, especially if that maybe the second person is the top performer.

Great. You spend that time with them, but not at the detriment of everybody else. That's your problem to deal with that side of it, just doing your best to make sure the team is good. Everyone's getting what they need as best that you can. It's not really about, I like this. I'm stylistically looking for this.

I particularly love to be quite close with all of my team, but that might not be what happens and what is best for the team. I'm. And so it's discarding that looking at what's around you. I think it's a hard lesson to learn easy to. But but that's what I got.

[00:33:40] Darryl Praill: That's good. And that was two minutes and 15 seconds.

So well done. My friend, we're pretty consistent on me. They're getting buzz. Yes, you are very consistent. Which of course is the sign of a good sales rep. Ollie, we've gone through kind of the. The best of the best you you've dis you've distilled the repository of amazing talk stand in these key takeaways.

Thank you for that. Now, with that said tell us a little bit about VanillaSoft. Tell us a little bit about Autoklose and tell us where we can reach you.

[00:34:07] Ollie Whitfield: Of course. Yeah. Well, first off, thanks for having me back on always good fun. Even if I get to give you a little bit of a jab and a little bit of an insult here and there, and that's your favorite sport anyway, to, to give me a little bit of a hook.

So I like to, I like to throw one back. But yeah, so Autoklose was the company that ran the conference. If you will. So autoklose.com. It's not close with a C it's close with a K. And if you wanted to take a look at the sessions themselves it's growthmonth.autoklose.com

Autoklose cold email about to be Linked In. That's a bit of an exclusive, maybe I shouldn't have said that, but I just did and contact data all in one. And then for NSF, the top sales engagement platform on the market need, I say. Me, I'm all over LinkedIn. Trying my best to be a personal grand person. Maybe I'm doing okay. Maybe I'm not. You can tell me I do Twitter a little bit.

Sometimes that's just me being upset about football. There's a lot to be upset about today. My team just lost four nil so I won't be tweeting today. My friends will be all over me, but apart from that. Yeah. That's, that's where I spend my time is primarily LinkedIn.

[00:35:01] Darryl Praill: Now I have to ask the question. Every person out there is wondering and I'm totally putting you on the spot here. I've never asked anybody this question in almost 200 episodes. Wow. We've not talked in a while, Ollie. So are you still single?

[00:35:14] Ollie Whitfield: Oh, this a difficult one that there's trouble everywhere. I look here. None of your questions bother me to date apart from this one and now for extremely hot and You know, it's not even that hot in this room, I'm single.

And I've been dating a little bit. I'm about to buy a house. So that's gonna put a big span in the works. I believe, I think it's, I'm gonna be moving fairly far away. So it's one of those awkward timings it's like today got the acceptance on my mortgage tomorrow. I'll have to deal with all the paperwork, but in September time, August, maybe I might be quite far away.

So, so who knows, it's a difficult time and it's a difficult one to answer, to be honest with you.

[00:35:48] Darryl Praill: So let me make it less D. Ladies and gentlemen, he's single. He's about to become a homeowner and he works for VanillaSoft. He runs growth and he knows what the hell he's talking about. He's my friend. That's Ollie Whitfield.

Give a shout, cuz he's pretty damn good. In the meantime, that's another. If not different fun episode this week on the inside inside sales show, we hope you like the little variety. Mix it up in the meantime, if you like this one, I've already given you some teasers. There's some great ones coming down the pipe, including episode number 200.

We'll be here before you know it. My name is Darryl we talk to you soon. You take care. Bye-bye.

This episode was digitally transcribed.