[00:00:00] Intro: The INSIDE Inside Sales Show, powered by the Sales IQ Network.

[00:00:08] 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.

How is everybody doing today? Oh my goodness. It is a fantastic fricking day. You know why? Because my friends. I don't know if he caught the last episode I sent on the on the whole episode series of episodes. I got to say episodes 42 times. And I, if there's a wager somewhere along the way, I don't know.

But I gave you a little update last time. It's like a two minute after, by shortest ever episode. I think it was like two minutes long. That was it. And it basically, I was saying I'm changing networks saying good show, just a new channel. Now, of course everybody has. 20 years old and younger has no idea that I'm making a television reference here.

Cause you've all streamed your entire life. You're like DERO. What are you talking about? That's what would happen? Kids in the days of television when shows would change times? Same great show. New cool time or day or what have you, so I'm sorry, I'm just, I'm an old man and I ramble. Yeah, so what's going on?

So what's going on is we're joining a very phenomenal network, the good folks at Sales IQ, check them out Sales IQ Global and, I mean, Luigi Prestinenzi, kids, Tony Hughes, kids. I mean the, the, the revenue shows they're phenomenal and, we're joining their posse. So it's going to be a lot of fun, but the same show, same format.

And if you haven't checked out Sales IG Global, please do phenomenal company, podcasts are equally epic. So that's my little plug. This is episode number 176. And the whole show, but episode number one on the new network, you're here for, this is history in the making. All right. So with that said, let's shut up and move on to the real reason why you're here.

I want to rant today. I'm ranting. I'm in a mood. Are you in a mood? You want to listen to me rant? Oh my goodness. I curious why rant. If those of you who are listening to me while you're exercising, maybe you're out for a run you're on the treadmill in the gym. Does it make you run faster? Let me know, send me a message on social.

I want to hear I want to rant because I've been lamenting a few things recently, and I think it's funny time. We have an episode. I have a heart to heart. What I've been lamenting. I've been lamenting bots. And need for me to talk about bots for guys don't use bots. Everybody can tell when you're using a bot, when you use a bot, it kills you.

I literally had a LinkedIn post of the day where I showed a screen capture of an invite I got, and it said, Hey, space, space, space, space, Darryl. You know, your company looks really interesting, yada yada yada. And of course, why was it? Space, space, space Daryl, because I have a microphone. Image in my name, which by the way, totally against the terms of service on LinkedIn, you really shouldn't do as I do, but I'm a rebel, I break rules.

But the reason I do that is so I can tell when it's a bot. So that would always say space, space, space, Darryl, or would actually say microphone, Daryl. And when that happens, I know that it's actually, it's not personalized. It's just a bot. This isn't an anti bot crusade. You've heard me do that before. I am going somewhere with this indulge me.

So there's that there is the whole. Activity over outcomes. All right. Do you have a sales manager? Who's like, you've not made 95,000 goals today. You suck as a sales rep and this is why you have no success. You are worth this to me. I spit on you. You ever have that, you know? And he tried to say, yeah, but I, I kind of had, I had 42 great conversations.

I don't care. You didn't do 95,000 calls. You suck at. So there's the bots. There's the activity. Oh, what else do I either rant that people are just trying to combine as much as possible discovery and demo at the same time. Because if I did the discovery and demo at the same time, and theoretically I shortened my cycle and I can get more activities done, like make more deals, except your demo sucks because you've got no context.

Cause you didn't do discovery and trying to wing it on the fly. And when you wing it on the fly, you realize they want to see something that you have no clue how to do. And then you botch the demo and you try to bullshit your way through it, but you lose the deal. When you simply, if you'd have taken some time, you'd have done a proper discovery and then you'd have to kill her down.

And you'd have been like a rockstar lack of research, right? Lack of research because, Hey, who has time for that? Cause I have to do 95,000 calls a day because my mantra says so, so you see there's a lot of power on effects here. What does all this have in common? What do all this have in common? Well, I'll tell you what it all has in common.

It all has in common either. We're trying to gain the system by doing as much as humanly possible through automation and shortcut. So the bot is an automation. Combining demo discovery is automation is a circuit right in front of the two things. And once am my friends, boys and girls gathered around, I want you to understand the consequences of what that does when you do this.

You suck, you suck. You're losing deals and your manager, who's already angry at you for not doing 95,000 calls. That day is now pissed at you because you suck. I have the answer and the answer is very simple yet. I contend it may be counter intuitive, so you're ready. Do you want to know what it is? Sit back, relax.

Get your pencil out. Get ready to put this down heading. Hey, maybe you don't have a pencil. Maybe you have a digital pen and you're on your remarkable and you're making these digital notes. Cause you're a cool cat. I like it. Here's the answer. I want you to do less.

Are you in sales, but you're not using a sales engagement tool? Then you're probably losing out on revenue because you are not engaging with prospects at the right time, with the right cadence, and with enough persistency. You need VanillaSoft. Go to vanillasoft.com.

L E S S in case you couldn't understand that my Canadian accent. And you'd probably go and I don't know what the hell you're talking about. They're out. That's okay. You're not the only one here to explain what I mean by doing less straight from Sales IQ Global headquarters in sunny, beautiful Australia, who is the master of less, don't ask the women in his life, the Luigi Presetnenzi, the man himself, the legend. How are you doing sir?

[00:07:06] Luigi Prestinenzi: I'm doing great Darryl, I don't know, that's the first time ever, anyone has introduced me as the master of less

[00:07:12] Darryl Praill: The master of less.

[00:07:13] Luigi Prestinenzi: That could be my new LinkedIn you know, title, the master of less.

[00:07:18] Darryl Praill: I was given that title by my wife on my honeymoon. I think it's a compliment. I'm not sure, but there you go. What are you going to do? My first, before we get into, what do we mean by left? Thanks for having me on the network, dude. Thank you so much. I'm a part of the family now.

[00:07:32] Luigi Prestinenzi: Oh mate. Well, you know, the minute I heard that there was a bit of a change I've thought, you know, there's a great trigger event to have a chat with you because obviously we've been working together for such a long time now, mate, and the big fan of the podcast, I've listened to it many times on my run and yes, it makes me run faster.

Just ramble your rants, get me angry. And as a result, that's the it's absolute privilege to have you part of our network and help elevate ourselves to sales proficient because I think you know, the profession needs a bit of help, more and more cause he comes the more and more.

[00:08:09] Darryl Praill: So let's talk about less. I mean, I gave him my opening ramp, but I know you've got an opinion on this. You've gotta take, did anything I say resonate with you. Do you want to go off on a different tangent? Do you want to build upon what I said? Where do you want to go with this? Absolutely. I think,

I want to go down this path. I think the fact of the matter is that the data doesn't lie, right?

We are seeing what is it? Data tells us 24% of emails are opened 50% of deleted before they're open. Sellers under 30% of sellers are hitting target salespeople spending, what? 30% of their time selling. I mean, the data's sitting there, it's staring at us right in the face telling us that there's a problem.

If you're looking at this, if you are anyone that you're looking at this saying, you know, well, this isn't really good data. Like it's probably not something you want to be sitting around the boardroom table with the executive. Looking at this going, Hey, we're making a real difference in our sustain 24% of people and hitting target.

We're doing all these activity. We're spending more money on tech than ever before. We've got, you know, CRM, we've got automation platforms. You've got call listening devices. We've got data in Richmond tools. You've got all these things, but yet sales performance is down. What's that telling us. And I think some really, you know, some real conversations need to be happening now about why, because I think throwing more tech at, at a problem is not going to fix the problem.

It's going to make the problem worse.

So let's talk about some of the symptoms in, you know, I opened up kind of the same, we're trying to do too much. And we're continuing, we need to do less. So I'll give you I'll I'll, I'll share a symptom and then you jump in when you got symptoms. And maybe we can get sad for that from the doctor, make the itch go away.

So you know, one symptom I see over and over and over again. As I get messages, whether it's cold email or it's a voicemail on my phone, which by the way, yeah, I do check my voicemails. And even when I don't, it's all automated, it comes to me as a, as a text-based email that I can read. Or it's a social media outreach, usually connection requests.

And there's literally zero relevance to me. And I used the, and I've used this term before. With my tribe here on the show. I go, I think, I think relevance is more than just it's it's it's personalization plus, you know, saying, Hey Daryl, you know? Yeah. Okay, great. But why do I care in my role? You know, what's the pain that I'm feeling?

What is it I'm struggling with every single day and how can you make this relevant to me? Because I need resolution to this pain. Great freaking out. And by the way, I want to be clear on this one, for those who have missed, we talk about this. When you come to me and say something like, Hey, you've got a big number to hit this year, a sales quota.

You've got a big number. That's not really relevant to me. Every single sales leader has got a big number. You know what I've got, I got a sales team right now, but I just listened to three or four of the recordings and they all suck despite all their training. Can you fix that for me? Cause that's relevant to me right now.

Okay. So. Why do we have these impersonal generic outreach messaging? I think it's cause the rushing as opposed to taking time and to do less outreach and make the messages they send to people like me more relevant. To me, that's an example of doing less. Thoughts?

[00:11:33] Luigi Prestinenzi: Absolutely. But I think the less part requires more effort and work. And this is like, we're asking sellers to go, well, think about a cadence. You're going to set up your sequencing tool and you want to do this and you want to do that. But hang on a second, let's actually take a step back and go, well, actually, who are we serving first? Let's think about what does a day in the life of them look like and simply just giving them a picture of a persona and saying here, we've done the work for you.

This is what your customer's pains are. This is what their challenges and opportunities in. But hang on. Do you truly understand what those goals and objectives are? Right. And I think that is a big issue because sellers aren't really going into the detail about what is happening in our buyer's world, because you're, you know, that the element of building a relationship or any form of trust comes from eight B empathy, but how can we truly show any empathy if we don't truly have an understanding of.

What the day looks like, what are the challenges in the day? Like you said, you've listened to a call. What's the sales leader thinking when he listens to that call. Right? So these are the things that I think sellers are missing now. And one of the things that I'm not that old, I even, I turned 40 next month.

Right. But you know what, when I started in sale sales, we didn't have the remarkable LinkedIn. We didn't have some of the tools that we've got today, where I can press a button. I can get a mobile number. We had to be curious, we had to go out there and look, we had to search, we had to do research. We had to talk to people.

We had to build our own lists. Do you know what that itself is? A skill that I think is missing for a lot of people that searching under a rock. You have a look, nothing there, go to the next, you know, that whole, I think that process is being missing. And we're trying to quickly focus on ramp, but we're forgetting there's some fundamental skills that we're missing that sellers are missing.

And that is, you know, I've got an email here is video innovate in animation, something you're in the market for that's the first line wise. We typically range between 5,000 and 12,000 per project, depending on length, if anything looks interesting, we'd love to pitch some ideas. And then I've got the next one.

And then the next one that says, are you not the person responsible for video in your business? Right. That's an automated, I've got it here. It's the automated sequence in play now, right? Why is that even relevant for me, Daryl? Like what rate? Like, that's absolutely crazy to think that these are them and there is countless and countless emails like this guy.

Right. For me, that's not selling. That's absolutely not selling. That's the opposite of selling.

[00:14:31] Darryl Praill: Yeah, I agree. That's spamming, but people are trying to do more. Right. They're trying to do the activity so they don't have time to do this. So we'll go down more examples. But I mean, I know what people are thinking right now, so let's just, let's just deal with that right now.

People are saying. I don't have time to do less because I've got a boss or I've got a big nut I have or I have to have so many conversations. I have to do so many outreaches a day. How can I possibly do less? I hear you. I know. But that's not realistic. So what do you say to that? I mean, you're the sales trainer, you're you?

You're the guy who not only trains the reps and this is true focuses for those who don't know. I and not only just the host of the show, I also am a client of that man right there. Right. I hired him for a long time to train my team. So. You wouldn't. I would have some blunt conversations where you'd say, Daryl, they'll be a dipshit.

You gotta do this. Who, the teams that have that only dipshit is actually polite. What you actually say in when someone swears that you're with an Australian accent, it really hurts. So I mean, how do you coach these sales reps who would love to do what you're saying, but don't feel they are empowered to do that?

[00:15:48] Luigi Prestinenzi: Well, I think this is this, you know, the time, the time equation constantly comes up and it's easy to say, I don't have. But I think the one, the thing that makes the high performing sales professionals a little bit different is they find the time they make it a priority. And we all know that, yes, you can't manufacture more time, but you can choose where you spend your time.

Right. And we've known that we've seen people in your, in your team, that there are some that really, you know, they spend a little bit of extra time per day. Doing what needs to be done so that they can improve and they can change the way they craft messages you know, learn new skills. So yes, it's always going to be a challenge when you've got your manager saying, Hey, I need these.

This is, this is, you know, your activity levels, et cetera. Okay, cool. We can't change that. We can't control that, but you know what I can control. If I'm going to listen to a podcast. I mean, I remember you saying guys, he's a podcast. This is my podcast. This is my inside inside sales podcast. Go off and listen to this.

They had incredible content already. They could listen to, and they could implement immediately some chose to do it. Some did. And as you know, the ones that chose to do it made improvement. And I think this is a biggest thing that sellers have today that it comes to a point of choice. They're either going to choose to improve or they're not now.

Yes, we go. This is not about creating a hustle culture, mentality and work more hours, but you know what, an hour a day, if they can commit and you can find that era day, if your morning walk, you can listen to a podcast, you can, you know, read a little bit of a book. There's many ways to find that hour where you can proactively even half an hour.

We did half an hour thinking about it. It's two and a half hours. That's 10 hours a month of learning self-learning Hanley sellers have Gong, Chorus, all these great platforms and they don't listen to a call. Right? We've had this conversation before they don't actually sit there and review a call. They don't review their deals like that.

For me is a choice. They're making a choice, not to focus on improving and not making a commitment to excellence. And this is where unfortunately, I, I believe that the people that make that choice not to focus on that commitment to excellence will actually be made redundant in the next five years. They will not be, they'll not have a role to play because, you know, sellers don't, I mean, buyers don't want to engage with a sales person.

They can't create value and isn't actually going to deliver anything outside of what a website information sheet can do. And we've spoken about that, right? We've spoken about the demo, the demo that isn't contextualized, isn't customized and isn't fit to purpose for the prospect. So why the hell do they need a salesperson running that when they can just watch it on YouTube?

Now they can just watch it on the website. Right? Right. So I hope that answered your question.

[00:18:48] Darryl Praill: It does. And, but I bet you, we have people in our audience saying, okay, now I'm really confused braille, because you're saying to do. Last, but then Preston NZ just said, you got to spend a half hour a day learning new content and maybe another half hour today, you know, kind of just skimming and listening to some of your calls.

So isn't that more. And let me clarify why it's less, because if you use the example, you have eight hours a day of doing prospecting, whether you're prospecting, closing deals, whatever, what Luigi just said was as you know, And I get seven hours a day to do that. Cause you're gonna put a half hour into learning new content, half hour, reviewing your own calls and comparing what you did well and what you did, right?

So you have seven hours a day, you're doing less prospecting. However, because you invested in the training and you invested in reviewing your calls and see what you're doing right and wrong. What happens is like a pro athlete who practices when they practice. Their success rate goes up, their conversion rate, your conversion rate, my friend will go up.

So you will convert more activity and more pipeline that seven hours than you do in the eight hours right now. So you're doing less prospecting, but you're being smarter and you're being more intentional about it. That's an example of doing last nap. Let me throw an example out there. Going back to the boss situation.

I hear you, your boss is a big believer in activity. I think what you need to do in any to have a hard conversation with them, maybe in your next one-on-one and you can challenge them. Not boss can handle this. I get this. This is your call. You can be bold. You can be brave. I will tell you this. It is an, it is a employee, a job seekers market right now.

So if you're not happy with the answer, you'll get another job in 33 seconds. I'm not making that up. Okay. I haven't go to the boss and I would say, okay, you want me to do all this activity? 95,000 outreaches a day. Okay. What do you really, what do you really want? Do you want that activity? Or do you want conversations or do you want outcomes?

Like, what is it that really matters? Cause I'm thinking we have a quota, so I'm thinking you want closed deals. So I'm thinking, you know, you want, you know, a number of conversations. And you're thinking it's a numbers game. If I do 95,000, I'll have one conversation a day and then one in three conversations, we'll close.

Who the hell knows what if I could do, you know, half of those touches, but have two or more conversations, you know, two X or more conversations. Would you be happy? Cause then I have conversations, which is really what you're getting at. And they're going to say, if you can get more conversations, most of them, 99% of sales leaders will say, if you're going to have more conversations and do less knock yourself out, right.

And they'll use that super voice. So you've got to have a conversation and an easy way to do it is say, great. Let's do an AB test. You know, I'm going to spend the next week or I'll spend mornings doing my time and afternoons doing your time, or the next two weeks I'll do this. And my time we'll compare, contrast, do an AB test to see how it works.

And then you, this way you can prove to your manager that doing less as, as she smarter, because when you're doing less, you have more. To personalize the message to make it more relevant, to do more research. In fact, you have more time to actually research before you do discovery. You have more time to actually do your call planning before you place the call.

All right. Yeah. This is the point. Sometimes my friends less is more, believe it or not. Anyway, Luigi have you had success in coaching, a sales leaders on our sales reps on how to do less?

[00:22:31] Luigi Prestinenzi: Absolutely. And I think there's a couple of good examples here, right? There's a gentleman that I keep referring to his name's Ellis Abraham's from DocuSign, he's been on our podcast before and one of the things that he's done so well, He's the haze, the key when it comes to doing less and getting more, right.

He's doing when he was an STR, he was doing about 14, 15 outreaches a day. When you, or, or contacts to reaching new contacts. And you'd be saying, mate, that's low. It should be 50, but it was booking four to five appointments a day. Right. And the reason for that is because he was spending a couple of hours in the research phase of his list, finding the right triggers.

Making sure there was relevance and it was personalized and therefore he was getting a high level of response. Right. Spending more time, making sure if they didn't respond to the first or second or third email in the thread, maybe he needs to alter the. And alter the relevant aspect of it. What did that, where did that lead into promotion?

AE finished a year, 180% of target, right? That's a key example of doing less activity, but making the quality higher level of quality, getting more outcome from the process. But I think the key for this is. We know that there's a trust gap between buyers and sellers. We know it. And again, we can reference a lot of data to say, buyers just don't trust sales.

How can you, when somebody's pitching me on an email that they don't even know that I need, right? It's pure spam, or really I'm dubious about the type of messages coming in. I'm getting these phone calls, et cetera. There's already that barrier that's up there. Right? So why are we fueling the issue when it comes to trust?

When, if I take the time to research you Daryl, if I take the time to, if I'm having a discovery, even at discovery call, for example, if I'm not doing any research on your organization, if I'm not doing any research on you, if I'm not coming with a relevant point of view, if I haven't got any really good questions that I've thought about before I meet with you, why should you take the time to spend with me?

We gotta, we gotta ask ourselves some serious Christians here. We are not order-takers, we've gotta be seen as value creators. We've gotta be seen as somebody that's actually delivering more than just a transaction because that's the risk associated with the sales proficient right now is the more that we try to automate and we don't deliver value and we don't create any value in the process.

The higher, the risk of the process being completely stripped out of the sales person's control. And we just give the buyer to say, Hey, don't even worry about interacting with someone, just go to this website and you can interact. You can get what you need to buy because you're not getting any value from these guys anyway. Right?

[00:25:26] Darryl Praill: Here's the one thing I'll say to you, folks your sales professionals, what, what do you like more, what attracts you to this profession? Beyond the commission check. Do you like being a trained monkey? Who does all their sequences and touches? So you can hit those 95,000 touches a day. Is that what you'd like?

And that's, you're like, great. Keep on doing it. Or do you like doing the research to get to know your ideal customer to understand how your solution can. Damn why it's relevant to them, how you can make them more successful in a consultative fashion, doing that research. So, you know, the angle to take, to start a conversation, to have a back and forth.

Do you like it, the relationship side? Do you like the cycle and the process of selling from start to finish the, you know, close deal, if you like the ladder, as opposed to the form. Then the trick here is simply to have more conversations and to have more conversations. The answer counterintuitive as it is, is to do less selling and to do more actual training preparation.

Research list optimization. You know, that's what it comes down to. So the choice is yours, but Luigi would never lie to you because he's the man. When I was getting ready for the show, I had two thoughts come to my mind that I thought were just sound bite, worthy on today's theme. Tell me what you think.

Luigi. I, this is why I came up with my two soundbites. Results matter more than activity, soundbite, number one, and number two outcomes over outreach.

[00:27:14] Luigi Prestinenzi: That's a good one. That's a good one. That's that's actually the one and you know what? Just on there, right? Just like we do in selling people, don't buy what we sell. They buy the outcome. We help them achieve. If your manager is, is banging on the door for activities, just ask the question. Are you paying me for activities or are you paying me for results? 'cause I'm pretty sure they hired you to deliver a result, not an activity active. Yes, it leads to result, but the most important part of the process is the result.

[00:27:43] Darryl Praill: Cool, we'll leave it there. Okay. I'd be remiss because we have the man, the legend, the one, the only Luigi Prestenenzi in the house. Luigi, for those who are not familiar with your podcast, brother, give us the quick and dirty. What is it all about?

[00:27:57] Luigi Prestinenzi: Okay. The podcast, the Sales IQ Podcast is a passion project of mine. We actually, I started it so that I could learn more. I wanted to talk to people, the books that we read, I talked to these people so I can be better at being the, be the best professional that I can. But it talks about mindset. It talks about tactics and it talks about strategies all around how to create pipeline and close more deals. So, check it out Sales IQ Podcast. I think it's pretty good. I've even had the man Darryl on it, or he might have to bit, you might need to be my I've never had a guest come twice. You might have to be the first Darryl.

[00:28:32] Darryl Praill: So funny story there, folks I've actually been on there twice. But if you go to the actual library, there's only one version of me. Because Luigi recorded me very early, maybe the first 10 episodes of his new podcast when he launched it. And I waited for like six months for my episodes to appear. And I finally had to go to him and say, Luigi, you know, those sounding, you know, impolite or rude, where, where am I dude? And then he had to say, I buggered up the episode and I didn't record properly.

And I've just been hiding my head. Hoping you would never notice. So I contend I've been on it twice. Dammit. So there you have it.

[00:29:12] Luigi Prestinenzi: So, three times.

[00:29:13] Darryl Praill: Three times. It's like, okay. That's it that's and it's the first episode on the new network in the can, but this is episode number 176. That means we're 24 episodes away from hitting the big 200.

So if you have any ideas on what we should do to celebrate that milestone, let me know, would love to hear it where we're a little bit of ways maybe. Well, if I do, the math was that maybe six months away. So it's going to happen. I want you to be part of it.

In the meantime, check us out, follow, like, subscribe, share, review, give us five stars. Tell Alexa, you think we're awesome. Whatever it might be. I am just thrilled to be talking with you again. My name is Darryl. That's my friend Luigi. You should follow his podcast too. We'll talk to you soon. Take care. Bye-bye.

This episode was digitally transcribed.