Simplify Your Strategy – Magnify Your Results Podcast
On each episode Brian Margolis helps entrepreneurs, sales pros and other professionals create a simple weekly strategy using The Pillar System. A system that's helped multiple individuals become 7 figure earners and is licensed by some of the largest companies in the world to help their teams grow through simplification Some episodes have a 2nd part where Brian helps guests review and refine their initial pillars and solidify the CAP strategies they can use to turn pillar execution into a habit.
Karloff is a successful salesman of 20 years who is now selling software for a startup company. The additional duties required with working for a startup, coupled with being a husband and father led Karloff to purchase my book. He started using the system on his own and was able to double his pipeline relatively quickly. He then reached out to me to talk about identifying the pillars he would need to hit his updated goal of $1 Million in annual sales. Here is what we identified in the first call:
To hear other episodes go to https://productivitygiant.com/simplify-your-strategy-magnify-your-results-podcast/
Simplify Your Strategy – Magnify Your Results Podcast
On each episode Brian Margolis helps entrepreneurs, sales pros and other professionals create a simple weekly strategy using The Pillar System. A system that's helped multiple individuals become 7 figure earners and is licensed by some of the largest companies in the world to help their teams grow through simplification Some episodes have a 2nd part where Brian helps guests review and refine their initial pillars and solidify the CAP strategies they can use to turn pillar execution into a habit.
Karloff is a successful salesman of 20 years who is now selling software for a startup company. The additional duties required with working for a startup, coupled with being a husband and father led Karloff to purchase my book. He started using the system on his own and was able to double his pipeline relatively quickly. He then reached out to me to talk about identifying the pillars he would need to hit his updated goal of $1 Million in annual sales. Here is what we identified in the first call:
To hear other episodes go to https://productivitygiant.com/simplify-your-strategy-magnify-your-results-podcast/
Brian Margolis (00:00:00):
This is Brian Margolis. And welcome to the simplify, your strategy, magnify your results podcast, where on each episode I use the pillar system to help a sales pro entrepreneur or other results based professional, create a weekly strategy to run a simple, more lucrative business strategy. So simple. It can fit on an index card, but so powerful. It's actually helped create multiple seven figure earners and is now licensed by some of the largest companies in the world to create strategies for their teams. If you'd like a free copy of my book on exactly how to do this, or want to be considered as a guest on a future episode, head on over to productivity, giant.com. Enjoy the episode herding said before, we'll keep this informal. So we talked a little bit by email, but catch me up on what you do for work, any kind of background that you think will be relevant to this. And, you know, based on you reading the book already, you know, where you are maybe stuck with the pillars or where bottlenecks are, what you're hoping to kind of accomplish, and then, you know, that'd be, that'd be a good starting point. And then I'll probably just ask a lot of questions. Sure, sure, sure. So I sell software
Karloff (00:01:18):
For living. I'm a director of sales for the New York New Jersey region. The company is a, a software solution that provides automation to, you know organizations. It could be small businesses all the way up to global conglomerates. I've been in sales for over 20 years very successful cut out a pretty good living. So you know, my typical day the company I work for is it's, it's, it's a small, it's a startup. So it's about, you know, five to $10 million in that range, about a hundred people, the employees. So I wear a lot of hats and that means there's a lot of activity. So I needed to do something different to manage my time. And so someone suggested and read the book which I have. I started, I referenced the book almost every other day, cause there's things that I don't remember not to go back.
Karloff (00:02:18):
I did put together some pillars. I used your weekly and daily time process. So I've got a small book that I split in half and I used the two pages and I have the columns going down. So I have the time on the left and I have the pillars on the, on the next to that. And then I have things I need to do. And then I have my personal stuff. So I, you know, I do that daily. Sometimes I get to do it in the morning. Sometimes I'm so busy that I get to do it in between meetings, but I've tried to do it daily. And I started now earlier. I started on Saturdays now to try to get ahead of things based on what the book told us or told me, I should say that the week should start Saturday to Friday, which I started doing that.
Karloff (00:03:08):
So the challenge is the there's a lot of activity. I have three kids at home when it's going to college, I've got those personal activities. Obviously I'm a husband and a father, so I've got those activities. But you know, my goal is to, to do more proactive to move the needle based, you know, based on what I've read and I've put some goals together, how much revenue I want to generate between now and the end of the year and the activities I need to do proactive activity that I need to do to, to move that needle. So that's pretty much where I'm at right now.
Speaker 3 (00:03:43):
And the, and I got, I don't know what you're on right now. Your microphone might be rubbing against something. I don't know if it's closed or something. I mean, I'm getting a little static. It's not nothing major, but yeah. So, so based on, on what you told me you know, do you, are you going into the office kind of nine to five or are you working from home? I work from home
Karloff (00:04:07):
And occasionally I rent office space like I did today. So I, I I have a virtual office service that I use it's called liquid space and I rented office in New York to just to get out of the house. And also if I'm meeting with clients like I am today, I I pick an office right near them in this situation today, I picked an office that's right across the street for my appointment. So it just, it's more efficiency and it's it just really manages my time a little better.
Speaker 3 (00:04:38):
And is that you, are you on the road a lot? Do you meet in person with clients?
Karloff (00:04:43):
I'm not on the road on the road a lot. I could say I'm a, maybe once a week, I'm in the city, but typically I know two weeks ago I was in Irving, Texas for a meeting and I'm going to London not next week, but the week after. So
Speaker 3 (00:04:59):
For, for the reason of, of talking to a potential client or correct. Okay. So these are larger sales than the longer sales cycle consultative kind of selling
Karloff (00:05:12):
That's correct. Cycles are, you know, it could be three months. It could be six months. Got it. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:05:20):
So, so, so you're not, but you're not a road warrior. You're probably in the office four days a week.
Karloff (00:05:24):
Yeah. Correct. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:05:27):
And as far as goals go, what are we, what are we looking at with what's our directional goal here? What are, what are we looking to get to?
Karloff (00:05:38):
So from a business perspective, from a revenue perspective is what I'm trying to accomplish utilizing the pillar system. So I want to do about 300 K of new revenue by the end of the year. Okay. As a revenue goal, then there's obviously goals to be, you know, a good father, a good husband and good listener, but which are soft goals you know, important, but not, not that you know, not moving the needle for my business right now. So those are the things I want to do because I haven't written down in a larger index card and it's 200 K in sales by December 30, first, 2018. That was my weekly goal on the larger index. And then my pillar is, which is in a smaller index card. I have it on on the top right hand corner, the number just to make sure that it's always there. And I've got a couple of activities that in, in that pillar.
Brian Margolis (00:06:34):
Okay. Let's let's, before we jump into the, the pillar part of it. So if I extracted that out, okay. What would be a yearly goal? Like as you move into 2019, what are you imagining your yearly revenue goal is going to be?
Karloff (00:06:58):
So if, if if I'm sorry, the question is, if I do, if I meet the goal, my objectives, what was it?
Brian Margolis (00:07:05):
What would be the full year? No, no, yeah. I mean, what is your, if you had to extract out a yearly goals, you know, we're going to be going into 2019 soon. Is it 300,000 for next year? Is it a $500,000 a year?
Karloff (00:07:23):
It would be for next year. The total year would be a million dollars of revenue. Okay. Yeah.
Brian Margolis (00:07:29):
All right. So, okay. So, I mean, I'd rather work on that now. Meaning let's design your business today. Like you, you like, you know, you Karloff inc. You're running a million dollar business. Right. I know you're within a business, but you want to generate a million dollars next calendar year, right? Correct. Okay. So let's, if you agree with me, let's make our weekly pillars designed just for that, right. To hit that million dollars on the business front. And are there any other business goals, you have subscribers building a team, anything I'm not thinking of, whereas this, you know, 1 million for you in revenue?
Karloff (00:08:14):
Yeah. That's the ultimate goal cause I'm an engineer and I'm an individual contributor. So you know, obviously I want my, my vision for my business is to be a trusted advisor. Right. To your customers, to my customers, correct. Customers buy with, for, you know, technology from people who are a trusted advisor, someone that understands their business and understands their pain and what motivates them versus someone who's just trying to sell a product. So if you want to add that as a, as a goal also yes. The goal is to be very proficient in what I do to a point where I'm, I'm viewed as an expert in the industry. Okay.
Brian Margolis (00:08:58):
And, and it, yeah, it's more of a, like a consultative selling position. Correct. the, as far as how your software works and what you're selling now, is there a lot of reselling to the same customers upselling, or is it a software service or it's a monthly or yearly licensing fee? It's a
Karloff (00:09:21):
Subscription. So a upsale is the utmost important. So the goal is to try to get a, a, a land to get something in and then expand it as you continue building your relationship. So, yeah. So it's land and expand is the it's the strategy.
Brian Margolis (00:09:39):
Okay. And, and does that mean when you say expand, is it different software or more software in the automation space?
Karloff (00:09:49):
It's a, it's more use cases to that expands the, the software to other areas.
Brian Margolis (00:09:55):
Yes. Yes. Okay. So, so more seats, so to speak,
Karloff (00:10:00):
It's not sold by C to sold by connectors, but you got the point. Yeah. It's more so more connectors.
Brian Margolis (00:10:06):
Okay. So you're not selling different software, like, Oh, they bought our ABC software now let's see if they could use our XYZ software. It's, it's, it's the same stuff with more, ad-ons more connections, more people that are allowed to use it, things like that. Exactly. Okay. So, and then do you, as your compensation, D are you building this residually? Do you get compensated based on their usage each month? Or, or is it a one time transactional thing for you?
Karloff (00:10:35):
Yeah, it's a, it's a one time. So, and then if they renew their subscription at, at the same amount, I don't get any any additional revenue. I get revenue. If I build it I used a Delta from the existing contract to their new contracts. If they build and add additional functions additional software, I get paid on a,
Brian Margolis (00:10:58):
Okay. So, so the cold value to an existing customer, I don't, I'm taking human humanity and emotion out of it just for a second. The cold compensatory value of a new of a new customer, or sorry, an existing customer is you can sell them more. You can make their contract bigger or you can get referrals. Right. Correct. Okay. All right. So I'm just trying to understand how much of your business is going to be, you know, hunting, hunting out new opportunities versus expanding existing ones.
Karloff (00:11:31):
Yeah. 90%. It's hunting for new opportunities. I don't have a big customer base right now.
Brian Margolis (00:11:36):
Right. But when you get one, is there a service department or do they continue to call on you? In other words, the more you bring in, does your service role start to expand? Cause that's important to understand.
Karloff (00:11:46):
No, I have a customer success team that would handle the customer. Alright, perfect. So
Brian Margolis (00:11:55):
1 million in yearly revenue and that's, you're, you're looking at new revenue, correct? Correct. Okay. So that's new revenue coming in each year and obviously that might change over time, but I just want to get a general idea. What is the average sale price? How, how many, how many customers are we talking about to get to a million new customers signing a contract?
Speaker 4 (00:12:21):
So it, it varies, but you know, an enterprise customer should be spending at least you know, a hundred K that's kind of the watermark. However, sometimes we get into a department even ended up, you know, even if it's a large multibillion dollar company, that department might have just a budget for 50 K. So you'll take that obviously, but if we keep the average deal size to where it's supposed to be, it's a hundred care. So it was about 10 deals at a hundred K and 20 deals at 50 K to do $2 million revenue.
Brian Margolis (00:13:08):
Well, a hundred deals, 10, 10 deals at a hundred, K's a million right there. Right. Exactly. And then, okay, I see what you're saying. Okay. So again, if we're averaging it, you're saying the average is a hundred, there's some that are more, some that are less. In other words, I'm trying to boil it down to how many new accounts approximately do you need to get a year?
Speaker 4 (00:13:30):
I wouldn't say 10 to 15, if we do it right.
Brian Margolis (00:13:33):
Average. All right. Let's just, let's make it for 15. Yeah, that's fine. I'd like to stretch a little bit. All right. So from a, from a pillar standpoint, since you've read the book gone through it, why don't we start there? Why don't you tell me what you think your activities are, your pillars should be, and then I'll, we'll kind of talk about those. And then what I'll do is we'll kind of start from the ground up, but I will use that information you give me and we'll kind of build out what I still think is needed. So T tell me what you've come up with in terms of your weekly pillars.
Speaker 4 (00:14:14):
Okay. So, so a couple of things, right? So in order to get to 15, I got to do a ratio of three, three X to get. So if we're looking at 15, we're looking at 45,
Brian Margolis (00:14:34):
45, what? 45,
Speaker 4 (00:14:38):
45 opportunities to be involved in order to close 15. That's a, that's a three X multiple.
Brian Margolis (00:14:46):
Okay. So, so you're saying out of every time you sit down and consult with someone needs this kind of software, you're landing one out of the three, so to speak,
Karloff (00:14:56):
Correct. That's kind of the ratio that I'm trying to keep too.
Brian Margolis (00:15:00):
It's not, it's not one out of three of people who take your call or ask for information, obviously, right?
Karloff (00:15:06):
Nope. It's a, it's one out of the three that are going to actually sign a contract and buy the software. Right. I think I'm asking what,
Brian Margolis (00:15:15):
How do they become one of the three you're actually meeting with them, correct. Back and forth, giving them a proposal, specs, all that kind of stuff.
Karloff (00:15:22):
Yeah. POC is discovery calls conversations with my tech team before we, you know, so we, I have to have about 45 of those in the pipeline. Got it. And if we want a goal, it's our goal is to close 15 at a hundred cage. Then I definitely make my number, but I gotta be in conversations and in a sales process with about 45. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. So so what I did, I took some of the examples you had in the book. And so there's a lot of ways to get to in front of prospects, right? One is myself calling people and in a cold call. So I, I put a a pillar of 25 cold calls a week, five a day. Now those cold calls includes my SDR. So I've got a, I've got a person that does cold calling for me also. And they S and there's people who sign up to my website. So that's all inclusive on that 25 a week.
Brian Margolis (00:16:31):
When you say SDR, you mean you have some kind of assistant or junior or someone, a department where they, where they actually make calls. And then if they get someone on the line or the hook are interested, you wind up calling them after,
Karloff (00:16:47):
Correct. That's called a sales development rep person, you know, out of college and they dial for dollars. They, they, they do that very well. Yep. Okay. So that's inclusive with that.
Brian Margolis (00:17:02):
Yeah. So I'll just call that 25 calls, leads, leads, and cold calls.
Karloff (00:17:07):
Correct. You could call it 25 lead gen a week. Okay. Which is a breakdown the five a day. So that's on the top of my list. I want to schedule two discovery calls and two demos a week.
Brian Margolis (00:17:20):
Are they the same thing? Are those two separate things,
Karloff (00:17:23):
A discovery call is to understand it's like a doctor, you go to the doctor and he's, he asks you, so are you feeling what's, what's ailing you and you tell them that my back hurts or my foot hurts, or what have you sure. So that doctor's discovering. Yeah,
Brian Margolis (00:17:36):
No, no. I understand the discovery demo pricing. Are they the same thing in terms of, is it to have one or the other, is it to have one and then two of the other as well,
Karloff (00:17:46):
Two, two of one and two of the other. Got it. So schedule
Speaker 3 (00:17:51):
Two demos a week, correct. For the future, that doesn't matter when they are and schedule two discovery calls a week. Correct. Okay.
Karloff (00:18:06):
So we've got the cold calls. Well, we call them the lead generation. That's fine. We'll get the discoveries. I also put in a non sales touches. So in LinkedIn, I, yeah, I see, I see now this, the scratching you're getting from the headphones. Let me just let me change this. So you don't get that scratching noise. It's, it's actually my collar. That's hidden there. That's wrong. But I'll, I'll lift it with my hand. That's fine. And I'm standing by the way, cause I, I can't do the sitting down. You're pumped up, man. Yeah. It's just, I'm looking at central park from this beautiful view and I'm like, I can't be sitting down.
Speaker 3 (00:18:45):
I was in, I was in Manhattan two weeks ago.
Karloff (00:18:48):
There you go. So, you know so non-sales touches it and I utilized LinkedIn for this. I look at articles could be from CIO magazine and my marketing department does a great job of filling up a, filling a sheet articles that has nothing to do with my company, but it has to do it a lot with industry. We, I can, I can reference a specific thing in that a Pacific specific page or a specific example. And I, and I send it off to to my LinkedIn say, Hey, you know, I read this article by Jim and he discusses how automation is transforming industries, and they're doing it exponentially in terms of getting things done correctly. And so I will highlight that, send it on, on LinkedIn. And I highlight the page number, the author, I give them obviously the credit. And then I want to send them, you know, one of those once a week or at least
Speaker 3 (00:19:51):
No. When you say, when you say send one, do you mean post it for public consumption or send it directly to individuals?
Karloff (00:19:57):
No. Directly individuals don't work. It has to be in your, your network. So it would be published to my network, which is posted. Correct. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:20:09):
So you want to post your, so your goal is to post a certain amount of LinkedIn articles a week or LinkedIn posts a week?
Karloff (00:20:18):
Non sales. Yeah. Non sales articles.
Speaker 3 (00:20:21):
Okay. And what, what was that number
Karloff (00:20:23):
Originally? I had a two and it was supposed to be two a month, I think, two a week. It's overkill. And what happens is you're going to get a lessening effect. So I think two a month is probably a good, or maybe once a month is probably even better. Okay. I guess the last thing I want to do, I mean, the last one I posted was about a month ago and I received 1700
Speaker 4 (00:20:48):
Views, which is 90% of my network, which is pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a, I kind of, so let me, I adjusted, I'm going to do one non sales touches a month via LinkedIn. Okay. Okay. I also have in here call family. So let me, let me explain I'm notorious because I'm so busy and what, everything that I stay in touch with people. And so I have to call my family, you know, once a week. And that could be, my grandmother was 98, my mother, one of my siblings, even my cousins, just somebody. Right. That's all I got
Brian Margolis (00:21:33):
Now is that pillar to reach out to one person or to have one phone call
Speaker 4 (00:21:39):
It's to reach out. Yeah, I can. I it's, it's specifically for multiple phone calls.
Brian Margolis (00:21:46):
It's specifically for what?
Speaker 4 (00:21:48):
No phone calls. So it's not just one it's you know, I could, I could, I could reach out to two siblings. I could reach out to my grandma at least once a week. I subset a specific date a time. Like usually he's on Mondays at eight and between eight and nine, excuse me, between eight and nine on a Monday, I call four people.
Brian Margolis (00:22:13):
Okay. So, Oh, I got you. I got you. Okay. So really it's, you're measuring it in time, not number of calls. In other words, one of the things about a pillar is it has to be measurable weekly, which means you, at some point you can cross it off done, right? Yes. So are you done when you have a certain amount of conversations, are you done after the hour of attempting to reach people and maybe reaching some, not others? When is that pillar completed? It's completed when I have a full
Speaker 4 (00:22:46):
Hour and I've at least touched, you know, three, three family members connected with connected, with conversations, not leaving voicemails.
Brian Margolis (00:22:55):
Okay. Then I would even the hour then becomes a hat more of a, how than a what in this case. And so the pillar would actually be three family calls connects a week. We're just, we're just writing these down right now, so we don't have to get crazy.
Speaker 4 (00:23:20):
Alright. Okay. so in, in that, in that I forgot to mention is the 25 cold calls that also includes sequences. So so we, we have already established that cold calling is really what's the word you use pipeline or
Karloff (00:23:47):
Lead activity? What's the word you used? I mean, I use it use your own language is fine. Okay. So lead generation is called that it includes sequences. So a sequence is a my, my SDR that junior person puts together a routine. We call it a sequence. But for, for me to explain it properly, it's a, this 14 touches, right? So industry have you're nurturing your lead, correct. You have to do 14 touches and then there's a phone call. There's an email, there's a LinkedIn. So all that's a called a sequence. It's about 14 touches is the industry average. So, but included at the 25 calls is to it's to reduce my sequences. So I might have 30 sequence that's at 30 tasks in my inbox to do these things. My goal is to [inaudible] the entire week is with the 25 cold calls.
Karloff (00:24:43):
And it also includes reducing those tasks for lead generations to ensure that I'm on top of them. Give me a specific example. So you know, we had an event two weeks ago and the person visited the booth and dropped his name. And they put a sequence in for me to touch that person. The first sequence is, or the first activity, the first task is to call them. So I go in my outreach software, click on task, start to ask, and it says, you know, call Jack can make the phone call either I leave a voicemail or I actually get them live. If I get them live, the sequence stops because that means me got, I got in touch with him, and then I'll set up either a meeting or demo discovery, or we postpone it when he's ready to talk to me.
Karloff (00:25:29):
But that sequence will be completed. Any touch point from an email or phone call stops a sequence, but let's say that our response, correct. If I don't get a response to leave a voicemail, it automatically goes into the next sequence and active in the next few days, I get another task that hits my inbox. It says, okay, you know, you left Jack and Eve a voicemail, but now let's move into an email. And this is an email template that you can use, go into LinkedIn, go into his business and customize a little bit, make it more relevant. So I go out and I do that, make it more relevant. I send it, I have five or six of those types of things in one day. So if I do five and if I do five cold calls, that's fine. Part of a sequence that, that hits my, that scratch that, that, that, that terminates my, my Washington state terminate. But that satisfies my goal of five cold calls a day. Okay. Just, but now just the, just the phone part of it, or even sending an email, correct. Even the email. So that's what I'm going to change it from co calls now to lead gen one. Okay. 25. Really? What you're saying is 25 prospect touches, correct a week. Make it five a day. That could be an email or a phone call. Okay. So I'm going to call
Speaker 3 (00:26:44):
It for my side 25 prospect. I actually forget touches, reach out. So reach out to 25 prospect reach outs a week. We can change the language later. Perfect. That could be email LinkedIn phone. It doesn't matter. And that's generated that the source is the, this a sequence that's been started for some of it that counts toward it. So, so put it this way in a week. If you call three people cold, if you get eight leads from a show, you call them, you send out seven emails based on sequences that popped up in your thing, right. That all counts toward the 25.
Karloff (00:27:27):
Correct. Okay. All right. So in, in order for me to be in a trusted advisor, there's, you have to be proficient in your demoing. And one of the things I read in the book is what can move the needle. So if I do an excellent demo, right, and I really touched on a relevance to the customer that takes my that prospect to a much better, it's up to at least at the next level, to get them to look at purchasing the software. So I, in my plan, I have 30 minutes a week to practice the demo, even though I know the demo, but I want to continue being sharp. So I take the demo and I, you know, I've got these stuffed animals in my office and I pitched these stuff down, but I'm practicing the demo, but I'm really becoming a trusted advisor because there's ways I even learned, especially if the process, if this relevance in the process I'm going to pitch to. And if I have the really down solid, I practice that. And that's 30 minutes, 30 minutes a week.
Speaker 3 (00:28:37):
Yeah. And, and, and listen, I'm a big proponent of, you know, being good is different than being effective. Right? Correct. You might be good in front of a group or at a meeting. You might sound like, you know, your stuff and that's important. But I think the component that a lot of people miss is they get so comfortable in these meetings and because they've done it and they know their product inside and out, and they get the same questions and they answer those questions and everyone feels good. All that is different than being effective. In other words, hitting pain points, saying things in a way that causes people to want to take action. Right. Psychology basically. And so being an effective messenger is probably, you know, what the most important skill, whether that's through emailing or calls or in person, you know, your ability to move someone to action. Right. And so I think that's what you're saying is you want to make your presentations more and more effective. Exactly. Okay. So that's,
Karloff (00:29:42):
That's the presentations and demos. So I do that twice a week. Okay. And they're two different things. A demo is actually looking at the product and going through it, and the presentation is going through slides and presenting the company. Okay. So right now for me presenting the company, I'm a lot more comfortable then demoing the product, which in this company, they rely on us to do that. Versus other companies, I used to have a solutions engineer, a technical person. So I don't have that to do that here, but so I practiced at demos to make sure I know it very well. And the presentations, I still look at the slides and I still do some things and tweak it to ensure that I stay ahead of the curve. So those are the two things. The other thing is I want to read a new book a month an inspirational book.
Karloff (00:30:36):
Oh, we have this thing called the cue cards, right. Their stories. So when a customer does something in our, in our solution and they're successful in it, like for instance this company called Slack, they they had you know, many different processes that was all manual. And they put together a workflow with [inaudible] with my company. And now they were able to you know, those processes, each one of them, we used to take a week now that takes, you know, 30 seconds. It was exponentially beneficial to utilize our solution versus the way they were doing it manually. So that's a, that's a customer story.
Brian Margolis (00:31:17):
Yeah. A case like a case study.
Karloff (00:31:19):
Correct. So once a half an hour, a week social proof, correct. I read it, I read a story and I internalize it. So I write it on an index card. I read it out loud. I talk to my stuffed animals. I practice it. So I want to do one customer story a week, learning a good story and internalizing it. That's a big difference, right? Just me saying these things at TZ. That's a, but internalizing it. So when you have someone asks you a question, so what, you know, to ha you know, what did, how did they determine that they needed to automate this? You know, what are the determining factors and what software did you use? So you've got to go to another level to those stories. And if you go to, if you're going to mention this story, you should internalize it and understand all the nuances of the story to make sure that you sound credible. So that's what I'm thinking, internalizing it, not just, just reading it, but internally
Brian Margolis (00:32:12):
You realize if your stuffed animals come to life, you're going to have an entire sales army. I know. Okay. 30 minutes on stories.
Karloff (00:32:21):
Yep. And the last piece is that clear my paper cutter my clutter. It's a file mail and make sure that I'm ready to for Saturday morning to start my week. That's it
Brian Margolis (00:32:36):
You're talking about. When you say clear your clutter, where you're talking about, you're talking about your
Speaker 3 (00:32:40):
Inbox, you mean physical, like in your office at home?
Karloff (00:32:43):
Yeah. It's it's sometimes I just keep piling it up. So once a week I gotta just take 30 minutes and reduce it. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:32:49):
So 30 minutes of cleaning your office, right?
Karloff (00:32:57):
Yup. And that's enough. I mean, the other, the other pillars had to do with closing business. If I can clues to meet the, you know, to meet the 10 and 15, I've got to do two deals a month. That would bring me to not 24. So I got to do at least a deal of it.
Speaker 3 (00:33:12):
Yeah. And that's not a pillar though. That's a goal.
Karloff (00:33:15):
All right. So that's not on here. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:33:19):
All right. So one thing I didn't see in here, but actually, maybe I, maybe I did, maybe it's the seat, the sequences takes care of what you call follow up, right? Yep. Okay. So when I say, what is your followup system, right. You're going to point me to this idea that you have a sequence could that'd be correct.
Karloff (00:33:45):
It would be correct. If I don't get in touch with them, that follow up is already built into the sequence.
Speaker 3 (00:33:49):
What about following up on opportunities? Meaning now you are in touch with them. Where does that fall into your week? Your pillars, your plan. In other words, me and you just had a phone call. We have a discovery call now, how do I stay in your pipeline? What are you doing every week to make sure that, you know, when I need to be, you know, reached out to I'm reached out to
Karloff (00:34:19):
So two things, I put all that information in Salesforce. So then it goes into the pipeline. And then the second thing is I send out emails with next steps with dates and it's called a closed plan. And the close planner are two ways. One is an email. So I just keep following the emails. The second thing is actually writing a close plan. It's a document that I send to a, to a prospect, and it has dates and activities. Who's responsible. And we kind of work together on a joint close plan. So those are the, those are the two words.
Speaker 3 (00:34:55):
Is that something you have to focus on? Or is that something you naturally do? Like do you probably have someone being a, a, how do I want to look at this? Someone being an let's let's do it this way. Let's do the Dean Jackson methodology, right? You have your invisible prospects and your visible prospects. And this is a little different than how he, what he's means, but an invisible prospect, or maybe that's a bad way to go. I'm talking about, okay, prospects, you haven't talked to and prospects, you have talked to, right? Like I have a little thing in my thing I call, I see which means I'm in contact with them. Like we've opened a line of communication. We've talked at some level. I'm looking your IC is once someone, once that sequence ends and they respond to you and maybe you talk to them, where do you look every week to make sure you see all those people and do whatever the next steps are, make sure you stay on top of that. It's all automated in your Salesforce.
Karloff (00:35:59):
Automated it's it's it takes focus. So you have to take a look of Salesforce every day.
Speaker 3 (00:36:08):
Okay. Now, w what do you, how do you Mark someone here's where I'm going with this? How do you Mark someone in Salesforce that you're in contact with them? Now they've responded, you're in contact with them, and now we're in the, whatever you call it something we're in the close plan.
Karloff (00:36:28):
Oh, you just, you they're, they're part of the opportunity. And they're a there's, there's a roles in the opportunity. So this could be your executive contact. It could be your champion you, so you Mark that in Salesforce, you know that that's your champion and that's your person. That's, that's getting you selling, selling for you internally. So you have that in the opportunity. So, yeah, it's marked and it's in there. So when, if I look at an opportunity, if I look at my forecast and I see one, one is at a different stage with date, then I'll look at that contact automatically and say, Hey, let's let you know. I have to call them. But yeah,
Speaker 3 (00:37:10):
The solution in search of a problem here, it sounds like this part you have down pretty good. It's not something you have to intentionally focus on, like print out a close report every week to make sure that correct. Okay. So, so this is something you're just doing throughout the day. You're constantly looking at Salesforce and who do I have to stay on top of. Okay. All right. Cause, cause my, my experience with sales professionals is just the opposite, right? The, a lot of them have to, they just, they don't their followups. Terrible. Put it up. Okay. Now I've got a pretty good process to follow up,
Karloff (00:37:48):
But if they don't respond, I always ping them in, in the next two days or the next two business days. So if it's on a Friday or Thursday, I it's on my it's a Monday morning say, Hey, I sent you. It's not something we have to really focus on that. No, right. Well, I could, yeah. I could tell you why we need to focus on, but that go ahead.
Speaker 3 (00:38:05):
Well, tell me, what do we need to focus on before I start asking some more questions?
Karloff (00:38:08):
It's it's the activities to get to more prospects to generate more prospect, those 25 that the lead gen a week is to take that from a lead gen to the next level to say, Oh, I do have this problem. What you, what you're proposing to do, what you're proposing is, is gonna address those, those those problems. Let's let's have a conversation. Let's have a conversation, you do a technical overview, let's get a technical win and it's get funding. Let's address that. That's a no, let's put a let's address it the right way and let's get up. Let's get your software in here. So you're saying,
Speaker 3 (00:38:45):
You're, you're saying the bottleneck is converting leads, correct? To prospects. Again, I want to use your L I want to use your language. So
Karloff (00:38:55):
The prospect, but from prospects to, to customer.
Speaker 3 (00:38:59):
Okay. From prospects. Okay. And those are even prospects you haven't done. If you haven't done a demo with someone, if you just got their name from the SDR, or you got their name from a trade show, or they sent you an email, they requested information. We're calling those leads, correct? Correct. Okay. They don't become prospects until you've connected with them
Karloff (00:39:26):
Until I qualify it. And the qualification is, is there, is it a pain that I'm, that they're experiencing is due to have a, you know, executive sponsorship? Is there funding,
Speaker 3 (00:39:41):
Right. But I'm talking about it in the communication process. Again, let's say your SDR or let's just say you going to someone from a trade show gives you their card. Okay. Correct. Someone subscribes to your email list, right. Or emails you about. Can I get more information on your product right now? You and I are both refer and I know we're playing semantics, but I have to understand this. So you're referring to that person as a lead. Correct. Okay. Now that person's not answering the phone, they're not responding to your emails after that. And that's when, cause they're in the sequence right now, right? Correct. That person is still a lead. They're not a prospect, right? Correct. Okay. It's once you communicate with them, they respond, you connect with them. They become a prospect. Exactly. Alright. You're not having a lot of trouble going from lead to prospect. The bottleneck is from prospect to customer. Correct. Okay. Alright. So there's plenty. Are there plenty of leads coming in the door?
Karloff (00:40:47):
This there's yeah. I could say that there's for me to make the number to have 45 in the, in the pipeline. Not yet it's getting there, but it's not like there's nothing coming in. So there is yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:41:00):
Was there something, is there something you need, you can do to influence more leads coming in? Do you do any of your own prospecting? Absolutely. Okay. So because the 25 calls or reach outs that we're talking about, that's both to generate leads and to turn leads into prospect. It has a dual role, correct? Just so we're clear. Okay. Crystal, do you think that's the right way to do it? To combine those here, here? Here's. Here's why I'm asking, because if you get a lot of leads coming in the door, then I'm guessing your 25 is going to be mostly trying to connect with those leads. Right. And you've stopped prospecting for new leads.
Karloff (00:41:50):
Correct. That would be a safe assumption. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:41:54):
Just sometimes is the, you know, the hard part about what someone like you does is you have all these leads are working and all of a sudden you look up one day and you have nothing new, not much new in the pipeline. Right. You have to kind of start scratching and clawing again, to get more leads in the door.
Karloff (00:42:10):
Yeah. But I avoid that and that's the five a day. So I let's say I'm working on a proposal and it's got a lot of stuff going on. I will force myself either in the afternoon or make sure in the morning that I make those five calls. Right.
Speaker 3 (00:42:26):
Right. But you're saying those calls are, can be to leads that have already been generated.
Karloff (00:42:34):
Those will be calls in the, in the, in the sequence. So I've got a lot of calls in the sequence a lot. So those leads come in from the SDR. They're plentiful. That's okay.
Speaker 3 (00:42:46):
That that's, that's where I was going with that. So you're not having a leads problem. No, it's prospect. It's, it's getting old. It's turning leads into prospects, prospects and the customers.
Karloff (00:42:55):
Correct. Okay. All right. That's okay.
Speaker 3 (00:42:58):
Right. So, so really there's 20. I got you. There's 25 reach outs. You do a week, whether it's emails or calls. That's okay. We're good. We're on the same page now. All right. So let me, there's a couple of things in here that probably don't qualify as pillars, but we can adjust them a little bit. And that's fine. Let me just kind of start from the ground up to make sure we didn't miss anything. Okay. Yep. Question, question. Number one, you know, in the pillar concept here is, you know, what is one thing you already know how to do effectively that if you just did more of, or were more consistent with would have the biggest impact on your business, even if nothing else changed
Karloff (00:43:49):
Jug, you know, turning leads into, into prospects,
Speaker 3 (00:43:54):
Turning leads into prospects. Well, that's, that's the sequence, right? Correct. Okay. So you already know how to do it effectively. You just have to do more of it. You have to be reaching out for these people. Correct. Okay. And that's what the 25 reach outs is designed to do. Yep. Okay. So, so that pillar kind of covers that right? 25 a week. You feel good? That's a good number.
Karloff (00:44:23):
Yup. Like for instance, today I'm behind my goal.
Speaker 3 (00:44:28):
Yeah. I mean, as you probably know, from the book, I'm not a big fan of the daily goal of the daily pillar, the weekly, but, but we're going to talk, we'll talk about that. But as far as identifying your pillars, 25 prospect reach outs actually, why don't we call those? We need a better name for that. It's really 25 sequence touches, right?
Speaker 4 (00:44:55):
Yeah. Well, I changed it already in calling it lead gen. So you could say sequence. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:45:01):
You have the, you're calling it a lead once they're in the system. So you're not generating a lead.
Speaker 4 (00:45:08):
So the prospect generation. Okay. Again,
Speaker 3 (00:45:13):
If you want to call it, listen, I, I'm not gonna, I shouldn't change what you call it. 25 lead gen. Okay. Let's let's ask that question again then. All right. Just to see if anything else happens here. Oh, I got a better one
Speaker 4 (00:45:29):
Prospect touches or lead touches. I like that instead of
Speaker 3 (00:45:36):
That's fine. 25 lead touches. Yup. Again, I just, you know, listen in your own brain, you can call them whatever you want. I just want to make sure you and I are talking about the same thing. That's why write these words are thrown around, are lot leads, prospect, nurturing, generating all that.
Speaker 4 (00:45:56):
Okay. Okay. Got it. Alright.
Speaker 3 (00:45:58):
Anything else that you need to be doing more consistently? Something you already do effectively. You just need to be more consistent about it or do more of it.
Speaker 4 (00:46:07):
Practicing the demos and the presentations. Alright.
Speaker 3 (00:46:14):
What about, let's jump to the second question, because I think you did a decent job on the pillars. We just have to clean them up a little bit. Okay. We'll talk about in a second here.
Speaker 4 (00:46:26):
What is, what
Speaker 3 (00:46:27):
Second question. What is one skill that if you significantly improved on would have the biggest impact on your business
Speaker 4 (00:46:37):
Communication.
Speaker 3 (00:46:40):
Okay. And is that what you mean by the demo practice, the presentation practice and the stories, or is this something else we're talking about?
Speaker 4 (00:46:49):
No, all three. That, that whole combination, the store, especially the stories, right? Social association, proof, social proof. It's huge in my business. And if I can't relate to something that I've helped someone not forget about the company, I've helped Jane or Michelle. And know, now she's able to do these things because of the students that we've not, she's a superstar. Right. Salesforce calls it a trailblazer. We call it heroes, those things. If I could do that more effectively, I'll generate more prospects. Okay. Any, any other skills,
Karloff (00:47:31):
Time management.
Speaker 3 (00:47:35):
All right. But that's what we're going to work on here. Right. Even though I call it focus management, you're probably talking about the same thing.
Karloff (00:47:46):
Like focus manager. That's that's what brought me to the book. When I read I read some of the pad pages and then talking about focus is what you really need. Cause all the noise, this is too much noise.
Speaker 3 (00:47:57):
Well, yeah. And, and here's the reality is you can be the most unorganized person in the world and make a million dollars a year
Karloff (00:48:04):
Happened. It's just not happening lately. So I have to change something.
Speaker 3 (00:48:11):
[Inaudible], That's what, I'm, what I'm saying is being unorganized or being busy or overwhelmed and all that stuff. Isn't a problem in and of itself. It's what is it keeping you from doing? Right. So, you know, I mean, I know, I know people who are crazy earners and people are amazed, they get out of their house with both shoes on. Right. And, and the funny part is that happens a lot because those people are so big picture focused. And so what makes me money focused and the critical activities that all the other stuff just kind of falls to the wayside and, you know, piles up, causes problems for other people. And they just don't sweat that stuff. Right. and so that's what focus, you know, we talk about time management, focus management. I just prefer the focus angle of it. Right. Cause, cause it doesn't matter if you get distracted 3000 times a week, if you get the critical activities done, everything else takes care of itself. Right. Exactly. And that's what we're going to be talking about, especially on the second call you and I do when we really get into. Okay. How do you hit your pillars every week? All right. The third question, is there any other school ones that I'm missing?
Karloff (00:49:27):
No, I think that's, I think that's enough. I think that's enough to really put something together. I don't think we need an ad anymore.
Speaker 3 (00:49:33):
Okay. And then my third question is, you know, what is something you can organize plan or create prior to taking action that would make the action much more effective, right? What is something you could organize plan or create prior to taking action that would make the action much more effective now that's okay. So for example, your SDR, right? Your SDR is working what, some kind of list that has been purchased or
Karloff (00:50:11):
They, they, they, a lot of the leads actually come into the website and they sign up for an account as a trial. Okay. So that's, and that's a super hot lead. Those are the ones you never, ever take your time on you. The CEO will call you if, let a lead come in and they, he could see everything cause everything's recorded and he'll call you and say, Hey, Carlos, last Friday NBC universal signed up for trial and it's still sitting in your sequence.
Speaker 3 (00:50:41):
Right. I got you. Okay. so organized planner create. So for example, a lot of people who do, who do are on the lead gen side of it for them instead of just smiling and dialing, like the SDR sounds like he might, he or she might be doing is they actually take the time to, you know, create a hit list, research, whatever. So that when they actually smile and dial, when they do get someone on the phone, there are much more qualified person. Right. It's sounds like that might not be that critical right here.
Karloff (00:51:19):
No, it is. It is. It is. Okay. The only thing is I don't have a one to one assignment to an SDR. They're, they're their shared resource. I'm trying to get them to change that I can have my own SDR cause I could do pointed or focused campaigns based on relevance. And I can't do that right now. Cause they'll just say, Carla can, I've got, you know, there's 10 reps, right. Can't just focus on NBC or you know, a Pfizer or any of these campaigns because I just don't have the time. So that's a challenge
Speaker 3 (00:51:55):
Worth your time to do that your own lead gen? Or is that not worth your time at this point?
Karloff (00:52:00):
No, it is worth, it is absolutely worth my time, man. I wish I had the time if I could do that and make it relevant and it's, and it's not that difficult and it's so much information out on companies and and on the things that we do that could absolutely provide you know, business impact, but I just don't have the time to do it. But if I can figure out a way with, with this system that I can do my own lead gen that way.
Speaker 3 (00:52:25):
Well, okay. If you had time, if you had time, what would you, what would you do? What would your lead gen look like?
Karloff (00:52:36):
If I had the time my lead jam would look like a set of customers that, that, that that's a, that's a profile customer. So we know customers who are buying those, those characteristics that we have. Right? So pick two, you know, watch pick one that fits the characteristics, go, there's a thing called discover.org. I can get a list of every person in terms of the, that, that title and that position and that responsibility. I can get all the contact information, emails and phone numbers. Okay. So I can do that. And my SDR will help me to have, they have the subscription to go into a discover let's just use Merck as an example, fi is you know, it's pharma, it's merch as in Jersey and you know, they buy automation software and I can get a list if I could take that list and then start to see, you know, which are the business systems titles, then, you know, maybe I get 15 names and then I go look at their, either the quarter report or end report or I'd go scouring, Google pages and find out if any of those folks wrote an article on business systems and automation.
Karloff (00:53:45):
And if they did, and it's a hit, that is, that's almost like a hidden lotto. Whereas now I could say, Hey guy, you wrote this article. You can revolve with this automation, you know, and I can, I can do a campaign or a message around how we can help that person. So that's kind of an example.
Speaker 3 (00:54:04):
Yeah. And that's very targeted by the way. It's super targeted, super targeted, right? Yeah.
Karloff (00:54:10):
If I could do five of those a week, I'll make 2 million, I could do $2 million in revenue. Well, okay. So hold on.
Speaker 3 (00:54:17):
And I don't want to let that, I don't want to let that go here. So what is the time? What is the time consuming part of it? Is it the Google searching? That's one. Okay.
Karloff (00:54:32):
Finding relevance. That's going to be important for that person is the second one
Speaker 3 (00:54:37):
Finding, finding relevance for that person, person personalizing the approach. Like learning more about them,
Karloff (00:54:45):
Not about them per se, but about what's ailing them or what's challenging them and their organs in their business targets and they're in their goals prior to reaching out to them. Correct. So imagine if I had that insight info, right.
Speaker 3 (00:54:58):
Where would you get that insight from though? What do you put together?
Karloff (00:55:02):
That's the search? That's the, that's the golden nugget I do go out and Google. Every one of those prospects, I will take an internal time or there's an event that happens and you meet the person and the person.
Speaker 3 (00:55:15):
Well, okay. Right. No, I'm talking about though, from you go to discover.org, you generate a list of relevant people, right. And now you start spending time researching those people. Right. And you hope to connect enough dots that you can put a really personal, relevant email and phone campaign together for them. Right. Exactly. Okay. So here's what I would do. You said your SDR can, can can create that list for you.
Karloff (00:55:50):
Yeah. The getting the names and the emails is easy. It takes 10 seconds. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:55:54):
Okay. All right. So here's what I would do. I would spend, okay, we'll start with this, but I would start with one hour a week of that one hour. It's amazing what you can get done in a focused hour when you're not answering your phone, looking at your email, whatever in one hour, a week. Okay. In one hour, a week, you can do some homework on these people. Right. So if I'm you, I'm spending an hour and I'm doing, you know, setting Google alerts for their name, right. Looking what's going on with them, researching their company, making the connections from one article to a name, to another, all this stuff that you're talking about. Right. Gathering intelligence. So you can make a targeted campaign for them. Would that be correct? That'd be correct. Okay. You can do that for one hour a week. Yup. No, Rick, I'm going to call it target campaign research. Yup. Because once you've targeted the camp, once you've created the campaign for someone to me, then they go into the sequence. Right. So then they're part of your week anyway.
Speaker 4 (00:57:12):
Yeah. And the best part of it is once I get that information and then I have a, I have a targeted message, a compelling message to be relevant. I could put that in my own sequence. I don't need an SDR for that.
Speaker 3 (00:57:24):
Correct. Okay. So, so here's w so when I look at your pillars, all right. When I start looking at what is the most important thing, so number one is going to be 25 and you called it prospect touches. That's the one you liked. Yup. Okay. Twenty-Five prospect touches a week. I'm saying a week. You got me saying a week. It pillars everything. Everything's a week. Yeah. It's 25 per prospect touches. All right. Now the scheduling two demos and scheduling two discovery calls. Is that a predictable result or is that a goal?
Speaker 4 (00:58:23):
It's, it's hard to be predictable. Cause I, cause I, I read that in the book. There's I could say I'm going to plan on doing two demos and two. So that's predictable, but I, I, I need someone to tell me that, yes, let's have this demo. Let's have this call,
Speaker 3 (00:58:48):
You know, at a certain point in a lot of careers or industries or whatever, you do get to a point where you're like, alright, as long as I do enough activity, I'll enough of this or that I can get to two demos a week. I don't know if you're at that point yet. I'm doing more than two weeks right now, actually. Right. But I'm saying as far as a pillar, where to focus. Right. Okay.
Speaker 4 (00:59:12):
It's actually a result of all the stuff. I'm all the work I'm going to be doing.
Speaker 3 (00:59:15):
It is a result of all this stuff you're doing. But let me give you an example. One of the industries I work, you know,
Brian Margolis (00:59:22):
They, they basically call on the same population of prospects over and over those prospects don't want to see them all the time, but they are not surprised when they call. Right. They know who they are. It's kind of part of that industry. Okay. So they have a more predictable result. Once they've been in a territory for a few years where they know they can put 12 meetings on the books every week, if they make enough calls, reach out to enough of them, make sense. Makes sense. So instead of saying, I'm going to make a hundred calls, I'm going to send this many emails. That's not even worth it. It's just do what you gotta do, but you need to schedule 12 future appointments a week.
Speaker 4 (01:00:00):
Right. I don't know that
Brian Margolis (01:00:03):
That applies here right now. Your demos and your discovery calls come from the 25 touches, I would assume. Right?
Speaker 4 (01:00:11):
Correct. That's right.
Brian Margolis (01:00:13):
The only place I see where they could come from on here, unless I do my own campaigns,
Speaker 4 (01:00:18):
I get a meeting and then I'd meet him. Becomes a discovery.
Brian Margolis (01:00:23):
Correct. Yeah. And even, so once you get your own lead, anyway, it goes into the sequence, right. I'll sequence.
Speaker 4 (01:00:30):
Correct. Okay. So
Brian Margolis (01:00:32):
For now I think I want to put the two demos and two discovery calls to the side.
Speaker 4 (01:00:38):
I agree. I I'm fine with having them as a goal. Right.
Brian Margolis (01:00:42):
But it's not a pillar, not a pillar right now. It's not, it's not a predictable result.
Speaker 4 (01:00:48):
No, it's not the,
Brian Margolis (01:00:53):
The 30 the demo practice, the presentation practice and the story. Practice time. Those are predictable. Yeah. You control those. Do you want to do 30 of each every week or do some weeks you need more work on one some more than another.
Speaker 4 (01:01:12):
I need more work on the D a the demo one versus the presentation.
Brian Margolis (01:01:18):
Okay. And then what about the stories?
Speaker 4 (01:01:21):
Stories is the utmost importance. It's more important to both quite frankly. So would you say you,
Brian Margolis (01:01:30):
The way I'm looking at it is can you do one hour, a week of demo slash presentation practice and you can determine on a week by week basis where your efforts would be better.
Speaker 4 (01:01:43):
Yup. And then the story
Brian Margolis (01:01:45):
I know that'd be it's will be its own pillar,
Speaker 4 (01:01:48):
Pillar.
Brian Margolis (01:01:51):
An hour is a long time, just so we're clear once you get started. So it is, I know it doesn't seem like until you start a timer. Right.
Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
So
Brian Margolis (01:02:01):
I would say one hour of demo forward slash presentation practice. Right. And you can decide which one or what, in what ratio, but then you're going to have a separate one of
Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
Four stories. And I would make that 30 minutes for stories a week. You can do, you can do more if you want then 30 minutes. Right. But on your worst week, you're doing at least 30 minutes of stories a week. Or do you say, or you do really want to do an hour every week?
Karloff (01:02:39):
An hour is tough. I mean, I could, if the, if the, if the goal is to do an hour for the week, that can break it up and I could do 15 minutes on a Monday, I could do 15 minutes on Wednesday and I can do 45 30 minutes on Friday. And I'm, and I'm covered as my hour.
Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
Right. But was right now we're between the three of them. We're talking about 90 minutes. We've put on, put 'em on here. Right.
Karloff (01:03:07):
And again, I don't want to get too caught up.
Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
You can always adjust these if you need to
Karloff (01:03:11):
An hour and a half to those three. So I'm doing 30, 30, and 30.
Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
Yeah. Well, the way I know the way I have it scheduled, you said stories are of the utmost importance. Right? Correct. Gathering those case studies, turning them into stories, the heroes, all that stuff. So I'm saying what the second pillar is one hour of demos and presentation practice. You decide that hour, how you want to distribute it among demos and presentation. Right. Each week you decide one week, it might be all demos another week. It might be half and half. Right. Does that part make sense?
Karloff (01:03:49):
Yeah. And when and how long. So that means only leaves 30 minutes for stories.
Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
Right. But 30 minutes every week you do 30 minutes of stories regardless, regardless. Got it. So that's the third pillar. The third pillar is 30 minutes of stories. The second pillar is that hour that you can move the ratio around based on what you think is the best use of your time. That week, right?
Karloff (01:04:13):
Yup. When I went demo slash presentation practice. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
Yeah. And then 30, 30 minutes of stories. Got it. Okay. You said 30 minutes cleaning your office?
Karloff (01:04:27):
Yeah. Typically on a weekend.
Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Well, okay. Let's not worry about how we're going to hit him yet. Let's just figure out what has to get done every week. So 30 minutes cleaning your office. Alright. Let me just get the easy ones out of the way. Three family connects a week, three family connects. Alright. Now you said you want to post a non-sales article once a month. Okay. Correct. So could, does that rise to the level of a pillar at this point? Or is that something where if you put a task on your calendar, a recurring task of a month, then when you see that it winds up on your to do list for that week or that, or do you think that rises to the level of a pillar where you've really got to make sure, like, is it more, you have to be reminded to do it or do you feel like you need to be measuring it, crossing it off kind of thing.
Karloff (01:05:41):
Yeah. I need to measure it's that important to, to really stay in touch with your network. A lot of people don't do that and they just let that go. And it, and it's a huge opportunity. I have my network, I have about 10 CEOs and really senior executives that are attached to me.
Speaker 3 (01:06:02):
So what goes into posting one of these non-sales articles.
Karloff (01:06:10):
Mmm.
Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
First you find him. Yep.
Karloff (01:06:13):
Then you read them and then you find some relevance out of them. Okay. And then the relevance is in the industry. Right. So if I'm, if I'm transforming the industry with automation and their business process, there's gotta be some relevance in that article. That's going to be important to someone. It has nothing to do with my company. It's, it's what you call non sales touch and your book
Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Similar. But I know what you're saying. Yeah. so would it be, it sounds like that's an ongoing thing though. You're constantly looking for and researching those articles and figuring out what's best. Right? Correct. Would it, would it be crazy to say 15 minutes a week doing that? That's reasonable. I mean, that's, that's easy, right. 15 minutes a week. And then whenever it turns into an, you know, a finished product that should be posted. Cause you probably put like your take on it and stuff, right?
Karloff (01:07:08):
Yeah. The paragraph is what you kind of put the importance on it. Yeah. Especially if it's something I can highlight, you know, take a look at paragraph five. Right. You know, a sentence three where the author says X, Y, and Z.
Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
Yeah. So to me, 15 minutes working on your LinkedIn content for 15 minutes a week is probably more than enough. Yep. I agree. It's as simple as yeah. It's as simple as that. And if that winds up in two posts a month or one, right? I mean, two posts, two posts a month is not insanity by any means.
Karloff (01:07:45):
I just didn't want to water it down.
Speaker 3 (01:07:47):
No, but I don't think two posts a month do, because you also have to remember not everyone's seeing your posts at the top of their feed, so they're not going to see it every time. That's right. The people who interact with it more. And the other thing is, I think as part of that 15 minutes, you also want to take into consideration you know, commenting on other people's stuff. Right. Cause when you interact with people on LinkedIn, you know, I don't know, I don't claim to know the algorithms, but the more you interact with someone probably the higher up on their feed, you wind up. Right?
Karloff (01:08:23):
Yeah. The algorithm is especially if they view it, that person would get a lot more of the content if they don't view it. And then the person doesn't view content about automation, that person will never get to see it.
Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
Okay. So the, then we have one hour, a week of target campaign research, all right.
Karloff (01:08:52):
An hour. Yep.
Speaker 3 (01:08:55):
It's a minimum. But I think you're going to learn a lot during that hour. I think that those are like precise missile strikes. Right. When you, I mean, you'll just need to find a few of these people to really do some personal campaigning and you might start finding out, down that road that that's the best use of your time. It's not how many, how much crap you're doing or how many emails you're sending out and sequences it's these targeted ones, right?
Karloff (01:09:21):
Yeah. Those are the Glen Gary Glen, Glen Ross leads
Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
The we must be the same age, one hour target campaign research. Alright. And then you had read one book a month inspirational. Now, when you say inspirational, do you really mean inspirational or do you mean personal development skills, sales, books, mindset, books, that kind of thing.
Karloff (01:09:53):
Well, you know, when I read your book, I read it electronically. So every time you highlight it or reference to book, I highlighted that in the notes. So I have a list of 20 books from your, from your one book that I can easily read.
Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
Yeah. And I don't. Yeah. So, okay. I wouldn't categorize any of those as little, most of those as inspirational books, I guess we're just using different words. Those are more like, you know, skills, development, business development, personal development, right? Yep. Okay. I just wanna make sure I was on the same page. Like you're not looking to read like biographies of, of a one-arm guy who makes it, you know, to the top of the mountain kind of thing. No. Okay. All right. So here's, here's, here's, here's what I would categorize that as. Okay. And eventually this just might become, you know, this might become part of what you do, but I'm going to call that sharpening the ax. Okay. Sta sta, now you could talk about 30 minutes a week. You could talk about an hour a week, right? I'll call it 30 minutes a week for now. Right. You might wind up bumping it up at some point. That's okay.
Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
But here's, I'd like you to focus on your 30 minutes of sta alright, effective messaging, effective messaging, all the stuff you're talking about, getting better at communication, telling stories, right? Making your demos more effective, your presentations, more effective that all falls under the category of effective messaging, direct response copywriting. Right? How do you write an email that someone responds to? How do you leave a voicemail that may get someone off the couch and makes them take action, right? Correct. That would be my focus on your 30 minutes of sharpening the ax. That is your $10,000 an hour skill right there. Right.
Speaker 3 (01:12:05):
It's effective messaging and storytelling. Yup. And there's no shortage of books on that. I mean like the classic influence, the psychology of persuasion by Robert CLD, Annie, you know, that books probably 30, 30, five years old and everyone still references, it talks about reciprocity. It talks about X, you know, being the expert. It talks about social proof. It's all that stuff. And here, and when I say 30 minutes a week sharpen in the act, it doesn't always have to be reading. You know, one of my favorite little shortcuts is if you find a book and author that you like type their name into YouTube, but the title of their book, and a lot of times they give a 40 minute presentation on it. Are they doing a podcast interview? Right. And a lot of times you can get some of the best stuff from the book without having to read the book.
Speaker 3 (01:12:58):
Make sense. Yeah. No, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I, I do YouTube all the time before I, because a lot of times books, I can tell you this, but like my book, if I had gone through a publishing house, they never would've published my book because they would have said, you got to add another 200 pages. Right. But yet the best thing I could have done for my audience, which I'm proud of is, you know, I have a little six by nine book, that's a hundred pages and it can be read pretty quickly. Right. And I left a lot of the filler and fluff out. And so a lot of times when you buy these books from these popular authors, they're way longer than they really need to be. And so, you know, before you commit that kind of time, in my opinion, jump on YouTube, watch some of that stuff. Right. If you're on the train, listen to the podcasts, things like that. Right. So, so I could just use so just to re, just to, to summarize it. So you're saying use YouTube instead of buying the book, I'm saying use YouTube as an introduction to that author or that concept. And then if after hearing that like, yeah, the book would actually be worth it, getting into the nitty gritty, then go for it.
Speaker 4 (01:14:15):
Got it. Makes sense. It wasn't.
Speaker 3 (01:14:17):
I listened to a lot of podcasts. I listened to a lot of odd, you know, audio books, podcast webinars, seminars on YouTube. You know, you have people on YouTube where people pay $1,500 to attend their seminar and the whole thing's free on YouTube. So, you know, there's a lot, YouTube is my university.
Speaker 4 (01:14:41):
Yeah. It's funny. I do have a subscription for Odo audible.com from Amazon.
Speaker 3 (01:14:48):
I haven't even moved away from a lot of audio books now, again, I'm an, I don't do a lot of driving anymore, but I just, I like YouTube. I like this. I like the summary, the thesis, the concept first. And then if I decide, I want to get more detail. I'll dive in for more detail. Right. It makes sense. But again, I don't know your, your whole schedule, but you can be listening to podcasts in the car. You can be listening on your earphones. You can be, you know, that kind of stuff. There's no information that one guy's going to lead you to another, guy's going to lead you to another guy. But I would focus on people like when it comes to effective messaging, I'd focus on people like Dan Kennedy I'd focus on people like Gary Halbert, H a L B E R T
Speaker 4 (01:15:37):
H a L B E R T.
Speaker 3 (01:15:39):
Yup. You know, the, the great, the, you know, the great copywriters it's help. It's first name Gary G a R Y. Okay. Great book called the boron letters. Those are basically his letters from prison to his kids where he teaches them how to make money by writing, copy how to make millions of dollars.
Speaker 4 (01:15:59):
What is he, what was he in jail for?
Speaker 3 (01:16:03):
Some kind of fraud. I'm not sure. Okay. But the guy could write words that made people want to buy.
Speaker 4 (01:16:08):
Yeah. That's a, that's a nice skill.
Speaker 3 (01:16:10):
Yeah. Oh, that's nice skill to have. So, all right. So just a quick review. 25 prospecting touches. One hour of demos, presentation practice, 30 minutes stories, 30 minutes cleaning the office. Three family connects 15 minutes of LinkedIn content. One hour of target campaign research. 30 minutes to sharpen the ax.
Speaker 4 (01:16:34):
Right. I don't think I have, I wrote all this down. You did, or didn't write them down. No, I did. I just have them. So let me just repeat them. So I have in a different order here. Okay. You know what, let's just forget about that. I'm going to just this, just list them again. I haven't been a card and I have them all over the place, but I wanted, I wanted it in your, your sequence. So here we go. Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (01:16:59):
25 prospect touches got that one hour of demo forward slash presentation
Brian Margolis (01:17:10):
Practice.
Speaker 4 (01:17:12):
Got it.
Brian Margolis (01:17:14):
30 minutes stories Working on your stories. 30 minutes, cleaning your office. Three family connects.
Speaker 4 (01:17:34):
[Inaudible]
Brian Margolis (01:17:35):
15 minutes of LinkedIn content.
Speaker 4 (01:17:41):
Go ahead.
Brian Margolis (01:17:42):
One hour of target campaign research.
Speaker 4 (01:17:49):
Yep.
Brian Margolis (01:17:50):
And 30 minutes of sharpening the ax with a focus on messaging.
Speaker 4 (01:17:59):
Yup. And you've, you've highlighted a couple of people here, Dan Kennedy, Gary Hilbert,
Brian Margolis (01:18:04):
Listen, you can just Google effective messaging. Right. And here's, what's funny. So I'm going to add these up real quick. Two, three, you have. Okay. So from a time standpoint, it's less than four hours, right? That we've committed to from all the time things you say you have to do. Yup. So basically you have four hours of time commitments, less than, but we'll just call it four hours. You have to connect with three family members and do 25 prospecting touches. My point is, even though this seems like a lot, it's not that much time. It's just more, a matter of focusing on it. Right. Making it a priority and doing everything else around it. Perfect. Now, when we talk next time, obviously I'll need full honesty. How did you do so keep track of how you did what you struggled with and I'll give you a lot more kind of real world strategies to make sure you're hitting these pillars consistently and we'll refine them and all that kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (01:19:04):
Yeah. No. Perfect. It's a good thing. Is, is I've been using your, the the process for my daily activity and then having the columns and then you use a, you used a rule book or a legal pad. Yeah, I can't, I can't deal. It's just, there's just too big, but I've got something that works for me and, and I'm hitting a lot of the goals and it's working very well. So my pipeline is almost doubled there versus a study using your, some of the things that in your program and your book. So now this is going to put me to a different, a different level.
Brian Margolis (01:19:34):
I love it. Yeah. It's going to be interesting talking a month. I think you'll see that, but I won't spoil it for you. Awesome. Alright, man, we'll go on, kill it at your next appointment. And I'll talk to you. If something pops up or you have any questions, obviously just drop me an email. I will. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (01:19:50):
If you're doing this, I really appreciate it. And I look forward to our next conversation in about a month. You got a car I'll talk to you soon. All right. Have a great day. Thanks.
Brian Margolis (01:19:58):
Thanks for listening to another episode of simplified your strategy, magnifier results. If you know someone you think could benefit from this episode, be their hero and share it with them. If you'd like a free copy of my book, or you want to be considered as a guest on a future episode, head on over to productivity, giant.com. Have a great day. And thanks again.