Confessions of a Seller Podcast

From 0 to 1 with This AI Playbook (Book & Close More Deals Now)

• Confessions of a Seller • Season 1 • Episode 7

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 45:52

Most teams don’t have a pipeline problem. They have a conversion problem.

Leads come in. Meetings get booked. And then… no shows, bad qualification, weak conversations, and deals that never move forward. More tools won’t fix that. Better execution will.

This episode breaks down how top teams are using AI to actually drive revenue — not just automate tasks. From booking meetings and reducing no-shows, to qualifying inbound and running outbound that converts.

It also exposes what most sellers get wrong: overcomplicating everything. Scripts, personalization, AI, cold calling… too many tactics, no system. This is where clarity wins.

You’ll learn how to simplify your approach, use “1 pain, 1 solution, 1 offer”, and act on intent signals and triggers at the right time.

Because in modern sales, timing and execution beat everything.

In this episode, you’ll learn

• How to use AI to increase meeting booking rates and reduce no-shows
• How to qualify inbound leads with precision
• Cold email frameworks that actually generate meetings
• Why most sellers overcomplicate sales (and how to simplify it)
• When scripts help — and when they kill your performance
• Why personalization at scale is often a myth
• How to use intent signals and triggers to improve timing
• The “1 pain, 1 solution, 1 offer” framework
• How to shorten sales cycles with better execution
• The do’s and don’ts that actually move pipeline

Partners supporting the show

Thanks to the partners supporting Confessions of a Seller.

🔗 Jason AI SDR by Reply
They’ve built one of the strongest multichannel outbound platforms in the market — taking teams from research to booked meetings in one system. It’s built for modern Allbound execution, where timing, signals, and automation actually connect.

Exclusive Promotion for you. Apply the following codes at checkout, and you'll get an exclusive discount:

Code "COS10" → 10% off monthly plans
Code "COS20" → 20% off annual plans

Jason homepage
https://reply.io/jason-ai/?utm_source=CoS&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=CoS-Jason

Book a Jason demo
https://calendly.com/d/cygz-vtz-fqf?utm_source=CoS&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=CoS-Jason

Reply platform
https://reply.io/?utm_source=CoS&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=CoS-Reply

🔗 Alta
They’re building one of the most advanced AI GTM platforms in the market — giving revenue teams a true system of action across inbound, outbound, and growth, and helping turn signals into execution.

Alta homepage
https://www.altahq.com/?utm_campaign=Influencers&utm_source=cos&utm_medium=podcast

SPEAKER_01

In this episode, we are going to teach you exactly the step by step of why triggers, intents, and social context impacts the most within your outbound. But stay with us before going into there. The first thing that we always want to say is say thanks to our partners. In this case, the main partner reply. Thank you for being with us. They are the best AI all-in-one sales engagement tool. You will have all the comments and all the links in the description of this video. So you go and check it out. And thanks to the reply team for joining in this crazy adventure that we are in. Without further ado, Kevin, let's keep talking about sales, outbound strategies, AI. And the first thing that I want to say in this confessions of a seller episode is how do you see outbound evolving? And what are your strategies or your techniques about outbound slash prospecting nowadays?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think it's it's really important. Part is you need to cut through all the noise out there. How do you do that? That's a really good question. That's a question for me as well. So as there are so many different ways how you can reach the potential buyer nowadays. And you know it by yourself, right? Um if you are a potential buyer out there and you know it as well, that you get so many emails from people trying to sell you something. Since I built my personal brand, I don't know how many emails I get on a personal day from other tools want to, you know, sell me something and uh advertisements or if like outreach from STRs, uh from account executive. And you need to somehow cut through this this noise, right?

SPEAKER_01

Imagine, imagine if you have a CEO putting in your in your title in on LinkedIn, just the filters and the and the and the search will drive you crazy. Yeah, right? Exactly. So how do how you are within for sure you are an AE, but you're helping your SDR as well in prospecting or or reaching out. What's what's the the the top strategies right now in order to help sellers say, hey, don't do this, do that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so it's it's really important to find the relevant intent data. And data is, I think, with all the different AI tools out there, I think data is one of the key points, right? Okay. Because before we had a lot of data in our dashboards, in our CRM system, but we had no idea how to filter that or narrow that down to potential buyers who are maybe now in their stage to engage and reach out to them and um schedule this relevant meetings, right?

SPEAKER_01

So basically what you're telling me here is that, and I agree if I'm understanding this right, uh, and this is something that most sellers need to understand, timing is important right now, and that timing will be given by data, by intent. Is that right? Yeah, definitely. I so what is intent specifically? If we have to define intent triggers, we we're listening about a lot of triggers. Use the triggers or use the intent or signals.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, intent, signals, triggers, it can be everything, right? Um if a company went to your uh to LinkedIn and they liked one post you you you shared, downloaded an uh an ebook from your website, they um uh connected with uh one of your your decision makers on LinkedIn, they visited your websites, so that so many different hiring uh new leadership or opening new offices. Let's take one example.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, let's do it's let's do one example.

SPEAKER_00

You're selling a cloud optimum optimization solution, right? Okay. Um you want to sell to companies who have an issue with general with the cloud as they want to optimize that, correct? They're hiring a um a cloud engineer. Correct. Right? What is the job of a cloud um uh cloud engineer or cloud optimization engineers are called?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Their job is to optimize the cloud. So if a company hires those people, they have a problem with their cloud. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01

Or they are willing to scale. Or they're willing to scale. There is an intent, there is a trigger that is saying to you, hey, maybe it's the right timing because they are willing to do something. Correct. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

These are all intent data, which now with the capabilities of AI, we are able to measure them and to silo it down to our SCR team, to your, to your uh go-to-market team, to reach out and find um the right persona and and and and of course getting these meetings.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Data is of course important, but I think it's still important as well to cut out or uh stand out from all the noise, have a kind of different approach than all the other salespeople. Okay. I would love to hear from you. How you how you stand out from all the other consultants out there offering your service, right?

SPEAKER_01

Of course, you have your personal brand, but I would love to hear No, it's really important, and and I think that there is a one key differentiator right now, that it's timing. Right now, outbound is about timing, connected to relevance, connected to an intent, a signal, or a trigger. Yeah. And we without them, or if you don't have all of them at the same time, most likely you will be a little bit of noise, or you will be uh basically irrelevant in your outreach. So the three things that I'm always focusing when we are doing outbound, it's what is the trigger signal or intent that it's telling me right now is the right timing. What is that intent trigger or signal causing as a consequence? So if they are hiring new people, maybe they are expanding or they just got a fundraising, or they are both doing both things at the same time. That means that they are mainly looking for new solutions for the new market scenario that they will face. Yeah. Or if they are opening a new office in another market, maybe they are willing to launch that market or expand that revenue share in that market. So I try to find a combination. The more combined intent and triggers, the better within social context as well. They are liking and commenting on your competitor post about a specific thing that you can solve, right? Yeah. So you are connecting all the dots. First thing. Second thing, your offer. That is why timing is important within those triggers and signals. The offer should be completely different than any other offer out there, meaning should be risk uh using somehow of risk reversal or risk, as you were saying in other episodes, de-risking the possibility of them saying yes in this case, an easy yes for them to say, you know what, why I would say no for this offer, that it's low risk, low investment, low resource, and it's giving me a lot of leverage in whatever the trigger is happening internally. And the third thing, not asking for time in the first um, whatever the outreach and whatever the channel.

SPEAKER_00

If I can interrupt you, you went through one one really interesting one, is like liking your competitors.

SPEAKER_01

Stealing from competitors is the best ever.

SPEAKER_00

I like I I actually built myself like an agent uh a couple of weeks ago who just did a really simple, really simple job. It scraped all the social media platforms off my uh and I put in five competitors, okay, scanned all the social media posts of my competitors, extracted all the people who liked and comment uh commented their their content on a weekly base, and sent me the contact uh the LinkedIn profiles of those people to my email.

SPEAKER_01

What are you waiting to share that with me, man? That's insane. And what is the strategy that you're using when you're reaching out in order to cut through the noise? Like what are you saying in one specific example?

SPEAKER_00

For me, for example, it's they're always if I know, for example, they like the uh a post from my competitor, I look for the the we weaknesses of my competitor and use this as an angle to get the conversation rolling. Like let's say, uh, maybe you're tired that that your current provider is using uh is changing their customer sex sex customer success people every six months. Correct. Um with with our solution, um, of course, we train the AI with a certain knowledge. Yeah, you give all the pitch as well. Yeah, exactly. If if there's no um if uh if there's someone is leaving from our side, we still have the data which or the information which is needed, right?

SPEAKER_01

That's awesome. I can give you one example if you want of how I use these uh competition posts or competitor posts that is basically imagining that a uh dream company of mine, a dream potential client of mine, is replying or commenting something or liking into a competitor that is talking about outbound or go to market or outbound strategies. That it's a specific uh topic that I know that I can help. So then I reach out to all these relevant people filtered by my ICP and I say, Hey, Kevin, you know what? I noticed that you were commenting on topic X, right? Outbound. I built a resource, right? Could be a one pager, a PDF, a G a GPT, custom GPT, uh whatever it is, a lead magnet, basically. Yeah, that this might answer your question and help in what you mentioned about XYZ topic. Should I send it over? That's risk averse. Nice. That's uh lower uh friction, that's adding value, and I'm not requesting any time from their side. But you are still building relevant output, trigger, intent, timing, and relevance. Really good one. Like that one. Absolutely, absolutely. I think that this is crazy how AI can be integrated in these scenarios. And now that we mention AI, I would love to understand there is one use case that you mentioned uh sometimes that is whenever you are more expert here in enterprise deals, when you go to events or venues or yeah, uh these uh these type of events, how do you usually and what do you think could be done in order to implement AI that it's not going to disrupt your daily operations but can help you book demos during the event or before the event?

SPEAKER_00

So there's actually a really interesting framework. I actually learned as well from uh a podcast of one of our sponsors, Alta. Okay. It's like a three-step framework. So it's three-step framework. Okay. Yeah, if you if you go to events, you there's always about preparation, then during the event, and then after the event. Okay, what I do, for example, with my STR during uh before the event is finding people, of course, who go to the event, finding the looking through the event list, contacting them before to have a meeting scheduled. Because if you're in the event and you have nothing scheduled there, you're done. It's a waste of time. You're done. Right? You have the meetings, you should have the meetings scheduled, and then really jump from one meeting to another and um uh and exchange. That is extremely helpful, extremely powerful. As well, um at the event, when you're at the event, look for companies, for example, who are around this area. Let's say I have an event happening in Zurich, right? Um, when I have an event happening in Zurich, I look which companies in Zurich are which match our ICP. And um, can I meet them, for example, for a visit? Can I go to their office? A little bit old-fashioned, but knocking on their office and say, Hey, can I um uh coffee and let's be I'm in Zurich. Could we c talk about like the old-fashioned way, maybe doing a face-to-face conversation? That's awesome. Um, because people appreciate that, right? And um, then after the event as well, of course, it's super important where you then um have all the data available and um um and follow it up accordingly on time. It's pretty pretty important as well, right? Having that in place and having even well, even during the event, let's say I had our I have a round table in in Zurich, and one amazing feature I love from Alta is um I just uh put the the Alex, which is the AI agent, and said, Can you please confirm with each individual if they are coming to the event? That's awesome. He calls the AI agent calls and said, Hey, we just want to confirm if you are coming to the event, yes and no. Uh another touch point which um increases the likelihood that they are actually joining the the event instead of like falling through the uh the the raster.

SPEAKER_01

So basically the use case you're using Alta uh to name one of the use cases that that we're talking here in how AI can help you. It's instead of you calling every single potential client uh that is going to uh attend the event, you give that list to Alex. Alex will confirm that directly, and that will increase the likelihood of having the meeting directly before the event, in a coffee shop, yeah, during the event, or even after the event if you align with them.

SPEAKER_00

Definitely.

SPEAKER_01

And that's the AI doing the whole job. Everything. So that's crazy. So how is that impacting your daily operations? You're saving X amount of time, I understand.

SPEAKER_00

Like how you measure just imagine you have like 50 people coming to the event and you want to reconfirm with them. You of course can write an email, you have to call, but if you call them, the chances are much higher. So imagine you need to do this manually by yourself. It's like uh half of the day is done.

SPEAKER_01

And a two 2.5 minutes per call, if all of them pick up, we're talking about more than three hours.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, exactly. Half of the day is done, just following up, which can easily be outsourced it with an agent with a high quality agent, right? Correct. Because a lot of people maybe think, ah, but I don't feel comfortable that an AI agent calls and confirms that's great. I said, man, but if you The result is there. If you have listened one to Alex, he's already my one of my best friends, but you're saying you it it the quality is pretty insane.

SPEAKER_01

The result is there. Pretty insane. Pretty insane. The result is there. So basically, to put it in as a takeaway, what we're seeing within AI here, and also with it with our partner Alta here is that they develop this AI agent called Alex. Yeah. And the strategy is for one use case that could be in your case as an enterprise seller, every time that I go to an event, it's a P in the A, you know? Yeah. Uh calling everyone, meeting, uh scheduling the meetings and so on. The AI agent calls and does the job for me. I get back plus 10, 15, 20 hours that I use in another whatever the task it is.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. That's crazy. Just one use case. There are many more use cases he can solve. But I think yeah, it's it's it's really um helping me reducing the the workload and focusing more on the important parts of following up and and and of course closing. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01

I see a couple of more use cases within that. For sure, we we always talk about inbound, outbound, how can we shorten sales cycles and make uh deals bigger and uh retain them for more time. The thing is that there is a reality, and this is connected to social context as well. Um when we are trying to do outbound or inbound, but with intent, because someone downloaded a PDF, as you were saying, or some other stuff that could happen within LinkedIn, talking to a competitor or commenting into a competitor. Sometimes when we are talking about super SMBs, uh, that this happened to me, I was selling 29, 79, and 129 uh average deals.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Is that as a seller, I don't want to jump into those small inbound deals.

SPEAKER_00

Sounds sounds tough, but it's it's true, you know.

SPEAKER_01

It's our job, but it's but we hate it. We are measured by a quota, maybe 3k per month, and we are closing 29 deals. Yeah, we are never getting there. Right. We need to close 100 deals to get there, yeah, or even more. So what Alta is doing, and what the use case, the powerful use case that they are seeing is that hey, and in this case, the AI is not replacing the seller. It's like USDR, UBDR, U AE a full uh sales cycle. Keep yourself doing what you're doing, that is focusing on high intent, high uh leverage, high deal priority, while Alex, for example, is reaching out to all those inbound leads, super small, that no one wants to pick up, yeah, but still will be qualifying them within a shorter period of time with the right intent at the right timing. 24-7. 24-7. All languages which is required. That's important because ah, that's key. So you want to say that? How is that that works? Like the language thing and whatever the region, because that's another blocker that we have.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, uh, how many of us had an issue that you um pick up the phone and say, uh, but hablas espanol time? And then there's a barrier there with language. It's it's it's important that they, you know, if someone from China or someone from Finland calls, you can even talk, uh let the AI talk in their local language where they feel more comfortable and maybe even be yeah more open to share potential issues, right?

SPEAKER_01

That's crazy. So two use cases. One use case is A, there's not only for qualification or when we are receiving email leads, yeah, but also for going to events, uh, confirming uh venue attendees and making sure that our time is more efficient. This is why AI exists. Making us more efficient, saving time, saving money, and us being smarter, focusing on priorities. And on the other side, what they call the agentic AI. Yes, for those small deals that no one wants to pick up, yeah, the AI will do the job for us. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think it's it's it's definitely a game changer, like in the in in the SaaS industry, right? Yeah. And this can be maybe even replicated to all kinds of different industries, right? Um hotel industry, um, booking or rescheduling. Last time I saw I called a restaurant and I said, Yeah, when do you want your table? Like 11. Uh uh uh eight eight p.m. Okay. Um, how many people? Three people, one child, uh, two adults. I'm like, but this is this is this an AI? Yeah, it was an AI.

SPEAKER_01

Just give me your email. Okay, the reservation is booked, and that's it. Then no one wants to do that again.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. How and uh I think it's it's it's not bad, right? Because this is who likes to do this job, like you know, but uh getting back to the point, and I think we talk quite a lot of about AI, right? Yeah, but Alan, how can we cut through this noise I mentioned at the beginning, right? Yeah, because AI it's it's a beautiful invention, but it's as well a pain, yeah, because it makes a lot of noise. A lot of people are using it wrong as sellers, yeah. They're using it like as mass emails, uh, which I I'm tired to be honest, to see those emails. How can you cut a seller through the no uh through this noise nowadays?

SPEAKER_01

There is one strategy that I apply as a golden rule that it's one pain, one solution, one offer at a time. It's like the three-step framework that I use or the three X framework.

SPEAKER_00

Can you can you uh elaborate each of the steps?

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely, absolutely. So the framework or the strategy is in order to break or cut through the noise and to break the patterns, it's one pain, one solution, one offer, or one offer, one solution as you prefer at a time. Meaning that whenever you're reaching out to Kevin, to Alan, to whatever the prospect that you're reaching out, you need to focus your full sequence into all of this. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

One pain, one solution, and one offer. Okay, let's make it actionable for the for the audience. Uh I have a SaaS solution. Correct. Uh I uh I'm uh the head of sales of my our SaaS solution. Perfect. And uh you want to convince me why I should need your service.

SPEAKER_01

Perfect. Awesome. So what I'm doing first, imagine that I am another SaaS solution, not as a consultant, because it's easy to relate. So the first thing that I do is okay, you are selling um automations, for example. Now that we are talking about automation. Yeah, you are selling an automation tool that automates uh process for customer success. Yeah. Okay, great. So what I would say is, hey, I know that your service, I understand that your service does three things automate the repetitive task from customer success, uh, respond to tickets from your angry clients, yeah, and eliminate uh bugs from uh, I don't know, the Jira tasks or whatever you have. Okay. So if I know that my solution can address all the three things that you are selling, meaning that either you are not uh reaching to the right customers, your outborn is not good enough, uh your pipeline is dry, and the solution is not getting a market fit, etc. So instead of talking all uh about all of them at the same time, just pick one. Pick one. Okay. And that pick one will be related to if we want to implement AI, the first thing that I do, and this is the step-by-step process, yeah, I jump into perplexity or chat GPT for research better perplexity, in my case, could be Gemini, could be Claude. And I say, hey, first I need to understand why this persona, this title, this buyer persona, is frustrated and going through these challenges. Challenge one, challenge two, challenge three. Then pick the most important one based on your understanding of the market. Yeah. And once I pick that, I connect that with my solution and my offer. Got it.

SPEAKER_00

And this is okay, this is more like From a framework perspective. Let's say we have like an SDR listening now, something he can implement tomorrow in his outreach way. Great question.

SPEAKER_01

So if you're an SDR, what I would suggest is open ChatGPT, put the title of your dream prospect of your ICP, the one that is making the final decision. Ask for the three main and biggest challenges of that role in that specific industry, in that potential company, right now in 2026, and the symptoms of those challenges. Meaning, if we don't solve those challenges, what is the cause, the consequence? Got it. The challenge is the cause. The consequence is the symptom, what they feel and what will happen if this is not solved.

SPEAKER_00

And how he how how this STR should reach out now?

SPEAKER_01

Once you have the symptom, pick one. Okay. Once you pick one, you ask the ChatGPT, and you can for sure uh develop more about it. You can say, okay, with this one, I will create a multi-touch uh strategy. LinkedIn. Uh if you are in the US, SMS, for example, or WhatsApp in Latin America or Europe, or email and phone call, right? And each touch point will talk only about that symptom that is related to that pain, that is related to an offer that it's yours, to one solution, right? For sure we can define templates here, but I don't want to jump into that right now. But it's basically okay, every touch point will be unified, but every message will be adding value to the previous touch point. Got it. Right? So the first could be one. It's like a ladder.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Once you stop the first sequence, imagine that you stop the sequence. You say, hey, this prospect didn't reply. You wait for two, three weeks, depending on the sales cycle that you have. You pick the second problem, second challenge.

SPEAKER_00

And how many, how many, how many touch points do you see as most effective? Because I remember four and six.

SPEAKER_01

That's a straightforward question. Answer, basically. Got it. Okay. It depends on the if you're selling enterprise, it's more about the multi-threading. Yeah. If you're selling SB, it's about the who is the right person with the right data. Straightforward, what we are seeing, the data is showing. Between three to five is the sweet spot. But there are two stats that are important to understand. Most deals, opportunities, slash replies, happens after the sixth touch.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Yeah, because I heard some uh uh like there were like some stats I think was from Sales Loft, which a couple of years ago, and there were like 36 touches. I was like No, that's crazy. If I do 36 touches in in Germany, you know what I guess. They said a lawyer letter to me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, exactly, exactly. No, I mean that depends how you understand it, how we define the 36 touches. If the 36 touches means that there are, I don't know, six campaigns of five emails or six emails each, well, maybe, but this is not the case. So it's like, remember, if 80 plus percent of the deals, opportunities and replies happen after the fifth touch, but there is another counterpart to it. That it's most sellers, um, they quit after the fourth touch. Yep. So this is a huge advantage and disadvantage. I felt I have to say I'm guilty. Um we've been all there, man. Yeah, like we call them, we send an email, we send another email, we call again, and we say, hey, you know what? I'm bothering them. Yeah, yeah. Until you have that no, yeah, you need to reach out. Yeah, but remember, cut through the noise. Yeah, it's not about hey, I'm just pinging you, just reply to me.

SPEAKER_00

It's like adding deliver value with every outreach you do, right? That's just I think that's something really important. Many SCRs out there or salespeople in general miss, right? If you are able to add value, um, send like a case study uh related to their potential point uh pain point, cutting through the noise with different outreach strategy, send a LinkedIn voice message, right? Um uh those kind of things. You said SMS in the US, WhatsApp. Um the bar is so low, man. So we are still all doing the same. Yeah, yeah. Like for me, for example, a really simple trick, right? Um, which a lot of people underestimate, if you use uh out there to all like the salespeople who use Teams, it's and it really effective. We we actually moved from Teams to Slack, so I cannot use it anymore. But um What's the trick? Yeah, so it's if if you know um, for example, you have a prospect, you talk to them once or twice, uh, you had a Teams meeting with them, maybe, just put in their the email address into Teams and you see if they are online or not. If they are online, it's crazy. They're active. Yeah, if they're active, they say you have the green circle, that means they are available now, they are working, they are not in a meeting because Red would mean meeting, and you can see that even though they are outside of your organization, and then give them a call.

SPEAKER_01

Man, that's GDPR hyper compliance, I would say. But that's a crazy strategy.

SPEAKER_00

It's really it really helps. And I I I I I started communicating with many prospects directly on Teams instead of you know sending an email then back. Do you like do you have a feedback from that? It's like more much more effective. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01

It's cutting through the noise. That's crazy. That's a really good strategy to cut through the noise. So let me go through one important point, and I think this is a question that most sellers are asking themselves, and I asked this myself. Why do you think, or what is the top one reason why there is so high turnover and there are so much failure within sellers when doing outbound or prospecting? No idea. That's crazy. Because what we are seeing right now in the strategies and in the trends and in the stats is that and let me let me put it as a question. Do you know average? This is just average, and it varies depending on the uh on the industry and and the nature of the business. Do you know average how long an SDR slash uh rep stays in a in a company nowadays before jumping into another one or being fired?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I think uh 12 months, it's a little bit more. Yeah? 16? Yeah, 16. There are some studies that said 15, 14, 16, 18, but it's one year and a half. And if you if you count the ramp up process, that the shortest must be two to one month, two weeks to one month, sometimes it could be three months. Yeah. So you have someone being trained, if at some point you train them and you help them, but during the whole year learning your stuff in order to get to full ramp up at full capacity, and either he or she is gone or you're firing them, and that repeats the cycle. Yeah, and there are some causes and roots about that. And what I think is that there must be something about outbound that it's killing or or or burning us out. It's a tough job. It's tough. It's tough. It's like I mean, it's it that's exactly what I wanted to talk about. Like, give me the real and hard truth about it. Like it's not beautiful. Everything is not like just uh gold.

SPEAKER_00

To be transparent, right? I think in my STR job, one year STR, I learned more than in my six years student in Germany, right? I had a good time as a student. I met amazing people, but I learned more as an SDR one year than six months. You're right. Uh than six years uh as a student in Germany. So and it's about rejection handling, right? Um, if they hang up like 50 times a day on like at that time, we had to be like doing quite a lot of calls, but if they hang up now, let's say 20, 30 times a day on you and say, no, not interested, this hand be able to absorb all those rejections, it's it's tough, you know. It's crazy. People screaming you to you like, hey, if you call me one more time, I I I'm gonna sue you. You know, like everything happened already.

SPEAKER_01

I think it's crazy. Don't you think that there is like a misunderstanding or a misbelief of people saying, I want to jump into tech sales because I will get money or or something like that? But then there is a problem there. I think that there is a loophole where people jumps in without understanding that this is a this is a freaking terrible, hard job to do. Beautiful. I love it. Uh as I mentioned in the first episode, I guess. Yeah. When when we introduced ourselves, I was meant to be a seller, but yeah, but it's I had two burnouts, right?

SPEAKER_00

So it's it's it's exactly. I think it's it's one of the most rewarding jobs in case of what you put in and you get out. Yeah. It's tough, of course, but we are not flying a plane with 250 people in. Correct. Right? And uh and we can earn the same money like a pilot. Yeah. And and uh I I just I mean Or even more sometimes. I I I made a uh uh a YouTube video on my on my on my own channel as well about where is it easier to get to a certain salary point where you can compare to a pilot, right? A pilot, for example, needs six years to get to 250k a year. Six years. Six years, but first of all, they need to have um hundred thousand uh uh dollars in in debt. They uh um because it costs certain money uh as an SDR, you don't even need like uh go.

SPEAKER_01

Someone will teach you, and that's it.

SPEAKER_00

I had my best SDR that he had no education, he didn't uh he he he stopped the school. Um and he booked me like 15 meetings uh per month. You know, like crazy. So it's it's it's and uh you can as in tech sales, if you have a good role, good quota attainment, you can easily get to the 250k in three years. Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01

You're right.

SPEAKER_00

Of course, it's not the same prestige, you're not flying a plane.

SPEAKER_01

No, for sure. But it I mean, that prestige is something that you can define on your own. Yeah, like for sure. I mean, it's crazy, it's crazy. It's something that I always try to answer in the most honest way to everyone that is asking me. And it's like, no, you know what, because I want to jump into sales. It's like, okay, you might love it, you might hate it. There is one thing, and this is not like you putting your cassette on and repeating everything, like, okay, this is beautiful and polite for the audience. Yeah, it's hard as F. Yeah. It's hard as F because one day you're in the top, one day you are in the ground. Yeah. You sold like crazy, you hit quota, everyone will cheer you up. The next day you are uh you are zero again, and everyone will say, No, you know what, Kevin, maybe he's not meant for this. It's like, man, I killed it like 13 quarters in a row, and because one month I failed, but that's it. Exactly. For sure, there's one thing that I learned over the years that it's discipline beats talent every single day in sales. I I've seen, as you are saying about your SDR, and I want to connect this to again to um outbound, to social context, to different ways of breaking patterns, of being different. Uh, I've seen reps that are coming from top reps that work with me, that are coming from professional uh sports backgrounds. Like they were tennis players. And it's like, what is what what SDR means? What is a call calling? What is an email? It's like this is what you have to do, and you are teaching them, and they are disciplined, they they don't take a no as an answer. Yeah they are so what do you think like what what what's that trait that you need to have in order to be successful in outbound or in hard sales?

SPEAKER_00

You have to be hungry, you know. I was like reading last uh like last week a post like why people work in sales. It's not, of course, you can talk about like because I want to help, I want to help people solve the issues. No, we are here to earn money. Exactly. So you have to be hungry to eat uh to earn money. That's a that's a uh uh the truth. I don't want to tell you a story, but um so you need to be hungry. Yeah. Uh then the second part is you need to be disciplined. Yeah, I have because it's it's I had as well certain SCRs um who were like performing and then going down, performing and going down. Like roller coasters. Exactly. That's and you need to have a thick skin.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

One one interview question, I I had once managed in a startup in uh uh in Berlin, um hired 10 SCRs, and uh I always asked the people, like they're fresh from the university. They said, Yeah, I applied for this role. I said, Okay, are you okay that you have to call like 50 people a day? Or even more? Or even more, and 45 from them they hang up and they they they say they're not interested. Are you okay with that? And then I said, Okay, yes, I'm okay. Okay, let's try it one week. Exactly. And many of them said, like, oh, I'm not okay with that. I'm done. It's it's not what I want.

SPEAKER_01

I like that strategy of not hiring but paying someone the salary for one or two weeks and see how it goes. Maybe it's not like a full sample, but but you will see how they behave besides the results.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. All right. It's crazy, man. It's crazy. But all right, I think that we can talk about this like for for a whole year, a whole life, uh, because it's more about the emotional stuff. Uh, but should we jump into the next topic and play the card games? Yeah, let's play some cards. Awesome. So let me let me begin with this. Yeah, let me explain to the audience what this is about. As you can see, we have a lot of cards here, and these cards, every card includes a question, and we call this chapter or this section the uh uh ping pong of yes or no and why questions, and basically are rapid fire questions where Kevin will ask me two questions, I will ask him two questions, and you have and I have 60 seconds to reply. Sounds good? Yep, let's do that. Let's go. So, skills category scripts, are they helpful or harmful?

SPEAKER_00

Harmful. Why what I told always my STRs is don't learn anything like out of your like don't learn anything by heart, okay, except one thing, which is your elevator pitch, right? Why? Because I told them if if someone wakes you up in the middle of the night and says, What are you selling? You should be able to respond in 30 seconds and straight to the point. Okay. If you have a script, of course you can make your scripts, but don't use them. Just for your own head to uh to to to build like a framework, but don't read them. Okay. So they're different kinds of people, right? Different kind of way different kind of styles how people learn. And um, some people need to have something written down and then they repeat it but and learn it. Correct. But I said never read from a script, so it can be a big disadvantage.

SPEAKER_01

Awesome. All right. Now my turn. Yeah, and my turn to answer.

SPEAKER_00

Uh metology.

SPEAKER_01

Methodology, okay. Uh methodology, sorry. Um go ahead. No, no, no, I'm just repeating.

SPEAKER_00

Sales is psychology or process?

SPEAKER_01

Sales is definitely psychology.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah?

SPEAKER_01

Definitely give me an example. If you know how to influence people by emotions and how to ask specific questions, how to use the power of no, how to use the power of silence, how to use other processes in your favor to close the deal, psychology will be on top of the process. That doesn't mean, and I don't want to be I want to be radical and take position here, and that's why I say psychology, because I love the neuroscience behind the sales. Um but that doesn't mean that you can do it in the way you want it. There's always a process of a system that needs to be followed, connected to the psychology that you put behind. That's why there is a phrase that we always listen into the sales that is it's art or science. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's kind of both. It's it's uh it's science, it's a process, it's art, it's psychology, right? Uh but yeah, definitely psychology. Um, and and I I do stand by that. Perfect. Let's go. One more. Outbound. Now that we are talking about social uh context and outbound. Yeah, this is a straightforward one. Cold calling still works. Yes, yes, you're confident. Tell me why.

SPEAKER_00

Cutting through the noise, you know, and um it's even it will become more effective. Why? The newer generation is mainly on their phone. They are not that I don't want to say scared, but they are not that open to pick up the phone and call someone, right? It's like um I I logical. Yeah, I have a five-year-old son. Um if I imagine like their generation, right? Uh they are they are on hiding behind the phone, they're uh uh chatting with their uh language models, but their their human interaction is becoming less and less. So if someone wants to cut through the noise in the future, I think we'll be if you are a good cold caller in the future, you will make a ton of money. I agree. I agree.

SPEAKER_01

That's awesome, man. I don't wanna I don't want to jump into into your answer, but I have a really deep perspective about it.

SPEAKER_00

Let's let's uh get to that uh after. Let's do the the last two. Yeah, outbound, personalization at scale, real or myth?

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Um no, it's it's real, 100%. Um the thing is how we use it. Um for sure everything is being personalized right now, but there is a misconception about what personalization means, and it's not the variables like hey, name, company, industry. Yeah, that's that's a commodity. You recently uh raised Exactly. We already know that. It's how we use personalization compared to relevance, yeah. And what we were talking about at the beginning, like using an intent, using a trigger, and personalize that around that scenario with the framework of one pain, one solution, one offer at a time. So combining all the strategies to make sure that then you can call that personalization at scale, doing that for a lot of people at the same time, but each of them will receive a specific message. Yeah. Right. Okay. I think that we spent a little bit about talking about this. Yeah. So this is outbound category and says AI for right for writing emails, yes or no?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Okay. Yes. Why? Because it makes your life much easier. Okay. Um, it saves you a lot of time. Okay. But always put your personal touch to it. Okay. Right? It's the same with content creation, right? Um I like the analogy. Anyone who says to me, I'm a content creator and I'm not I'm not using AI of creating.

SPEAKER_01

You're lying.

SPEAKER_00

Lying straight to me. Liar, go to jail, you're lying to me. I write all my posts by myself. I have my Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_01

I don't believe you. I even have my GPT creating my post. Yeah. I created a custom GPT with a lot of knowledge, and and then it's like, yes.

SPEAKER_00

And it's the same, it's the same with with emails, of course, you have to. I think it's it's it's important that you then put your personal touch to it, that it doesn't sound too robotic.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Don't write a prompt and say, okay, that's can you make it sound more personal or more human or something? No, put your own touch to it, right? Um, examples or something you identified on there storytelling, yeah, emotional stuff, whatever. Exactly, exactly. So definitely using AI as all right.

SPEAKER_01

I think that we covered a lot of topics. Yeah. Um, if I have to sum up and define some key takeaways, and and and we always do this, like correct me if I'm wrong and add on top of me. But basically, I think that we are always talking about AI outbound and how AI is increasing our chances of getting a reply within outbound and how tough outbound became uh in order to make sure that we are doing a or applying a good strategy, apply AI, apply AI, for example, as we were saying with Alta, yeah, right, within Alex as an AI agent calling for as your use cases for even if you're going to an event to confirm people there and save a lot of hours and time. Um, on the other side, if you have an SMB, use that agent in order to pick up on those inputs that no one wants to pick up on to start generating pipeline on that side.

SPEAKER_00

Be able to filter the intent data important to relevance of then giving your salespeople the right leads to reach out to that's important because there's so many different intent data points which you can consider, like from hiring, uh website visits, downloads, uh liking, it's overwhelmed, commenting.

SPEAKER_01

There's no way that you can use it.

SPEAKER_00

No human can get or summarized all this intent um uh data points to one lead. But AI can, right? This is the the magic on AI, yeah. Um so having having that in place makes uh it automatically a lead machine, how Alta get a seven figure pipeline using exactly this strategy.

SPEAKER_01

It's all the top of the funnel that it's basically being boosted or being optimized on top of what you're doing. With AI, agentix stuff, and so on. So that's the key takeaway. On top of, hey guys, maybe it's overuse, but be different, break the patterns. Right now, the the bar is so low that everyone is doing the F same. Yeah. Everyone is doing the same. Just try to be different, tackle a new angle, tackle a new channel, pick up the phone definitely. Because if you are competing with 20 years old, because we are older, 20 years old guys, if you pick up the phone, you will be leading the leaderboard for sure. Yeah. So those are the key takeaways. And uh as always, to conclude, um, thank you very much, Reply, for being part of this crazy adventure and and this journey as a main sponsor. Uh, thank you for all the audience to to watching, to listening, and to being part and uh learning with us. Don't forget to subscribe, hit that button, hit that button, get that support, reach out to LinkedIn, to Kevin on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00

Uh ask ask questions in the comments if you if something you want us to dig deeper, maybe another episode. Um, just just ideas, yeah, insights, whatever you want.

SPEAKER_01

We are making this podcast deconstructured. We don't want to be the formal guys. Exactly. We want to help and give uh stories that you can feel related to. In the upcoming episodes, we are going to talk about a lot of new stuff that we are cooking, but we are digging deeper into always AI and the FOMO about it. Yeah. AI outbound uh for AI SDRs as well. Uh, a lot of topics about strategies, negotiation, tactics, modern selling. Guests. Uh, guests coming, super important. We have a really exclusive guest visiting us. So, yeah, stay tuned and see you in the next one. Cool.