Jason: Going live now. Hello. Hello. Welcome to the masterclass by the Engage AI. Now, super excited to have everyone joining us today and especially for what for the guests that we have today. And the whole idea of this masterclass is really to help you. to improve and to learn some new tricks and strategy for your sales and the prospecting if you Are in the b2b business.

So let me just go through a couple of things before I get Tom to join us on stage and share about that all his strategy in The pre seals, research, right? So a couple of things that we will be you can expect to see here So number one all these experts like Tom will share with you. How do you grow your business visibility?

How? What are the actionable prospecting strategy and also what are the proven method to boost sales is really what all this masterclass is about. And now I have some really, something really special for you. I want to give you access to our special, really good AI prompt library, and you can get it entirely for free.

All you have to do is take a screenshot of this event. Post it on TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever the platform you are. Tag us in there. As soon as we notify, we will send you this AI prompt library to use in customize your tone when using Engage AI. And the good thing doesn’t stop there. Also, anyone who share that will also have a chance to claim a one year free Engage AI Pro plan subscription that is worth 360.

So click the button, share the event and get the special prompt. Now, if you, if this is the first time that you are joining us, the masterclass, give me just one minute to introduce Engage AI. So Engage AI is about speeding up your sales relationship on LinkedIn. It is an AI implemented and embedded right inside your LinkedIn, and you can use it to engage your prospect.

And why do you want to do that? You already use the automation to send all the in dm to send all the email But equally there are thousands of people are doing exactly just that And I know that you probably have received a lot of those Email uninvited email and uninvited dm And I bet most of the time that you are ignoring them because nobody likes to receive uninvited You But when it comes to the public post and engagement though, it’s a different story.

I bet a lot of us here are the SMB owner. If you’re a SMB owner, you want to sell to Bank of America, you will be talking to the head of engineering, head of marketing, head of SEAL. You don’t have to talk to the CEO because the deal that you and I are making for This enterprise is not 30 million or 300 million deals, right?

That’s why we are dealing with the head of sales or head of engineering. And what exactly does it mean then? I know I have been on LinkedIn for 15 years and so many of these head of engineering Whenever they create content and pose on LinkedIn They barely get any engagement Because they are not Gary Vee, because they are not the CEO of the Bank of America.

So imagine every time when they make a new post, you can be the first one to engage with them. How would they feel? You’re making them feeling special. And more importantly, when you are doing it very often, frequently for consistently eight or nine times, they I bet they will remember exactly who you are and that’s the perfect timing to start a conversation.

It’s a perfect timing to slide a DM or send them an email and say, can you start a conversation? And this is what Engage AI does and what Engage AI goes further doing. And that is what we call the monitoring feature. I know that when I go on LinkedIn, I have to scroll on the newsfeed. endlessly. Sometimes I got distracted by the clickbait article.

Sometimes I got distracted by all different things and I forget that the whole purpose I go on to LinkedIn is not for fun but for prospecting. But the problem with LinkedIn is they don’t, they just don’t show me who I care about. They just don’t show me the opportunity that I care about. They don’t show me the people that are most important to me.

So this monitoring feature, basically, if you tell us exactly who these people are every single day, we will go and monitor their profile and check if they have made a new post or not. And if they do, we’ll bring back all the new posts into a single webpage for you to look at and engage. You never get distracted.

It will allow you to be super focused because I know you are busy serving your client. You don’t want to go to link in just to scroll and read get distracted You just want to prospect right and this is what monitoring feature is doing for you Now before I introduce Tom to you, we are doing a poll tell us which of these two cool features you would like us to build next. The first one is using the AI to help you crafting the messages within and inside the LinkedIn inbox so that should make it easier to start the first messages or that should make it easy for you to quickly respond and number two is super relevant to what Tom is going to share with you today – get a summary of all the posts that you have commented on before meeting with your prospect so that you can use some of this information in the first five minutes in the conversation telling them that what you have read about them in terms of what they posted and use them to warm them up is something that probably tom will be talking about.

So we’d be really interested to hear his thought on that tell me exactly what that is and then we will Listen and we will vote I’m going to introduce you to Tom Slocum, he’s the CEO of the SD lab and today he’s going to show you the warm outreach mastery the presales research blueprint for the sales success. Tom has been in sales for very a long time.

He has made 8, 000 cold calls and appointments. He has made over 25 million dollars here. It’s crazy. Crazy amazing, right? So I am super excited to hear what he has got to say without a further ado Let me pass you to Tom.

Tom: Hey, we’re here.

Jason: Welcome Tom and super excited to have you here. I’m gonna let you to take over. How does that sound?

Tom: Appreciate it. Thank you all for coming and tuning in. We’ll make sure this goes very smoothly for you. You walk away with some actionable things as you’re here. In the topic at hand, which is how do we master warm outreach and turn it into building meaningful connections?

So we’re going to go through the next 30 minutes or so. I’m going to give a couple examples. I’m going to take you through a couple of frameworks that I have, and we’ll get right into it. And to Jason’s point, I’ve got almost two decades of experience. I’ve closed over 25 million in my career. I’ve made over half a million cold calls.

My own company is all around sales strategy for sales orgs, whether they need to outsource it to us, whether they want us to come in and help them optimize what they’re currently doing with their team internally. So I’ve got a wealth of knowledge here. We’re going to get right into it. First and foremost, just welcome.

We’re going to keep the super real. I’m not a talking head. I want you guys to be engaged. We’re going to have some fun. We’re going to keep it very light. And feel free to ask questions along the way in the comments. If anything comes up, we’ll have a moment at the end for a little bit of Q and a now this is all about warm outreach.

I am known as somebody who advocates for warm calling, not cold calls. Now again, we all know telemarketers are telemarketers. We’re always calling We’re always going after prospects and it’s always going to be cold But there are ways to warm up that prospect to the idea of your outreach And the power of doing that is it builds trust And a relationship, we’ve got to remember that these prospects who are reaching out to you do not care about us, they don’t care about what we’re bringing to the table that often, asking them how they are, all these things that it’s just irrelevant, right?

They want us to answer who we are, why we’re reaching out, pique their curiosity and then help them in their hero’s journey and so warm outreach does that, it builds that trust, gets a relationship established. It also means less rejection and more connection. If you’re coming with your research, you’re coming prepared, the moment you pick up the phone or you craft that first message to them or your follow-up, you get, you give a crap, right?

You’re done your research, you have some relevancy and you’re trying to help them. And then it opens doors for deeper conversations. No more surface level stuff. You’re able to really come with that relevancy, ask some really deep, good questions. Because as we know, the longer we can get the prospect speaking, the more they will spill, right?

And that’s what research does. It gives you that in and allows you to ask deep questions. To have that conversation with them. And so just so you know, the foundation to all of this is that’s why we want to do our research. That’s why we want to reach out that, you want to be a red X in a sea of blue circles, right?

When everybody’s going left, we go right. And a way to break through the noise in today’s landscape is through warm outreach. And it starts with smart research. Research is key. Now you don’t need to do this with everybody. I’m going to show you a couple of things over the next few slides here, but you want to dive deep into your prospects world.

Okay. What are they thinking about? I always go into mindset of, I want to seek to understand. Where they’ve been, where they are, and where they are going. Because if I can do that, then I can tie in that relevancy in there and say, Oh, Jason, that’s why I reached out. It’s exactly why I was giving you a call is because of XYZ that you mentioned.

So you want to dive deep into their world. And the way to do that is through their LinkedIn. If they are a prospect that is posting, they have a presence, it is a goldmine on what they’re sharing, what they’re engaging in, what groups they might be in, where they’re dropping comments. There’s a lot of gold out there that’s just public information that you can grab.

Then, if they’re not present on LinkedIn, jump into company pages. Because if they’re not, the prospect isn’t doing a lot of information, their company probably is. They want to be known their marketing. They’re pushing things. You can look at 401k reports. You can look at company job pages for hiring.

If that’s something within your market, right? If they have a job listing, go through that job listing, understand the language that they’re using. What are some of the things that they’re asking of this applicant that language then can be tied into your message. So company pages are just as insightful as the prospects, personal pages.

And then lastly, interviews, podcasts. Morgan Ingram will talk about this. Go listen to a few podcasts. And when you reach out, leave with something specific. Hey, Jason, I was just tuning into your recent podcast episode you had with XYZ. And I loved at the two minute Mark, where you dove into XYZ that really struck a chord with me because that’s what we’re doing here at the SD lab.

So I thought about reaching out to you. Here’s why that way they’re like, wow, this person is really giving a crap and invested in me. I might be more inclined to hear what they have to say. Okay. Next, you want to look for common ground. What is some recent activity that they might be doing that is common for you?

A sales leader I was able to connect with was a triathlon runner. Found out that was something they were into. I’ve done one or two, so we dove into that together. That was my outreach and the entire message was built around triathlons. So I found that common ground, my, my into the conversation. What we have to realize is it’s just like going to a party or an in person networking event.

If you can walk up with finding something to connect on, then you have a lot more likelihood of having a deep conversation with this person versus just walking up any shared interest. Are there things in there about me on their page? Is there something that you see that is a shared interest of yours?

People love dogs. Maybe you have a dog, they have a dog that they post often about. You can drop in there and talk about dogs. People will warm up a little bit more to that. And then mutual connections is always a great one in your research. Is there somebody that can help you open that door?

Is there a connection of you to a fellow sales leader that they follow that, you can bring them into the conversation to build, that relationship. It’s just like a party. If I can come to a party with a friend, I’m more inclined to have conversations in the group than showing up alone.

And then it’s, show you’ve done your homework with contextual outreach. That’s what smart research is it says, I care about you. I do want to help you. This is why I’m reaching out. And this is what I found in my research. The big takeaway here, research turns cold outreach into warm conversations.

You’re going to have an opportunity to actually get a chance to speak to this person and you may not get the meeting or that deal, but you will end up with a friend and a partner and a referral partner. Potentially I have a lot of people in my network that didn’t lead to a meeting or a deal, but they send me business or we’ve become friends.

Prime example is back in 2021, March of 2021, I was running a sales community called RevLeague. It’s calling sales leaders, pitching them on getting their reps into the sales community I was running, met with this guy, called him up on the phone. Before I reached out, I realized he was a hockey fan, big Toronto Maple Leaves fan.

I’m a Tampa Bay lightning fan. So when I picked up the phone, it was hockey season. And that was my opener. I was like, Hey, how are you liking that Toronto game last night? It’s Tom over at the SD lab. I’m a Tampa Bay lightning fan. And immediately just started spewing. Oh, it was so bad. They did this, that, and we got to talking for five, 10 minutes, just about hockey.

And then he was like why’d you call me, Tom? I was like, Oh, this is what I was reaching out for. Was hoping that we might be able to get a chance to work with your reps. And guess what? Closed that deal up. He put his reps into the community and now we’re friends still four years later, three years later, every hockey season, we get into banter about the Toronto Maple Leaves and the Tampa Bay Lightning.

So with research, you can build that connection. That can go beyond just a closed deal or a booked meeting. You can build a friendship. So smart research but with smart research what happens with reps Is everybody thinks everybody needs that research? Everybody thinks oh, I got to research every prospect I need to be going out there and everybody tells me all the gurus say to do this When in reality you don’t have to and what I wanted to introduce you guys today to is account prioritization matrix You and the persona prioritization matrix.

When you can create a prospecting system for yourself and incorporate that smart research, you can start getting about a meeting a day because you’re putting your time in the right places. So with the account prioritization matrix, what you’re looking at is you’re tiering out your accounts. So you need to know your customer profile very well.

You need to know what customers make the most sense for your organization. And then you start mapping them out. Your name are going to be your biggest wheels. Okay. So for example, first column here, retail and e commerce, we want to go after the Walmart, Amazon targets of the world. Okay. That’s going to be our big whales.

These folks are going to have all the personalization in the world, all the research to be done on them. These are the people you’re going to look at interviews, you’re going to look at company pages, going to dive into 401k reports, and you’re going to try to find as much Information as you can to get yourself with that foot in the door.

But as you go down to the next tier We’re going to then look at the next grouping of accounts that would be similar but aren’t going to be the big whales This would be your Best Buy, your Wayfair, your Macy’s These are going to be mid market to enterprise businesses. They have an online presence like Walmart and Amazon but they’re focused on these things This bucket is your A bucket and they are going to have some general resources in there along with a little bit of personalization.

But further in your sales funnel, you’re going to start converting over to snippets, some templated framework and some buyer persona language. So you might only personalize maybe the first or second email and then start grouping them into some buckets. Whereas remember with the name, the whales.

Everything is manual. Group C, Other, is going to be the next level of accounts that are a little bit lower. That’s going to be your Kohl’s, your Bed Bath Beyond, your Container Store, Again, regional or niche players have a similar employee account. Those are what we’re going to go there. Now, those are going to be scaled.

Okay. These ones you can introduce some automation, some pre templated emails. You’re not really going after them heavy with all that personalization. So when you can map out your accounts now, every day, when you come in, you’re putting your time in the right places. Because everybody gets lost in research.

And what happens is. You lose your day and the day runs you and you’re not getting to your accounts or you’re putting all this research in on the container store where Reality is if we got that meeting great, but it’s not necessary And it’s probably not going to be the best fit for us Whereas if we went to amazon or target that’s going to be a six figure deal for us So you can prioritize your time and start grouping your buckets and doing your research in the right places And that ties right into once you get the accounts mapped Now you look at your buyer personas and your buying center and you start mapping out those contacts to understand Okay Who do I need to personalize and really tie relevancy into and then who can I drop down?

Into some buyer persona language with so example again customer support and experience side of the house If we’re looking at our named, that would be Tony at DoorDash, Dara at Uber, Airbnb. Again, big heavy accounts. Those are people we would love to get in contact with, and if we automate to them or we don’t research and we don’t really know why we’re reaching out, we’re gonna lose our shot with, so they get all personal, like personalized outreach.

They’re gonna be mapped as your name. They’re gonna have 80 to a hundred percent manual effort. personalized videos, voice memos, you’re researching them. And then again, tier one and tier two, you start moving into some more automation, some more scaled outreach. They’re not your heavy hitters, right? I don’t need to personalize my outreach to the manager of customer support, but I do need to personalize my outreach to Tony at DoorDash.

So again, first thing first, before we start diving into research, you’ve got to be smart about who you’re putting, where you’re putting that time into and make sure that you’re grouping out your accounts, you’re mapping them, you’re putting them in the right place. So that way your time is effective. Okay, so group prioritize Now we can get into how to do smart research for those that are here If you want to drop into the comments, I did have a quick question for you when using the account prioritization matrix How should you allocate your time and resources?

So with this one, is it spend equal time on every account? Is it focus more on high priority accounts with personalized outreach? Is it only work with accounts that have already shown interest? You Or is it prioritized based on the product’s job title alone?

For this one, it’s going to focus more on high priority accounts with personalized outreach. So that’s where your time wants to go. Okay. You want to focus on those high priorities, A’s and named accounts. Those are the ones here that you want to do all of that with. Again, the rest of the stuff, you can start tiering out, start automating, maybe tie in some snippet framework emails, where you just got to plug in a few variables and send it off.

Okay. But focus more on high priority accounts with that relevant outreach. So then from there, how to craft outreach messages that resonate. Okay, so now you know who you need to target. You’ve got all your named people. You’ve got all your tier one buckets. These people need your that research done.

How do you craft messages that makes sense for them? Number one use the research If you’re gonna go do it, make sure you use it I’m a big component of the three by three research method Which is find three pieces of information on the prospect in under three minutes Very simple, very sweet because again, when prioritizing your time, reps will get prospecting paralysis and find themselves down rabbit holes when it comes to research.

I’ve had SDRs that will spend 20 to 30 minutes on that account when you got to move on. There’s a time and a place for that research and it doesn’t require much, but what are three things you could find on somebody that will give you enough relevancy to reach out? Because everybody talks about personalization, but what it really means is relevancy.

You’re researching and you’re personalizing the message because you’re trying to tackle the four R’s, the right person at the right time. With the right message on the right channel. That’s the system that every rep is trying to hit every day, the four R’s. And so how do you do that? It’s crafting that outreach that resonates with that relevancy and the research is going to help you get there.

The other part about it is keep it about them, not about you. When you’re writing your message to them, that first email or that first cold call to them, focus on their world. Again, understand your buyer personas. What is their world and day to day like what is the role of a ceo? Like maybe you’ve never done that if you’ve never done that How are you going to cold call somebody up and tell them how?

Their pains or what about their life when you’ve never experienced it small story here I used to be a car salesman when I was 18 years old got a job through my grandmother a mutual friend I was at Peoria Nissan out here in Arizona worked there for 60 to 90 days went through all the training and one day while I’m out there hustling the streets in the lot. The CEO or the director of that lot came on.

She was a female, she comes in and she spots me 30 minutes later. She’s Hey, can you send them into my office? I go into her office. She reams me and yells at me and questions me on how an 18 year old be sitting in her lot, selling a 50 to 60, 000 car to people that have that kind of cash. When I’m an 18 year old kid, I’ve never held 50, 000.

I had no concept. And I had to defend myself for the next hour on explaining to her, but I know people, I understand what they want the vehicle for, I’m learning about them, I’m asking questions, I’m tying in stories for them on that single mom looking for a car for her kids or that guy hitting the dunes on the weekends with his truck.

Don’t care about the dollar amount. It’s about selling to their world, learning who they are as individuals, and then finding the car that fit their world and then selling them that story. Ended up keeping my job. She was very happy with it, but I got questioned as to how are you going to talk to these people if you’ve never done this?

So you have to keep it about them, understand their world and really dive into it. It’s not about you. Nobody cares that you’d love to do anything. They don’t care that you want to book a meeting or close the deal. Cool. They want to know that you care about them and the best way to do that is to research And then use engaging openers again tying in that research if you’re going to find it use it Saw your post Jason on, warm outreach mastery event that you were hosting with Tom.

I attended that and I thought it was phenomenal. I really liked how he mentioned in slide seven XYZ. And that’s why I thought I’d reach out because that’s what we do here at XYZ. I know being a founder of a company, this is something that you might struggle in. Is this something that’s super relevant to you right now and be worth maybe a future conversation around?

Now, Jason knows that I’m about his world. I’m understanding what he’s going through. And I’m reaching out because I’ve done my homework. And that’s the why behind why I even thought to drop that in my email and do his inbox or pick up the phone. Or, hey, I noticed your company Engage AI just released a new feature.

How are you getting that out to market right now? Or there’s a plan of attack and how you’re going to be crafting that messaging or a marketing plan to get it in the hands of the consumer. Here at the FD lab, we do XYZ. Thought it’d be relevant for me to reach out. Is this a priority for you? Again, you’re showing that research.

And then another great way is be concise, respect our time. Don’t write a whole novel. You don’t need to tie in all this research and write out five different things and overwhelm them with, Hey, I read your podcast and looked at your 401. I see you’re doing this. Pick one very specific piece of information.

You could tie into your message. And bring it all together. I’ve seen way too many reps do research and they use it just for the first line to get their attention, but they don’t pull it into the message. If you’re going to find out that somebody loves surfing, don’t just bring up surfing in the opening line, just because.

Tie it to the message and show why you picked that piece of information in the first place. And if surfing can tie into your product, or you can bring it into their world of, Hey Jason, I know you’re a big surfer. Things that I found with surfers often is, their boards. And X, Y, Z, that’s what we do here and and how we engage with prospects, X, Y, Z, right?

Tie it all in. Your goal here is to spark curiosity, spark a conversation, not sell. We can’t even sell yet because again, we’re seeking to understand where they are, where they’re going, and where they’ve been. And tying that all into the relevancy of, hey, this is why I picked you, Jason. This is why I’m reaching out.

So after conducting pre sales research, what is the most effective way that you would want to personalize your outreach message? Is it going to be mentioned a recent post or activity from the prospects? LinkedIn included generic greeting and ask for a meeting, focus on your company’s products and features in the first sentence.

Or send the same message to multiple prospects for similar roles. For those tuning in, it’s going to be mentioning a recent post or activity from the prospects LinkedIn. That is going to be the best way for you to tie in your personalization and your relevancy is again, looking at their LinkedIn, looking at their content on the website, finding something that you can tie into the relevancy of your reach out.

So tap into social platforms like a pro. Okay. Big thing is, the world is not a place where everybody’s so public. Everybody is wanting to share their life. Go follow them on Instagram if you want, become their friend over there, find them on their Tik Toks, find them on LinkedIn and tap into it.

It’s a wealth of knowledge where a buddy of mine who was an STR manager posted a job listing out on LinkedIn said, look, I’m hiring for STRs. One of the STRs that ended up landing the role, you want to know how they did it? What made all the difference, right? Got hundreds of applications. This dude found this SDR manager on his Instagram, saw that he was a soccer fan.

Now this was nowhere on his LinkedIn. Nobody knows about this SDR manager being a huge soccer fan as much as if you’re connected with them on Instagram, you know this, that’s where he shares that stuff. He’s a big Messi fan, Ronaldo fan. He loves that stuff. So the rep that was looking for the job created a visual that showed the soccer kind of team lineup and put their face in it along with the rest of the reps on the team and tied in his whole message to this manager around how he would fit like a glove within the soccer team and sales team.

And guess what? He got the interview. He got the job. Why? Because he did his homework and he found a way to break through the noise. Find relevancy and he was an opposite fan. So he was a, uh, Rinaldo or a messy fan while the manager was a Rinaldo fan, so he pulled the rivalry in there as well and it worked.

So tap into social platforms, LinkedIn could be your best friend more than anything, probably before you go to the other platforms. But don’t be afraid to go look on Twitter or Instagram. See if they’re out there because you might find a little bit of a secret information that, will set you apart and then follow your prospects activity and engage naturally before reaching out.

I talk a lot about the fetch method, social selling F E T C H follow, engage, track, connect, help. That’s what I do. My first steps are if I was going after Jason here, I’d get into his LinkedIn. I follow him. I don’t need to connect yet. I’m going to hit that follow button and I’m going to engage in what he’s sharing.

I’m going to add insights to his comments. I’m going to become a friend and I’m going to be in his circle. I might find some other connections that he has that were mutual with. And I’m going to try to add value to his world. And then after that becomes norm few days later, I’m going to drop in that connect note.

And more often than not, by my engagement, I tend to get the prospect to reach out to me and connect with me. Hey, I really love that. You’ve been showing up in my content lately. Thanks so much for adding value to my posts. We’d love to connect. And they come to me. Because it’s so easy to set yourself apart with your prospects that most of their content only has four comments Maybe one and it’s very low.

So if you’re showing up, they’re going to be familiar with you So follow them engage naturally add some value Have discussions with them and then drop that connect and then when you do be authentic about it I like to say be a homie my subject or my headline is Your future homie in law. Be authentic.

Don’t do this to just shortcut or slow drip them or pitch slap them with this research, but comment share relevant posts with them and just show genuine interest. And again, lifting them up in their hero’s journey and saying, Hey, I’m just here to help because of X, Y, Z that I’ve noticed.

Take away here, engagement is a two way street, show up and build rapport before making your ask. The way I like to say it, it’s like an ATM. If you go to your ATM every day and you just keep withdrawing and keep asking and asking for money, what ends up happening? You’ll go into the red and have no money in your bank account.

But if you’re going in and pulling withdrawals, but also depositing money in there. Now you’ve got a healthy bank account, right? Same thing with our prospects. Make sure that you’re not always asking for something. You’re not always coming in and being like, can we get a meeting? Can we do this? Just be helpful.

Use the research to help them along their journey. If they’re hiring, maybe send them a person or two that might be a fit for them, or on their post, drop a friend or two that might be a good fit. Be helpful and put in that deposit so when you do go for that withdrawal, you have a likelihood of not overdrafting and being rejected.

I’m going to break down how a quick example of this would look just to give you a visual here. The cold lead that I had was a prospect who was a VP of sales at a mid sized SaaS company. The challenge was they had recently posted on LinkedIn about the difficulty of scaling their outbound efforts.

They had a team, they doubled in size within the last 90 days and things were breaking. They were unable to replicate what their current team was doing with the new squad. So in my pre sales research, what I noticed was they had a recent post about scaling those challenges and they were actively looking for some solutions.

The company insights that I found was that they expanded into a new market. Hence the increase for that outbound lead gen and the scalability of the team. And then I found with that leader that we had some mutual friends and a mutual sales leader who I had actually worked with. So in my message, I said, saw your post on outbound challenges.

Have a few ideas because again, they were looking for solutions. So I knew if this was a subject line, they may be like, Oh, somebody’s getting back to me. Hey name, I came across your recent posts on scaling outbound efforts and how challenging it’s been with your recent expansion. I’ve worked with companies in similar positions and thought I’d share a few strategies that might help streamline your outbound process.

Would love to discuss how my team and I at the SD lab have been helping in companies with this exact challenge. Guess what? Within a few hours, he responded, thanking me for referencing his post and showing understanding of their challenges. And we were able to secure a call to dive deeper on how I could help them.

So again, I was aware I was keeping a pulse on them. I was used to LinkedIn sales nav. I had seen their posts talking about tech stack and different things. And should they create a playbook? Like how could they fix this team to become more unison? So my subject line was simple. I saw your post on it.

I have a few ideas. And immediately he got back to me and we were able to dive into it. And I was able to come in for my program for three months. And I helped them bring the team all together over three months and walked away with a great friend and a referral for future business. So this is how you could turn that cold outreach and tie in that relevancy without going over the top again, just being a homie with them.

And for what you could see here. I didn’t really pitch about the SD lab. I didn’t bring in all about me and my value prop and all the features and all the benefits. It was just like, Hey, I have some ideas for you. And we’d love to get a chance to discuss with you how we’re doing that. And he was open to the idea because it was that big of a pain for him.

And that’s what he had asked was I want some ideas. So some takeaways for today as we talk about this is do your homework. Research is everything. And if I can leave you with anything is a couple of tech tools that I do to do this. As I said, I use the three by three method, but there’s tools out there that I did not have.

I started in 2007. I had to do all manual research, everything. I had to dig. I was prospecting paralysis. I spent 10 to 20, 30 minutes on that account. Now there’s zoom info co pilot. There’s EvaBot, there’s Engage AI to help you, there’s Humantic AI, there’s these Chrome extension tools like EvaBot, I can jump on LinkedIn, I can go to Jason here, and within 2 3 minutes tops, I can run the EvaBot on it, and it’ll give me an entire synopsis on Jason as far as company research 401k information that might be out there around Engage AI, some relevant mutual talking points or shared connections that we might be able to have, and then through it, it can even AI the message for me still needs a little bit of human effort in there, but it takes a lot of that lifting off.

So don’t be afraid to go into research, especially with all these tools that are out there in the market. Research can be your friend. I am team research all day. Know why you’re calling before you even pick up the phone. Or send that message. If you couldn’t tell me if I ask you why you’re reaching out to Jason today and you simply tell me, oh they’re on my list.

That doesn’t count. Know why you’re reaching out to somebody and be prepared because when you get on that call and you have the ammo, your questions get deeper, you’re able to handle objections, and you’re able to get that to move the needle with them because You have your research and you’re like, Jason, I called you specifically because of X, Y, Z, and here’s what I have to offer to help you.

And then keep it short and about them in your outreach. Again, take the burden off them. Stop making it all about you. Keep it short. Look to aim for a conversation discussion and keep it all about them. Nobody cares about your product. Nobody cares about the features and benefits. They want to know why you reached out to me.

And can you help me with whatever pain or challenge or goal that I’m going through? And then use social platforms. Like I said, everybody’s out there nowadays. It’s not that hard between the company or the prospect to get some type of information as to why them, why now, why should they care? And then use that to warm them up and then focus on building trust.

Have a friend, have a conversation with them, talk to them, tell them that you’re looking to help. I tell SCRs and sales reps all the time. You guys are so lucky that in a given week, you can talk to five to 15 people in your buyer persona world that you know, what’s going on. I talked to sales leaders all week long, my friends, my prospects, my customers, my sales teams that I’m coaching, I know the truth.

Outside of what LinkedIn might say or what I’m thinking, I get to talk to these people. So when I go into the next conversation, I can come to Jason and be like, he’s yeah, I’m trying to help my team get more comfortable on the phone. They’re not picking up. They don’t want to get on it. I can be like, Oh, intriguing.

I was just talking to John over at XYZ last week, and he had the same problem. You know what he did to get them bought into the phone. He put a spiff together and put some goals aside for them and created some micro goals for them to get them in the exercise and just two weeks later. Now he’s got his entire team walked into cold call.

Have you tried something like that? Now Jason’s got his curiosity peaked. He sees that I’m an advisor that I’m in this space and now he wants to talk to me and he might implement that tip. And now he’ll see the needle move and now i’ve established that trust Don’t worry about the sale that comes secondary and will come naturally If you are doing your research and really diving in here to warm up those conversations So i’ll leave you here with any questions you guys might have that’ll wrap up the session here So if there’s any questions anybody in the comments feel free to jump in here and lastly Thanks for hanging out with me today.

If you’re ready to dive in, you want to talk with me you can find me on LinkedIn, as I said, I’ve got a wealth of knowledge out there. There’s tons on me that you can find in my pictures, my content. I have a link tree with podcasts, episodes of about 60 plus I’ve got articles. And then I have my company website, the SD lab.com. So don’t be a stranger, feel free. If you have any further questions and don’t want to bring them up live today, drop me a DM. We’d love to connect with you and be your future homey in law. And to Jason’s question, where can you guys get a copy of the account prioritization matrix or the persona?

Drop, drop me a DM. I will send it over to you. I will get a copy over to Jason. So he could share those as well. And the post production of this. But if you’d like them, you want to see them, I have them blank with those and with those examples, happy to share it. Because once you can start bucketing your accounts and your personas.

Then research gets really easy and you start putting more points on the board because your time is Efficient you’re targeting the right things and you’re not wasting your time on things that shouldn’t be And you can automate a little bit more of that down the funnel once you start getting the prospecting system to work in your favor you’re engaging open or skip the word I and go into the verb fight right away. We’d like to elaborate on it and on the audience on why you crafted it that way So yeah, so if we go to let’s see Yeah, so saw your post on or noticed your company they skipped the word I right again I don’t make it about me.

Nobody cares about Tom. They don’t care that I know what I’m talking about They don’t care about my career anything of that nature People love talking about themselves. They love somebody building up their ego or why I get sales. It was all the time to word vomit on me in a five minute cold call because I asked them what’s working for their team or what’s not working and they love to share.

I’ll ask them, hey, did your sales team hit quota last year? Yeah, they sure did. Cool. What worked for you? Because I’m hearing some sales teams aren’t hitting quota. We’ve got the formula, Tom, and I’ll tell you exactly why we did this, and they’d love to share. And then from there, the more they share, the more I can discover things and uncover things with them.

And then I could be like, you know what? So I reached out, John, it sounds like your quote is being hit. But it also looks like you’re about to run into this problem. Have you thought about that? And now we’re diving in. So I crafted to where I’m jumping in and making it about them. They don’t care about me.

I’m bringing myself into the equation way later in the process. Because again, if my open my email with, I would love to, I want to talk to you. Nobody cares. Remove the eye out of there. Make it about them. You have a lot more success in them reading that email or getting back to you. What do you think about the sales reps questions in the first meeting?

Tell me more about your business. Again, I think if you’re going into Discovery, again, do your homework, right? Take the time. You can get all of AI, Humantik, EvaBot, ZoomInfo, Copilot. Go do the research. Do not go into a SILAS Discovery call. And I hate this question. I don’t like it. When I go into a demo and a person’s tell me a little bit more about the SD Lab and what you guys are doing.

I just think it’s silly. My website is there. My information is out there. You should know what we do and come prepared and maybe have a question or two to say, hey, Jason, I was looking into engage AI. I would love, in a moment for you in your own words to maybe tell me, why you created it or really where it’s going.

But from my understanding and my research. I believe it’s helping folks on LinkedIn, right? With their outreach just doing X, Y, Z. What I found very intriguing about that was this and this. Now he’s okay, this person is caring about this meeting. If you come in and say, tell me about your business.

It shows to me you’re buying time to maybe do that research while we’re, why I’m talking, or you waited five minutes before the demo or the discovery to get yourself situated and jump into the call, right? Don’t ask me all the questions your FDR has already asked or not, or have me tell you about my business.

It’s really irrelevant. I would rather lead with something to give them the in first. Like I said, Jason, I was doing some research before we jumped into this call today, I love what Engage AI is doing. I did have one question. I was looking through the website and I saw this feature. Can you tell me a little bit about more why you guys created that now?

He’s going to tell me more about his business, but I don’t have to make it look like I didn’t care. And I didn’t bother to even learn about them before they jumped into the call. So I don’t like that being your first question. I think you need to come prepared and maybe ask them something to get them talking about something you liked in the research of their business.

Jason: That was great. I have to agree with you. That is the question that I hate the most. Every time when I want to buy a service from someone or even the worst when they are the one who call outreach to me and I said yes to their meeting and their first question is Jason tell me about your business. I was like, have you done check the website to see what exactly that we do and why we do it. Oh my goodness!

Tom: Yeah, you learn trust with me so fast. And again, if you’re trying to close a 10k to a six figure deal You know what kind of disrespect that is or slap to the face that the first question you’re going to ask me is Hey while we’re here in the first 10 minutes Tell me you know about your business or the other one.

I don’t like is So why’d you take this meeting, tell me why you’re here today or you know What got you to take this meeting that stuff is so irrelevant and just shows me You’re buying time and you didn’t do your process and you’re expecting me to bail you out And I’m just not going to I’m gonna let you sit in that and I’m not gonna help you.

Jason: Exactly, and I think that what you have to say is really spot on that the services that a lot of us are selling are because and that’s also the reason why we are only in is costing from 10, 000 to six figures.

We’re not selling a sneaker for 200. We need to sell them. We need to do the work more than selling a pair of sneakers. Yeah.

Tom: Yeah. If I worked at a shoe store, I don’t really need to know much. And I might need to ask you when you come in, Oh, what’s got you, what’s got you coming in today for a new shoe?

Sure. That’s a 20 and a hundred dollar buy. That’s fine. And you’re doing value. But if I’m going to an enterprise company like Walmart or Uber, and I asked the Uber guy to get on a call with me and I’m like, hey, what, tell me about your business. He’s What do you mean tell me about my business? Why don’t you tell me what you know about my business and why you have me here for this?

You’re the one that reached out to me saying I need your product or I need your service Then why did you even ask me? Yeah, it’s so exactly and the

Jason: other thing that I want to highlight in your masterclass and I really like it is the ATM analogy. It’s the first time This analogy but I thought it’s great you’re not you don’t want there just to withdraw because You’re taking, and if you are never Depositing that’s why people don’t want to go out for lunch with you People don’t want to go out for coffee with you because you are taking all the time That was perfect

Tom: It’s like those friends that every time you get together, you go to lunch you go to coffee and the entire time They’re the ones talking about their world and what’s going on and they’re just like always about them and then you walk away You And they’re like, Oh man, I never got to ask you, how are you?

Or what’s going on in your world? And you’re like I gotta go now. Thanks, man. Thanks for the lunch. I’m glad you got what you needed. And you’re just taking from people. And just like with an ATM, if I keep coming every day and I just keep trying to pull money out of that, what’s going to eventually happen is I’m going to get the decline.

I’m going to get the rejection. And they’re like, dude, why do you keep asking me for stuff? And you’ve not done anything for me. What about for me? Are you going to show up for me? Are you going to do something that can maybe help my world? I’m a big believer in giving a lot of gives in my outreach That’s why my research is so important because then I can give them something.

Hey, Jason, I’ve seen you talking about some tech tools that you might be exploring between this one and this one I have a guide that I put together because I deal with a lot of sales leaders trying to figure out, which data providers I deal. I created a side by side and I did the work for the leaders on which provider might be makes sense.

Would that be helpful if I sent that over to you as you evaluate these providers? It’s not going to make or break my bank, but if they see that they’re like, dude, that was phenomenal. I actually went with XYZ. Thank you. It had all the boxes checked for us and now it’s helped the team. Is there, I was hoping maybe we could meet.

I’d love to learn more about the SD Lab and maybe see if there’s something we could do together. Now I’ve earned that trust and credibility with them because I helped them in their world without expecting anything in return. And I gave that deposit to where then when I come back and I ask for that withdrawal, they’re not mad at it.

They’re like, yeah, Tom, let’s meet. I would love to. You really helped me last week setting up that provider. And What can I do for you? Yeah, let’s jump on a call.

Jason: I want to take that ATM spin in a different scenario and hear your thoughts. And this probably also comes from a bit of my experience as well.

So before I founded Engage AI, I was running my own data and AI consulting. This is so it’s like a lot of folks here selling to the big enterprise and means that we have to go out there and build relationship, right? One thing that I also pick up is Because the deal is big, sometimes it doesn’t close in a single call, in a single meeting.

So you have to build a relationship. And to build a relationship, you need to do a lot of the meetings and where possible. And if you are lucky, you can do a lot of meetings. Now, this is where I want to ask exactly the same question again with the ATM technology. One thing that I have felt is that, There are prospects that I can go into multiple meetings to continue to build that relationship.

Now it’s great. And I know I’m really good at to keep them talking. which is doing what you were suggesting in the masterclass. But I also found that if I go into multiple meetings with them, and even though I am so good in keeping them talking, if I have never spent a little time to ask me about my business or even ask me about myself, often my feeling is that they are not going to do business with me either.

In other words, they were equally taking all the time. I think they were literally maybe they just like, yeah, Jason is going to buy me lunch. Why not? And he is a good, companion. He every time I spend time with him, not only he’s paying for lunch, or he got my ego boosted because I get to tell him how smart I am.

What do you think about that ATM analogy in a slightly different way? And would that be a good indicator that, oh yes, I may still be able to build this relationship with the prospect, but it doesn’t seem like I will be able to close the deal because I don’t know. They don’t actually really care about if we can do business together.

Tom: It’s a balance, right? Because, yeah, is I have found myself in those predicaments where I’ve been working a sales cycle. And I have been that helpful homie. I have given them time to ask me questions. I sit, make it all about them. My talk time is 80 20, right? 80% of the time it’s them, and I’m jumping in for that 20%, and then I find out they ghost me, or I never hear from them again.

Because I gave them everything. I gave up everything because I was being too kind and I was trying to do too much helpfulness. I had that deal six months ago. That way got the, got a referral, got in with the deal guy was trying to hire a job or role. He was like, I don’t know a job description.

I don’t know a comp structure. So trying to give and be helpful. I wrote up the job description. I wrote up the comp plan I was like, oh let me help you I have some things for you Next thing I know he hired the rep set up the entire structure that I gave him and didn’t need me anymore And ghosted me and I lost that deal And I realized they took too much from me and I didn’t get anything in return.

I wasn’t really managing that deposit and withdrawal. I just let them keep withdrawing thinking, Oh, this is going to help progress the deal, right? If I keep helping, they’re going to give me the deal. And I literally gave them the entire kitchen sink and I lost the deal because what else did they need me for?

So I think it’s a fine balance on, again, if I give you something, how do I get that ask in return? Example, Jason, you’re like in the call, Tom, I’m struggling with this. Do you have any ideas or what would you recommend? Or can you send this over to me? And it’s Hey. Jason, I’m happy to do that.

I’ve got a couple things for you while I put that together. Why don’t we do you mind in return? What I’d love from you is if why don’t we schedule another call on Thursday and we will go through it together That way I can address questions with you. I’ll send it over But i’d love to get that call with you on the books to get the deal progressed as well Now it’s a give and take relationship.

So it’s like I’ll give you that But in return, I’m going to take from you too and make sure that we’re still mutual benefit here of I’ll give that up. But in return, you need to do this for me too. It’s like when offering discounts or trying to close the deal and they’re like, what kind of discounts can you do?

It’s dude, I’ll do a discount, but I have to know that if I go to my manager and I asked for this, or I’m willing to do this for you, if I get the, okay, for this. Will you sign by Monday? Yes, Tom. I will do that. Cool. I’ll go then back, go to bat with my manager. I will do that for you. Let me see if I can make work this out for us.

If I do though, and that’s the last thing on your radar to move this deal forward and I get that clearance, you’re good with them signing by Monday. After Monday, if I don’t get that okay, unfortunately I can’t honor that discount. Does that work for you? Tom, that’d be great. Let’s do that. Cool. I will go do my part.

I’ll let you know if I get that deal across. I’ll get you over the paperwork and I look forward to our deal closing on Monday. Now it’s a give or take versus what most reps will do of yeah Let me go see if I can do a discount. No problem. I’ll talk to you later. And now they’ve got nothing in return and they go get that deal Or they put that discount and now they’re ghosted right or they never get it across the finish line or that person drags their feet And it’s dude, I went to bat for you.

Why couldn’t I get something in return? So always try to do that. Give or take, yes be helpful, but also get something in return. So what I try to do is I’ll give them something. Hey, I’ve got a guide for you on how to help you with your onboarding. I know you’re looking to hire some reps. If I send this over would you also be willing to maybe meet on Thursday and we could dive in a little bit deeper Once you’ve taken a look at it.

Sure. Tom, that’d be great. Cool. I’ll get the invite over to you. Once I see that accepted I will send over that guide to you and I hope your onboarding goes. Mow I got something in return.

Jason: I love it. That was really good I’m gonna take note of that and do it for my consulting business now This is really great.

Now folks anyone who want to rewatch this masterclass again, and this is recorded We will put it up on our website next couple of days, so you can rewatch it anytime you want. I will make sure to get the metrics from Tom and share it in on the webpage as well, so you can download it at any time you want.

Really like Tom said, right? Social media is really one of the places for that. You can really go out there and get their attention and Engage AI is about helping you to make it easier. Commenting is really literally the least crowded way, compared to their inbox, compared on LinkedIn, or email the least crowded way for you to get in front of them because nobody is doing it and that is a perfect opportunity, isn’t it?

Now, don’t forget, take a snapshot of this event and share it on your social media, tag us and get a chance to win a one year subscription for free. And most importantly, get access to our AI Prom library. Now as a thanks, small appreciation of thank you for joining, who joined us. Get a discount code web 15 and get a 15 discount, 50 percent for your first month and do try Engage AI.

Next week, not today, but in October, we have the LinkedIn Mastery, unveiling the five different strategies for truly choosing your winning playbook. Now, once again thank you so much Tom. I personally really enjoyed, I actually learned quite a number of new things that I know that will be useful for my business.

I should I must say that I wish I have learned that when I was still in my consulting business ’cause that was really a lot of useful strategy. I love it. Good. Once again, thank you so much for hosting this MasterCard.

Tom: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. And like I said, anybody reach out with any questions, if you watch this back, anything like that.

You can come chat with me all you want. It is okay. I am happy to be your future homie in law and give back as much as I can. Thanks all for tuning in.

Jason: Thank you, Tom.