Non-Spammy Sales Success: Outbound Insights with Mark McInnes

[00:00:00] Michelle J Raymond: Welcome everybody to the LinkedIn for B2B Growth Show. I'm your host Michelle J Raymond, and I am passionate about sales. I'm passionate about helping you grow your business, and I have bought my favourite contact from LinkedIn. Mark McInnes. Welcome to the show.

[00:00:14] Mark McInnes: Thank you very much, Michelle. I'm flattered that I'm your favourite. That's good.

[00:00:17] Michelle J Raymond: You are, because there's not too many people that I can talk sales with. But for those people that haven't come across you, like I want to set the scene here. So you are one of the best sales trainers for outbound sales here in ANZ. You are also the author of the Tactical Pipeline Growth book. Host of the Best of Sales Skills podcast, which I've been on, so people should go and look for that episode. You're also the Founder of the Sales Development As a Service.

You live and breathe prospecting, outbound selling, and new business. And that is what I wanna talk about today. I wanna talk with you about, let's be clear, how do we sell more and spam less? And I know you're a huge advocate for this. But before we jump in, I'm gonna ask you a question. Do you think salespeople are born or made?

[00:01:04] Mark McInnes: Oh, this is a classic, isn't it? I know they're made. If you'd asked me this, when I started my sales career, I would've said they were born. But now I know for a fact that they are made and the data supports that. So introverts typically are better at sales than extroverts and I've had to change my approach and the way that I manage my personality when I'm selling to make more money and get more deals. And that includes winding back on typical sales attributes.

You know, bit extrovert, bit loud, want to talk all the time. That just doesn't work and I think if salespeople were born, you'd have to say that did work. And I know it doesn't.

[00:01:41] Michelle J Raymond: When I first thought about that question, I was adamant that they were born, not made. And then I thought about my own journey.

So going back 20 odd years ago, I started in customer service and then I evolved because I wanted to be face-to-face to my customers. So that's how I fell into sales and then I loved it because from then on I could be face-to-face and the next 20 years I spent selling. So for people that are listening in today, that means that if you're an introvert, nope, this actual podcast is for you. You are good at sales.

What does the research say about making introverts better at sales than extroverts, for instance?

[00:02:19] Mark McInnes: So two things. One, selling is all about helping your clients or your customers, and the best way to help them is to figure out what it is that they want. And the best way to get that is through a conversation where you do less talking and they do more. Introverts like that scenario. Extroverts find that hard to get there.

The second thing is that introverts typically like systems and processes. If you follow systems and processes in sales, instead of being a maverick, you've got a higher chance of closing a sale or finding an opportunity, opening it, using some systems and processes to make sure they're the right potential.

Using systems and processes to present your proposal. Using systems and processes to close. Using systems and processes to manage your customer retention. Introverts love that stuff. Extroverts go I'm just gonna freestyle man, and one of them will build repeatable, scalable sales teams. The other one will be awesome one week. Terrible the next.

[00:03:16] Michelle J Raymond: I think that if we go back to the Nineties when it was all about, let's go out on the long lunches or the cruises, or there was money to spend and we would be at restaurants then it was the extrovert's dream in sales.

I've seen a power shift over the last, especially 10 years, when Google became really powerful. You've got the world at your fingertips. So I think there's been a power shift to the buyer now, away from the seller and from my personal experience, what I found was people would do all of their research and then when they just wanted to know the final 20% of the info, like logistics or pricing, or when could we deliver, then they would ask me for my input.

 I wanna talk about outbound sales because there's a really active process going on, I think, with buyers where they're trying to get around sellers, especially bad sellers, and I would love my listeners to actually have all the tips and tools from an expert like yourself so that they can have some good processes in place.

Now we're gonna start with what's spamming, what's selling on LinkedIn, because I assume that everybody knows what's a good process on LinkedIn, but given the volume of spam that I get into my Inbox on LinkedIn, I don't think this is the case, so I never wanna assume that my audience knows.

So what's spamming and what's not on LinkedIn?

[00:04:30] Mark McInnes: Okay, so what's your definition of spam? Let's start with that maybe, right?

[00:04:35] Michelle J Raymond: For me, it's always the wham bam, thank you, ma'am. The message that you get that's completely out of the blue with no relationship, no context, and it is in your face with, I want this from you.

And it's repetitive, typically. It is relentless sometimes, and it's bombarding is how it feels. And there's no personal relationship there. There is no research done on their behalf about why I might be interested. It's almost like just a numbers game. And so that for me is how I would define spam. How would you define spam?

[00:05:09] Mark McInnes: Well, spam as defined by the 2013 Spam Act says that an unwanted message that isn't relevant.

So if I was sending you a message, regardless of how I'd worded that message, Michelle and said, you need a new podcast tool that's not spam. It doesn't matter how I present it. It doesn't matter whether I pitch and then send you a connection request, because it's reasonable for me to assume that you would want a new piece of technology to help make your podcast better.

[00:05:35] Michelle J Raymond: Makes sense.

[00:05:35] Mark McInnes: So that's a business to business outreach. Now if I do it badly, we are gonna say it's spam, right?

So you have to be very conscious about what it is. So society has created this scenario where you get a text message from the tyre repair company. You might have repaired your car tyres four years ago. You get a text message saying, pay for three, get four. And people go, I get spam messages from this tyre company. It's not spam, you signed up for it. But we consider it to be spam because it's unwanted and it's considered to be an intrusion.

So in the context of that, we need to understand what's making us think that that's spam, when it's actually not. So we've bought tyres from that person. We've given them the approval to send us text message. If we connected with somebody on LinkedIn, we've given them the permission to send us a message.

So it's not spam, but it's spammy right? So let's talk about being spammy and salesy on LinkedIn, right?

So I think it's important that people understand what is actual spam and what's just spammy behaviour. So humans look for triggers to make decisions. They look for patterns, okay? So at some point in your lives on LinkedIn, you and some of your listeners would've seen a message come in and you've gone, Wow, I'm not sure whether that's automated or not, but that's pretty clever.

The first time I receive, Mark, I love what you're doing over at the podcast. Let's connect. And you go, oh, that's nice of them. And so I go, oh thanks very much. Yeah, let's connect. And then instantly I get a Oh by the way, do you wanna buy my software?

I'm like, oh, damn it, that was a automated thing that tricked me, right? And when you look back, you go, I kind of knew that was gonna happen, right? And what's that saying? Fool me once, fool on you. Fool me twice, fool on me. So our brains go pattern. There's a pattern, right?

So next time someone says, I love what you're doing over at and it's not specific. You go, damn you, it's spam. I'm not accepting that connection request. So within one or two interactions, we've developed a pattern. So spam on LinkedIn is anything that fits into that pattern that typically shows up as an unwanted and unrequired message.

So the important thing about this is, even if I really wanna talk to you, Michelle, and I present that in a pattern that you could think is spammy, my receivers are gonna consider it to be spam. Even though I might have written it one by one, but if I go, I really wanna be connected Michelle.

She's connected to a whole bunch of people I am. Oh, Michelle, I see you're connected to a whole bunch of people in my network, let's connect. And it's completely from the heart, but that hits your inbox and it's a pattern that says spam. I'm not accepting. So there's intent and there's patterns. So you've gotta figure that out.

So if you know what the patterns are, it's very, very simple. Do something else.

[00:08:06] Michelle J Raymond: That makes sense, right? Do not just be a sheep. You have to get creative and thoughtful, I think is what you're saying there. I love that you've distinguished spam versus spammy and there's the two definitions that we've got there, cause I think that's an important distinction that I hadn't really thought about.

And you're right to me it's just like, how many times a day do I have to deal with this? And when I flick it around the other way, because I'm talking to business owners that wanna grow their business, what's happened now is they've stopped doing any form of outreach for fear that they're gonna fall into these patterns that you've discussed and come across as spammy, which I think is equally disastrous.

Not doing something is almost worse than having a go and maybe getting it wrong sometimes. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[00:08:55] Mark McInnes: Look, I'm an outbound guy, right? So I'm definitely gonna say you should be having a crack. The thing that a lot of people are trying to avoid is looking like a spammy person. So if you can look at those patterns and figure out a way to step away from that, you should be able to reach out safely to start a conversation.

And we don't have time here, but there's some fundamental psychological triggers that will enable more people to say yes. So increase the chances people are gonna say yes and decrease the chances people are gonna say no.

And I'm referring to Dr. Cialdini’s Principles of Persuasion. He wrote a book called Influence in 1984 and a follow up called Pre-Suasion in 2017. What he says is there's six principles. It's actually seven now. If you use those in your outreach, you are more likely to trigger people to emotionally say yes than no.

And we see an example of this is done really badly when they say, Mark, I love what you're doing on the podcast. The boss podcast is easy for them to scrape on automation. I love what you're doing is a compliment. Compliment is a persuasion strategy. We're all humans. Everyone likes compliments. So you gravitate towards people who give you a compliment.

That's done badly. But we've seen the pattern so many times. We now know that's a fake compliment and it doesn't work.

The theory is right. So if instead you said, Mark, I love what you did with the Boss podcast, particularly the chat you had with Michelle where you talked about Company Pages versus Personal Pages, I'm gonna go hang on, that's specific, I'm gonna connect.

[00:10:15] Michelle J Raymond: Absolutely. And the other thing that I hate, which I'm just gonna put out there, is people that think that you can do one nice message. The old one two punch.

[00:10:26] Mark McInnes: Yep.

[00:10:26] Michelle J Raymond: It's like, oh, I'll do the right thing. But the second message, I'm gonna ignore all of the etiquette and rules cause I think some of it's etiquette on LinkedIn as opposed to rules. And that can change by person, by country, by age group. There's all kinds of different ways that it changes, but it feels desperate and it also feels that undercurrent of you're trying to get around a system by going, people said don't connect and pitch. So I won't connect and pitch, but I will on the second message that I send you.

But look, I didn't connect and pitch and so I think people are wised up to that, as you said, we see that pattern, we know that it's coming and we're just putting the breaks on it before you even get a chance.

So let's move on. Another thing that I actually think that people mistake on LinkedIn specifically, when they wanna grow their business, they think that posting content is gonna all of a sudden generate all of these inbound leads, and that's what selling is.

Now, I would strongly disagree with that. And you see it all the time. People are posting consistently but not getting any sales. And then they go, LinkedIn doesn't work, Michelle, it's LinkedIn's fault.

How can we help people that are, having a go trying to put content out there. Before we jump into outbound, which we'll talk about in a tick, what do you think could help them in this space? For me, it's about strategy and goals, but I wonder what you would have to say about this point.

[00:11:49] Mark McInnes: So I can't talk about current stats, but I remember back to about 2018, 2019, 95% of LinkedIn 's trainers were marketers. That's where this whole thing around posting content and, that's how you do social selling came from. Social selling It's an active task. It's not reactive.

So if you are posting content, you are promoting. So you are trying to build awareness. You are nurturing people. Social selling is when somebody likes that piece of activity and you pull down a list of the people that like that and you send them a message to start a conversation based off the fact that they like that content because you built your profile to attract your ICP, and your posting content that made them interact with you.

And then that trigger of them liking, commenting, or whatever is the reason why you wanna reach out. That's the natural next step. So social selling is an active task. I think people get confused about what the leads are. The leads aren't the amount of likes or the amount of shares or the amount of comments.

The leads are the people that are making the interactions. And then you've gotta make the conversation off the back of that and you can go so far as going posting content and then dragging people into that by going, Hey Michelle, I posted this thing about, I don't know, Plumbing. You could say, Hey Michelle, we spoke about pipes two years ago. Here's the latest pipes and you drag people onto it, right? And the whole idea is you're just trying to start a conversation, which will eventually lead to, Hey, I know we're talking about pipes, but do you wanna come over and have a look at mine?

And after you've had a bit of an interaction that will naturally come up, providing your profile is built with people that would like your content. The big challenge I see is people build a profile as fast as possible with a network as fast as possible, and they put anyone possibly in there. Then they post about their pipes. No one cares about the pipes, because they've got people that are non pipe lovers in their network, so no one interacts.

[00:13:34] Michelle J Raymond: It's LinkedIn's broken again. And this is the thing that I say to people, especially those that are in engagement pods. Call them what you want. They've got all kinds of different names these days. All you're doing is going at velocity in the wrong direction, with the wrong crowd, and you are not going to attract the right opportunities.

And I love that you and I share the same philosophy. Social selling for me is not about the content that I post, which is what people think it is, cause I'm so visible and in your face because you see it all the time and I'm top of mind. Top of mind is just one piece of the puzzle. What people don't see is how much I do in the background.

So it might be I get an inquiry as we did recently, get an inquiry. Do I know anyone that does outbound sales? Actually it's not me, but I know Mark, and so I make that connection and refer. And I do that like more than I care to let on. Is about how can I connect others? How can I help someone else? Refer business. Include people in posts that I've seen that have nothing to do with me, but I think they'll find interesting. And that's how I nurture relationships.

As a B2B sales expert of nearly 20 years, I also found it interesting when most LinkedIn trainers were marketers and there's this whole, you can't sell on LinkedIn and it's driving me crazy because there are businesses that are going broke and there are people that are in a lot of pain in a, you know, a year that might have a lot of financial turmoil around the world, that if you don't start selling, you are going to be in a world of financial pain.

And that has implications outside in life and I don't want that for people. So I'm out to change that conversation. And this is why we're gonna be talking about our favourite subject, which is sales in general, but for you it's outbound sales.

Can you talk through what's a typical outbound sales process In a B2B world, what does it look like? What should I be thinking about or considering if I'm haven't got it implemented in my sales team, or maybe I'm a business owner that hasn't got a process in place. I find a lot of times these business owners are subject matter experts in whatever their field was that now may have set up a consultancy service and they're not good at this piece of the business, but they're really amazing experts. So with those in mind, what kind of processes could they put in place?

[00:15:49] Mark McInnes: Okay, so we could talk about this for an hour, so I'll try and make it as succinct as possible. So the first thing you need to do is figure out who your real clients are.

Most people are trying to attract too large of an audience because the fear of scarcity. I don't have enough leads, so let's be as attractive to as many people as possible. So it's like that picture of a, a restaurant that says, we have pizza, Chinese, Indian and steak , and you go, well, if that's the only restaurant in town, that's great, but if I want a great steak, I'm not going to that place because it'll end up tasting like pizza.

Have a think about the way that you buy stuff. You don't Google, multi food outlets. You go, gimme the pizza place closest to me. I want pizza. And so if you are a lead generator or you're selling pipes or whatever it is, you wanna be very specific about who your target market is.

The 80 20 rule, you wanna appeal to the 20, not the 80 because 80% of your business will come from 20% of the market, and they're looking for people just like you. Everyone's looking for expertise because they want information that's free.

What they will pay for is the context around execution. How do I take this information and apply it and take action that's best gonna suit me in my scenario. So if you are saying our software does everything, that's not gonna be very compelling to a dentist. If you say, I've got some software that's helps dentists reduce their cancellations and make sure people don't do no-show, they're like, yeah, okay, that's a dentist specific software. It might not be but if that's the way you're selling it, then it is.

First thing is pick that target market. Really understand who it is that you're reaching out to, and then just have a credible story about how you've helped others just like them. Develop that, make it really simple and then do five pieces of outreach every day. And the cumulative effect, it's a bit like compounding interest. Maybe it's five every week, it depends where you're starting from but five a day is the perfect scenario, right?

Can I have two conversations on LinkedIn? Can I call up two old customers? Can I ask, one of my mates for a referral? Okay, that's five actions. Then just figure out where your clients are and then interact with them in that space. So if they're SMEs or they're turning over less than 50 mil, you can probably get 'em on the phone.

If your mate's the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank, good luck sending him an email or getting him on the mobile. You won't get him or her. So you have to be realistic about those ICPs in the best channel. So just using LinkedIn, because you or I say using LinkedIn, and they're not there, is not gonna work.

So you have define the right channels, and then just do those five pieces of outreach and don't give up after the first time. If you won a hundred thousand dollars in lotto would they call you once and not leave a message? No, they'd be going, this is important to Michelle. We've gotta make an effort. What tools have we got? We can send her a letter. We can send her an email, if we've got that details. We can reach out to the local newsagent and we can try and call her again. We'll probably leave a message and we might have been send her a text message.

Think about recruitment, if you've got a perfect candidate for somebody, is that worth a hundred thousand dollars to their business? So then why the blazers aren't you carrying out the same level of urgency in your outreach?

[00:18:34] Michelle J Raymond: I think people are scared of the, no. I think they're scared of coming across as the spammy that we were saying before.

And they create all these barriers and filters in their own minds before they even pick up the call, before they send the email. It's not even put out there for the person to pick up or not pick up. I had a classic example of this. I had a person call me and they were in a bit of trouble with their business. They'd used up all of their savings. They were a consultant. Written this amazing book, which really resonated with the head of a bank, for instance.

Now that head of reached out and said, love the book. I've given it to all of my team, the executive team, let's talk. She sent a proposal, it was all going great but then she sent an email with the proposal, no response.

I said, okay, so what did you do after that? Nothing. She didn't respond to the email. And I was like yep, she's running, let's say this bank. Do you think maybe it just got lost in that? Do you not think with all those signs that she was expressing that she was interested. How many, you know, signs were there and you just went, oh, sorry she didn't respond to my email. Not my problem. I'm walking away. There's no opportunity and walked away from it.

And I think that whole, I don't wanna be spammy, becomes this excuse for, I'm not following up and having good sales processes in place. Like you said it's not just if they're on LinkedIn, go to LinkedIn. There's so many other places that we can find these people and we've gotta meet them where they are. So I love those kind of things. Anything else you wanna add on to this point?

[00:20:07] Mark McInnes: People are busy and if you believe it's important, then it's worthwhile chasing. It's as simple as that. The minute you stop doing outreach is the minute that you stop believing that what you've got is worthwhile. And if you are honest about what it is that you've built or you're selling, you know that it's gonna make a significant difference to somebody's business outcomes.

And if you know them using you or your product or your service can make a considerable difference to their personal life or their business growth, then you've got an obligation to at least get to the point where you say, Michelle, I'm bothering you because this is what I've seen working with lots of other people just like you. Some people are making these mistake. Look, I just wanna give you the opportunity to say you've got it sorted and me to share with you what I know, having fixed 150 people in the same position as you.

And if your focus is on helping people and not selling, it's a really easy conversation and it's a really easy self-belief to get to. What happens is we start telling ourselves, ah, they're at lunch. I won't call them. It's Monday morning, I won't call 'em. I won't email them, they're probably busy. That's all just BS that we're making ourselves. And you have to go back to the point is what I'm selling, is what I'm doing actually of value? If it's yes, then you are holding the cards. It's your obligation.

[00:21:16] Michelle J Raymond: I always think of those light bulb moments when I do training with clients and you see those light bulb moments where they get it and it's going to be implemented and have a real impact. And like you said, it's selfish of me to not share that.

[00:21:29] Mark McInnes: Yeah.

[00:21:29] Michelle J Raymond: And if it will help people out there, why I've been so good at sales in my career, my context for selling is not used car salesman out to get someone. I'm a not a hunter and gatherer. My context is helping people in problem solving. The more I do of both, the more I sell. And it's really that simple for me, which means when I show up, I've got the context in mind of, how can I help Mark get more out of his business by giving him training?

And I'm confident that what I've got will make a difference. So why would I keep it to myself? So I love that we're like twinning on all of this because we are so aligned. It's just crazy.

And I think we've probably spoken about this, about why people avoid outbound sales. Are they scared of the No. Does it feel like rejection, like in your experience, you've trained lots of people in this place, what's the most common fear that pops up for people?

[00:22:20] Mark McInnes: Sales managers will tell you that the sales team are just lazy. That's what I hear when I go to talk to teams all the time. They're just not doing enough outbound functions. And what I'm saying is, well, what credible reason are you giving them to get out there into the marketplace? Most salespeople just fail to have the right, credible reason, right narrative, to go out.

And what happens is, as I said before, people focus on too wide a market. So they find it difficult to be compelling to everybody, but if you break it down into small sections and go, you know what? I've got a great software program that works for dentists, architects, accountants and legal firms, but for the next 90 days, I'm just gonna call dentists and I've got four dentists that have bought this product from me before.

And they all just happen to be in the Sydney Metro area and they've all got more than one partner. So I'm gonna find all the dentists that have got more than one partner and they've got a practice, I'm gonna ring them up and say Hey Bob, I've been working with a couple of other dentists in the Sydney Metro area, and what we know is, you've generally got a cancellation rate of about 5% of people and about another 3% do no shows. That's 8% of capacity. You can't fill that at the last minute.

What if I could show you a really cool way to get that cancellation rates down to half? Would you be interested? They're gonna go, yeah, of course. Like how quickly can you get over here?

[00:23:29] Michelle J Raymond: I think for me, even in my own business, when I first started out, and as you know, I was always talking about Company Pages, Company Pages, Company Pages and then I freaked out for a little bit cause it was early on in my business and no one else liked Company Pages.

So then I was like, oh, I could just do LinkedIn training and don't worry about company pages. No one likes them. So I'm just gonna go over here and I'll sell anything to do with LinkedIn because I know all of it. You know, pretty much I know how to use all of LinkedIn.

I was like, yeah, I'm gonna do this. Sounds like a great idea. And thankfully I've got my LinkedIn bestie, Michelle Griffin. She's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. You are staying in your lane. And for me, it was the scariest thing I've ever done. I'm not gonna lie, it was not easy. But by having that focus, all of a sudden I stood out in the crowd.

And what I love about your process, if in the dentist example, if you call those five dentists or make that contact with five dentists, you'll hear what their objections are and you'll get very quick at learning how to handle those because on the next call you will go, actually, I know what you're about to say and I've already prepared an argument for it.

And so this is why sticking to one thing, I think that is just a, brilliant process that I've used myself. I can see your head nodding here. What would you love to add to that? Cause you and I get so excited about this and I'm like, I better let you speak. You are the guest, right?

[00:24:47] Mark McInnes: I just wanna reinforce your point from the side and that is, the more of these conversations you have, the more you sound like the expert and everybody wants to get to the point of being a trusted advisor.

If you use that example of where we could sell our software into four different verticals, but we've just chosen one. By the end of the first week, if you've had five times five conversations, 25 dentist conversations, believe me, you are gonna know more about or as much as the way they run their, um, practice around the software application.

Not every other part, but you only need to be an expert at your piece. So when people go, how do they do this? Oh, we know some people do this, some people do that. Some people use this software. We've spoken to such and such, who's only got this many cancellations and he manages it this way, but that's gonna cost way too much.

So straight away they're like, oh, I didn't know that. And you're, well, this dentist is looking to move, maybe you could hire them. So straight away people are like, this person's an absolute expert in this field. And it becomes easier for them to recommend you, refer you.

It's easier for you to use introductions. Hey, I was talking to Mary, she suggested I should give you a call cause you've just opened this place and she thought you might have had a similar problem. Like it just becomes so much easier.

[00:25:53] Michelle J Raymond: And also it becomes, Maybe Mary's a no today, but in three months time, something might change within that business. And then all she can think about is, yes, I spoke to you because you are the dentist software person. And so this is, the other part of social selling, staying top of mind.

So you've gotta be out there, you've gotta be planting these seeds. Then we do the nurturing and then at some point these things come off or they don't and that's fine. It doesn't mean anything personal.

And I think that's a lesson that people who wanna get good at sales, none of it is personal. The wins aren't personal, the losses aren't personal. It is just a business transaction where you are able to facilitate something in exchange where you can solve someone's challenges and they give you money in return. And that's as simple as it is, right product, right price, right time.

And I think if we take away all that emotion, it's not about becoming transactional in my mind, it's just you focusing on the right things. How do you add value? How do you help? How do you, have those processes for follow up? And I think that's, something that's really important.

For a B2B business that's looking to grow in 2023, and I was gonna ask you a question about overcoming fear, but I think there's a better question.

Is it up to management to set the team up for success and have these reasonable KPIs or is it up to the person doing the outbound sales to really have that initiative and drive it themselves? I'll tell you why I'm asking the question. Today, I was on the end of what I would call an automated spam message on LinkedIn.

Someone wanted to sell me personal branding and I was like, should I send them the book? I already wrote it on this. They hadn't read my profile. It had Michelle J. They hadn't even changed my name to just say, Hey, Michelle.

So there's all the classic signs, and I got angry. I got triggered because again, the pattern as you said before And then I wanted to launch back. You should know better, you're selling personal branding. But then I stopped and I was like, there's a manager behind this person. There is a business owner behind this person that is encouraging and rewarding this behaviour.

And I just wonder, is it chicken and an egg or is it everyone together?

[00:28:01] Mark McInnes: It's the manager's fault or the business owner's fault, but it's understandable. So I'm giving him a free pass. As a sales manager and, I was a sales manager with a relatively small team, less than 20 sales people.

So I ran the entire sales and marketing business. So I had my head across every part of the sales function. Knowing what I know now, and things are a bit harder in the last 10 years since I've been out by myself, in outbound, but you need to have a dedicated leader in the outbound space because, things change so quick.

We're talking about LinkedIn, but some of those connection messages we spoke about earlier would've worked 12 months ago. Now they don't. If you are a sales manager, you can't adjust your playbook, every six months because you're also doing everything else.

There's a lot of things to get your hands across. So you look for the easiest and most likely right answer. And if you use ChatGPT as an example, if you put in there, LinkedIn connection message, you will get the absolute worst LinkedIn connection message on the planet because it's going to source the most popular, not the right answer.

So, as a sales manager with limited time, we go to Google, we go to HubSpot, outbound sales outreach, social selling. What infographic can I flick through and give to my team, so they've had a social selling training course and they can start using LinkedIn. And that's reasonable, but what happens then is that's where the spam starts.

And we've found that if you don't have, teams of five or more doing outbound, you have to have a dedicated leader. And if you've got teams of less than five, you have to be nurturing those individuals cause there's typically ones or twos, SDRs or outbound reps feeding BDMs or AEs.

You need to be really supporting them more than what you probably like. So that's a real challenge. So in a lot of cases that's where the out outsourced SDR functions really come into play, which of course I own one, so just disclaimer.

[00:29:46] Michelle J Raymond: No, that is totally fine. Do you have a ratio between outbound to inbound? Is it 50 50 or is there no one size fits all like most things in life?

Or is there, in your experience across many years that you've been selling in your own business and helping others, what kind of stats do you think that works best around that?

[00:30:05] Mark McInnes: Yeah, so like everything in sales, the answer is, it depends. How easy are they to get to the prospects? What's your close ratio? So meetings versus close. How long does it take for you to close and what's the average fulfillment time?

If you are selling to dentists, then I can probably book you five dentist meetings a day, selling software in a scenario that we just gave there. You can't go to those meetings if you are a three or four person software team. A quarter of an SDR could keep you busy forever.

But if you are trying to sell to the top end of town, then you're gonna get one meeting a week maybe. But if you're in, at the top end of town, you're probably selling something worth a couple hundred thousand dollars. Then the sales cycle's longer and your presentations are more complex and they need to be to win the business. There's more stakeholders, so the whole process probably moves slower.

It depends on where the leadership's focus is. If they're very good at the outbound, they'll have less SDRs, cause they'll be sharper. But typically the big software companies like Salesforce and those sorts of things, they have lots of SDRs because they just use a blanket approach and they know that they'll send lots of volume cause it's not legally spam, cause everyone needs software.

So what they're doing is fine, it's legal, but they're doing lots of outreach to try and get a few nibbles and then feed their AE team. So again, it depends is the answer.

But look, if people are thinking about that, I'd be happy to have a chat and just give 'em some oversight.

[00:31:22] Michelle J Raymond: Yeah, for sure. Because I just think, what I want people to realise is that there isn't a one size fits all. Nothing I tell people ever is a prescription. And I'm sure that you do the same because in B2B, we've gotta have a look at exactly all those things that you said. What are the times of products, the life cycle, the sales cycle that we're going through.

All these kind of factors come into play and how quickly you need that growth because there are some people that are gonna be really desperate. That five a day is not gonna be enough for you to get results. I've seen people do like 800, they just automate it all out and know that they'll only get two or three bites and that's fine cause they're gonna send 30,000 over time. Which is something that does my head in, but I won't go there because that is a conversation for a whole podcast in itself.

Mark, I love to give people an actionable tip and you are the guru of all things outbound sales. Say that a professional services, one man band, kind of solopreneur situation is listening to this. They're a subject matter expert. Sales is their Achilles heel. They need to incorporate outbound sales. What do you think, or where do you think they should start in this process?

[00:32:28] Mark McInnes: Okay, so can I give two?

[00:32:29] Michelle J Raymond: Yes you can. I will let you, this is fine. Go for it.

[00:32:34] Mark McInnes: So on the LinkedIn side, the first thing I do is create your perfect ICP in a cert function and then reverse it.

So figure out who are least likely to be your clients. So for example, my perfect clients' sales enablement and VP of sales. So the people that I'm not selling to, are IT professionals, legal, accounting, that sort of thing.

Click and maybe look for people outside of your geographical location. So if you only sell in Australia, search for people outside of those geographical locations and disconnect from them.

Get them out of your network. Nobody said you had to connect forever. Get rid of them because it'll make your feed more relevant and the people that were liking your content more likely to be a lead.

The second thing, which is on the mindset side, to help people with outreach, it won't be what they think.

Get electronic diary, open a tab on, OneNote or Google Keep, whatever is your favourite tool. Do one piece of outreach because I guarantee you, you won't get yelled at because we don't get yelled at. We do hundreds of outreach every week and people are pretty polite.

So do one piece of outreach and write down something positive out of it, and then every time you go to do something, just constantly record the positive outcomes that you get.

And over time, you'll end up with a massive list of positive outcomes, and that'll reduce your fear when it comes to doing outreach. And so don't focus on getting the meeting or getting the sale, focus on did I have a conversation? Did they pick up the phone? Did I have the right number? Did I have a good conversation with the person on reception? Did I find out that they've locked in a contract for three years? They're all positive outcomes from outreach.

Did they ask for an electronic brochure? That's positive, right? It's better than where you were before you saved the phone call. So save that stuff and just then use that positive reinforcement to go two the next day, three the next, four the next. And before you know it, you'll have so many positive affirmations. You won't be able to stop yourself.

[00:34:23] Michelle J Raymond: And that is exactly what I want for the listeners, Mark. I appreciate everything that you've shared. I've appreciated listening to you and your expertise in outbound sales is invaluable, and I'm gonna make sure that everybody has your contact details in the show notes so that they can reach out and connect with you if they are struggling with outbound sales.

Mark is the go-to person, especially if you're here in ANZ. He is the person that I put my name and recommend my clients to. So Mark, I appreciate everything that you've shared so generously here today.

[00:34:53] Mark McInnes: Michelle, great to be on the show. I love what you're doing. You do some great stuff. Please keep it up. I'm looking forward to watching even more in 2023 from you and the crew.

[00:35:02] Michelle J Raymond: Until next week, it's been fabulous.