How I Got Into Sales & How I Sell Outbound #scottsthoughts

Hey there, Scott here from the Success Story Podcast. Today you're going to hear me on the Revenue Collective Podcast. Revenue Collective is one of the largest organizations focused on sales and marketing executives, bringing in this community of sales and marketing executives, talking strategy, resources, insights, whatever, just basically providing some support for people that build out sales and marketing organizations and teams. I speak with Brandon who hosts the Revenue Collective Podcast and we speak about outbound sales strategy things that I've used in my own organization throughout my own career, but also things that as an individual contributor as somebody who's trying to find new leads or to prospect or to close deals, these are things that I've done myself that I eventually end up teaching over to the sales reps that work for me. So let's go into outbound sales. I hope you'll get something from this. You'll be able to include some stuff from this in your own sales playbook. The Revenue Collective Podcast, go check it out and here's about a half an hour clip of me on their show. All right, we are here with Scott Clary. I'm so excited to have you on, man. He is the SVP of sales and marketing at Excitem. He is an avid podcaster himself with his own pie. You got to plug that right up front, but really pumped to have you on, man. Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to get into this. Let's go into it. We got 15 minutes to go through everything. So I want to keep it short and sweet. I love that. I love that. Well, look, we, you know, it's all meat, no filler. As you just said, tell everyone what roll you're in, include the podcast because it's really great and tell us how you got there. Cool. So full time, you know, nine to five job is sales and marketing. So I had that up at Excitem. Excitem is an OEM, an affiliate of Grass Valley. We produced all SaaS products for Grass Valley's target customer base, which is enterprise or broadcast customers. So we do everything from audience engagement. If you're ever watching American Idol Texan devote, that would be our software. We do a lot of live streaming tech. We do a lot of virtual events as well for companies because we have that audience engagement plus video delivery. So that's where I'm working right now. I head up, you know, I'm almost like entrepreneur and residents. So I do where many hats between sales and marketing, jumping on demos, strategy, hiring and onboarding, take to market strategy, you know, a little bit of product marketing as well. So a lot of different things, which is kind of why I got the role and why I wasn't I was excited about the role. You mentioned the podcast as well. So success story podcast where I interview incredible individuals unpack their playbooks, their life, like basically how they got to where they are. So, you know, I'm going to plug that so you can go check it out. But that's, you know, my background was always in sales. Individual contributor worked in large telco in Canada, Bel Canada, similar to Verizon, AT&T in the States. Worked my way up through retail, all the through the SMB, mid and enterprise, left worked as enterprise sales, basically had another telco called Digicom. But that was when I had my first sales leadership opportunity. After that, that company exited to private venture capital. And then I left did consulting for about two and a half, three years. And then I went back to work for somebody, work for somebody, which is where I'm at right now, I grasp. Nice. Nice. And what, like, did you know out of, you know, I would say a lot of people maybe today are leaving school and understanding want to be in sales. But maybe back when you did it, that was more rare. Did you know you want to be in sales? I mean, telecom sales doesn't exactly ring as the most, you know, amazing thing you want to do day one at a school. But, you know, tell me about it. Yeah, for sure. So my back, all my entire family are police or law enforcement. I was supposed to go into law enforcement, but I wanted to take a step further. So actually I was doing pre-law in my undergrad, sort of setting myself up for law school. At the time, making money, selling cell phones internet in retail was the most money you could really make as a student. Maybe outside of like waitressing or waiting or whatnot or bartending. So I was making good money. We're not, we're not going to, no, I'm just kidding. No, so I was working and I was working as my first sales job really. And I was making good money. I was good at it. I'm like, you know, I'm a nerd at heart. So like it came pretty easy for me because I think that when you got a little bit more technical, like, sort of where I differentiate myself was like fixing problems that customers had that were more technical in nature, which ended up, you know, landing me sales and landing me deals. And I didn't really understand, I didn't connect the dots that's kind of acting as like a quasi sales engineer at a retail level at that point. But it worked really well and I was good at it. And I was personable, you know, I was, you know, outgoing and all those things that seem to sort of vibe with like that natural, natural sales person that has no idea actually why they're, you know, what they're doing and why it's working, but it seems to work. And then I kept going. I kept, so when I was in university, I moved into small market. So like it was still B2B, but it was small business. And I was doing well there. As I finished my undergrad, I'm like, I have two options. I can either go into law school, which is another five years of school. Or I can double down on what I'm doing now. And I basically said, I'll give myself five years. I'll give myself five years, see how I do in sales and sort of like working up the private corporate ladder. Because again, whole families and law enforcement, none of my family was really in private at that time. Like, like, you know, father, grandfather, they were not in private enterprise. So even that was a stretch for me. Forget entrepreneurship, software, all this stuff was like very different from what my family was used to. So I just sort of like kept doing it and kept every year moving into a different market, a bigger market, more responsibility, more revenue, higher targets, and you know, president's club making awesome bonuses. The commission was great. So I'm like, this is awesome. And I stuck with it till I was dealing with like, you know, Fortune 500, Fortune 100 clients. And that that's actually at the point where I wanted to be strategic and actually moving to sales leadership, which is why I left a larger company where I felt like there was a slower progression to move through the ranks between manager, director, I wanted to get into that leadership role and get that experience like mid 20s. So then I moved into a smaller telco where I had that opportunity. And yeah, after you taste the success of sales, and it's immediate to go like, let me go have a big impact at a VC back company go from small to big. I love that. By the way, my father's a police officer from New York City. My mom's a nurse like, like, I understand this journey, man, because, you know, I even talk to them today about stuff that I'm doing in my company bite. And it's a little bit, it's a far into them. It's strange. It's super strange. Yeah. And then you talk about entrepreneurship and selling software and I was doing some consulting and working for my own company for a bit. And it's all like, whoa, what the hell are you doing, Scott? But like, I love it. I love it. And I've never looked back really. Love it, man. Well, look, it takes hard work and luck to get to where you are. Give us a, you're talking a little bit about the hard work we can hear. I can hear it in the way you progress through your career. Any stories on luck or hard work that you'd want to highlight? Yeah. So the first time I moved into true sales leadership, like I've held team lead roles before when I was working in like big telco. But when I was working at the smaller telco, I was hired on as an account executive. Basically, two, three months into working there, the director who hired me left for Salesforce.com. So there was an open opportunity. It was not supposed to be going to me, but I took initiative. I put together a pitch deck. I put together a one three five year plan for the sales and marketing organization. I was just putting together where I wanted to take them, basically learning from any resource that I had because I hadn't had any actual experience doing at that point. I presented it to the owner of the company. It was an owner operated company as well as the director's sales when he was on his way out. And that was my first sales leadership role. So they moved me into that role because I took that initiative, put together this deck. I've never done anything as a ballsy in my career ever and it paid off. So it was like right time, right place. Like who would have thought I would have been hired right when a director was on his way out. That wasn't really it worked out well. And I took advantage of it and it paid off. So it was like the first it was a cool story. I like that story a lot. And also it's because it's the first time I realized that if I actually just want something, obviously there's a lot of layers to this, but you take enough steps. And this was actually very easy. Like I wanted this. I did a presentation. I put in the research and the effort and it was presented to me. That's very nice. It doesn't always happen so easily, but it was a taste of like if you want to just take it, just get it and find the way, find the steps you got to take to get to where you want to be. And if you action on those, even if it's short or long term, like it ends up working out. It's it's it's just baby steps, right? Yeah, it sounds so silly, but like the worst that can happen is they say no, but like, hey, you learned a lot and you showed an initiative. The next time that something interesting comes up, they'll come back and be like, man, that's Scott, like he understood how to put a business plan together, right? They know you're looking at like unless you're working for a dot org, everybody in your organization wants to make more money. They grab away to do it that aligns with what you want to do and pitch it. I love that man. That's great. Look, you talk to so many amazing leaders. So I'm hoping you drop some value here. Don't go nuts on me, but what is what's a tactic that that you think that people should do in their everyday life and sales and or marketing? Okay, you want to, you know, so for this, yes, I speak to a lot of amazing leaders who have a lot of amazing people that I've learned from over my career. And I'm going to talk about something that I do because I also manage and lead sales individuals today. So this is obviously, you know, some of my experience plus people that I've learned from probably some of the people that, you know, some of the people that you've probably spoken to and some of the people that that, you know, Sam has spoken to on sales hacker as well. Those are sort of the people that I grew up with and that I listened to and learned from. So sales and marketing alignment. So let's talk about how to align sales and marketing in terms of social selling and why you should be social selling and how to do it. We're going to do this briefly because a lot of nuances to this, but I want to outline what I do right now. So we're talking about an outbound campaign, you're identifying your ideal customer profile, your buyer persona, your going to be, you know, seven to 15 touch points in a B2B environment give or take across email, phone and LinkedIn. Now, when you do those touch points, a couple ways to optimize those outbound touch points. You're going to use, of course, you're going to personalize everything, but the two or the two, I guess strategies that I use for the actual content is pattern disruption and why you why now pattern disruption. If I'm not mistaken, comes from Aaron Ross. Why you why now comes from Jeff Hoffman pattern disruption just means you're sending out an email that's personalized but it's saying something along the lines of for a first email in a cadence. Is this the right individual to speak to about marketing technology? Is this the right person to speak to about you know, automating your sales process? Very succinct to the point hyper personalized because it's talking about something that that person who you're reaching out to that buyer persona should be responsible for, but you're not going into a pitch. You're not making it a pitch. You're just breaking the monotomy of the different types of emails are going to be getting from all the other sales reps because all the other sales reps are coming with these wordy lengthy pitches. You're doing a one-liner straight to the point. It's almost like they recognize your authority in being able to deliver such to the point question and it does really differentiate from everything else that they're getting into. Yes, all right, I'm not. Let me just respond. Exactly, and that's what you want. You want to get the conversation started because the most difficult thing to do in sales is to get a conversation started. So with that pattern disruption, what happens is they'll either say, no, I'm not the person. This is the person or they'll confirm that they are truly the person that's responsible for this particular thing you're trying to sell them and that's when you can kick off the conversation. So that's one thing that I use and I'm going to tie this back to social selling as well. That's one thing that I use for email and LinkedIn outreach for an initial touch point. And then I'll also use a why you why now. So why you why now is something that was done by Jeff Hoffman. He also has his own sales podcast. What that is, it's basically an email that discusses why I'm reaching out to you and why is there a meaningful event in your company's life cycle that justifies me reaching out to you about the product that I'm trying to sell. So I would follow up with the pattern disruption email with a why you why now. This is a very useful sales strategy because again, it's all about personalization. It's tying that individual's job role and something that's happening in that company's life cycle to what you're selling. So they know that it's not automated. They know that it's not bullshit. They know that you've done your research. So when you send that why you why now email, it's a very, and then you can of course include all the other components that you want to have like a strong CTA or call to action in that email as well. It sort of checks the boxes as to what a decision maker would like to respond to that answers all their questions without them even having to reach out to your jump on a call. So it makes sense. So anyway, so that's sort of like the first two touch points in a sequence or a campaign across email or LinkedIn. Of course, then you want to call them. I'm not going to get too much into this because each different component can have a whole bunch of strategies and tactics behind it. But when you're doing this type of outreach, then you want to bring it back to your social profile, your presence, your brand and what you're doing with your brand, especially when you're selling on LinkedIn, you are building out your LinkedIn profile like a web page. What I mean by that is you have a header that shows a picture of what you do or what your company does. You have your value proper, unique selling proposition telling people exactly what you do in that little box that gives you a few characters to speak about what you know, what your job title is to put a little bit more in so people know what you're doing. And then as you go down your profile, you can actually put some copy, put some text in that will have a call to action asking people to reach out to you for this solution or that solution or this product or that product. And then you're also aligning that messaging that you are basically building your LinkedIn profile around with the content that you're putting out. So the content you're putting out is answering questions that that remember that ICP and the buyer persona that we first identify that we're doing our cold outbound to would be asking. So now you have your outbound aligning with your social media profile on LinkedIn. So you have this outbound machine that is leading people to look at your LinkedIn that your LinkedIn is now identified as using authority in this particular topic area or this particular industry. And it's the LinkedIn profile is now optimized in a way that it will actually convert and an act is almost like an inbound tool as well. So that's the demand to tactic. You just put like a 10 of them together and do it. I went at like a million miles a minute. So I really hope this is like I try this is I'm actually doing a webinar on this in a couple of weeks with another with another peer. And it's like a two hour webinar. And I just tried to say everything I'm talking about because it's also mine. This might go up this might go up after the webinar. So if we hear we'll we'll link to the webinar when we get this up. If it's something you can share because that of course yeah people that are interested. Well look when I walk you through that does that make sense? Is there points that need clarification because I can go into detail but I just want to make sure from a you know from a high level it does. Let's leave a little meat on the bone for the webinar. All right sounds good. Sounds good. We're in the we're in the fat and the the fast zone of the podcast the quick fire questions if you will. So I want to keep position your hiring for. Mm-hmm. I'm always hiring for sales and the reason why I say that is because I will always hire anybody for a sales position. If they show that they're tenacious they have grit and they're curious and they just it doesn't matter because I found incredible sales people that don't come from sales roles as long as they have the right personality traits excuse me sales can be taught. I'm a firm believer that sales can be taught if you have the right personality. Love it. And then who do you follow for who inspires you from a content side? Yeah um so for marketing it's Seth Goden I think he's an incredible marketer um and for sales a lot of people will this will resonate with a lot of people Mark Robert from HubSpot like he's uh you know he's kind of the OG in terms of demand gen inbound and I just to listen to him speak and study how he thinks and how he sort of built this inbound as opposed to outbound um rev gen machine it's very it's very impressive. Yeah love that he's been mentioned a couple times so Seth Goden who's who's the goat in so many ways uh all right so who else who are the kind of like colleagues or up and comers if you will who are doing some cool stuff that we should know about? Yeah so I'm again big fan of social selling and I think that if you want to learn how to do social properly don't look at businesses look at individuals that are killing it and what I mean by that is there's somebody that's great on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and study from them study their examples anyways the people that I follow um so at M Kobach or Matthew Kobach on Twitter he does a great job of a community building on Twitter um Justin Welsh on LinkedIn is killing it on LinkedIn he has a great following any any it's just they know how to use the platform properly so if you want to learn how to use Twitter well for business go to go to this person you want to use LinkedIn look and study for example Justin and then on Instagram the only person that I've ever seen really do Instagram well for B2B is at the Chris Doe or Chris Doe he's awesome at Instagram for B2B cool well I just had Justin on the the pod and and really learned a lot from him and and in what he's what he's up to all right well look all this stuff is cool and all but um it doesn't feed us I want to know where I should eat all right um so the best uh the best place that I've ever eaten at um right now I'm in Toronto Canada um but I was basically born and raised in Ottawa um and Ottawa has an incredible Middle Eastern Lebanese population they have the best Chihuormas in the world like literally the world and I will debate anybody in the world on that um I've never seen a better I've been overseas I've been everywhere in the States they don't have better Middle Eastern food or Chihuorma so if you ever go to Ottawa Canada um go to Chihuorma Palace they have three franchise locations um all family operated and it's the best in uh food delivery like no I love it I love it man this is great we we left a little bit on the phone for part two or for your uh webinar upcoming uh thank you so much for joining so great to have you my pleasure man thanks a lot for having me