John Corcoran 2:19
Yeah, Potomac Business Capital, his business, if you have an agency you’re thinking about selling, go check them out. And of course, this episode is brought to you by Rise25, where we help b2b businesses to get their clients referrals and strategic partnerships. We’ve done few podcasts and content marketing, you can go to rise with a media calm or email us at support@rise25media to learn more about that? But let’s dive into this topic, Jeremy. So yes, there’s a lot of companies that struggle with this idea of creating an outsourced business development process. Or maybe they have some biz dev reps since in house that are struggling to get good quality leads in the door. And so we thought that this
Jeremy Weisz 3:00
edition, you know, sales development rep and sales development process as well,
John Corcoran 3:05
right. And so what we want to talk about here is kind of two pieces. One is how to set up the rep for success. And two, how to set up the process for success. And first, it boils down to, you know, a lot of people do is they lead with an ask, you’re asking others to give you their time, you’re asking for them to be inconvenience, to basically show up for what a lot of people realize is a sales pitch, you know, and so I think that’s why a lot of people don’t get high quality people high quality leads coming in the door. So what we say is better is to lead with a give, it will actually save you time. So talk about that, Jeremy the difference between leading with a give rather than an ask?
Jeremy Weisz 3:46
Yeah, I mean, it’s just again, increases your percentage. And leading with if you leave with an athlete, obviously, maybe like 100 people you contact, maybe there’s one that happens to be in the market, again, when we’re talking about cold emailing or cold contacting people, very small percentage, and we all get those messages. I mean, I get numbers of them a day with they’re just, it’s all about their services. And maybe if I happen to be in the market for that, but usually I’ll ask a friend for a referral or someone they trust anyways. So if you lead with a gift, like how do you get like when John and I think about reaching out? How do you reach out in a giving fashion so that it’s a value to that person? So not about us, but about them and how we can serve what what they’re working on? Right, right.
John Corcoran 4:33
And some people might just ask a really broad question like, How can I help, which sometimes isn’t all that helpful? It might seem at first valued like it would be helpful. But if you aren’t sure, or you haven’t talked with someone ever before or in a long time, it can come out of right field, it’s you know, you’re not sure how to handle that kind of conversation. So it doesn’t end up working out that well. But you know, we believe in combining content marketing with relationships Building and content marketing, you may not believe it, but it is a give. When you give someone exposure by creating some content, you are actually giving value to them, even if you don’t have a tremendous following or audience or exposure, all that kind of stuff. So there are different flavors of content marketing there. And we’ve done it all books, articles, video series, podcasts. There’s more and more digital tools available to us today. So let’s talk about some of the different pros and cons of those different tools.
Jeremy Weisz 5:30
Yeah, I mean, again, like you said, it’s featuring them and profiling them. And you’ve been featured in books you’re featured in Dorie Clark book, and when you were featured in that book, and it came out, guess what jumped to the top of our list to do even though we had so much other things to do, was promoting that book that you’re in? Yeah, I’m the article video series podcast. Obviously, we’re a big proponent of the podcast, we’ve been doing it for over a decade and helping others do it for over a decade. And it’s because it combines all of those pieces. And it’s continuous. It’s ongoing. And, John, I mean, you wrote for the White House, you wrote, or speechwriter for the governor of California, if you asked me to write an article, I would have gotten one out in the past 10 years, but I can talk to people and I can’t have a conversation. So I find it a 30 minute conversation. I can do two to three episodes a week. And obviously, you know, we have a team that actually write the posts and everything. But I can do that and get two to three blog posts up when we think of podcast, we also it gets repurposed as a blog post that goes on all the podcast channels, it can go a video on YouTube, it goes across, you know, 15 to 20 different channels. So I can I can have a conversation.
John Corcoran 6:53
So when you evaluate these different tools, a book and article, a video series of podcasts, you know, we’ve done all of them. But what we found is that a lot of them are just required too much complexity, like a book could take six months could take a year to come out. So after the course of a year, I mean, books are great. But of course of a year finally, then, you know, you get that exposure, give that exposure to the people who are featured in the book, the 10 or 20 people or whatever, it just takes too long. You know too much.
Jeremy Weisz 7:25
You’ve done articles, I mean, you wrote for Forbes and entrepreneur. And again, like I think there’s a situation of an and not an order. So like you can combine all of these sure into one but but if you’re looking at, you know, maybe the there’s a spectrum of complex to
John Corcoran 7:41
some right. And then the other one is like some kind of YouTube show or video series or something like that. We’re not fans of putting all your eggs in one basket. If one tech company controls your future and can shut down your channel, that’s not a good thing. So we do have YouTube channels, we put content on YouTube all the time. But I would never want that to be the one thing that you have, just because it’s putting all your eggs in one basket. So that’s content marketing, obviously, we’re big fans of using the podcast, because of the number of relationships you can build over the course of time. It’s just really efficient use of your time. And then the other thing that matters when it comes to this process of using content marketing, to build relationships is how you message it. And you have to have a really well written copy written message that gets a result. And Jerry, you have devoted 1000s of hours to studying copywriting talking to some of the best copywriting of the 21st century 20th and 21st century, and and breaking down and even done like six figure training programs that you’ve attended, where you studied this sort of thing. So talk a little about the importance of copywriting.
Jeremy Weisz 8:45
Yeah, I mean, when we’re doing again, with the outreach message, whether it’s on LinkedIn, whether it’s an email, whether it’s wherever it’s going text message, you know, those elements a good copy written message. One is about them, there’s a give there also, there has to be some kind of social proof there. So it’s a copywriting one on one, right? And people right? You know, it’s one of the formulas, there’s many formulas, but Ada, right attention, interest, desire action, what is that they have those components in there, there has to be some social proof in all those elements for it to be successful it come across as something that they’re going to respond to, right, the goal of a message is to get a response or get that whatever action you want them to take. Right? Yeah, so all of that has to be created to have that come true.
John Corcoran 9:40
Right? Or else they they’re not gonna take any any action and good. I was
Jeremy Weisz 9:45
gonna say, you know, a lot of things can go wrong when we when we zoom out a little bit right of this whole business development sales development process. There’s a lot of things that can go wrong. So I think we’re gonna touch on a few of these things, which is and it’s similar to copywriting and sending out whether it’s direct mail or email or text Bill, you have to have the right targeted list, you have to have the right message to that list, you have the right tools and software to deliver those messages, you have to have the right offer, you have to have the right way of conducting a conversation with that person. And the right way, if it’s a podcast specifically for a give right way of conducting the actual interview, and then a key is even if you do all those right, John, you know what I’m going to say next, you don’t have the right way of following up or don’t follow up. All is all could be lost.
John Corcoran 10:45
Yeah. So all those pieces are critical. Let’s start at the top. So first of all right target list. Talk about the importance of that, because you know, a lot of people spray and pray, are they targets wrong? People talk about that.
Jeremy Weisz 10:57
Yeah. And I forgot there’s some Gary Halbert quote, and I apologize bond, who’s his son, if I’m gonna butcher it, but you know, the one thing he wants out of everything is a starving crowd, right? So if you have the right list, or you’re in the right place, you want that right list, right? These people starving or, you know, for your product or service, or it’s a good compliment, right.
John Corcoran 11:27
So they’re thirsty, they’re, they’re ready for what you want. So
Jeremy Weisz 11:31
one of the things we will do for ourselves and for some of the kinds of we will zero in on their best referral partners, and it’s not just clients, clients, and referral partners, and get really granular with maybe the position that that person’s in and generate a hyper targeted list. Yeah. For that,
John Corcoran 11:55
right. So that’s, that’s a key piece is how to put that list together. And then the next one is we’ve kind of touched on already, but having the right message that you use the outreach message. And I like this about a velvet rope. Right. So I like to say that you use a velvet rope. So not anyone can get in, it’s it’s got some exclusivity to it, you know, the velvet rope is the idea of, you know, some kind of exclusivity to it. And you You also have very specific criteria about who’s a fit and who’s not. So it’s not just like anyone can come in, but you know, certain exclusive types of people that you’re looking for. So
Jeremy Weisz 12:35
it’s important, because you don’t want to, if I was reaching out to you, John and said, Hey, I want anyone who you know, has, right? But if they say something like listen, I’m looking to really connect in in have in this book, or article or video or podcast, someone who’s done a high level of writing at different places, you’re like, oh, yeah, that’s me. I’ve done a high level writing at the White House and the governor of California, etc.
John Corcoran 13:04
Yeah. So that’s another one. And then next, right is right tools and software. And one big mistake that people make? Well, for one, you know, people use LinkedIn as a lead channel, which is fine, they’ve cracked down a lot in outreach. And so it’s harder and harder to do outreach. That way you can use email as a channel for reaching out to people hard part about that is you don’t want to reach out from an email that comes from your primary domain. Because if you do that you can get blacklisted and you will lose all your traffic and your emails don’t get delivered to people.
Jeremy Weisz 13:37
And those sorts of like deliverability issues if you start landing, and now all the email experts will talk about this, you know, if you land in the spam or you land in the social or promotions, then even if you have the right message, and they never read it, you’re done. Right. So you have to have the right so you know, again, we have to have monitoring tools and other software to make sure the deliverable is on point.
John Corcoran 14:05
Right. And in addition season domains that you use for the outreach itself. And then right offer which relates to the velvet rope piece, but you know, you need to make an enticing for them to come be a participant in this content marketing that you are creating. And then a next one is right way of conducting the pre interview conversation. So a lot of our clients, they will do a short little conversation prior to that creation of that content, to just ensure that it’s a good fit all around, ensure that the person that they’re reaching out to is a good fit. And sometimes it’s the the CEO or founder owner. The business is doing that other times it is a team member, a member and the dog doing the call conducting that call, right? But it’s a shorter call. And the purpose is to determine if they’re fit to qualify them for the What the content that you are seeking to create?
Jeremy Weisz 15:02
Yeah. And sometimes in that conversation, you can, you know, we call it a pre interview conversations, because is it a fit, but then you can get into prepping them a little bit for the conversation. So it makes for a better experience on the actual interview. So you ask some pre interview questions which we, you know, coach people on so that when you get to the interview, you feel prompt, you feel like you’re gonna create some great content together,
John Corcoran 15:26
right. And then that leads to the next step, which is the right way of conducting the actual interview itself. And a lot of people like to think about just the actual interview itself. But we like to say that you know, the conversation before and after, and during all three are really Of equal importance, how you handle the pre conversation, how you ended the actual conversation, during the interview, how you handle afterwards, all of those are important.
Jeremy Weisz 15:54
And then the next thing is the follow up, I want to mention, while you’re reaching out to the people, so as follow up after the interview, but there’s also a follow up, just even get that, that scheduled, right, when you get to the pre interview conversation, you know, we may have sent three or four emails to the person, you know, because people are busy, so they may see it, and I’ll get to it later. Not that they don’t want to do it. And then once they respond, we may send two or three or four manual emails back and forth, just making sure answer any questions and getting them scheduled, right. So they could have gotten, there could be seven to nine emails exchanged just to get them onto the call. And now you have the pre interview call, and then the interview call, and now you have to follow up after the interview. Beyond,
John Corcoran 16:48
right, and and that’s a key point as well, first, I swear five years of doing a podcast, I made the mistake of not consistently following up and emailing my guests to let them know that their episode went live. And that was a total mistake. So now we have a process where we do that where our team is sending messages, and I’m CCD on those messages, and then I can follow up with that person. And we’re letting them know about it, we’re also putting on a social, we’re tagging them so that they can easily share it on social. And but then it’s also an opportunity to follow up on something that we might have discussed during the initial interview that I wanted to follow up on. So having a process in place for that follow up afterwards is critical as well. So I think that wraps it up any final thoughts, Jeremy on on how to create a successful outside business development and sales selling process?
Jeremy Weisz 17:43
I think, you know, the people that we talk to who have a setup this, you have a business development rep or a sales rep. They love this, because it makes those people’s job easier, it’s easier for them to reach out and giving fashion they get on a higher percentage of calls. Right? Because there’s also that well, doesn’t this take more time? Right, John? Right, will just take more time,
John Corcoran 18:10
right, which hold this up in terms of the time can I’ll hold this up against, you know, doing dozens of calls with unqualified people any day of the week. Because you can use this process will filter out that in many cases, people will disqualify themselves if they’re not a fit, right? If you say the parameters are, we want a CMO of a hospital chain with 17 locations or more. Those who have 16 or fewer would disqualify themselves. Or if you say we want a tech folks focused VC firm managing partner in Northern California. Those people who don’t fit those criteria would disqualify themselves and you won’t waste that time having those calls you only have those calls with those people are a good fit. And again, you’re doing it for the purpose of content marketing for giving them exposure. Everyone wants exposure or most many people do a lot of people do. And so you will get much higher caliber conversations that are happening. So that’s it. Jeremy where can people go to learn more about you and rice?
Jeremy Weisz 19:13
Yeah, you can go to rise25.com Learn more. We have lots of content and videos you can go to inspiredinsider.com to check out other episodes and you can go to Smart Business Revolution to check out other podcast episodes as well.
John Corcoran 19:27
Excellent. Alright, thanks everyone.
