Adapting to the future of sales and prospecting into the millennial customer base (Collin Cadmus, Founder @ CollinCadmus.com)

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1. 4:07

   Or at least it should. Love it. Round us out, Colin. What's number three? All right. Prospecting strategically is about finding arrangements that can benefit you as well as someone else. And this doesn't need to be something that's happening at the senior level of your company on a partnerships team. You can find folks who are selling into the same base that you're selling into and create “an arrangement with them where you're going to share warm introductions.” When I was selling at single platform to restaurant owners, I did this. I didn't tell anyone on my team I was doing it because it was my secret sauce. But I was cold calling restaurants, selling them a menu distribution service. Basically they put their menu online and it went out to Google and Yelp and all these sites, right? So everyone that I called thought I was an internet marketer.

   In Partnerships

2. 4:07

   Or at least it should. Love it. Round us out, Colin. What's number three? All right. Prospecting strategically is about finding arrangements that can benefit you as well as someone else. And this doesn't need to be something that's happening at the senior level of your company on a partnerships team. You can find folks who are selling into the same base that you're selling into and create “an arrangement with them where you're going to share warm introductions.” When I was selling at single platform to restaurant owners, I did this. I didn't tell anyone on my team I was doing it because it was my secret sauce. But I was cold calling restaurants, selling them a menu distribution service. Basically they put their menu online and it went out to Google and Yelp and all these sites, right? So everyone that I called thought I was an internet marketer.

   In Partner-sourced leads

3. 6:20

   So instead of coming in with a pitch or pattern break, just actually break that pattern and jump right to the question that you have. The first question we always ask was, are you the person who manages the phone system for X, Y, and Z team? If we were calling for the sales team, CS team, whatever. From there, that gave them enough context because they knew we want to talk about the phone system. “So I didn't need to go into an explanation of, hi, this is Colin from Aircall.” This is what we do. Blah, blah, blah, blah. It was like, hey, this is Colin Cadmus. Joe, do you manage the phone system for so-and-so sales team? Got it. Quick question for you. And then I'll give you more information whenever you need. Do you guys integrate right now into your CRM, right? And boom, you're either going to go down a good path, a bad path.

   In Question-led cold call openers

4. 6:27

   The first question we always ask was, are you the person who manages the phone system for X, Y, and Z team? If we were calling for the sales team, CS team, whatever. From there, that gave them enough context because they knew we want to talk about the phone system. So I didn't need to go into an explanation of, hi, this is Colin from Aircall. This is what we do. Blah, blah, blah, blah. It was like, hey, this is Colin Cadmus. “Joe, do you manage the phone system for so-and-so sales team?” Got it. Quick question for you. And then I'll give you more information whenever you need. Do you guys integrate right now into your CRM, right? And boom, you're either going to go down a good path, a bad path. And so it's just about finding those right questions, though, that lead to the right outcomes. Colin, I, in preparation for this interview, because this is the morning for me, I was

   In Question-led cold call openers

5. 6:34

   From there, that gave them enough context because they knew we want to talk about the phone system. So I didn't need to go into an explanation of, hi, this is Colin from Aircall. This is what we do. Blah, blah, blah, blah. It was like, hey, this is Colin Cadmus. Joe, do you manage the phone system for so-and-so sales team? Got it. Quick question for you. And then I'll give you more information whenever you need. “Do you guys integrate right now into your CRM, right?” And boom, you're either going to go down a good path, a bad path. And so it's just about finding those right questions, though, that lead to the right outcomes. Colin, I, in preparation for this interview, because this is the morning for me, I was like, I got to wake myself up. So I decided to make some cold calls first thing in the morning to get myself ready for this episode.

   In Cold-call discovery questions

6. 16:49

   making, let's say, a hundred calls or emails a day, and then maybe two of them are successful. We're all wasting our energy when we could kind of come together in certain ways. And so that's the way I look at partnerships. And so the example I used before, right, I found the organic pizza guy in New York. And what I had done was pretty simple. Like I started Googling or not Googling “LinkedIn, looking for folks who sold something to restaurants that were physical items.” I wanted physical items that, again, I didn't want to be mistaken as a another competitive internet marketing. At the time in 2012, if you asked a restaurant owner anything, if it had to do with the internet, it was internet marketing. It didn't matter what it was. So it would have all been perceived as the same. So I was looking for people who were selling

   In Partner recruitment

7. 22:06

   The last question is, what's one bad habit that you see a lot of salespeople exhibiting that you think they need to stop doing because it hurts them more than it helps. When you send someone a message and you're painting a picture of a problem that you're assuming they have and a solution that you have, and then you're dropping your email link, “you run a very big risk of being entirely offensive to them. You have no idea if they” recognize that problem. Okay. And people don't realize this when you're on the receiving end of these messages, they come off very different, very different. I'll give you an example. And then all the salespeople listening to this, we'll start to relate this to messages they've sent and how someone could have potentially perceived it. Because in our minds, when we're salespeople,

   In Problem and outcome framing

8. 24:26

   how they feel about it. And so when you come off by trying to, hey, here's a problem you have, it's not usually perceived the way that you hope it's going to be. And so lead with not trying to schedule those meetings, not trying to tell people they have problems, lead with questions that help you to diagnose if they have them. And if they don't realize it, enough of those “questions can somehow get them to realize it.” we jump off here? Absolutely. The Modern Prospecting Initiative, my course, which is about a large amount of what we talked about today. It's all about the future of sales, and essentially how to sell to the millennial buyer. It's all based off of Gardner's research of what's happening right now. There's tips in there that you can implement today. There's also

   In Problem and impact discovery