Being disarmingly blunt and disqualifying early (Alex Bruschi, Director of Acquisitions at Towerpoint)

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1. 5:18

   or the sorts of customers that we work very well with, you're losing the person on the other end of the phone. All they're thinking is, what's in it for me? One of the things that I've heard in your value prop, I want to dig into it, is you're so cut and dry. “This is what the hell we do and why we solve it.” At Carta, I hear it all the time where people will be like, we automate and centralize as one source of truth everything related to your equity. It's like, guys, stop. You need valuation after you raise round, it is free. That's it. Super simple.

   In Value proposition

2. 6:21

   No matter what industry you're in, you're basically always going to have competitors. Are you going to hide behind that and pretend that it doesn't exist? Or are you going to confront that elephant in the black room right away? Arman, I've even heard you say this. These people are going to have a negative thought in their head either way. “Why don't we narrate that for them as opposed to letting them come to their own conclusion?” So the best litmus test, if you're a new salesperson, you're at a new company, it's like, try to explain to your grandmother what your company does. And if she doesn't get it, you probably need to dumb things down a little bit because your customers are getting bombarded with vendors calling, emailing, texting, LinkedIn message

   In Belief-based messaging

3. 8:48

   And so you call me up, you're like, hey, you own this property in Texas, you have a cell tower on your land, I want to pay you 200 grand. I give you some sort of objections. What types of questions are you actually asking me from there to figure out if I'm just a tire kicker or if you legitimately have a selling opportunity here? “So first off is you want to take small steps, like almost a wide to narrow questioning.” So you want to make sure that when you are answering important questions, that you've captured their full attention first, that it's not a part of the conversation where they're drifting off here, they're drifting off there. So for me, what it may look like is, hey, when you purchased this property, was the tower sitting there already?

   In Discovery question design

4. 9:42

   been in my family for 50 years, we don't want to do anything with it, perfect, have a great day if anything changes, here's my number. Or if someone says, hey, I bought this property five years ago, this tower thing is cool, I like the income, but it's just kind of there. “Now I can start to ask a few more questions around what's your knowledge of it?” Have you ever had anybody review your lease? And so I think if you want to put a bow on that, it's clarifying questions. So clarify that they're actually asking what they're telling you. Because they may be asking you X because they want to know Y.

   In Cold-call discovery questions

5. 12:48

   In the body, Nick, I was passed in your direction about a tower at this address. Am I in the right place? Please confirm yes or no either way. Done. And now the goal here, right, what we have to remember as salespeople is that our number “one goal in outreach before anything else is to get a response.” If you don't get a response, you cannot do anything with that. So for someone out there thinking to themselves, hey, you showed all your cards, why would you do that? You're going to get a no. Well, that no, someone sent me, I'm going to get their cell phone number and the signature line of the email.

   In Campaign offer design

6. 13:15

   So for someone out there thinking to themselves, hey, you showed all your cards, why would you do that? You're going to get a no. Well, that no, someone sent me, I'm going to get their cell phone number and the signature line of the email. I can call them up and they may be interested. Who knows? “Secondly, I can quickly disqualify that person.” If they send me back a paragraph and tell me to go screw off, cool, I'll take you off the list or number three, right? You can always catch that person that has that intrigue and then you're in the position of power. Well, one thing to say is that, so I was looking at my inbox the other day and I saw the name

   In Disqualification signals

7. 14:24

   And so it works, guys. It really caught my eye. So anyways, Alex, you can keep going, man. Yeah. How do you not open that email? I guess is, I guess is the better question. And here's a cool one too, because I've recently changed my stance on this a bit is voicemails. Cold outreach. I leave a voicemail every single time. “If it's a later stage deal and you don't need to leave a voicemail, that's different.” But cold outreach. I'm leaving an email every time. Rarely is it longer than 10 seconds. Hey, it's Alex, tower point calling about the tower at this address. Give me a call back. And I'll keep going with this sprinkle in some emails here and there, right?

   In Voicemail leave strategy

8. 17:49

   And the reason I ask is so I can put that in our CRM so we know not to bug you anymore. And oftentimes they'll tell me somebody that I know, like my company replaces a lot when we're selling our ERP system. So I'm leveraging that, hey, don't want to bug you to turning it into something that I can actually use in the future to help them. Right. “And it all goes back to removing the friction, right?” We always have to remember that the person on the other end of the phone is trying to milk every second out of their day to do their job. They don't care about us. They don't care about our phone calls. And so if you need to get uncomfortable and let them know right away, get that quick.

   In Market-entry offer design