110: Stephen Chase (Top SDR/Sales Weasel) on Mentors and Detachment from Outcomes

0:00 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of Proposify, Alyce, and Vidyard. You can learn more about them and all of our sponsors at top1.fm/sponsors.

0:20 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve.

0:29 Scott Ingram: To learn more, visit us at top1. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Stephen Chase. Stephen is hard to describe, so we'll just call him the Sales Weasel, and I'm sure we'll get into why that is. Welcome to the show, Stephen.

0:47 Stephen Chase: Hey, how's it going, Scott?

0:48 Scott Ingram: Good, good, good. I am super pumped for this. We had a little bit of pregame conversation, and based on that, this is going to be fun. And also just want to send another shout out to Justin Michael, who again connected me with another rockstar SDR. So Justin, appreciate That, and Stephen, why don't we jump in like we always do with some immediate value and talk about the 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success as an SDR?

1:13 Stephen Chase: So I think the number one, and I, you've already talked to one of them, number one thing that has contributed to my success over the last few years of being an SDR are my mentors. I'm sure Amy Quick apparently talks about me all over the internet when it comes to people that she appreciated connecting with. And I appreciate her a million times more than she appreciates me because she's been An awesome mentor, as well as people like Patrick Downs, aka my big bro in sales. Dale Dupree, my other big bro in sales. Justin Michael, he's been a big influencer on my progress over the last year, given 2020 has been what it has been for everybody in sales. And then there's a bunch more I could name, but we'd be sitting here for the entirety of the interview for sure. And then after my mentors, detachment from the outcomes, because everybody knows being a sales development rep is what I would say is probably one of the harder jobs in sales. Being a professional opener isn't easy. And really over the course of the last year or so, being able to detach from the outcomes of the calls and not stress about getting the meeting or not and really focusing on how I can help the people that I'm talking to not only increased my, actually my call-to-book ratio, but it also helped me not burn out as much and worry about my quota. Always worry about your quota. But ultimately, if the person that you're speaking with doesn't need or want your help, don't fixate on that. And hopefully the next person you call does. And then number 3 is don't be afraid to test everything. So you don't know what's going to work unless you try it. And that's just point blank. If you think something is going to be different and differentiate you in front of your ICP versus what other people are doing, try it. If it doesn't work, try something else. And that's really, like I said, it's Sales Development 101. Test everything.

2:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great stuff all the way around. So, I guess when it comes to all of the other mentors who didn't get named, we'll have to tag them in our announcement post. So, shout out to all of them who are here listening to us right now, who came into this, because I know, I know exactly how that goes. It is so difficult to name all of the influences and all of the people that are contributing. So, we'll give it a try from that perspective. You know, it's interesting also on the detachment from outcomes piece, somebody gave me some great feedback on the interview I did with Kyle Rasmussen. Who was Justin's other referral, and they called it sneaky good. It was just this idea, they're like, man, there's such good stuff in there that you really gotta kind of listen for it. And I think one of those big things was exactly that. He's also really good at detaching from the outcomes. And it's all just, you know, just do the work. And especially this time of year, right? Everybody's doing goal setting, but I think too often we set goals that are outcome-based. Exactly. You can't control that. All you can control is the input. So I set goals that are habit-based. Based. Like, what are the things that I'm going to consistently do and that I can actually control and hold myself accountable to? Can I hold myself accountable to I'm going to sell over $3 million this year? Nope, I don't control that. I just control the inputs.

4:13 Stephen Chase: Exactly. And how intentional the inputs are on top of that is like… so I read a post from, I think, actually Gabrielle, who's in one of my communities that I hang out in, shared a post from Kevin Dorsey about having… I think it was Kevin Dorsey. Hopefully she'll correct me if I'm wrong, if she listens to this podcast. But he shared a post that was saying that he was talking to a rep that laid out their call list on paper and wrote notes how they were going to help these people individually, not necessarily from a generic ICP base, but like researching like, hey, this person needs this kind of help based off of our product positioning, yada yada. So going down the list and being ultra intentional of how they're going to help each person they're about to call very specifically. And I think that's, what sets apart the top performing reps from the average is being overly intentional about your, your inputs for the day.

5:09 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. That's awesome. Katie and I are due to get together. He's like my neighbor now, so it's pretty wild. It's wild. So Scott, Alyce, Katie, and I all live in the same zip code in Southwest Austin.

5:19 Stephen Chase: That's awesome.

5:20 Scott Ingram: So we're all about 2 miles within each other. So yeah, there's going to be some get-togethers and some additional walk and talks or cigars and whiskey if we're doing it Katie style.

5:28 Stephen Chase: Yeah, for sure.

5:29 Scott Ingram: Or tequila if we're going the Scott Liss fashion, I'm not sure. So, well, let's try and contextualize this a little bit. Like, talk about your role and your background because your role has changed very recently.

5:40 Stephen Chase: Yeah. So I actually started my first job as an SDR in 2018, March of 2018, actually. And it was for an outsourced SDR agency called Operatix. And it was really interesting because I come from a background that has no college degree, no formal or corporate sales experience, software sales experience, anything like that. So I was the guy that went straight outta high school, worked in retail, food service, odd jobs, stuff like that, and lucked into, and I'll say lucked into as like that's emphasis on lucked into, a job as an SDR with this company, mainly because one of my friends who was actually in a band with a couple years prior to that worked for the company and was like, hey man, my job's hiring. I know you could use a steady income and I think you'd be good at it. Apply. Interviewed 2 times and actually got the job. And I'm one of those people that hates looking like I can't do something, or for lack of a better word, stupid. I don't like to look stupid, so I will research and learn everything about what I'm going to be doing to the ends of the earth. So I have like an automatic, I don't want to say chip on my shoulder, but I guess an automatic intrinsic motivator in that fact to be good at what I'm about to do, especially if I've never done it before. So over the course of the couple years I worked at Operatix up until about, let's see, I transitioned October 1st to Findom. And it was an interesting experience because primarily a lot of the companies that I worked with at Operatix were cybersecurity based. And Findom was actually my last client at Operatix and they were actually in talent acquisition. So it was definitely something fresh, something that I'd never been, I've never dealt with before in terms of software, ICP, things like that. So. Apparently I did a good enough job over the course of the quarter that I had them from late June to September. They wanted to actually bring me on internally, which is a cool thing that happens at companies like Operatix. If you do a good job, usually clients will reach out to you and be like, hey, come work for us. So that was really cool. And actually a pretty solid validation of the work that I've put in over the last couple of years. And now that I'm at Findem internally, it's actually a lot of fun. Alison is my director of sales. She's awesome. And then the rest of the sales team, Lauren, Akhil, And myself were, I mean, I'll pat myself on the back. I'm awesome too, but they're more awesome than I am. And it's just been a lot of fun because working for a Series A startup that's as small as we are, I've never worked in a startup style environment before. I've worked with startups on the outside of the company, but I've never actually been internally. And it's been a lot of fun. It's really fast-paced. Got to wear a lot of hats and constantly be improving on the process from a sales perspective so we can keep gaining traction. But so far, the last quarter that I worked with them is actually really, really fruitful from learning and actual production perspective. And I mean, Couldn't be happier and looking forward to more quarters and years and yada yada yada.

8:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah, dude. This this is going to be so fun. I mean, one of the places I I know we'll talk about is you know whether or not outsourcing the SDR function works from your perspective, having been on on the inside of it. But first, we probably need to talk about what's the Sales Weasel thing. Wait, before I let Stephen explain the Sales Weasel thing, let me explain Proposify. Proposify is our newest sponsor, and they've got a solution to help you streamline your entire. Proposal process, not only making it easier to pull together a better looking and more effective proposal, but to see what happens with your proposal after you send it. There's nothing like knowing that your prospects are looking at your proposal and which pages they're spending the most time on. You can even set it up so they can sign your agreement right inside of Proposify. Check it out, top1.fm/proposify, and now Back to the Sales Weasel.

9:31 Stephen Chase: The Sales Weasel. Oh man. So the funny thing is, is like the Operatix, I tried really hard for a long time to establish a personal brand based off of like things that interest me and how I can incorporate those into sales and yada, yada, yada. And it's like, you know, when you try to force something, it just, it makes it harder to actually come up with something than just kind of letting it happen.

9:55 Scott Ingram: Yep.

9:56 Stephen Chase: And so one day there was a client that I worked with and then I helped build out their, basically their entire top of funnel process with their director of demand gen. She's awesome. I'll shout her out. Aya, if you're listening, thanks for all your help in getting me to where I am. But I actually moved off of that team. So I actually became our sales operations lead, which at Operatix is a little bit different than your standard sales operation, but I won't get too deep into that because we'll all go in the weeds. But I got moved off of that team to essentially assist other teams with their tool process and things like that. And one day the manager of the team that I was working with shot me a message on Skype and was like, hey man, check out this email that one of my reps just got. And he sent it to me and it said, hey, I love shaming sales weasels on LinkedIn. Pay attention for that there later, which contextually or like syntactically Doesn't really make any sense, but essentially what he was saying was, hey, I'm gonna shame you on LinkedIn.

10:59 Scott Ingram: Wait for it.

11:00 Stephen Chase: Right? Wait for it. Pay attention for that later. Yada, yada. And the funny thing was, is this was a C-level executive at a company and it really frustrated me in the moment. And I was like, well, what's this dude's name? So I'm not gonna name him because that would just be terrible. But I went on and looked at his LinkedIn profile. Sure enough, repeat offender of doing exactly what he said in the email. And I was like, all right, well, that's my new brand. I'm going to run with it. I'm going to go under the moniker of the Sales Weasel ironically, and make it so this isn't an insult anymore. And that's pretty much where it came from, just because I'm a sarcastic person and I don't take myself very seriously at all. And I will refer to myself as a sales weasel 24/7 if I have to, if it gets the connotation of what it means in terms of an insult.

11:53 Scott Ingram: Well, I want to hear how you turned it around more, because I'll never forget, I was standing in a studio. We were recording Amy Quick's presentation for the Sales Success Summit. So she was able to come down and be in the same place that I was recording my sessions, whereas we sent folks out to do the other recordings. And so that's the first time I heard your name and the Sales Weasel. And I was like, what in the heck is this?

12:14 Stephen Chase: Why does he go by that? That seems like a terrible idea. Yeah, that was a lot of people told me that, which is funny. A lot of people told me that calling myself the Sales Weasel was probably a really bad idea. But to say that's like caveat, I don't refer to myself as the Sales Weasel in emails and phone calls, or I haven't been, but I'm actually going to start doing that as of this year just to see what happens. Like I said, test everything, you know what I mean? But I really would just want to see how people react to it. Like I'm not going to include my name in my call openers and things like that. I'm just going to say, hey, this is the Sales Weasel and see how they react. With my opener. And also I'm going to take my name out of emails and only put The Sales Weasel in my signature just to see what happens. But I think it's going to be an interesting year to see how the brand or my personal brand expands from, from that perspective, just to see how people react to it.

13:05 Scott Ingram: Well, that will be fascinating. I'm eager to hear about the result of the experiment. So, but you found, you did turn it into a positive, like you found all sorts of positive attributes and were like, yeah, you know what? Like I am a weasel, right?

13:17 Stephen Chase: Yeah. And the funny thing is, is Justin Michael actually gave me this like 2-bullet-point definition as to why being a weasel is awesome, or for the lack of a better phrase, and his verbiage, badass. The first thing was, it was this long paragraph about how weasels are like seasoned killers. They're methodical assassins and blah, blah, blah. And then the second one was a link to a YouTube video and it says, oh, and they do a war dance.

13:45 Scott Ingram: All right.

13:46 Stephen Chase: And that was it. And I was like, all right, so that's why my headline on LinkedIn is Sales Weasel Methodical Assassin.

13:51 Scott Ingram: There you go. So we will find that YouTube video. We will include a war dance in the show notes. So if you go to top1.fm/this episode number, because I don't know what it's going to be, or top1.fm/Stephen-Chase, that will get you there. That's Stephen with an H. So Stephen, I want to get into this sooner rather than later, because I'm sure there will be a lot of later in the places that we will go in this conversation. I'm really interested in your perspective around does outsourcing the SDR function work?

14:23 Stephen Chase: Personally, yes, I think it works. I think the biggest thing that a lot of people don't or don't want to understand is, and this is from a person who's going to be using the service perspective, I don't think they understand that the SDR agency doesn't know you, your product, and your positioning the way that your company does. And the way to make the person on the outsourced agency side successful is inclusivity and being hands-on with them from like a partnership perspective. So if they're just going to be out on an island and you're just expecting them to get results without any real training or guidance or help in general of any kind, then it's obviously probably not going to be a fruitful relationship. But if one of the clients that I worked with that I mentioned earlier, they were very hands-on. The director of demand gen was very hands-on. She gave me and the team a lot of guidance on how to use our tools, which a lot of people really struggle with, is being proficient in tooling. Because as the sales tooling space expands, which it's obviously doing at a pretty insane rate, the tools, the tech stack gets more complicated. And she, that was one of the things that really set us apart was that we knew our tools inside and out. We knew how to use them. And then training, we went through Topo training on messaging building and things like that. So there was just a lot of help from the client side that we really, in my experience, I actually didn't get from some clients, which we destroyed their internal team when it came to not only our own personal work ethic, but the amount of help that we were able to get in the ramping period as well.

16:06 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. So what should people look for, right, if they're considering outsourcing the function, what are the things that they should look for to see whether or not it's going to be the right fit or they're likely to see success? Because I will tell you, I have almost never seen people outsource that function and have success with it.

16:24 Stephen Chase: See, that's, that's honestly what I don't know is what people should look for. Because at the end of the day, maybe the… and this is just me speculating at this point, because I wasn't really involved in the sales process of Operatix, but maybe client side interviewing your reps in terms of, because that's actually what Findom did when they were about to start a program at Operatix. They actually called me and the other person that were going to be running their program to make sure essentially we knew what we were doing. So, I mean, that's one way to go about it. And then you could also just grill the company on what their training protocols are and how long reps are in training. Do your reps have experience with popular sales tools? Platforms and things like that. And like I said, that's me speculating, but that's essentially what I would look for because it's one of those things like if you're going to be having someone working or representing your company and your brand from the client side, really you should help them. But from you as a customer of this company, you need to make sure that the people providing the service are of competent nature and understand the basics of tech stack and outbound process as a whole.

17:36 Scott Ingram: Yep. Yep. Well, I'm really curious about just your experience through all of that. Were you typically working on one client at a time? Like how many different companies and roles did you sort of hold over your time there at Operatix? Whew.

17:52 Stephen Chase: So yeah, one client at a time and I was primarily on fresh clients, so I would run clients for Like I would kick off the programs. So it was like I was the, I don't know what the phrase is, but like if you're on an Olympic track team, right? And you're doing a relay. I was essentially the guy that kicked off the race and tried to get as far ahead as humanly possible. And then ultimately I think I would usually only be on a client for, I think my longest run was 9 months and that was my first client. And usually I was on for like maybe a quarter, quarter and a half. But in the second quarter, I was training another person to take over the program from my account management and business intelligence, et cetera, perspective, while also leveraging the client as well to help train the new reps. So I was kind of like, I was the opposite of an anchor, you know what I mean? But I think total clients, let's see, I don't want to name everybody. I'm just thinking about it. I think 6 or 7 total clients. I think is what I had. And like I said, most of them were in cybersecurity-related product categories and stuff like that. So Findom was really the only one that was outside of that familiar ICP.

19:03 Scott Ingram: Interesting. Now talk a little bit, you were telling me about this before we, before we got started and it was pretty fascinating just around the rapid ramp concept compared to like a more traditional SDR.

19:13 Stephen Chase: Yeah. So as I'm sure everybody in sales knows, typical SDR times are like ramp times are usually 60 to 90 days. But working in an outsourced agency, it's a unique experience because your client is obviously paying for your service and they have expectations of results produced. So you had to get really good at ramping really fast. And by really fast, I mean max 30 days, but you're probably looking at like 2 weeks, at least in my personal experience, because ultimately they're paying for the month that you're supposed to be ramping. While the expectations have been set, they're also looking at it like, hey, we're paying for this, we need results. Quick, you know what I mean? So having to be able to grasp positioning, ICP information in terms of challenges, how your product helps, yada, yada, yada, everything that a normal SDR would usually get in 60 to 90 days, you have to be able to pick up in 14 to 30. And you could tell who was struggling with that and you could tell who had been there long enough to be able to do it effectively. And it really comes down to how tenacious are you when it comes to research outside of business hours, which unfortunately is the downside, or really if you're going to do all of your research through the workday when you're trying to ramp, is your Google Fu belt a high enough tier to where you can find the information very quickly?

20:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, let's go a little bit deeper on that. Like, what is the secret? Like, if you were to put out the playbook, for a rapid ramp for anybody, right? Anybody that's coming into an SDR prospecting type of role, what's that process? How do you figure it out quickly?

20:56 Stephen Chase: Well, a lot of the things that I did was get really good at asking Google questions. And I know that sounds really easy, but it's really not. And focus on your ICPs, focus on the initial product. Okay. So if I'm going to make a bullet list, it's going to be number one, product research. Where does that fit? Watch YouTube videos. If your client has done any like pitch competitions or if they have demos or anything like that online, watch those. See if you can get ahold of any of your account executives that you're supporting. If you can get ahold of any of their demos, like their recorded Zooms and stuff like that. Basically anything internally you need to be able to consume quickly and take notes in the process. So I actually triple reinforce my information. Which is weird. So like I'll watch a video while, and you're obviously listening to it, so that's 2 forms of learning. But while I'm watching the video and listening, I'm taking shorthand notes at the same time. And then I will type those notes into a Word document after the video or whatever I'm listening to is over. So it's triple reinforcing the, or actually that's 1, 2, 3, 4, that's quadruple reinforcing the information. So I remember it faster than I would if I had to go back and just watch the same video over and over and over again. Now, that might be a personal thing. I'm pretty sure not everybody learns that way, but it works for me. And I highly recommend doing that if you're one of the people that is in a rapid ramp process, because ultimately the more information you consume and reinforce in the shortest amount of time, and then when you get on calls with your clients, be able to develop questions based off of what you're watching, listening to, taking notes on to affirm your understanding and be able to have a conversation about it. That's kind of, that was like a really long tangent of just how I go about doing that, but that's essentially what it was.

22:51 Scott Ingram: I like long tangents, especially when I ask for them.

22:53 Stephen Chase: Right. Yeah. It sounds really confusing, but it's just finding all the information that relates to your client and your ICP and consuming it in a variety of ways. And taking as many notes as possible to develop questions to ask your client about. It's just like a tiered stream of information because you found it. This is your understanding. Ask a question based on your under… have a conversation based on your understanding of what you found and ultimately have your client affirm or reroute your understanding of the information that you found.

23:28 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. And it's interesting. I think that's a perfect tie-in because I wanted to also ask you about just your thoughts on Mastery.

23:35 Stephen Chase: I'm just gonna give a full disclosure, Scott. I was really nervous to do this podcast because I know you only interview the top 1% of salespeople. And I don't consider myself, or nor will I possibly ever consider myself or affirm to myself that I am in the top 1% of salespeople. While I think mastery exists, I think people who embrace the fact that they're masters limit their learning capabilities after that moment, because then it becomes an ego-based thing and it's like, I'm the best. And then it kind of, at least this is my thought process, mastery Mastery exists, but embracing the ego side of mastery limits your ability to progress past that.

24:12 Scott Ingram: I love it. I love it. So what I want to get into though is what is the path? What is the approach? So what I heard there is it kind of starts with the mindset of you better not feel like you're done.

24:23 Stephen Chase: Yeah. And that's really what it is. Like, I mean, that might also trigger some form of imposter syndrome, which it does, at least for me on sometimes. Patrick Downs told me I had object permanence issues when it came to my job performance, which is really funny. And I'll explain what that means in a minute. The path is honestly, it's like I said at the beginning, when I first started, I have a weird, like I said, I don't want to say chip on my shoulder, but it's definitely a strong intrinsic motivator to be the best, but not embrace the feeling of being the best because that intrinsic motivator is why I feel like I'm so good at what I do. Because if you embrace the fact that you're the best, like I said, you limit your mentality of like that intrinsic motivator goes away. At that point, you're just, like I said, you embrace the ego of being the best, so you're limiting yourself. So with me, it's like I constantly have to find something else to push my limits. And a lot of it really came down to how not serious can I take being an SDR? And I know that kind of probably seems backwards given the fact that this is a corporate environment and things like that. But you have to, like, I go back to like, these people are just people also. Like, I'm just talking to a person. I'm not talking to their role. You know what I mean? Like the person is the role, but they're not their role. Does that make sense?

25:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah, for sure. They're humans.

25:49 Stephen Chase: That was kind of, that was honestly a big thing that I struggled with up until probably the mid part of this year. And it's like, and learning how to embrace a new mindset is also on the path to mastery. And it's like the, it goes back to detachment from outcomes. Like the reason I detach from the outcome is because I detach from the fact that these people are just people. I know I'm potentially bothering them, but I'm trying to help them and see if they need my help type of thing. So it's, it's weird, but it's like you just have to put yourself in a mindset of, I'm not the best. Not that I'm not the best, but I am going to continue on a path as if I wasn't.

26:25 Scott Ingram: I love that. I love that. And then what does that look like? You know, here we are at the beginning of a year. How are you planning for and looking to grow over the course of this year and tackle that?

26:37 Stephen Chase: So a lot of the stuff that I'm focusing on is more personal development. Like I said, I don't have a strong background in like corporate or business environments and things like that. So I feel like my business acumen can be improved upon and things like that. So I actually asked for a learning and development budget going forward into this year to either be able to take some, some management courses and things like that, because ultimately I'd like like to be leading a team in the long run. Get some management development courses and things like that. Maybe take some more formal sales trainings just to kind of open, like broaden my horizons on sales methods and things like that. Not necessarily take them as word of law, you know what I mean? Because there's so many different sales methods and things like that. Obviously multiple ones work, but if I could learn as many of them as I possibly could and kind of blend them in my own particular personal style, that's really what I've been doing all along. But I'd really like to know more that's out there. And of that, one of my New Year's resolutions, as cliché as that sounds, I don't normally do them, but one of my New Year's resolutions is to read 2 books a month, whether it's sales, personal development, or just something I'm interested in for the course of 2021. I know people are like, why not a book a week? And it's, well, I'd like to start small and then go from there. If I can start killing books fast, then sure, I'll kick it up a notch, but I'd really just like to put myself on something attainable. And be able to absorb what I'm reading or because I actually prefer audiobooks, what I'm listening to and go from there, really.

28:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious about would you have done anything different? Right. So now you've been at this for a couple, 3 years and you've been in the space and you've had all of this experience. If you were starting over now, knowing what you know, would you have taken the same path? Like, was starting with an outsourcing agency the right way to start, the right place to start?

28:25 Stephen Chase: I'm just going to go ahead and preface this might be a spicy take, but I don't think I would have had the option. Given my work background prior to starting at Operatix. So a lot of what I feel like a lot of people struggle with, at least in my particular position, is not having a college degree. So I'm not saying you need a degree to be in sales. Obviously you probably don't, but a lot of companies in tech auto-reject applications based off of that not being a notated attribute or whatever you wanna say on your resume or whatever. And that actually happened cuz I actually did apply at some organizations prior to getting my job at Operatix and it was all auto rejection because I assume I didn't have a degree. But I think that's a big struggle is a lot of, unless you know somebody through a referral process at an organization, I feel like a lot of people that don't have any type of, at least like business background or college degree, even whether it was a degree in sales or whatever, because I know that those programs do exist at some universities, I don't think I would have had the opportunity.

29:33 Scott Ingram: When you started at Operatix, how long was it before you would say in their eyes, because I know you're going to be more critical than they would, that you were successful?

29:43 Stephen Chase: I would probably say if I had to look at it from a management perspective, I would say it probably took me about a standard SDR ramp time.

29:50 Scott Ingram: So 60, 90 days and you were there and you were at least as good as the average new hire.

29:55 Stephen Chase: Right. Yeah, I was definitely hitting average numbers for sure. After my first 90 days or so, I booked my first meeting in 2 weeks, which is pretty solid in my personal opinion. I don't know if that's true or if that's even a solid measure of quick success, but yeah, after 90 days I was consistently meeting at least the average number for sure.

30:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. It's just one of those things, right? It's as we think about diversity and inclusion and all these other things that are going on now, you know, I think so much of it is just giving people a shot. Right? Like, forget about the… some of the background stuff and the assumptions that we make that, oh, somebody without a college degree can't do this, or…

30:34 Stephen Chase: exactly.

30:35 Scott Ingram: Like, you know what, especially in the SDR role, because if it doesn't work, like, you're gonna know pretty quickly. We're like, okay, sorry, that didn't work out. Like, but we gave it a shot, right?

30:44 Stephen Chase: Exactly. I don't know, I feel pretty strongly about this topic because my cousin, my cousin Dan, actually helped me prep to get that job. And he doesn't have a college degree either. And he worked at Sears as an associate when he was 18 and worked for Sears for 13 years. And with this COVID thing that's happening, I didn't know how to phrase that. I just completely killed that description of the pandemic, but he lost his job and he was the national sales manager for Sears PartsDirect. And it's frustrating because he doesn't have a college degree either and he can't get a job. And it's really weird watching the person that helped me be successful when starting in corporate America and sales struggle the same way I was struggling to get a decent job. You know what I mean? And it's like the kid's a machine and it's really frustrating that, like I said, he gets auto-rejected. Because he doesn't have a degree either. And it's, it's just frustrating because I know that happens to a lot of my friends. And it's like, just because somebody doesn't have a college degree or 5 years as an SDR on their resume, because some of these job reqs are just wildly outlandish for entry-level roles, doesn't mean you can't do… like, this person can't do the job. You wouldn't know unless you hired them, like, just like you said. So it's pretty frustrating. But to your question, again, I don't think I would've had the opportunity if I didn't start in outsourced.

32:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. So I'm trying to be a little bit more intentional because there's been some misconception around the title of the show, and I may actually do some things about that with kind of our in-between episodes. But some people look at Sales Success Stories and they think, well, I just want to hear the story of an actual sale. So we might tackle that, but let's start here. Like, what do you have for us in terms of just the story? You know, maybe it was the hardest meeting you had to get or something. I know you've got a good one.

32:44 Stephen Chase: So I have 2 that basically like came to fruition. I guess my 2 biggest pats on back was booking 2 major telco companies that amounted to multimillion dollar deals for the same client in a quarter. And I mean, it's not, it's not like a glorious story. It was one of them came through an email, which is weird in itself because looking at everything that's going on now, email sucks as an outreach medium, at least for me. Hot take again, if anybody has has any differing opinions. But the other one was a phone call, and it was really weird because their solution was actually a very complicated solution in terms of security. So I actually used analogies to be able to simplify what the point of us helping companies was. So the analogy that I used was that it's like an apartment complex security system. So like they were in container security, which is like cloud virtual machines. And the biggest issue is that, or was at the time, was that you couldn't see the traffic inside of that environment, right? So it's like you can't tell who's coming in, who's going out, what information they're messing with, yada, yada, yada. So think about that environment as an apartment complex, right? But you don't have a gate, you don't have security cameras, and your apartments don't have doors. And the funny thing was, is this actually made a lot of sense to people. And I was like, well, think of us as that piece of your apartment complex. So you are able to see who's coming in, where they're going, and what apartments or containers they're accessing and what they're doing in there, period. So that was honestly the way I described our product and how we help to get that meeting that ultimately amounted to a multimillion-dollar deal that closed in the same quarter. Wow. Wow.

34:38 Scott Ingram: I'm a huge fan of analogies, right? I think, you know, we use all these 3-letter acronyms, TLAs, and, you know, we try and sound so smart, but you know what's really smart is making it easy to understand. And that's way harder.

34:52 Stephen Chase: Exactly. And it's funny that you say that because that was actually like a pivotal turning point in my SDR career when I figured that out. So like one day I came home from work and I have a 5-year-old. At the time he was 3, maybe 4, I don't remember. But at the time I came home and we were doing something around the house and then he just just randomly asked me, he was like, Daddy, what do you do at work all day? And I was like, oh God, right? How do I explain this to a 3-year-old? And I was like, well, I help… I call people and try to help them with problems in their computers. And he was like, oh, okay. And that was good enough. Yeah, he got that. And I was like, all right, well, let's try and replicate this in a sales conversation. Like this type of explanation, which I refer to as a subreddit, Explain Like I'm 5, But I said that on LinkedIn once and people thought I was being insulting. So essentially it just means simplify everything, or if you want to use the other acronym that most people use, keep it simple, stupid.

35:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's better here with context, so hopefully you're not flamed.

35:55 Stephen Chase: Right. But no, like that was like one of the biggest things is like, how can I take a complicated call guide and make it easier to understand? So it's like the less words you say, with more value ultimately shortens the conversation, the amount of time that you talk to give the prospect more time, but it also makes what you're saying easier to understand. Because I mean, I'm sure everybody's listened to calls where everything's just feature-centric and all these complicated technical jargon terms, yada, yada, yada. Nobody cares about that. Nobody cares about what your product does. They care about what it's gonna do for them. And can you explain it in a way to make it sound like you're actually trying to help That's it.

36:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I want to touch on this call guide concept of yours.

36:41 Stephen Chase: Right.

36:41 Scott Ingram: What is a call guide? How are you building that? What is that?

36:44 Stephen Chase: So I essentially base it off of Operatix' messaging building structure. It's who we are, what we do, and what it means for you. And I will credit my awesome training development manager at Operatix, Joe Greaves, with helping me learn all that. But essentially it's just filling in that criteria. But I kind of, I've made it into my own kind of thing. And it's really now what I do is I just, apparently the opener that I use is Sandler-oriented. So I'm just like, hey Scott, this is Stephen. Listen, I want to be upfront. This is a cold call. So feel free to hang up on me. But if you have like a minute and some change, I'd love to tell you why I was calling.

37:18 Scott Ingram: Nice.

37:19 Stephen Chase: And so I just basically get into it. It's like, hey, we've seen that these leaders have these problems, but your team also has their own set of problems. And what we've done is we've created something that ultimately helps solve this problem X by doing X and this by doing Y for your team. Not sure if that's a fit, but would it make sense to talk about a little more to see yada, yada, yada. And that's essentially what it is. It's literally, I just introduce myself, I guess Sandler pattern interrupt at the beginning with my opener. The fun thing about that opener is that they usually laugh, which is the best part. If they laugh, I know I'm gonna at least have a decent conversation. And then it's just simple. It just explaining, hey, these These are these challenges. And then I've actually been getting feedback. It's like, well, you should ask, is this something that you're seeing or is it maybe something different? Which ultimately leads to a better conversation. But usually I would say I have like a 75 to 80% hit rate when it comes to that structure that I just gave you. It's either we don't have that issue right now, call me back in a couple months, which is a pretty standard thing to hear on the phone regardless of what you're saying. Or it's, I get the meeting. We have a conversation about some of the things that I said. Well, how do you do that? Yada, yada. And my rule is I'll usually answer 2 questions and then on the 3rd question I'll say, well, hey, it sounds like it might be a fit here or a use case. Would it make sense to set up some time with my director, Alison, so we could kind of walk through it, see if there's a fit? And like I said, it's usually 75-80% chance that I'm going to get the meeting.

38:46 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Well, let's then break down kind of the prospecting process and methods, right? So obviously that was perfect. I love getting into the detail on the calls and appreciate you sharing the… I know you're you're allergic to the word script, but, but I appreciate you sharing that structure to the conversation. And I think just to emphasize what you were saying before, like the work is really getting the details in that call to the point where they're specific and understandable and relatable and connect to something that, you know, now you're going to be able to pivot and have a conversation about. Yep. And I really like, I like that you have kind of a rule on, I'm going to answer a couple of questions, like let's actually have a conversation, but once that keeps going, like that's your sign. So now let's close on the meeting.

39:31 Stephen Chase: Exactly. And it's, it's funny because it's like a lot of people get too in the weeds answering questions.

39:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

39:37 Stephen Chase: But as Justin Michael once said, he's like, don't spill all… or he said somebody else said this, but he told me don't spill all your candy in the lobby.

39:45 Scott Ingram: Yep.

39:45 Stephen Chase: So it's like if you answer all their questions, there's no reason for them to take a meeting.

39:48 Scott Ingram: Right, right. Yeah, I think that's another Sandlerism.

39:51 Stephen Chase: Yeah.

39:52 Scott Ingram: So let's just walk through kind of your end-to-end prospecting process and the channels you're using, because you slammed on email earlier, and you know, all this stuff evolves and changes and everything else. So, you know, maybe it'll all be different in 6 months. Actually, I hope lots of things will be different in 6 months, but yeah, let's…

40:07 Stephen Chase: or sooner, please.

40:08 Scott Ingram: Yes, walk us through. I'd really love to see my friends again, right?

40:12 Stephen Chase: Who needs human interaction when we have the internet? No, I'm just kidding. I don't want to say it's standard prospecting, but I actually use… I help Justin admin his Discord community, the SalesBorgs. So a lot of the methods that we're using are based around things he's seen in the industry, and he's helping people understand essentially what… going back on simplifying emails In terms of short, sweet, we call them the short uglies or spears, but short uglies is funnier. Essentially, the emails look like a text message because it's like, I don't know, it plays on this weird psychological thing that like you don't send people that you want to talk to paragraphs. So we send emails that look like text messages. And that's not to say that I don't use email. I just haven't been having a lot of success with my emails. And that's probably something that I'm doing wrong, which I'm working on figuring out what that is. But then there's also comparatively like the SalesLoft data that comes out saying that email responses are low and things like that, calls are high, yada, yada, yada. Who knows at this point? But my prospecting literally is the Combo Prospecting Method. Again, that was a case study done on Justin Michael, but it works for me. Essentially, it's a sequence of touches that are triple touches on a prospect. So it's a phone call, a voicemail, and an email back to back to back on the first day. And then it's like a cascading process on top of that for the next 2 days and then there's a rest period. So essentially how it works is I would call you. If you answer, cool. If not, I'll leave a voicemail that essentially is going to say exactly what I would've said on the phone in the first place, where it would be like, hey, this is Stephen from Findem. We're helping companies do XYZ, just to kind of give like a little overview of why I called. And then I'll follow up with an email that more or less mirrors that same messaging as well. So it's kind of like, it's just boom, boom, boom. And then the next It would be a bump on… so it'd be a call, a bump on that email that would either be a visual. So like we send, or I send Venn diagrams, that's kind of like a visual descriptor of where we would sit in their tech stack or something like maybe a Loom video showing how we would help or like what steps in our process that our product has would help speed up some stuff for their team internally, etc., etc. So a visual bump and then And then a LinkedIn follow, I think, is the second one. So it's kind of just like, it's a cascading thing that keeps your name in front of them. And then on the third day, it would be another phone call and then another bump, literally that bump. And I'm sure a lot of people are probably gonna hate this bump, but it literally says, thoughts? And then there's a 48-hour rest period and then you start another cascade with a different value proposition based on your ICP. And just follow that same thing. So it's pretty aggressive by, I guess, normal sequence standards because it's not like a 30-day sequence that's like spread out over yada, yada, yada. But it's a very aggressive sequence to initiate a response, like whether they're going to say, hey, leave me the heck alone, or yeah, let's take a meeting. It's just to get them like it's just a poke, like, hey, you're going to notice me at some point and you're either going to… we're either going to talk or you're going to tell me to go away. Type of sequence. Yep.

43:17 Scott Ingram: Stephen just mentioned that video is one of the components of his outreach process. My favorite way to easily record, share, and track videos is with Vidyard. Using Vidyard's free Chrome plugin, you can do it all quickly and easily. Try it out today. Just click over to top1.fm/v. And I haven't done this in quite a while, but if you'll send me a Vidyard video, I promise I'll respond in kind and send you a Vidyard video back. Don't believe me? Try it. First, go to top1.fm/v to get Vidyard and then email your video to me at scott@top1.fm. Now back to my conversation with Stephen. So your second point was the detachment from outcomes. So what are you measuring? Like, what are your metrics? How are you deciding when you are and aren't successful?

44:10 Stephen Chase: So I've actually been focusing a lot more on connections in terms of like call connects, like people, the amount of conversations I have on a regular basis. So I'm not necessarily focusing, like obviously focus on getting the meeting, but the biggest thing is you can't get the meeting unless you talk to somebody. So I've been focusing a lot more on my total dials versus number of conversations I had. And that's kind of double-pronged just to make sure that I'm getting the number of conversations I need to get a meeting, but also looking at how clean our data is.

44:40 Scott Ingram: And what are those numbers? I mean, what's your daily conversation target?

44:44 Stephen Chase: My daily conversation target based off, because I'm not using, like, there's people out there using like PADs, parallel assisted dialers and stuff like that. I'm focusing on at least 80 dials a day with 10% conversations. I want to get at least 8 conversations. High end, I would like to get 10 to 12. But I mean, like I said, I'd like to at least start with something that's more achievable based off of the metrics that I was seeing prior to the new year starting, my average connects was about 5. And I think that might be a data thing. So focusing on how clean our data is and stuff like that, that's just something personal to me. Like I want to be able to help solve some of the problems that we might have on the backend before we start scaling the team also. So data hygiene is one of those like back, like second tier motivators for measuring these things. But really I just want to focus on conversations because you can't get conver… you can't get meetings unless you have conversations. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's, it's funny.

45:41 Scott Ingram: Because that's basically where I've landed with my stuff for the year too. I'm like, you know what, it's just about conversations. And, you know, you kind of figure out what the inputs are that get you to that point that you can have the appropriate number of conversations and know how that fits in. But that's the meaningful thing. You know, it's, it's not, it's not anything else. It's not any kind of rocket science. And you're talking about the data. What is kind of the top of this? How are you feeding the funnel and deciding who you're calling?

46:07 Stephen Chase: And how does So our ICP is pretty cut and dry, which is lucky, honestly, because working in cybersecurity, there's so many pieces to who makes decisions on cybersecurity solutions. Working in talent acquisition with what our product does, it's solely focused on talent acquisition leaders. So talent acquisition execs. And then also if there's a chief diversity officer or a CHRO, depending on the size of the company. But really the people that I am targeting first and foremost, since we use ZoomInfo, shout out to ZoomInfo. Since we use ZoomInfo, I'm targeting the people that only have cell phone numbers. I know that sounds risky, but it works.

46:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

46:48 Stephen Chase: Well, my personal thought process on the cell phone number thing, because a lot of people I talk to are like, don't call people's cell phone number, especially executives. And I was like, why? They're not in the office right now.

46:57 Scott Ingram: Right.

46:58 Stephen Chase: And I was like, why would I call the direct line number if they're, it's automatically gonna go to voicemail? Now, or I'm operating under the assumption they wanted to forward their office number to their house, which what executive would want to do that? If I was an executive and we were in a pandemic, I wouldn't want to forward my office number to my house. I don't know, maybe that's just me, but cell phones actually worked really well for me in the first month or the first week and a half of December. I booked 14 meetings just calling cell phones. All right.

47:27 Scott Ingram: So we clearly buried the lead. How long have we been talking before you whipped out that So I guess that's my fault because I didn't ask about the results early on like I typically do. So what's typical for you? What sort of outcomes? I know, you know, you're detached from this, but these things have happened. So what sort of outcomes do you typically see?

47:47 Stephen Chase: I mean, my plan is based on points, so it's a little bit different. Each meeting or account size has a point value. And I'm not going to lie, November was a bad month for me. I don't want to talk about that month because I have PTSD from it. That was actually just… I messed up in that and I sat on an ICP target for too long in terms of account size and kind of shot myself in the foot before pivoting. I pivoted too late, but essentially I was focusing on enterprise and enterprise was a nightmare apparently in November. Couldn't get ahold of anybody. And then I waited too long to pivot to 100 to 1,000 employee-sized companies. But my typical outcomes, I mean, I don't know if this is high or low or what, but I usually sit in the to 15 meetings a month mark, but I'm more focused on value of meetings. Or like, I don't know what I mean by that. That's like a quality of meetings.

48:38 Scott Ingram: I know what you mean by that.

48:39 Stephen Chase: Does that make sense?

48:40 Scott Ingram: Well, it totally makes sense because here's one of my things with the way that we often measure the prospecting activities. And, you know, having been an AE supported by an SDR in the past, they were on sort of a similar point system. But there's no end points. And when we're just looking at meetings, we're not looking at what's the ultimate value of that meeting, right? If this meeting goes well, does it represent a $500,000 opportunity or does it represent a $50,000 opportunity? I will tell you one of those is more valuable to me than the other.

49:12 Stephen Chase: As a salesperson, I can definitely imagine that.

49:15 Scott Ingram: Right, right. Well, and to the company and everybody else, and very rarely do I see comp plans and structures and things that sort of recognize that level of value, right? Because if I'm then in the SDR role, well, it's easy for me to get the $50,000 meetings.

49:33 Stephen Chase: Exactly. It's not easy.

49:34 Scott Ingram: It's not easy.

49:34 Stephen Chase: Multi-million dollar meeting.

49:36 Scott Ingram: Exactly, exactly right. So, you know, we ought to recognize this, and, and this comes back to sort of my soapbox issue around professionalizing the SDR role, right? Part of that I think should be incentivizing longevity. Like, if you can be in an opportunity where it makes sense to be an SDR over the long term, where you can make AE-level level money because you're great as a prospector. Well, I think one of the ways that you actually do that is, well, pay commission when the deal closes. Yeah, you know, or give a little bump when it goes into pipeline and start valuing the pipeline, not the meeting, right?

50:12 Stephen Chase: Accelerators shouldn't be solely based on achieving meeting or overachieving meeting quota, right?

50:17 Scott Ingram: Right. So I love that you're thinking about it that way.

50:19 Stephen Chase: Yeah, in my personal opinion, I think SDRs should comped on total pipeline generated. Yeah.

50:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah. The challenge in that, and I mean, I get this, right. And that's why I think you do have to kind of recognize the parts, right, is that can lag, right? It can be months before we can even call that pipeline. But to be fair, like it absolutely should be one of the components.

50:43 Stephen Chase: Yeah. It should be like, it should be like a quarterly thing, in my opinion. Like, oh cool. How much pipeline did so-and-so generate over the quarter? This much. Percent OTE on for that value. Yeah, that would be, that'd be sweet.

50:57 Scott Ingram: Exactly. Yeah. And just to beat the horse to death, maybe if it's not already dead, right? It's kind of like, okay, well, Stephen is getting 8 meetings a month, but I'm setting 10. But I generate, you know, $80,000 in pipeline and Stephen generated $8 million. Which one do you want?

51:14 Stephen Chase: Exactly.

51:15 Scott Ingram: And in that scenario, I got paid more. That's messed up.

51:18 Stephen Chase: Yeah, that would be… as me, if I was the 8th meeting generator and I had that level pipeline and you got paid more than me, I'd be severely frustrated. But that's because I care about how much pipeline I'm generating. I don't know if that's like a standard thing.

51:31 Scott Ingram: Well, okay, so new soapbox issue. You know, I think part of being a true sales professional is you care about the bigger picture and the outcome, right? Of course we're gonna optimize based on our comps. Like I get it, but at the same time, you also have to optimize on the value to the business. So in the SDR role, the ultimate value that you're bringing is pipeline, and you don't… again, speaking of not controlling outcomes, because you have zero control over whether or not somebody then closes that opportunity and it moves to a closed won status. Like, well, that's completely out of your control, but you do certainly control your contribution to pipeline. Pipeline.

52:09 Stephen Chase: Right. That was one thing that I was always confused on because like I kept track of my pipeline on every client I worked for.

52:16 Scott Ingram: Oh, that's awesome.

52:16 Stephen Chase: For Operatix, just because it was a personal thing for me, it's like, oh cool, I set this meeting. What did it turn out to be? Like, that was like a motivator for me. It was like, what is the value of the meetings that I'm setting? And that's like when I saw like big number values being attributed to meetings that I was setting for these clients. Like that was an extrinsic motivator. It was like, oh cool. Like I'm doing a good job. These meetings, the way I'm explaining these meetings and the people that I'm contacting are the right people. And obviously there's big valuations for the projects that they're needing help with. So it was like, all right, well, I'm going to go after more accounts like this. And this person hit that account because obviously the track record that I'm seeing is these accounts have large valuations tied behind these projects. These are the right people to talk to. So let's go find more like meetings. And it just made it easier to hone in on more relevant prospects.

53:06 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. What are you most proud of?

53:08 Stephen Chase: The fact that I am no longer a 20-year-old kid bent on not having a desk job. Like if you asked my girlfriend one thing that I always said in my early 20s, because I'm 28 now, which is still young, I guess. I feel old, but whatever. When I was in my 20s, I told my girlfriend very specifically that I never wanted to have a desk job. And it was really funny because like, I guess the motivator behind going into this was not only the fact that I had never done it before, but also Also, we were having a son, so I had to grow up. And I think I'm pretty proud of the fact that I apparently did it well and I got the opportunity that I did to be where I'm at now.

53:55 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. That's really fun. You know, like you, I struggle with the age thing too. I think it's all relative, but just like you, this is the oldest I've ever been.

54:03 Stephen Chase: Right. And the youngest you've ever been.

54:06 Scott Ingram: No, that's not true. Oh, I will never be the youngest I've ever been.

54:11 Stephen Chase: Not with that attitude.

54:14 Scott Ingram: No, I'm pretty sure.

54:16 Stephen Chase: I'm just kidding.

54:17 Scott Ingram: You can't undo that. If anybody knows that secret, then yeah, we need to talk.

54:21 Stephen Chase: Where's the fountain of youth at?

54:23 Scott Ingram: We definitely need to talk. Well, let's start to dissect your day. This is one of my favorite things to do is just to understand how are you structuring your day and everything that fits into that. So the way I like to do it is the alarm clock goes off, tell me what time that happened, and I, I literally want the detailed blow-by-blow until your head hits the pillow.

54:43 Stephen Chase: So alarm clock goes off at… how many times are we talking? No, I'm just kidding. Alarm clock usually goes off between 6 and 6:30 depending on how late I stayed up the next… there, the day prior. I'm an avid PC gamer, sometimes I get ahead of myself late at night. But 6, 6:30, I wake up, make coffee, I always make my girlfriend a cup of coffee every morning before she goes to work. And then I sit down at my computer at like 7, check my emails, make sure I didn't have anything come through overnight, which is very rare. And then I wake my son up for daycare, but he's no longer going. So I guess that takes that out of the equation by 7:15. And then 8 o'clock rolls around, I'll sit back down at my computer because I usually spend spend like 20, 30 minutes with my son before we would take him to daycare. And then I'll sit back down at my computer and I'll open up ZoomInfo and start building a list of prospects to call, which is usually between 30 to 40 prospects for my first call block. Research the companies, look at some of their job boards, figure out what types of roles they're hiring, if any. Job boards can be deceiving though, so those opportunities could be a And then usually from 9 to 11, I'll start making calls. I know people usually start making calls earlier, but like I said, I'm calling cell phones. So I'll do a 2-hour call block because I'm doing those triple touches. So it usually takes me a couple minutes to get through each prospect. 2-hour call block starting on the East Coast since I'm at 9, starting on the East Coast. And then hopefully by the first hour, once that first hour is done, I'll be done with my East Coast prospects and then I can start calling through Central and West Coast. And then And then I usually do a workout on my lunch break, which is noon. So I'll go to the gym for an hour. And then from 1 to 2, I'll come back and build another list of prospects, do research, the standard, what I call the standard 5 minutes per prospect, depending on what's out there. And then from 2 to 4, I'll do another call block and then I'll send any follow-up emails and things like admin stuff at the end of the day.

56:49 Scott Ingram: And what time is that? What's the official end of the day?

56:51 Stephen Chase: Well, end of the day, like usually 5, 5:30, that's when I'll do that. And then usually from 4 to 5, I'll send out my follow-up emails from pro… for prospects and things like that. If I emailed somebody the day before or replies, or if I have like a marketing project that I need to get done, I'll usually set that up because I help our marketing out with webinars and stuff like that too. So I'll usually set stuff up like that towards the end of the day as well.

57:16 Scott Ingram: Nice, nice. And then what happens after hours? What happens in the, in the 5 to 9 or beyond?

57:21 Stephen Chase: The 5 to 9, I actually exclusively stop working at the end of the day. So I usually am doing stuff with my son or hanging out with my girlfriend because she gets home around 5:30 from work. So I usually try to be done working because I usually do all the dinner, like I'll cook dinner, I like to cook. So I usually do all the nighttime stuff whenever she gets home.

57:43 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then what's the game that you're playing right now?

57:45 Stephen Chase: Oh, there's so many. I actually play Rocket League pretty intensely. That's like my main go-to game. It's like rocket-powered soccer cars is essentially what it is if I had to explain it.

57:57 Scott Ingram: Love it. If the 5 to 9 thing I just asked Stephen about sounded familiar, that's because that's Alyce's thing. Alyce is a personalized gifting platform that helps you send personalized gifts gifts based on the 5 to 9 interests of your intended recipient. So in Stephen's case, they might recommend that you send something cooking related. Think about how impactful that might be for the people that you're trying to connect with or build deeper relationships with. Check out Alyce. It's an amazing platform, and you can get there by clicking over to top1.fm/alyce. That's A-L-Y-C-E. Now here's me and then Stephen again with no further interruptions. Any other kind of habits and routines that are core to the way that you operate in your success?

58:44 Stephen Chase: Not really, no. I can't really think of anything specific. I don't have any weird rituals or anything. I don't know. No, not really. I just try to make sure that… this past year made it really hard for my diet because I used to be a competitive bodybuilder. But this year with everything going on, I kind of struggled to not order DoorDash consistently. So I usually, I have a pretty solid diet, so that usually attributes to like my energy levels and brain function and stuff like that. So I usually eat squeaky clean, but kind of let that slide this year. So really one of my big things that I'm gonna be focusing on more is being more intentional about what I'm putting in my body and stuff like that too.

59:26 Scott Ingram: Gotcha, gotcha. Well, speaking of putting things in your body, that's a good transition. I always like to ask about everybody's information diet. So I know the goal is to read 2 books a month. I guess we talked about sort of the plan for those. When does that consumption happen? What other kind of information are you consuming and when does that happen?

59:43 Stephen Chase: So, I mean, I usually scroll through LinkedIn sometimes on my off hours. It's really hard. Like, you have to dig on LinkedIn, I feel like now, depending on how big your network is and you're like the amount of people you follow. Because another spicy take from Stephen about LinkedIn, but I feel like a lot of people are posting a lot of the same So that's honestly one of the reasons I don't really post that often is because I feel like I don't just want to repeat what other people are saying just for the sake of content. You know what I mean?

1:00:12 Scott Ingram: I know exactly what you mean. And in fact, it's one of the things that I'm trying to bring into what we're doing with the email, with our newsletter this year. So if you're on, if you're on the listener list and if you're not, my God, please, top1.fm is where you want to go. I'm trying to actually kind of bring the best of sales on LinkedIn. LinkedIn to the newsletter, because the thing I struggle with is my personal social dilemma is finding that right balance. I love LinkedIn. Yeah, but it's also like anything, it can become a black hole. Like, to your point, it takes a lot of scrolling to get to some good stuff sometimes. And I'm just, I'm trying to find that right balance for myself personally. And hopefully that's something that I can kind of bring into the community and a number of us can kind of work together to surface. We've got some ideas we're on. If you are on LinkedIn a lot and you want to contribute to that effort and help with the, with the best of, like, hit me up because…

1:01:04 Stephen Chase: Yeah, I mean, I can try my best.

1:01:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was more for the audience, not just you, Stephen, but as you find those gold nuggets, those are the ones that we want to, we want to kind of call out and give people an easy way. Like, hey, once a week I can go here and I know I'm going to find like, okay, here are the big ones.

1:01:19 Stephen Chase: Yeah. I guess in terms of other information that I consume, I usually try to, I don't know, I'll just start researching things. Like it's, I don't have anything in particular because that's just one of those things. Like if I fixate on a topic that I want to know more about, I'm going to go learn about it from various sources. But really for books and stuff, I usually just focus on Audible just because like I said, I like listening to audiobooks more than I do reading. I don't know why. I think I don't have the patience to just sit still and stare at words. I have to like be able to audibly, like for some reason when people read books, like the tonality makes it more interesting of the person, like the person reading. Makes the book sound more interesting. So it's like, it's one of those things, like it keeps my focus more. I have a hard time doing that with like shows too, because it's like the first episode or 2 of a show, if it doesn't catch my attention, I'm not going to finish watching it regardless how good it gets later on. So it's like if I'm reading a book and I'm actually reading the book, it has to catch me within like the first chapter or I'm not going to keep reading it. And I've noticed that I've gotten over that barrier listening to books because it sounds more interesting when the person actually puts some like tonality and stuff in their voice behind behind the content in the book. But yeah, so usually I get all my sales books and personal development books and whatever else I choose to read. I'm a big Sam Harris fan. I don't know if you know who Sam Harris is, but…

1:02:36 Scott Ingram: Vaguely. I think I know enough to know that he's quite controversial.

1:02:39 Stephen Chase: Yeah. Yeah, he definitely is. He definitely challenges a lot of thought processes that a lot of the population has for sure. But it's interesting to me just because I like to challenge people and I like to learn everybody's perspective that I possibly can on society, reality, different things. But yeah, outside of that, I don't really… like I said, if I want to know something, I'm going to go find the information, but I don't have any particular topics that I'm majorly fixated on at this point aside from getting better at sales.

1:03:07 Scott Ingram: Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. What about… this is probably a big topic. Let's just talk about tools and apps and tech and all that. I'm just going to leave it there. Let you run with that however you want.

1:03:17 Stephen Chase: Tools and apps and tech. That's hard because I have so many on my phone. I'm going to go one that's completely unrelated to anything sales or whatever, but my sister-in-law got our son this thing called Osmo for his iPad. And it's essentially a home learning thing for kids that uses the camera on the iPad to view the table that they're sitting at to take them through various activities and things like that. And I'm kind of obsessed with it just because, I don't know, I think kids are fascinating. I will only have one, but I think they're fascinating. In the sense of watching their minds work. Like you can see the gears turning when they're doing stuff. It's weird. But watching him use this thing without having ever seen it before is mind-boggling to me. And the app I'm obsessed with because it lets me keep track of his progress on this thing. And it's just bonkers watching all the stuff he does in this in terms of completions and stuff like that. Outside of that, I mean, I'm a big Twitch fanatic. I mean, I sit on YouTube quite a bit, not throughout the day, but in the evening hours I'll sit on YouTube watching videos of I guess it really depends. I'm a huge Pokémon card collector, in case anybody cares to know that. So I'll usually start researching Pokémon markets and things like that because they're similar to the stock market. Outside of that, I mean, I don't know. I don't have anything cool on my phone. Discord, I highly recommend everybody getting Discord. I saw recently that they actually raised a bunch of money to pivot into other communication avenues, which is cool. But if you don't have a community on Discord, I highly recommend creating one because it's better than Slack. Hot take from Stephen. But yeah, I don't have any crazy apps or anything that I haven't found. We're using a tool at Findem called Mixmax for sales engagement, which I think is cool because it gives you a lot more functionality in your emails. So like you see a lot of people that use that like alligator email. I don't know if people still do it, but I saw it a lot in like my first year where it's like, pick one of these responses, 1, 2, 3, 4, yada, yada, yada. You can actually create a poll in your email in Mixmax. Like you would on LinkedIn, but you can create it in the email. It's branded to your company because you can assign your own branding to all the stuff that you can put in your emails and stuff like that. And then you actually get metrics based on how your prospects potentially engage with things like that in your emails. So it's pretty neat. Highly recommend checking it out if you're a small sales team or a single salesperson that's like consulting or something, because the functionality in emails is super cool. But outside of that, I don't think I have anything. Else off the top of my head. I know being involved with the sales boards, I probably should, and Justin's probably gonna be disappointed, but…

1:05:48 Scott Ingram: Well, I was, I was gonna say like, what's, what's the must-have like piece of sales tech?

1:05:53 Stephen Chase: Must-have piece of sales tech? Something that provides you with really good data because you can have all of the SEPs and intent data and blah, blah, blah, but if you don't have the data to get ahold of that person, is any of that stuff really worth it?

1:06:04 Scott Ingram: There you go. I like it. I like it.

1:06:07 Stephen Chase: And I would caveat on top of that, call analysis. This software.

1:06:10 Scott Ingram: There you go. Perfect. So maybe we touched on this before, which is the idea of… and you know what, maybe I'm going to pivot this a little bit. So the question I usually ask is around kind of motivation, right? How do you think about motivation? What motivates you? I read something, it might have been in… oh gosh, I'm gonna forget his name… the guy that wrote Atomic Habits has a… he's got a pretty good…

1:06:32 Stephen Chase: oh my Lord, I think I have that book now that I'm thinking about it.

1:06:35 Scott Ingram: He's got a really good email newsletter. And he started there. He was doing the email thing long, long before he wrote Atomic Habits. And, and I think that's… that was actually the reason why Atomic Habits was so big, because he had such a massive, massive list. But he's got these great emails, and he said it was something along the lines of like, motivation is fleeting, but habits and the things that you do and that you're consistent about are like the real drivers. So I don't know, with, with that preface, like, talk about stuff.

1:07:04 Stephen Chase: So it's funny that you say that because the job before I started as an SDR, I was actually the GM of a gym and the head personal trainer. Working at a gym, you have to figure out what motivates people and how to set them on a path of good habits to keep up on that motivation that they had to get them into the gym in the first place. So I think in terms of motivation, I agree with the phrase that motivation is fleeting because some days you're not motivated to go. And this is just an analogy, not motivated to go to the gym. But if you have the habits in terms of diet, exercise, like you've developed the habits to keep those things going, the motivation will come based off of, like, it'll usually come in terms of like an extrinsic, a new extrinsic motivator or a new intrinsic motivator. So the saying that I always use with my clients and the people that came to the gym was it takes 21 days to make a habit because that's statistically true. It takes 21 days to make a habit, but it's on day 22. It's what you do on day 22 that matters. So it's one of those things like you've developed the habits. Are you going to keep them going?

1:08:07 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:08:07 Stephen Chase: Like that's kind of where it goes. And then at that point, it's on you to ensure that you're doing what you're doing, what you have been doing, continuing that to be successful.

1:08:15 Scott Ingram: Nice. And is that the way you think about it for yourself? Like how do you apply that to the sales side of your life?

1:08:21 Stephen Chase: Yeah, that's absolutely how I think about it. So it's like one of those things like if I'm trying to instill new habits, I have physically force myself to do them. And usually, like I said, statistically true, it takes 21 days to make a habit. But if I can keep it up for 21 days or 3 weeks, whatever, it's usually like a 9 out of 10 chance that I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing. But in terms of being motivated in general, that comes from, I mean, just bought a house, so I got to pay for that, providing for my family. All those are severe motivators. But I guess for people that don't have those motivators, motivators. Because I mean, I've always… I don't want to say I've always had those motivators, but those have been the primary motivators since I've been in this industry. So I don't know what it's like to not have those motivators.

1:09:08 Scott Ingram: Right. That makes sense. That makes sense. So is there something you believe that the average SDR would think is crazy?

1:09:17 Stephen Chase: Yeah, that you can book meetings on the phone. No, I'm just kidding. That was probably mean, but I think that a lot of average or new, I guess new SDRs are afraid of the phone. And I don't mean that in like a bad way. I just mean like you can't get good at the phone unless you get on the phone. And as in my experience, I hated the phone when I first started as an SDR because I had severe phone anxiety. Like I said, out of the fear of looking stupid, like that's something I hate. So it gives me really bad anxiety to be put in a situation where I have the potential to be looked at like I don't know what I'm talking about or whatever. And I think that's something a lot of new or average SDRs might deal with, and that's just speculation. But yeah, I think that's probably, it's like I don't have to get on the phone to book meetings. And honestly, I lived that for a little while because I did get really good at writing fun emails that actually worked. But at the end of the day, that success is limited did because that's only one medium of communication where it's like, if you utilize the phone, which is a more direct line, then ultimately you're going to get the meetings probably faster.

1:10:25 Scott Ingram: And how did you get through just the fear and anxiety around the phone?

1:10:30 Stephen Chase: Sheer willpower. Honestly, like I said, just by doing it, like you have to make the calls for sure. But like I said, the caveat to that is the conversations behind them. If you're not having the conversations and putting yourself in that uncomfortable situation, Like I said, that problem could probably be caused by a myriad of reasons, but if you can't put yourself in the situation to get better at dealing with it, then you're never gonna deal with it and get past it and develop the confidence that you need to continue making the calls and having the conversations.

1:11:02 Scott Ingram: And how long was it before you kind of just got into that groove and it, and it wasn't, you know, it stopped weighing 50% Honestly, it took me like a solid year. Yeah.

1:11:13 Stephen Chase: I mean, it probably could go faster for people who have been in it for a little while. Like maybe you've been in SDR before and you're just transferring to a new industry or ICP or whatever. So you might be a little nervous about how to deal with that stuff. But for me, being somebody that wasn't in the industry ever and having to get, learn everything all at once, like a fire hose, it was a lot. And it took me probably like a solid year to like get to get over the anxiety of having to call people that make a lot more money than I do and try and get them to take a meeting with me.

1:11:44 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:11:45 Stephen Chase: Yeah.

1:11:45 Scott Ingram: How much more effective have you been on the phone since that year?

1:11:49 Stephen Chase: Right.

1:11:49 Scott Ingram: Like since you've sort of gained the confidence and a level of comfort with it?

1:11:54 Stephen Chase: I mean, like I said, usually I have like a 75 to 80% hit rate when it comes to booking if I get somebody on the phone. So like usually If I get 3 conversations, I'm going to book at least 2 of them. I mean, that's probably a limited number of conversations, but I'm just going based off of the number of connections that statistically we see from calling people. They're usually fairly low unless you have really good human verified data. But I usually click people pretty effectively on the phones since then. Like I said, I usually sit in the 12 to 15 a month club. If you want to call it that. And honestly, I don't think that's like the best by any means, but like I said, I have no frame of reference because that's aside from my, my first job, because that was where the top one sat is usually like $15,000, $16,000 a month. Yeah.

1:12:43 Scott Ingram: What about the flip side? Is there something that the typical SDR believes that you think is crazy?

1:12:48 Stephen Chase: Trying to think. I don't know. I don't know what a typical SDR would believe at this point. I mean, maybe I was a typical SDR at one point. Point, but I don't know.

1:12:57 Scott Ingram: Well, let's think about it from that perspective then, right? Is, is there something that you thought early on as you were getting your start that now looking back you're like, oh my God, that was so wrong?

1:13:04 Stephen Chase: That's such a hard question because that was so long ago. I don't think I have anything for that because it's like, I don't know, like I said, I'm a weird case. Like, I don't abide by normal, like, social norms. Like, usually if somebody believes something, I believe the opposite type of thing.

1:13:21 Scott Ingram: Say more about I don't know.

1:13:23 Stephen Chase: It's just weird. Like if you tell me that email doesn't work, I'll show you that it does. You know what I mean? But here I am living in the fact that I haven't been having success with emails, but ultimately my main goal is to make it work. So it's like people told me that you had to get on the site. Like that's kind of where the me getting good at email thing came in. It's like, well, you have to get on the phone to make, get your meetings. And it's like me, it's like, well, I'll show you. I don't have to do that. But then ultimately I got put in a position to where I had to get on the phone. So it forced me to develop that skillset, but it's like, I don't take anything that anybody says at face value. I'm a skeptic, a true skeptic at heart. So it's like, if you tell me something, I'm going to go find out whether you're right or not.

1:14:03 Scott Ingram: Super interesting. So why don't we use that to talk about, since we're already kind of talking about your personality style, you and I talked about that early on, and this is kind of a favorite topic of mine. So, you know, tell us about you and just kind of what you think, because I think you were surprised and felt like, oh, maybe I'm the only one.

1:14:20 Stephen Chase: I think it's like… so Myers-Briggs is outdated by comparison to things like DISC, and I guess the OCEAN test or whatever it's called. I took that one recently too, just because I like knowing where I sit in terms of personalities and how I think and stuff like that. It helps me manage life easier.

1:14:42 Scott Ingram: I don't know the OCEAN test. That doesn't tell you like what kind of fish you are, does it?

1:14:45 Stephen Chase: So it stands for openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Neuroticism is what OCEAN stands for. So then it gives you like the context of like what it means to have high openness, what it means to have high conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism. And in terms of like how people that score in these high things deal with these things, what are some things that they use for like coping mechanisms? Like apparently people with high conscientiousness and neuroticism, which I don't think I had, like my neuroticism score is a 58, my conscientiousness was a 70. And apparently people that score higher in those categories actually use music as a coping or a way to express themselves or their feelings, which is interesting. I thought was interesting. But in terms of Myers-Briggs, I am to a T an INTJ. Any Myers-Briggs personality test that I took, I score INTJ every single time, which is apparently, I think it's called the mastermind. On one of the names for the classification is the INTJ is the mastermind. Like we're those people that sit in the back and can drive master plans to everything, processes and blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, we're highly analytical and have empathy problems. But the funny thing about that is, like I said before, is I feel like those people are looked at as people that shouldn't be in sales because we focus primarily on the logical outcomes of our relationships with people instead of like the read between the lines emotional values associated with relationships also.

1:16:11 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, and I'll kind of share the same thing that I did when we talked about this before is I I think all of the preconceived notions around what the personality types of top salespeople are, yeah, are wrong. Yeah, I think I've talked to damn near every type of person, right? Lots of people who are quite introverted, right? People, certainly people that are very extroverted and just kind of all over the place on that scale. And at the end of the day, I really believe it's what you do with It, right? It's you know you've just got to kind of find your way. Part of that is understanding who you are and what that unique set of skills that you bring to the table is. And you know some people are I've actually been surprised. I think there's a lot of very analytical kind of thinker types that do extraordinarily well in in sales, right? Because they they just take the time to really seek to understand, and they listen well, and they're great at strategizing and kind of crafting solutions and and things like that. And they're they're great to. Work with.

1:17:14 Stephen Chase: Exactly. And I mean, I think I'm great to work with too. But yeah, no, it's one of those things. Like, I think about the outcomes for like every possible situation that I'm putting myself in and how to generate a process that gets me the most desirable outcome, but also planning for the least desirable outcome.

1:17:30 Scott Ingram: So let me just like triple-click on the outcome thing, right? So we've talked about detaching from outcomes, but you're planning the outcomes and you're thinking about the outcome. So how are you like resolving all of that in your head? Because you seem very outcome driven.

1:17:43 Stephen Chase: Yeah, the outcomes definitely exist, but the emotional values associated with a negative outcome is what I'm detaching from. Like, I'm detaching from the emotional side of the outcome itself, but being able to plan and drive a process towards an outcome helps me do that. I don't know if that makes any sense whatsoever. You know what I mean?

1:18:04 Scott Ingram: A little bit. All I learned earlier is that we're going to pretend like November didn't happen.

1:18:08 Stephen Chase: Yeah, we're going to pretend that November didn't happen. I don't want to talk about that one, but I don't know. It's a weird thing to explain because it's like, I feel like that doesn't make any sense, but at the same time it makes a lot of sense. Like being able to plan for the outcomes and drive yourself towards them, but also know that this might also happen, which is like the positive-negative fork, helps you or helps me detach emotionally from both of those outcomes because I've already associated the facts in my own head that like, hey, this is what could happen positively, but this is also what could happen negatively. Be prepared for it so you don't react emotionally in the long run and hurt yourself in your process to getting to a positive outcome later on.

1:18:49 Scott Ingram: I think I get it. I think I get it. That's pretty fascinating.

1:18:51 Stephen Chase: All right.

1:18:51 Scott Ingram: It's like I'm gonna boil that down as a logical approach to emotions.

1:18:56 Stephen Chase: Yeah, it's weird because it's weird being… I don't know. I never had that self-awareness up until I got into sales. Is that… I don't know if that makes sense either, but like being aware of how you think and operate. Operate isn't something I really paid attention to. Like, I was just like here kind of in the ether. Just, I'm a person, you're a person, we just kind of exist and we talk to each other, relationships happen type thing. But diving into and really understanding how I as a person think, operate, deal with, and handle emotions and things like that really helped me be more proficient in sales because it's kept me from burning out in this like recent year with everything that's been going on. I never burnt out one time. I don't know, it's just been a huge relief on my psyche of understanding how I operate as a person and being able to apply those concepts into sales because I think it also brings out who I am as a person in the sales process also. Yeah. So like you hear everything about authenticity and yada, yada, yada. I think my authentic self is a person that is able to apply Like it comes out when I'm able to apply my personality and how I operate as a human being in my sales process.

1:20:10 Scott Ingram: I think that's the game. And it sounds like, and I'll have you talk about this a little bit more. I mean, it sounds like you figured out some ways to just manage. Dude, sales is probably the most emotional job out there.

1:20:21 Stephen Chase: Right.

1:20:21 Scott Ingram: Right. I mean, the highs and lows are insane and a lot of times they can happen within minutes of each other.

1:20:27 Stephen Chase: Right.

1:20:27 Scott Ingram: Unlike any other role I can think of, like, are you consciously managing that? And how do you think about that? About that?

1:20:34 Stephen Chase: I think it's just, I don't know, it's having a level of self-awareness that I don't think a lot of people have, like being able to look at what had just happened and assign your emotions based on that. So it's like being able to sit there, you just had a bad call, you just got destroyed by a VP or something on the phone and you're feeling down, but able to like pull yourself out of that as like a third party in this emotional thing that you're feeling and recognize, okay, This person made me feel this way, but they're not somebody that I'm going to interact with on a consistent level. So let's just analyze the emotions, why they happened, and then move on is how my brain processes that. It's weird because it's just like identifying like, okay, these emotions became or arose because of this thing that happened. Is this something that I'm going to let ruin my day because this person's going to be in my life consistently? Instantly? No. Okay, well, let's just take a breather and then move on to the next.

1:21:34 Scott Ingram: Nice. It's very… do you meditate or do you have like a mindfulness practice? Because it seems like it's a very sort of detached, like, oh, let me look at that and examine myself and go, oh, okay, well, we're going to call it this, this, and this, and I've decided that's irrelevant, so let's keep going.

1:21:48 Stephen Chase: Yeah, it's a combination of that and the book The Art of Not Giving a Blank. It's a combination of that. I don't have a severe mindfulness practice at this point. That's also something I've been trying to work on developing the habits for, but time and quiet, you know, having a 5-year-old. Fun fact, they were talking about meditation. They actually put a Headspace series on Netflix.

1:22:12 Scott Ingram: I didn't realize that.

1:22:14 Stephen Chase: Yeah, we just found it yesterday, and I actually did one, like a little guided meditation through the series before I went to bed last night. And man, apparently I can actually get into like a relaxed state, which is weird considering I'm constantly thinking about everything the universe has to offer 100% of the time. But yeah, it definitely helps, especially for somebody that is analyzing everything about the world constantly. Being able to put myself in a mind to not think about anything, quote unquote, not think about anything, but be relaxed and then train myself to analyze my thoughts on a wavelength that's not like negative rumination or positive rumination, but more objectively, definitely helps a lot when it comes to obviously sales and dealing with the tribulations of emotional outcomes.

1:23:04 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, and I'm most intrigued by the Netflix insight. So we'll… I think we're gonna have a rich set of show notes. So top1.fm/stephen-chase or whatever this episode number, either one of those will get you there. I think this is gonna be a… this is gonna be a good one. Stephen, what advice do you have for somebody that's just starting out in their sales career? Today?

1:23:26 Stephen Chase: Embrace the suck. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Sales sucks, but in the best way. I don't know. Embrace the suck. Do as much research as you possibly can. Learn as much as you possibly can and don't become an island. Talk to people in your company. Talk to people you find have a similar take on the way you feel about sales and how sales process should work, but also be open to others who don't, because that's how you grow as a salesperson.

1:23:55 Scott Ingram: I love it. I love it. And, you know, a fine… I would also just kind of add, because I know you've certainly done this. I mean, especially if we look back to the beginning of this episode and the folks that you've named, it's kind of like find community. I don't think that we've put enough emphasis on this as a profession. There aren't, you know, professional associations like the… like there've been in other spaces, I think, in the past. One of the places you can do that is, especially if you're really into this prospecting topic and you happen to be listening to this early in the year. We're kicking off our Encore series and replaying the sessions from the summit that happened in October. And the first number of those were very prospecting and creating pipeline oriented. So I'd really encourage you to check that out because it'll be live Q&A with the presenters. But also, we've kind of embedded opportunities to interact in the community in our kind of special networking space that we have set up. So if you go to top1.fm/encore, Encore. You can sign up for that and it's free thanks to all of our amazing sponsors. So come check that out. Stephen, what advice do you have for somebody that is… the suck has taken over, right? So they're in this space where they're just feeling kind of stuck and frustrated and maybe not seeing that, that way through. What, what advice do you have for them?

1:25:12 Stephen Chase: Reach out to Patrick Downs.

1:25:14 Scott Ingram: Say more. Why?

1:25:15 Stephen Chase: The funny thing, yeah, honestly, because he's helped me with those exact same problems. Like I said, I think I said it earlier in this episode, but I have object permanence issues when it comes to my job performance because the suck did get me. Like I said, I don't want to talk about November, but the suck did get me in November and I was dealing with object permanence issues. Like, I know I'm good at the job, but when something isn't panning out or the stress of quota, because it can even take over a rep that is fairly seasoned, especially if nothing is happening. And that is exactly what happened to me. I had a streak of good enterprise-level meetings booked in October, and then November just went flat. But I reached out to Patrick. I was like, yo dude, I don't know what to do. Everything I'm doing isn't working for some reason. And I've tried to analyze all the things that I have possibly been doing or could be doing wrong, and I can't figure out what that is. And he's like, dude, it sounds like you have object permanence issues when it comes to your job performance. How long have you been doing what you're doing, yada, yada. He basically talked me through all of the things that I have been doing, my progress that I did, that I was making, and basically set me straight. It's like, dude, you can do the job. You just gotta keep doing the work type of conversation. So not necessarily reach out to Patrick Downs, but if you have, I mean, he's the perfect person to reach out to, but if you have people in your company that are like, you feel comfortable with, you have good relationships with, talk to those people. Let them know what's going on, because I think we have this weird stigma on people who aren't performing that are obviously stressed out, not managing that stress appropriately and putting them on a path to improve. Instead, we just chalk it up to them being bad at the job, which isn't the case.

1:27:03 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I had a giant takeaway from Michele Marshall, who was, who was on the podcast a couple of months ago, and she talked about… she's in kind of a player-coach type of role. And a big part of their process was use the buddy system. I've started to think about that more. And I think as much as you can, I think you need to have at least 2, but a minimum of 2 buddies. You should have somebody inside your organization who, you know, you can open up to and who will support you and kind of understands the unique challenges and situations and, you know, the skeletons in the closet and everything that you've got within in your, your organization. And then you need to have a buddy just in the broader sales community, right? Who's just a friend there to support you. Somebody that you can lean on like a Patrick Downs, like whoever that is for you. I think it's so important to just sort of seek those people out and, and whether it's mutual or they're your buddy and they help you and they have different support systems, it doesn't really matter. I just, I think this idea of community and supporting each other Because damn it, this is hard.

1:28:05 Stephen Chase: Yeah, especially now.

1:28:07 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know, you've just got to kind of figure out like what are those support systems that you can put in place for yourself and and having those outlets. And maybe, and this is a favorite topic of mine. I can't believe I didn't come back to it earlier. I have existed on mentors my entire life. You know, I and I consider virtually everybody I talk to as my mentor because I learned. Something from them, right? Like, how do you view mentors? How are you developing your mentors? Like, just go.

1:28:36 Stephen Chase: I think mentors for me are more like people who have been around longer than me in terms of the topic that I'm trying to learn, just because they… like, if, if it's something fresh like sales was to me, then I want to know what people who have been in the game 5, 10+ years were are doing and want to be doing later. Because ultimately what they were doing 5, 10 years ago isn't what they're doing now. So being able to develop a relationship with somebody that has that level of experience and kind of figure out where they came from to where they are now helps me in terms of like what they're doing throughout their career, helps me to form a baseline on where I should be starting out, and then ultimately helps me develop a conversation with them on how I need to be improving in terms of where I want to go with my goals.

1:29:34 Scott Ingram: Yeah, love it, love it, love it. So along those lines, what would you want to know about the top sellers, the top 1% in other organizations?

1:29:44 Stephen Chase: I'd want to know more about like same questions you asked me, what their day-to-day process looks like. Do they Like what their messaging is. Do they develop their messaging? Do their leaders develop their messaging? Like, I don't know. Do they have a hand in any of that whatsoever? I'd really like to know if maybe I need to develop some weird rituals that get me in the game for sales. And really, I'd like to know like what I think it would help me understand the personalities of top 1% salespeople out outside of myself, even though like I said earlier, I don't consider myself top 1%. Like what their hobbies are outside of work. You know what I mean? Because it's like, I'm an avid PC gamer. I collect Pokémon cards obsessively. And I work out a lot. It's weird.

1:30:28 Scott Ingram: That is a unique mix, I think.

1:30:29 Stephen Chase: Yeah, it's… well, I don't know. It's just a weird thing for me because like, working out helps me combat depression and anxiety. So it's kind of like my escape for the day to go to the gym, get out of my house because everybody works from home now. And then kind kind of just zone out, work out, improve mental stability, etc., etc., blood flow, all that good stuff.

1:30:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. So this is so weird to talk about because it's in the future from here, but it'll be in the past when we launch this episode. So if you listen to tip 719 on Daily Sales Tips, Jeff Kerchick talked about embracing your weird. Such a good tip. So like, so, so good. So go check that out. That was a really fun one. Dude, we covered a ton of ground. Was there something that you had hoped to talk about that somehow I didn't ask the right question to get us to?

1:31:20 Stephen Chase: No, I think we covered everything.

1:31:22 Scott Ingram: All of it. Like, we're done.

1:31:23 Stephen Chase: Yeah, all of it.

1:31:26 Scott Ingram: You didn't hold back any secrets? Not like, well, wait, there's this one thing that I do that makes a difference.

1:31:32 Stephen Chase: I mean, the one thing that I do is I just don't take the job seriously. And that sounds like a negative thing, But I don't know, like I just have more fun on the phone than I feel like most people do. Like I called the VP of Talent for Netflix once and she was on a Zoom meeting when she answered the phone. She was like, well, I can't right now. I'm on a Zoom. And I'm like, oh, awesome. Well, could you tell everybody I said hi? And she was flabbergasted that I even had the audacity to suggest that. And she was like, just call me back in like an hour. And I was like, okay. But I called her back. She didn't answer. She probably was… she probably remembered my number for sure. But I just have too much fun on the phone. I don't know.

1:32:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's part of the game, right? If you can find a way to make it enjoyable. I mean, it goes back to your concept of embracing the suck. Like if you can have fun with the suck, then it'll suck less.

1:32:23 Stephen Chase: Yeah, exactly. I don't know. It's just, I like to, like you said, embrace your weird, have fun. People, you're going to talk to this person probably one time, have fun with it. Maybe they'll take the meeting just because you had fun with it.

1:32:35 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. Well, man, I hope that we talk more than one time. This has been a blast, and I always try and make these as actionable as we can as we wrap things up. So what would you challenge our listener to do to improve themselves and improve their results over the course of the next week or 2?

1:32:53 Stephen Chase: See if you have extra data sources to, or test out some new trials on some data tools that you might not have looked at before that give you some trial credits or something like you have like a week trial or something to see if you can get some better phone numbers. If you're having phone number issues, emails, if you're having email issues, develop an opener that uses your own personality instead of what people tell you to say and work on your tonality.

1:33:19 Scott Ingram: I like it. I like it. Stephen, to be continued. Thanks, my friend.

1:33:24 Stephen Chase: Yes, sir. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode, and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.