143: Insurance, Tenacity & The Law of Averages with Tompkins Insurance's Daniel McDevitt

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0:24 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 help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram.

0:39 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Dan McDevitt. Dan is the top account executive at Tompkins Insurance out of Pennsylvania. Welcome to the show, Dan.

0:49 Daniel McDevitt: Thank you for having me, Scott.

0:50 Scott Ingram: Excited to have you on this side of the show, and I know that you have been a listener for quite a number of years. So let's kick things off like we always do with some immediate value and talk about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed most your success in sales?

1:06 Daniel McDevitt: Yeah. Well, once again, thank you for having me. And it's an honor to be on this side and to be considered within a lot of the group that you've had on this. As I mentioned to you, when we were talking before this, there, you know, are a lot of things that I contribute to my success and some of the ongoing stuff I do within presentations and prospecting efforts that I've picked up from your show. And to piggyback off that main word, I think the top thing that I do that's carried on in my career. I got into outside sales when I was 18 years old, is daily activity and daily prospecting. My regimen is cold calling. It sounds hard to believe, but it's something I actually do enjoy, and it's evolved in kind of the mediums in which I've used. But every day I try to have between 2 and 4 hours of some sort of outflow activity. Whether that's, you know, going to an industrial park and knocking on doors, that's doing my follow-ups from my call list. I've gotten really big. COVID, you know, kind of forced me into doing a lot more like social media and text messaging solicitations. And, you know, I spend a lot of time actually direct messaging people on Facebook, which doesn't always sound as the best, you know, spot to get sales opportunities. But I found with a lot of the blue-collar type businesses. You know, you have an owner, an owner's spouse, or owner's child managing the social media, and it can be a good audience to get into their inbox there. And not a lot of competition, not like an, you know, an email inbox or a LinkedIn inbox.

2:46 Scott Ingram: I would…

2:47 Daniel McDevitt: number 2, and this is maintaining a positive attitude. When I was typing this up, I think that this is one of the longer paragraphs that I put together. But I try to put things into perspective is when I am prospecting, that no matter how good of a product I have, how good my pitch is, how needed my product is, no matter what, 80% of the day I'm going to be hearing the word no. And it's just, you know, taking that is for what it is. Nos come in all shapes and sizes. Not letting them you know, affect me or bother me. And just staying unbelievably positive is what I like to characterize it through my prospecting efforts. 'Cause I've found through the years, you know, people tend to be curious when they have somebody really excited to talk to them and their, you know, curiosity can obviously buy you those couple seconds that you need, especially when you're cold calling to legitimize why you're talking and why they need to keep talking to you. In my start of my sales career, I worked for a multi-level marketing firm. Some people know them by Smart Circle. It actually depends on what part of the country. They had a few different names: DS Maxx, Innovage, Smart Circle, Granton Marketing. I started in their Innovage clearance division, and we had this morning meeting ritual, if you want to call it. And then it was the 8 steps to success. And, you know, in that, you know, they had mentioned keeping a positive attitude and then maintaining a positive attitude. So It was really instilled early in my career. And the third and most important thing is just being a constant student. I feel in a lot of professions, but sales especially, is people will come in and have some introductory success and they stop learning and the marketplace changes and they get frustrated and, you know, it's just kind of a negative domino effect and how that burns people out of a sales career. So I've found, you know, through my years to make sure there's networking aspects to it. I try to read as many sales books as I can. Podcasts like this have been great, especially, you know, like after when I'd say like 2015 or 2014 when podcasts became like a really big thing. There's some like TV shows and YouTube clips that I'll watch here and there. Been more like fictional characters, but like, I don't know if you watch Mad Men, but Don Draper's, you know, he's especially in the first like 3 seasons, he's got some great sales pitches and just different things like that. So the wheel is round, it rolls, it works. I'm not trying to reinvent it. I just want to figure out who's rolling it better than me and then copying a piece of that and implementing it into, you know, my pitch or however I'm going about my business.

5:43 Scott Ingram: I love the wheel analogy. That's really good stuff. So I'm going to come back to a number of those items as we talk through this, but why don't we provide a little bit of context first and talk about what your role is, who you're working for, those types of details. Before we get into Dan's background, let me quickly mention Outreach because as you just heard, and as you'll continue to hear through this episode, consistent and disciplined prospecting has been a huge key to Dan's success. And one of the best tools out there to help you manage those efforts is Outreach. Do yourself and your team a favor and check out Outreach at top1.fm/outreach to help you create more consistent pipeline. And now back to Dan and his background.

6:28 Daniel McDevitt: Yeah, you know, I'll say how like my sales career evolved and got to this. When I was 18 years old, I was not a gifted student. College was quickly becoming just more of a place to waste money because I was never going to classes and I had this kind of fork in the road where I was considering joining the military and I was using that winter break to, you know, get a job somewhere. And I was answering ads in the paper and there was a warehouse ad and there was this company Innovage. And that was kind of one of their recruiting tactics is to get you in for a first-round interview. And they did. And I was 18. I didn't understand what they were saying. It was come back 2 days later for a second-round interview. And the second-round interview, they, stuffed me in this Volkswagen Jetta, you know, it was filled with merchandise, cutting boards and Christmas decorations. I didn't know what was going on. And we drove to Kutztown, Pennsylvania, and the guy's name was John. John was my interviewer and became my quote unquote leader. And he would start walking into businesses and, you know, hair salons and pizza shops and any business along Main Street. And he'd had this little pitch and You know, these products were $5, $10. And I think a lot of people, you know, probably witnessed something like that. And they're like, you know, they take some convincing for them to consider themselves doing it. And I gravitated towards it. I loved it right away. And that is how I got into sales. And I worked for this organization for almost 4 years. I got to travel the country. I lived in Kentucky for a little bit and Connecticut and Queens, Harrisburg. And it taught me, you know, that attitude's everything and the law of averages. Because, you know, you're selling these products $5, $10, you're making $1.50, $3 off each one. You know, you have to sell a decent amount to make somewhat of a living off of that. And for a variety of events, my opportunity no longer existed with the company. And from there, I went into financial services. I worked for Citizens Bank for a short amount of time. And it was somewhat of like an inside sales role as their banker position. And I worked in an in-store branch, which was inside of a grocery store. So I also had to be a bank teller and just was a lot of not selling, to be honest with you. And I was not in a great place in my life. I think I mentioned this to you that I've been sober for 12 years now. In 2022, I celebrated 12 years of sobriety. So there was some leading reasons to why my time at Citizens Bank came to an end. And from there in my life, I got into treatment for the first time, and I got linked up with an advertising firm called Breck Specific Publishing. And they had a really interesting method in which they would send you to a small town somewhere in the Northeast, and they would have a contract with a, like, very well-known restaurant, and you would sell those decorative menus. You would sell the advertising borders, and it was really almost like guerrilla sales because they would not make a reservation for you at a hotel. You would go and you'd actually convince the hotel to exchange a week of a room with you for a half or a full-page ad in this menu. And they gave you a pitch on how to do it. So I did that for a little bit. From there, I got into water filtration sales, and then I unfortunately had to go back into treatment. Well, fortunately, because there's some worse outcomes. But then when I came out of it, and my sober date's January 23rd, 2010, I got a job with a company called Smoker and Company, and it was an accounting financial services firm in Lancaster. And this is January of 2010. So obviously the economy's in a bad spot at that point. The recession was kind of like in its worst months, quarters, kind of coming out of it. There was like glimmers of hope, but they had a division called Keystone Credit Services, which was a debt collection service. And I sold debt collection services for almost 7 years. And in that time, my last 2 years at that company, I had got recruited to go work for a friend, and in order to keep me, the owner of the firm, Mike Smoker, asked me if I could, you know, go pass the Pennsylvania Property and Casualty Insurance Exam because he wanted to get into offering commercial insurance to his customer base. And I did. And they sent me to some training. It was a producer school administered by an insurance carrier called Westfield. It was called the TAP program. When I was about a year into being licensed. And I learned a lot about the proper way to sell insurance, or at least how that organization… it's called The Dynamics of Selling by the Insurance Alliance, the National Insurance Alliance. And I really gravitated towards this vehicle for sales because there's renewal income, which is somewhat unique. So you're not always living and dying off your at-bats. And I found that a lot of my competition is not as well equipped in… not aggressiveness is the right word, but how to prospect. And, you know, someone that's a little bit more tenacious than them, they'd have trouble keeping the account. And there's a lot of nepotism in our industry and perpetuation within, you know, family members. So I started making connections and started learning what the income capabilities were for like really moderate success. So I could only imagine for what major success. When I was working for Smoker and Company, I eventually became their marketing director and it was Mike Smoker. And I'm friends with him to this day. He was at my wedding. I'm great, really good friends with his son. So I know that there wouldn't be any hard feelings of me saying this, but Mike's always doing 3 things, you know, what he just did, what he's doing and what he's about to do. And I was kind of his key man for that. And while that was fun, I was starting to think about more of a long-term, you know, wife and kids and wanted to have a, you know, an income capability for my wife, who's my fiancée at the time or girlfriend at the time, to be able to stay home with the family. And insurance, I felt, was the best way to do that. So I was never gonna be able to just be insurance sales for Mike. So it was a real tough decision. And it wasn't all sunshine and hugs on my way out the door. I mean, it was obviously disappointing that I left, but I went to go work for a very well-known local family-owned agency in my hometown. And I worked there for almost 2 years. Well, a little bit over 2 years, almost 3 years. And it was great. I learned a lot. I learned how an agency works and a lot of the processes that I wasn't quite as exposed to at Smoker and Company. But ultimately they were very much like a legacy book of business and kind of my, I think my efforts overwhelmed them in a lot of ways and what their infrastructure was set up to deal with. And I was very fortunate to have a top 100 agency like Tompkins in my backyard, even more fortunate to have some personal connections I've developed at that agency with just people I knew in the community and even most fortunate that they looked at me as a potential positive addition to their agency. I started there in February of 2020. And then, you know, we all kind of know how the first quarter of 2020 went. You know, the world changed pretty significantly, really quick. I remember saying something to my sales manager, as I said, you know, as unfortunate as not to make it seem like I'm looking at a pandemic as opportunistic, but I said, you know, if we keep our foot on the gas, I think that there we can come out of this you know, better than going into it. And, you know, I was able… 2020 was my biggest year until 2021 in my career in terms of sales made and income generated. And I've been able to sort of catapult off of that. So I gave you a bit of a long answer there, but hopefully some good information and insight on, you know, how I ended up in this working for Tompkins.

15:11 Scott Ingram: I think the context and the background is really helpful and obviously lots of twists and turns as you worked through that, knowing all that you know now. I mean, if you could start that adventure over again, what would you do different? Where would you start?

15:24 Daniel McDevitt: Well, I probably would, you know, try to not have a problem with substance abuse. I think that, you know, obviously put… I was fortunate to have it in my early 20s and, you know, kind of was in that opportunity where I could just focus on myself. I would change that. And I mean, I would like to say that I would have gotten into insurance earlier. I could only imagine what my book of business would look like right now, but And sometimes, as much as if I appreciate the question, you have to go through the fire, right, in order to get the education. So I think they all… those experiences played roles in my development as a professional or as a salesperson. But yeah, not to give you a non-answer, I guess the short answer would be to, you know, get into commercial insurance earlier.

16:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think that's a fair answer. And I was thinking back, I think I've only ever had one other person in insurance on this show, which is kind of a disservice.

16:19 Daniel McDevitt: Yeah, no, you've had a lot of people that have dabbled in it. I've heard in their stories, but yeah, one true insurance producer from what I could find and listen to.

16:28 Scott Ingram: And that's probably a disservice, especially considering, to your point, this is… it's kind of a different game because you're building this book of business and you're building this residual piece. So it's not just, you know, what did you sell this month? There is that component of, you know, I'm building something.

16:46 Daniel McDevitt: Well, and I think the industry, you know, I think if you hear the word insurance, it would probably, you know, a lot of people think it's boring. You know, they hear insurance and they know just enough about it. It's the gecko and it's flow and all this. But I can tell you, commercial insurance is far from boring. It's really exciting. It's something different every day. You really have to become like experts in so many different industries. Like, there's a lot of education that I've learned, just like, I mean, for example, like how buildings are constructed and stuff that I think, you know, benefits me outside of insurance, different types of like how to finance risk. And through my career, I also got a designation called the CIC, which stands for a Certified Insurance Counselor through the National Insurance Alliance. And I'm working towards a CPCU designation, which Those are like the top 2 in our industry. And yeah, so I found that a lot of it has helped me out. And the other point is it's an aging industry. So there's a lot more people retiring than are coming in. So, you know, that means there's a lot of opportunity in the marketplace. And for a lot of those reasons is what's kept me so engaged in the industry.

18:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great stuff. Well, put your results in perspective for us too. It sounds like you've kind of been building year over year over year here at Tompkins.

18:07 Daniel McDevitt: What's this last year looked So the first year, 2020, I came in 2nd in Pennsylvania and 4th or 5th in the company whole. Now they try not to measure it that way. They try to measure just Pennsylvania and New York, but they still send the New York dashboard. So I kind of look at, I want to be number one of both regardless if there's a quote unquote award or designation for that. In 2021, I have a colleague that provided great competition and I pulled away from her by like $5,000 in production in the last month of the year. So I was very fortunate to be number 1 in Pennsylvania and New York in 2021. And up until this last… we call them dashboards… came out here in 2022, I was number 1 in Pennsylvania, number 3 in the company. But right now I'm 4 in PA, And I think 5th or 6th in the company. So it's given me a lot to chase right now. And I'm certainly striving to hopefully go back to back with number 1 finishes, but also very exciting to have so many team members, you know, to not be a big fish in a small pond, so to speak, is it really keeps the motivation and the hunger to… there's income reasons that I like to be number 1, but there's also pride reasons, which I think sometimes in my mentality are just as strong.

19:37 Scott Ingram: That's interesting because that was my next question is what is the biggest driver, right? Is it the leaderboard? Is it the dashboard? Is it the money? Like, what is it that ultimately kind of pushes you to do the work every day?

19:48 Daniel McDevitt: I would say it's tied with the finances and the dashboard. You know, I don't want to just be making the most. I want people to… it may turn some people off and sound egotistical, but I want people to know that I'm number one. There's a few competitors in my industry, at least regionally, where if I walk in and I see their name on the policy or I hear their name as the incumbent agent that in some cases I'll just walk away because I know I'm not taking it from them. That even though that this customer of theirs has decided to entertain a phone call, ultimately they're really, really good producers and really, really good agents. And I've gone up against them enough that I just know I'm gonna get punched in the face for a few months and then ultimately waste my time. So I hope to be that to other people as maybe, uh, you know, kind of like full of himself to say, but that, I mean, that's what keeps me going.

20:44 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. Right. And at some level, that's actually maybe less about you or less about the competitive drive and more about the service drive. Like if I do a great job of taking care of my customers such that nobody else can have them. That's pretty cool.

21:00 Daniel McDevitt: I agree. And one of the sales trainers or pieces of literature that I gravitated towards a lot and still do, it's called Randy Schwantz, The Wedge. He also rewrites that book to be more general than sales. It's called How to Get Your Competition Fired. And it is rooted in the fact in insurance, we have something called a broker of record where I can come in. Let's say you have an agent and you know, you're kind of interested in seeing what the marketplace has to say, but I come in and I pick apart your program and I point out mistakes that have been made and different areas where maybe you could have gotten better coverage or save premium dollars. And I can hand you a piece of paper called the broker of record that an insured can sign. And as long as I have a contract with that insurance company, you know, I get appointed as your agent. So it's, you know, literally firing your agent and hiring me. And that is kind of my niche in selling insurance. I feel, you know, when you bring an account on that way, you build some loyalty and it's not all money-based transaction. I actually have a wall in my office called the Broker of Record Trophy Wall that I hang up every one of my broker of records. And, you know, that's kind of my strategy. And when I go into an account and I was able to You know, because there's a lot of learning-based selling with that. And that's why these designations that they offer in our industry are really important, because I can, you know, perhaps understand, you know, how an endorsement would be excluded and give you better coverage, or just a variety of different technical terminology. I don't know that would benefit going into, but that I can use as, you know, my chits in order for the ask of the broker of record and You know, at that point it becomes pretty definitively that it's your account and, you know, hopefully stays your account for many years to come.

23:03 Scott Ingram: There you go. How many of those trophies are on the wall?

23:06 Daniel McDevitt: So for my time at Tompkins, I want to say there's 38 or 40, and I would say career-wise, close to 60.

23:18 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. So obviously just another way to measure and think about those things. I want to get into… you opened with the work that you do every day in cold calling, in prospecting. What is your approach?

23:32 Daniel McDevitt: So my soup to nuts is what I do is I have like, it's like a postcard almost. It's a little bit bigger than a postcard and I'll try to find blue to no collar type of condensed business park, you know, industrial park. I love industrial parks. Something that's got like 20, 30 businesses in, and then I quote unquote paper it. So I just, my literal pitch when I walk in is I say, hey, I have something to leave here for whoever gets bothered with insurance. That, you know, sometimes gets like a cheeky smile, leave it there. Prior to COVID, I got business cards. I felt like during COVID it's one of the things where people, you know, it's handing stuff out and all the, you know, agoraphobics out there. So now I just take, I have you know, cell phone. I just take a picture of their front door. Then I'll go back to the office and I'll scrub those. So, you know, we use ZoomInfo, which is a great tool. There's other things. There's this tool called Snov.io, RocketReach. Specifically to insurance, there's a website called Insurance X-Date where your workers' comp is public record. And usually your workers' comp, I would say 90% of the times, is concurrent with the renewal date of the rest of your insurance. Not every time, but usually. So then we have a CRM, I enter it in there. And, you know, whenever the appropriate time to follow up is, you know, I give them a call. And I'm very non-aggressive when I'm reaching out to people. You know, I just want to have a quick conversation, see if they're happy with their incumbent, or if there's room to be happier. And if, you know, there's room to be happier, but if, you know, if somebody, at least for what I sell with insurance, if somebody you know, has an agent that they're really happy with, and I can tell from the carrier that they're with that they're probably not getting gouged in rates, what benefit am I doing by forcing myself in there? You know, maybe I can force them and let me give a quote, but in my industry, you know, we don't get paid for our time, right? So I've done it enough where I don't need to practice anymore. So I really want to you know, try to get into the people that have, you know, some legitimate interest early on and are going to be more prone to hearing what we have to offer. And that's my, you know, soup to nuts. You know, if I schedule an appointment, I try to make it within 72 hours from when we're on the phone because, you know, how quick life changes these days. And I don't know if there's anything, you know, more in the specifics there that you'd want to drill into.

26:04 Scott Ingram: I think that does the trick. What you mentioned earlier also on top of kind of the consistent prospecting effort is your positive attitude around that. How are you maintaining your attitude when you're potentially getting punched in the face?

26:17 Daniel McDevitt: I owe a lot of that to Innovage, right? I mean, I was walking into businesses in North and West Philadelphia for 3 or 4 years trying to sell coloring books and remote control cars and just nonsense for $5 or $10. So, you know, you hear a little bit more of an aggressive note. In those areas. So it's kind of no-no that I've gotten post-Innovage has ever been kind of really worse than maybe somebody like physically picking up my box of merchandise and throwing it out their front door. And I put that in perspective. I mean, the worst somebody is going to say to me is no. I think I just have really thick skin for rejection given the fact that I've been, you know, I'll be doing, you know, direct sales for almost, well, in this December will be 18 years. So, you know, coming into it as somebody new in the industry or like trying to add cold calling into that is really just trying to be acceptable that a no is a no, regardless if they scream at you, they hang up on you, or they're kind of passive-aggressive to you. And every no that you get brings you closer to a yes. I mean, literally, you can walk around with money, with cash, and offer it to people. And some people are still gonna say no to you. And that's just the nature of, you know, approaching people. And I think people that look at my success and this organization I'm in now or previous organizations, they kind of like wink wink at me like, uh, Dan, what are you really doing? But my sales manager will tell you, I mean, he's in New York, but he spends time in PA and, you know, sometimes we'll make 50, 60 calls in a day. Which I know, like your tech sales guys, that's like nothing to them. And I can appreciate that and all that. But with insurance, it's a little bit different. And that's, you know, every day, because the more I do, the more the law of averages is going to be in my favor.

28:13 Scott Ingram: The law of averages is a real thing. But what if you could do something to improve those averages? That's what Revenue Grid is all about. Revenue Grid is designed to help you speed up your sales cycles and improve your pipeline visibility. It does a lot. And the best way to learn about Revenue Grid is to experience Revenue Grid. You can get going on a 14-day free trial with no credit card required at top1.fm/revenuegrid. Check them out today. So let's dig into kind of the way that you are structuring your day. And I know you listen to the show, so your alarm clock goes off. What time does that happen? And give us the blow-by-blow.

28:53 Daniel McDevitt: Yeah, it's changed since COVID right? I was home for March 2020 to July '21 is when they started letting producers go back in the office. And then we just had our second kid. We had a son in December, so that brought me back home a little bit more. So usually I'm up between 5:30 and 6, definitely not later than 6. And if it's a day that I'm going in the office, which is usually 3 or 4 days a week, I want to be at my desk by 7:30. And I like to eat breakfast at my office and just kind of skim through emails and, you know, maybe ponder the day and think about how I'm going to go out the day. A perfect day for me would be I have an appointment in the mid-morning where I'm able to do drop-offs around that, and then I get back to the office by lunch. I get all my drop-offs entered by 1:00, 1:30, and then I make calls until 4:00. That's a perfect day. But now with my book of business, it can kind of evolve, and service-based issues, claims come up, you know. And when you're selling insurance, there's what they call the marketing of it. So you get somebody's policy, you put it into record applications, and then it gets assigned to our marketing team who's has the relationships and starts the correspondence with all the different carriers in which we're marketing the account to. So things come in from that, questions underwriters have, supplemental applications. So the day can get sideways on you sometimes, but I definitely would say I spend at least 2 hours every day doing outflow. And a lot of the times it's the phone because It's just easier for me to be sitting in one place and getting on the horn. And from there, you know, I try not to get home too late. You know, our kids are only little for so many years, and I've been able to produce and, you know, maintain a good income level and not staying in the office till 7, 8 o'clock and make sure I'm home to help my wife with dinner and bath time. And then usually it's time with the family. There are exceptions to every rule where I may have to do some paperwork or something in the evening hours, but I try to do as much as I can with leaving work at work. Now with the cell phone and emails, and I have some clients on the West Coast, there's only so much of that that I can do. If a call comes in, I'm not one of those guys that says, well, I'll call you tomorrow. I try to handle it as it comes in. But that is my day in a nutshell.

31:38 Scott Ingram: And how do you make sure… because there's always these demands, I'm sure, especially as your book of business grows and you do a good job, you create opportunities that also creates work. How do you make sure that you, no matter what, are getting kind of that prospecting time in?

31:53 Daniel McDevitt: Well, I have support staff in my office, like account managers and whatnot, that I try to take care of financially. So we're more cohesive in our team. So if I land a big account, you know, I tend to give them pieces of my commission and just like small stuff, like buy them lunch once a week and stuff like that, where I can maybe push a little bit more service stuff on them and it's not met with hostility. And getting into the office a little bit earlier helps because my day is not so rushed and I can plot it out in front of me. I'm not gonna lie. I mean, there's days where just it evolves to such a degree and I get pulled into so many different directions where I'm not able to get those 2 hours in. And I can tell you it's something that I guess it's because I've, you know, worked early on my career as, you know, commission-based sales. And especially you had to do a lot of high volume in order to make $75 to $150 a day in Innovage. So there's just like this guilt that I feel that if I'm not prospecting, and quite frankly, I don't know what I'd be like, what I'd even do with myself that if I have, you know, an open block of time, why I wouldn't be prospecting. It would seem like it would work to my disadvantage by not doing it.

33:17 Scott Ingram: Right. Right. Are there other kind of habits or routines that are kind of central to the way that you operate in your success?

33:24 Daniel McDevitt: I mean, it can get a little bit personal because, you know, I kind of attribute a lot of that to my sobriety, but yeah, I mean, there's different things that I do. Within that, I mean, I'm not trying to force religion on anybody, but I say a prayer every day. I make my bed every day. I eat breakfast every day. I try to take a half hour to myself to… it's not like meditating where I'm sitting Indian style with candles around me, but just have a half hour with my thoughts every day. I have a lot of close friends that also share that aspect with my lifestyle. So, you know, coupling those things together, but I would say my production and what shows up on the dashboard is indicative to my dedication to prospect almost every single day. I like to say every single day, but I just, you know, told the listeners, obviously, like the day can evolve to be such, but if I haven't prospected, it's not because I didn't want to per se.

34:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, let's dig into your information diet because that was kind of the third thing you talked about is being a true student of sales. What specifically are those kind of inputs? What are the books? What are the podcasts? And when are you reading and listening and watching that stuff?

34:43 Daniel McDevitt: Well, podcasts are when I'm, you know, have an opportunity to walk my dog or mow my lawn. It's a big podcast time. Sometimes in the car, I tend to these days be on the phone a lot more in the car. But if I have like a good 2-hour drive, cuz none of my books super local, so I'm usually doing about 20,000, 25,000 miles a year. And books are kind of as I see them on LinkedIn and different types of networks. Like the last sales book I read was called New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg. And that's a great, if you ever wanna know like how my mind works in terms of prospecting. He's done a really good job at laying that out. So I like that book. As I mentioned, just like through my years, there's just been like fictional sales stuff. Like, you know, Mad Men was really influential. And I mean, not that it's the most ethical movie to reference. Boiler Room was a great sales movie. There's different people, things on YouTube. TikTok's actually got like a lot of sales influencers, if you want to call them that, on there that just kind of show up into my feed. LinkedIn, I'm probably on LinkedIn, you know, an hour every day, just kind of scrolling through. And there's a guy named Josh Braun on there who does a lot of good sales scenarios for my industry. There's a gentleman named Charles Specht. Who's really big into the broker of record that I absorb a lot of his content.

36:21 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Well, as always, we'll have links to all of that stuff if you go to top1.fm/this episode number or top1.fm/dan-mcdevitt. We'll get you there. Dan, do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy or approach?

36:37 Daniel McDevitt: It's good to ask that question. I would say in insurance, it's the wedge and the dynamics of selling. Like those 2 things married together. Would be my kind of mantra and how I sell and handle insurance meetings. I would also say that, you know, the law of averages and the law of averages, how I learned them is 1 out of every 10 people are going to say yes to you, right? So just, you know, I think the better you get at what you're saying and how you're saying it and targeting and who you're prospecting, you can maybe get that in a 1 out of every 6, maybe down to 1 out of every 6 people. So that's kind of always my common cure on my pipeline is prospecting, picking up the phone, and nothing happens if nothing happens.

37:29 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. And then how would you describe your style as you're kind of executing against that philosophy?

37:35 Daniel McDevitt: Well, I try to get people to laugh. I'm, you know, big into building rapport through that medium. You know, I believe if you get somebody to laugh, they're gonna like you. And then if they like you, the people do business with who they like. I can also say that I'm, I like to call it tenacious. Some people may call it aggressive. There's no amount of follow-ups that I consider too much. Now I say that because I have been like sometimes on the receiving end of certain tech products, CRMs, when I was a marketing director where Some of those salespeople call me, like, if I didn't answer, they'd call me right back. I don't do that. I don't like that. But like, I will call somebody every week until they tell me not to call them. I think there's a lot of statistics out there, you know, the 80/20 rule, right? Where 80% of sales are made after the 8th contact, but only 20% of salespeople do that. So I have found through the majority of my clients have taken 8, 10, 12 contacts, and maybe even with insurance, it kind of doesn't… like if somebody's renewing their insurance and they have a big enough account on May 1st, there's not logistically enough time for me to take that as a serious opportunity for this year. So it may even take somebody, me, like 2 cycles to get in front of them, but I just keep following up with them. Like I said, until they tell me stop following up with me, or I learned that their son's their agent or something like that, I will just continue to follow up. And then as I would say, my approaches have changed too. You know, with COVID came the whole social media outreaching. ZoomInfo has given me a lot of cell phone numbers. You know, some of your listeners and maybe even you will think I'm crazy when I say this next thing. I know my sales manager did, and then I showed him the results. Would it yield it? But if I'm 4 or 5 contacts into somebody and I've gotten no response and they have an iPhone, because I have an iPhone, so I haven't figured out the best way to do this if they have an Android, but I will take a 30-second selfie video of myself that's like a voicemail almost, you know, hey, I've just been trying to reach out to you about your insurance renewal. We've had a lot of success insuring your competition. Feel free to call or text this number and send it to them that way. And I started converting, you know, I would say 80% of the time that has yielded me some sort of response, not always a yes, but at least some sort of response. So that's been really good. That's awesome.

40:19 Scott Ingram: I think there's no wrong, right? I mean, as long as you're not hurting somebody, right? You're just using another channel, another way. You mentioned Facebook. Earlier. Talk about that. I mean, you're having good success with reaching out through that as well.

40:33 Daniel McDevitt: One of my niches is towing and transportation, and a lot of them have Facebook and different social media. So just a lot of times, you know, the people that you call, the gatekeeper, she or he is doing their job by not transferring you to who you need to talk to. And social media and their Facebook has been a good platform for me to get ahold of the person that I need to get ahold of. I would say text messaging does that really well too. And there's not only ZoomInfo, but for your listeners that don't have ZoomInfo or company doesn't, there's a website that I use a lot and I still use it because sometimes ZoomInfo's not always 100% accurate. It's called searchpeoplefree.com. And I hope it stays free after I tell your listeners this.

41:23 Scott Ingram: Well, it's in their name. That would be really hard for them to change it, wouldn't it?

41:26 Daniel McDevitt: Yeah, I know. But it's been… if you have the person's first, last name, and then like just the town that they're in, it's been pretty accurate at getting me cell phone numbers. And I'm a big texter. I mean, I'm, you know, still a smiles and dials type of guy, but I can appreciate that text messaging is sometimes easier, especially for really busy individuals. So that's been a good way to get a cell phone number because the gatekeeper is rarely going to give you their cell phone number.

41:55 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What is your text approach? I mean, what is it kind of a cold open look like on that front?

42:01 Daniel McDevitt: Hi, Michelle, it's Dan from Tompkins Insurance. I reached out to you a few times over the past 2 years about your insurance renewal, but the timing never worked out. We've had a ton of success in home healthcare services, and I think we could not only add some competition to your bottom line, but give you better coverage and service as well. If you're open to getting something worked up, please give us a call. I say a lot of other stuff too in my approach, like kick tires, shake a stick at things. I try not to use the word quote at all because I don't want a transaction-based approach. If I win an account on price, I'll lose an account on price, right? So, and you know, a lot of my I try to stand out in my competition. So I'll say people, you know, are you… instead of if they're happy, I'll say, do you have a sad song you're looking to make better? And just like little, like, kind of tongue-in-cheek things that I feel keeps somebody engaged and maybe gets me past the, like, the whole robotics of a script.

43:01 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think our approaches are really similar because I use humor so much. And I've been told that the pun is the lowest form of humor. And I'm totally okay with that. You know, it's whatever kind of breaks through. And I think most people are just sending the same old stuff. And if I can insert just a little bit of personality and have a little bit of fun or send somebody some goofy, you know, animated GIF or, you know, just something that is different that doesn't look like all the other garbage that's out there.

43:31 Daniel McDevitt: Yeah. I'll give you an example. There is a sales guy on TikTok that I found, and I've been using this now and I've gotten some response from it. Is if you're a couple touches in this person, I really struggle with email. I sometimes will word vomit in my emails, put too much in there, or it will just look like a real scripted email. So this one in the email, he taught me always put their name in the subject because people, you know, wanna see if their name's involved in it. And then in the email it's like, hey, I've reached out to you a few times. We haven't had success connecting, which leads me to believe one of two things happened. Number one, you've fallen down the stairs and you need immediate help, or number two, you know, you found a solution that's working better and our process isn't going to be working this time. Hopefully it's the latter, but in the event that it is number one, if I don't hear back from you in another week, I'm going to send for help. And, you know, it's like I said, it's a humor, kind of like a cheeky thing to say, but It's gotten some people that have ghosted me to respond.

44:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I think part of the problem that happens in sales with this stuff is sometimes those types of things kind of get viral, right? And then they get overused and then that puts people off. I think the more that you can even invent your own versions of that, and I won't get into specifics because I don't want my thing to go viral and it's not any one thing, but you know, with those videos, First of all, one of the reasons I love the video send so much is because it's something that doesn't scale. If I mention your name and talk about something specific about you in a video, you know that I recorded that just for you and it's not some canned scripted thing. But if you can take that one step further, right? Oh, okay. Maybe they're getting a fair amount of videos. Well, how do I make the video stand out? I'll grab a banana. You know, and talk on a banana and joke about my banana phone or, you know, whatever it is. I mean, there's, there's a lot of different stuff that, that you can do. And again, it's kind of that combination of being creative with the channels. So, I mean, I hadn't even heard or thought of the idea of sending somebody a video on iPhone. I've certainly heard people doing, you know, video messages on LinkedIn and things like that, but using Facebook, using, you know, so what are the other channels that you can use? And then inside that channel, How can you also be creative and insert some personality, insert some humor, do something freaking different?

46:05 Daniel McDevitt: Yeah. I mean, I don't know that TikTok's been a really great video editing platform for people that don't know how to edit videos, which I'm one of, you know, they make it so easy to add music to your video or just, you know, these TikTok videos, they're everywhere. They're on Facebook, they're on Instagram, they're on the news and things like that. So especially like if a sound or a song's going super viral and You know, you just make the video on TikTok, you save it to your camera roll, and then you send it to people that way. I mean, that's something that I've done. But yeah, I just think about like, if somebody were to like text me a video of themselves, why would I not watch that? For me, I'd be like, well, I'm gonna watch this.

46:47 Scott Ingram: Right.

46:47 Daniel McDevitt: And I have red hair too, for your listeners that don't know what I look like. So that's worked to my benefit.

46:53 Scott Ingram: Being creative with videos has certainly worked to my benefit. And as you probably already know, my favorite way to create those videos is with Vidyard. Let's have some fun here. If you'll go to top1.fm/vidyard and download Vidyard, which is free, and create a video and send it to me, I'll send you 50 Sales Coins, or I'll send you a reply Vidyard and show you my banana phone. And this isn't any regular banana. I've never showed this to anybody publicly. So here's the process. Go to top1.fm/vidyard to download Vidyard, record your video, and make sure you reference this episode. And then just let me know if you want the coins or a banana phone reply and send it to scott@top1.fm. All right, let's get back to Dan. So I'll work on putting this into the show notes, Dan. I'll follow up with you. I'd love to get a couple links to some of those TikTokers that you're watching, and we'll put those into the show notes as well.

47:54 Daniel McDevitt: Definitely.

47:55 Scott Ingram: So we talked about something that other people think you're crazy around with some of these videos and the creative outreach. Where do you think the average or typical sales professional is crazy in what they do or what they think?

48:09 Daniel McDevitt: Expecting success to come to them and not being more comfortable and putting themselves out there. I guess it's worked to my benefit, right? Because a lot of my competition isn't cold calling and it's given me to that opportunity. But, you know, I see some of my colleagues and people across the industry that just, you know, they kind of sit there and they click around their emails all day and they look at different websites and they think about who they want to call and they, they spend all this time thinking about it and planning it. And well, I want to make sure I have the right, you know, color, this scheme and this and that. I mean, before I had my postcards that marketing made for me, you know, I literally just went into a supply closet and I grabbed 20, 30 pieces of literature and I went out and hit the streets with it. It's really not like I always tell people that that is just an anchor for why I'm calling. The content… rarely does somebody call and say, hey, you know, I saw this testimonial on your postcard and it's so great, and that's why I want to buy insurance from you. No, it's just, hey, I was there I'm very fortunate to have a really, really unique memory where I can typically remember something about that business as if I went in and, you know, kind of couple that with why I'm calling and start to build the rapport as I'm calling. But, you know, daily activity is what has led to my success in my career.

49:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, it's one of those things where, and I think this is true throughout sales, right, is the bar's kind of low. Right? The level of activity it takes to be successful isn't insane, right? But you have to do it. And the level of creativity that you need, since we just talked about that, isn't insane, right? Because almost everybody does just the same old boring stuff. You only need to be a little tiny bit different, a little tiny bit interesting to really stand head and shoulders above everybody else.

50:06 Daniel McDevitt: Or have red hair. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that too. Yeah, that doesn't help. Hurt. But, and it's that. And when, you know, I've been fortunate to be asked to train people, which I always find it really flattering that a company would entrust me with that. And I'm not any different with them. And I tell them, I say like, listen, there may be other ways to have success in what our industry is. I don't know how to show you those ways. This is the only way I know how to show you. And it's, you know, put on some walking shoes because we're gonna go hit an industrial park. And then get a comfortable chair because then you're going to watch me on the phone all afternoon and that's it. There's no shortcut that I take along the way.

50:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. So along those lines, what advice do you give to somebody that is just starting out in their sales career today?

50:55 Daniel McDevitt: I would say to, you know, I think if you're going to get comfortable in sales and having a comfortability with cold calling is going to go a long way. When I was in Innovize, It was always kind of a lot of our sales mentors would always say, you know, just put a bunch of merchandise on my back and parachute me anywhere and I'll figure out how to sell it because you'll just go into the territory and talk to enough people and you talk to enough people about anything, someone's going to say yes to you. And I think, you know, also in doing that, you build confidence, you learn about people. There's a lot of really valuable education that happens when you're putting yourself out there. Really get comfortable with that. And just remember, a no is a no. And the only way you're gonna get a yes is by getting nos. And there's always gonna be more nos than yeses. The best salespeople in the world, the people that you have on your show, the people, the salespeople that are making millions of dollars a year selling, you know, whatever that is that they're selling, I guarantee you they hear the word no more than they hear the word yes.

51:59 Scott Ingram: Right. Right. What about the advice that you have for somebody that is… they're further into this, right? Like, look, I've been in sales for a while, I'm slogging it out, but they're not having the level of success that they would hope. What's your advice for them?

52:12 Daniel McDevitt: Well, there's a book called Who Moved My Cheese that a lot of companies make their middle management read, and it's about these 4 mice that live in a maze and they all have this like central area where they get cheese every day. There's just… they show up, the cheese is there, right? And then one day the cheese is gone. And 2 of the mice put on their running shoes and they get back out in the maze to find more cheese. And the other 2 mice just say, you know what, what I've been doing, there's no way I'm not leaving. The cheese will be back. The cheese will be back. And they eventually die. They starve to death while the other 2 mice, you know, they find a little bit of cheese there and then they find a little bit more cheese and then they find a bigger version of cheese. And I, I think COVID taught a lot of people that you automatically had to figure a different way to do business, you know, unless you were already kind of working from home. I think that opened up the floodgates for a lot of people. And if something is not working anymore, it's probably the marketplace is telling you something. So figure out what is working. And also, I mean, I feel it's not just a man thing because I know a lot of women struggle with this, like ask for help, network, with people. You know, I can't tell you how many times that I've reached out to somebody on LinkedIn or in some sort of setting where it's just met with like open arms. Like, of course I'll help you out with information and all that. So I think being a student to your craft will go a long way there.

53:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah, love that. And Dan, we're recording this and this whole thing is brand new. But this is maybe a perfect place for me to drop in one of these mentions. So we just launched the Sales Community Coin, and I'm going to offer those coins right now because of what you just said, because the coin is also your ticket to come into the Sales Success Community and the Slack workspace that we've set up. So if you go to salescoin.co/askforhelp, that's going to be your keyword for this episode. You'll get a few coins. And again, that's your ticket to come into the community where there's lots of help, right? And there's lots of people that are eager to kind of help you figure out where the cheese is this week, because to your point, not only does it move, and the way I think about it, it's been a long time since I've read that book, but I think the lessons are great. I also think of it as you've just got to keep moving forward. You just have to put one foot in front of the other as things are trying to trip you up and they're trying to stop you. They're trying to get you to turn around. It's just one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other. And if you keep doing that long enough, you're gonna look back and go, holy crud, I just finished a marathon.

54:53 Daniel McDevitt: Like Jimmy V said, survive and advance.

54:56 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. Love it. So Dan, we have covered a ton of ground. Is there something that you were hoping to talk about or a question you were hoping I would ask, a topic that we wanted to get to that I haven't gotten to yet?

55:10 Daniel McDevitt: No, I mean, not off the top of my head. I think You know, I know there's been some other people that obviously shared that sobriety has been an impact in their professional development. And if I can obviously ever be an outlet for somebody in the Sales Success Community for that, you know, anytime, anyplace, I got the same help from somebody. So I'd be thrilled to help somebody. And I hope my information wasn't confusing to anybody. And that somebody can take a portion of this and add a little bit, something new to their routine and see success like I've done. I've told you, one of the biggest things I picked up from this show has been structuring my discovery meetings with the FORM method. And that's, you know, where are you from? What's your occupation, recreation, motivation to help build rapport. And that has been something that I do every new business meeting for 4 years or however many years ago I learned it from your show.

56:08 Scott Ingram: That's amazing.

56:09 Daniel McDevitt: That's amazing.

56:09 Scott Ingram: I will find that. I'm going to find that reference. We'll put that into the show notes. And I appreciate you calling out the sobriety again because I probably should have leaned into that a little bit more. But here's what I'm gonna do. I've talked to… you're at least the third, maybe the fourth person who has just a really incredible sobriety story and has risen way above and made it to the top of their field, I'm going to create a new sobriety episode page. So just like if you go to top1.fm/sdr for the SDR episodes or /enterprise for those episodes, I'm going to put all of these together at top1.fm/sober. So if you are struggling with that or you're on a sobriety journey and just need some additional motivation, these episodes… because I have leaned into it a lot harder in some of the earlier conversations… super important topic. If that would be at all helpful to you. I'm going to put those together and all of those folks 100% are willing to help in that journey. So if one of those conversations resonates, right? If what Dan said is speaking to you, please again, ask for help, right? Reach out because there's lots of people here who would love to help you turn that around.

57:22 Daniel McDevitt: Definitely. Thank you for that.

57:23 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm so, again, glad you called it out because I probably should have spent more time there, but we are under a little bit of a time crunch. So I just, I want to be respectful. There and of that. So Dan, the, the last thing we always do when we wrap up these conversations is we talked about a lot of stuff, but what is the thing you would challenge our listener to do? What action can they take to improve themselves and improve their results? Something they can do over the course of the next 1 to 2 weeks.

57:50 Daniel McDevitt: I think if you're not already doing some outflow sales and that some of the higher numbers can be daunting, but like you said, like put enough steps in front of you, you eventually run a marathon. And I think the same thing is give yourself a small goal, you know, 5 new people a day. I don't think that's… to do 5 of anything a day is that difficult, especially with sales activity. Maybe to run 5 marathons a day would be hard, but to find 5 new businesses a day and to outreach to them, because, you know, that's 25 businesses a week, that's 100 businesses a month. I mean, if you go by the 1 in 10 law, law of averages, you know, you got 10 yeses waiting for you. So I'd hope that anybody that's been struggling or kind of thinking like, hey, I want to do a little bit more self-business development. I think it was your last episode where a gentleman was selling tech sales. It was Dustin, was the last episode that was Dustin Brown at Outreach? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know a lot of times in that industry, you know, they lean on an SDR. Obviously, and then they come in and, you know, he even said himself, like, I want to do it myself. I want to develop my own business. And nobody's going to develop a better business than you do it for yourself. Absolutely.

59:07 Scott Ingram: What a great place to end. Dan, thank you for the time. Thanks for sharing your story. I appreciate it.

59:12 Daniel McDevitt: Thank you so much, Scott, and have a great rest of your day. 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.