55: LeadIQ's Top SDR - Jeremy Leveille

0:08 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. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram.

0:24 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Jeremy Leveille, who just became the team lead of sales development at LeadIQ. Because before that he was their top senior sales development representative. Welcome to the show, Jeremy.

0:37 Jeremy Leveille: Thank you very much, Scott. Happy to be here.

0:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And a big shout out to Ryan O'Hara, who is the VP of marketing at LeadIQ, for connecting me with Jeremy. Ryan just had me on his show, the Prospecting Podcast, and I'll put a link to that show in the show notes at top1.fm/55 because this is episode 55 where you can go check that out. But Ryan said some pretty amazing things about you, Jeremy, and I believe you were also just named the SDR of the Year at David Dulany's Sales Development Conference, right?

1:07 Jeremy Leveille: That's correct. Yeah, it was a… it's a good honor to have, you know, because there's… I think I read a statistic, there's around like 8,000 at this point, maybe even more of, you know, SDRs, BDRs, whatever you want to call it, you know, business development or account exec… account development representatives. So pretty cool to win that award as the top one.

1:28 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. And there was also something about 69 meetings in one month. So lots to look forward to and lots to talk about. But we're gonna start like we always do, Jeremy, with the top 3 things that you believe have contributed most to your success as an SDR.

1:43 Jeremy Leveille: Sure. Yeah. So I think number one, in really embracing the role of an SDR, BDR, you know, sales development representative, embracing the role, embracing prospecting itself, and, you know, not just seeing it as a stepping stone role that, you know, I'm just gonna come in and try to just like, do the job because it's just this low-level role and then, you know, try to just get to an account executive role as fast as I can. Like, no, I mean, I actually enjoy this, you know. It's… I put in a lot of time and effort into perfecting the craft. So I think that's like number one. Number 2, building a personal brand and really being immersed in my industry, trying to learn as much as I can and network as much as I can with other people in the industry. And share, you know, that content that I find when I'm learning, share it with prospects and other people to try to like become really well-known and be seen as like an expert or thought leader in the space that I'm in. And then number 3 is just like the quality of the outreach over the quantity. You know, a lot of people that are doing the job of SDR, BDR, you know, they're told to do 100 calls a day, 100 emails a day, and it's more about the numbers and the metrics than actually what you're saying to these people and the quality… who are you targeting and what is the messaging you're using to me is the most important thing. So your actual quality of outreach is going to result in people actually responding to you because it's so easy for people to ignore these cold calls and ignore the cold emails.

3:11 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, talk about that a little bit more. I mean, what do you measure? What is the metric that you look at and think about?

3:18 Jeremy Leveille: The biggest things to me is A, meetings booked. But not necessarily meetings booked because they have to actually happen. You know, if people are, you know, if you book 20 meetings and then like 15 of them no-show, then it's like, you know, what are you doing? You know, so meetings booked, but more importantly, meetings that actually occurred that you set, you know, for your account executives, you know, that's one big metric. And then the other one that is equally important to me is not just the number of, you know, meetings that you're booking as an SDR, but what is the quality of those meetings? And are they actually moving forward in the sales process? You know, do they do that? Do you book… yeah, you booked 20 demos, but then they didn't… nothing happened. You know, none of them were closed deals. Like, you know, they just did the demo and then that's it. You know, so are those deals, are those opportunities that you're sourcing, you know, are they resulting in closed won deals? Are they moving forward in the sales process? And also, you know, if they are closed won deals, are they moving forward? What is the deal size? I mean, You know, if you, if all 20 of those 20 meetings are moving forward and they all close, but they're all tiny deals that aren't gonna really move the needle, they're all just like, you know, one-seaters, then what are you doing? You know, so all of that together is what I think is more important. You know, number of meetings, number of meetings that are actually happening, and then the revenue that's being generated as a result, not just, you know, deal sizes as well. So that's the most important thing.

4:41 Scott Ingram: So it sounds like really more the contribution to the total pipeline, which makes so much sense, right? I'd much rather take one really great, well-qualified meeting with an opportunity that's worth, you know, $200,000 in annual revenue versus 5 meetings that are worth $10K apiece that I'm just… is probably the same amount of work for, you know, way less output.

5:05 Jeremy Leveille: Exactly. So, you know, I think being able to really see the big picture there and being able to see, you know, the revenue, be very, you know, revenue-driven as opposed to just you know, like a robot that's trying to just, you know, do a bunch, do 100 calls, 100 emails a day and just book some meetings. You know, it's just a different mindset.

5:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah, for sure. Well, we'll spend a lot of time talking about sort of the specifics of how you're doing a lot of this stuff and how you're structuring things. But before we go there, I mean, I'd love to just get a little bit of backstory and understand how you initially got your start in sales.

5:37 Jeremy Leveille: Sure. Yeah. So I'll try to not have it be too long because I'm 32, definitely a little bit older than most people that are BDRs, kind of the what a lot of people think is the perception is that, you know, they're all 22, 23-year-old kids coming out of college. When I wasn't going to college, I was going for sportscasting. I wanted to be a broadcaster. Obviously, Scott, you have a really good, you know, radio voice, and, you know, that's what I wanted to do was, was, you know, get on the air, do broadcasting. I did an internship at a radio station when I was in college, but all the work there was, you know, not much work for production and getting on the air. So I noticed that more to actually contribute more to the radio station was on the sales side. So I picked up the phone and I was helping out the sales reps there. I was making some cold calls. They were telling me I was making more cold calls than their actual reps, their actual account executives. And they gave me more responsibility to, you know, put on some events for them and make some cold calls. So that's when I started to like actually figure out, oh, I was actually starting pretty good at sales. So that's kind of where I got my start. And I've done sales development, business development at a couple of different companies. One was an outsourced third-party company that, you know, a bunch of different tech companies outsourced their sales development function to them. That's where I started to actually do, you know, the work of a BDR. So I was a BDR there, then promoted to team lead, then went to a different company called NaviSite, was a BDR there for 13 months. Then they moved me into a channel manager role, managing reseller and referral partners. And now I'm at LeadIQ where I've been since February. And, you know, been there as an SDR and now team lead for the SDR team.

7:11 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. I talk a lot about on this show, I consider myself to be an intentional individual contributor. It sounds like you are an intentional SDR.

7:20 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah, I guess so, you know, and I mean, I'm of the opinion that, you know, SDR, like, you know, everybody thinks that you have to get promoted to AE or, I mean, I kind of feel like SDR, AE, and, you know, or like a sales manager, They're all kind of equal, you know, because like some, you don't necessarily want to promote like your, your best SDR to be a manager, you know, your best sales rep to be a manager because it's different skills. You know, it's more of like the leadership skills and motivating skills for being a sales manager. Not necessarily mean that one's better than the other, or one is like actually like a promotion than the other. And different skills from SDR to AE as well. You know, so I think LeadIQ, we kind of consider them all to be equals. We're all just equals. Even though a lot of people, the perception is that, you know, SDR, you know, is a low-level role, but, you know, I embrace, I embrace it. I really enjoy prospecting. Just yesterday I was here in the office until like 10:30 at night. And, you know, it wasn't like, oh geez, you know, I'm working this late. It didn't even seem like work to me. It was more like fun, you know? So I, it's, it's, you know, I still have hobbies, but, you know, it doesn't seem like work because it's more fun for me.

8:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great stuff. Now, if you were starting all of that over again, is there anything that you would do differently?

8:34 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, I graduated college in 2008, you know, when the economy was, you know, not doing so well during the economic crisis. So, you know, and I also didn't really have the business acumen that I do now, the sales skills, the people skills that I do now. So, I think, you know, the maturity that I do now. So, you know, I think the one thing I would do over again would be like that first 3 to 5 years after college when I was just kind of didn't really know what I wanted to do when I was bouncing around and I didn't have the maturity or, you know, the business acumen, sales skills, and people skills that I did, that I do now. You know, I would have probably tried to like, you know, try to streamline that process a little bit in the first 3 to 5 years out of college, like get those skills and learn the stuff that I, that I was, that I was able to learn much later on down the road. So then I'd probably be further ahead, you know, now than I am. But, you know, what are you gonna do?

9:28 Scott Ingram: Sure. And is there something that you would have had immature Jeremy do in his early 20s, right, to build a foundation that would be helpful for you today?

9:39 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah. I mean, I think one thing I probably would have done, like, when I was in college would have been like, I was a communication major because, like I said, I wanted to do sportscasting. You know, I probably would have done, you know, business major instead to at least get some of that foundational, you know, skill set and, you know, business acumen so that when I got out of college, I, you know, would have had some more direction in what I was going to do. Also, you know, I was pretty like just socially awkward when I was in college, and so my people skills weren't as good. I wasn't as confident on the phone actually making sales calls and stuff. So I wasn't as good, you know, at sales when I was first coming out of college, you know, because I wasn't as good with people. And so, you know, I would have done some things differently, tried to, you know, get out more, be more sociable. One thing that helped me a lot socially was when I started to just get out more and socialize with people in real life and get more comfortable and confident actually talking to people, you know, in real life. I would start up conversations with the person You know, in line at the grocery store or at the laundromat, like anywhere I go, just talking to people and, you know, going to bars and just starting conversations with strangers. I started to do that not until I was like 27, you know, started to get more comfortable and confident out in social situations. Took that comfort and confidence with me onto the phone when I started to do business development work just in the past few years. But if I had, you know, started that process a little bit earlier, you know, then that would have probably helped as well.

11:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah, there you go. Now, before I have Jeremy talk about his results, I wanted to remind you to go grab your copy of the Sales Success Stories book if you haven't already. We're getting such great feedback on it. The book features 60 stories from 20 top 1% sales professionals like Jeremy, and all of these stories were written specifically for the book, and they're so good. I can't recommend the audiobook enough because you'll actually get to hear each of the contributors reading their own stories in their own words. You'll find the links to the book on Audible, Amazon, and everywhere else, including a special offer if you go to top1.fm/book. That's top1.fm/book. All right, Jeremy, let's talk about these results and I wanna hear about these 69 meetings in a month. So kinda walk us through the journey at LeadIQ and what you've done there.

11:57 Jeremy Leveille: Sure. Yeah. So shameless plug, obviously I'm not gonna pitch the product very much here, but Using the product at LeadIQ definitely helps. It is a tool that is built for SDRs and to make them more efficient and productive. So actually using LeadIQ has helped, but also, you know, it was just like my second full month here and, you know, just being more comfortable and confident with the product. You know, I just felt like the, a big part of it is confidence in the product and understanding what the value is. And being able to, A, understand what the value is of what you're selling, and B, being able to like have that confidence and know how to actually convey what the messaging should be and how you should actually convey that value to your prospects and buyers. I was able to, like, the light bulb just kind of went on, you know, it just kind of hit me. You know, there was that ramp time of the first like 3 or 4 weeks when I was still kind of figuring out You know, okay, what do we even do? How are we different than some of our competitors? Who should I be reaching out to? What should I be saying? But then the light bulb went off after like the first 3 or 4 weeks and I was like, oh, I got it. This is exactly like why somebody would buy from us and this is why, you know, we're different from our competitors. And this is… and then, you know, as I started to use that messaging and have more, you know, people responding positively to it via calls, emails, LinkedIn, Then I would able… then I was able to iterate and then be like, okay, these things that I'm saying aren't working. These things that I'm saying are working. And then just kind of get better and better as I was going. And also we had, we went to an event, the AISP Leadership Summit, and had a booth there. So 20 of those 69 meetings were from that event. So they were semi, you know, semi-warm leads. Like kind of, they weren't really inbound because they didn't like come to our website and fill out a form. But there were people that like came to our booth and like, I treated it like a cold call. They came to our booth at this trade show and, you know, I had to just look at their badge, figure out who they were, what company they're with, what their role was at that company, what our value might be, and just like ask them some discovery questions and qualify them and generate some interest. And 10 of those 20, I booked with them right there at the booth. So they came to the booth and then, you know, there was enough interest there. That I just pulled up the calendar on my laptop right there at the booth and booked the meetings right there. And then the other 10, I had to follow up with them after, after the event. But, you know, I think that's a big part of like business acumen is like a lot of BDRs wouldn't be able to like really think on their feet like that. You know, if you're just sitting at a computer, you're able to like look the person up on LinkedIn, you're able to do some research on the company, you know, formulate a message that might get them to respond. They reply to your email and you're able to take your time to craft a response and do some research to figure out how you wanna respond to them. But when you're in real life, when you're in person at a trade show, you gotta think on your feet. It's happening in real time. So you really have to have the business acumen to figure out, oh, this company's in the healthcare industry and they sell an ERP system. So this is what I would say to them. And they use Salesforce instead of HubSpot CRM. So I would say this instead. So that was a big part of it as well.

15:07 Scott Ingram: Well, and there's a couple of things about that that I think are really important. I mean, one, the fact that you were booking meetings meetings in real time, right? You weren't waiting for… because I feel like events in particular, it is so hard to convert that excitement that's happening in the moment and when you're having that conversation to now I'm trying to get a meeting when they met 50 other people at that event and were equally excited about that. And now they've got a mountain of work they're trying to catch up on because they've been out of the office for days or a week or whatever it was. But let's get a little bit more granular. Talk about What is that opening question? How are you starting that? And then how are you taking that all the way through to making sure that you're getting that meeting on the spot?

15:50 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah. So, you know, one thing that helps is that, you know, our product isn't super technical or complex. So I basically, you know, when they're at the booth, you know, it's like the first 30 to 60 seconds is, you know, figure kind of qualifying it, figure gauging their interest level and A, how interested they are, and B, how much do they even know about what we do and stuff. And then from there, if there is a little… if I'm able to pique their interest a little bit, we have the laptop right there on the table at the booth. So I'm able to just give them a really sneak peek preview. I'm not going to demo the product right there, but a little bit, like a little mini, you know, demo of how the tool works to at least get them a little bit more interested. And then they're like, oh geez, wow, that's really cool that you can do that. And I'll usually, you know, go on that person's LinkedIn profile and use LeadIQ to show them we can get their cell phone number and email address with one click, put it into SalesLoft and Salesforce. And then they're like, whoa, no way, that's really cool. And so being able to kind of show them a little bit but not too much, you know, still keeping them intrigued and interested helped a lot too.

16:57 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And then, I mean, just to get super specific though, what's the opening? What's the first first question you're asking?

17:04 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah, so I usually make it specific to like to their company. So if they are with, you know, say they're with Staples, Staples, you know, the office supplies, and, you know, I'll just say, hey, you know, I know you guys are a really big company, like you're in charge of their, you know, inside sales team, like what, what is… I make it about them, like what are you, what are you here at the conference for? I might say something like that, or You know, how is your team doing as far as, you know, how much time are they spending like on manual data entry, manually trying to find prospects and who they should reach out to? Just kind of keep it open-ended, keep it light, not like overly salesy. I'm not just diving in like really aggressive trying to like pitch them anything. Just trying to say, hey, you know, how's your team doing? Like, you know, what are you guys running into? And just keep it really light and conversational.

17:55 Scott Ingram: Nice. That's great stuff. So back to the numbers. So you had one month that you set these 69 meetings. What did the rest of the year look like? What else were you doing? Yeah.

18:05 Jeremy Leveille: So my next best month after that was 57 meetings in one month. And then I had a couple other months where I had like 47, 45, 48. I think the lowest month that I've had since I've been here was like 41 or maybe 38 or something. Some of the ones in the, in the beginning when I had like 69 or 57, few of them, like maybe 5 or 10 per month were inbound. So there were people that were a little bit more of a warm lead where, you know, they filled out a form on our website or something, or they chatted with our chatbot on Drift or something like that, or, you know, called the phone number that we have on our website. And then I just qualified them and booked a meeting from there. So in the past couple months, it's only been more like 40 or 45 because now we have somebody that's taking over all the inbound stuff and I'm just doing outbound. But yeah, that's what it's, that's what it's been like. I mean, they thought the goal for an SDR here at LeadIQ should be 15 outbound meetings per month. So I'm kind of doing like 300% of that, like, you know, the production of 3 BDRs. So now they're trying to figure out like, what am I doing? How can we replicate this? You know, so I'm putting together a playbook for what I've been doing so that the other reps that we have can, can try to kind of, you know, not mirror it exactly, but you know, it'll provide at least a guide for them to go off so they can try to emulate that success a little bit.

19:23 Scott Ingram: Well, that's perfect. You teed me up exactly right because I wanted to really dig into, okay, like walk us through the steps. So what does that playbook look like? How are you structuring it? What are the pieces? How do you make this happen?

19:35 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah. So, you know, I put pen to paper on the playbook and I'm still trying to make it like more organized. Like, you know, my number one weakness is probably organization. Like I'm, I kind of am like a mad scientist with just like You know, ran and I kind of just like wing it when I'm reaching out to prospects. Like, I don't, I don't know. I don't have like everybody in the same cadence of, okay, these are all the people I'm going to call today and email today. And then, you know, I call them today. If they don't respond, then I'm going to email them again on Thursday. Like, that is my number one weakness is like actually having that structure nailed down in that process. Like, I'm more just kind of like, I'm, I live on LinkedIn. I see somebody I want to reach out to. I call them, I book the meeting. You know, or I email them. And like usually because the targeting and the messaging is so good that their response… I'm not having to put people into a cadence of, you know, 10, 11, 15, 20 steps and then finally they respond or something. Or, you know, after the 20th email they finally get back to you and say, call me in 6 months or something. Like usually the targeting and the messaging is so good that they're responding within like 2 or 3, maybe 4 touches tops between call and email and LinkedIn. And also having like a good personal brand really helps because I'm, you know, I've somehow been able to get pretty well known in the space and to the point where I don't really have to make a lot of cold calls because the people I'm reaching out to, I'm already connected to them on LinkedIn. I've already chatted with them on LinkedIn. They've already engaged with some of my posts. I literally right now have, I think, 216 connection invitations on my LinkedIn, people that are connecting with me. I can't even keep up with all of them to accept them. And like 90% of them are people that could be, you know, good prospects for me at LeadIQ. So building that brand is definitely part of the playbook. And I've put in some… put some stuff in the playbook, an actual like how to build a personal brand and how to do social selling starting from scratch. So I can kind of dive into that really like quick, you know, if you want.

21:38 Scott Ingram: Yeah, we're gonna turn this into a seminar rather than an interview. No, I definitely want to get into those things. But first, you talked about the first ingredient there was the targeting. So what does the targeting look like? Because I'm sure that's an important ingredient.

21:52 Jeremy Leveille: Yep, definitely. Most important is like targeting and messaging, you know, to me when being a successful BDR. Targeting is just knowing A, what type of account should you be reaching out to, what type of company, and B, what person at that company, what persona, you know, and it's just knowing that and knowing how to find those people, you know. So like for us, it's computer, it's SaaS companies, computer software companies that, you know, have inside sales teams of at least 10 reps. And, you know, they generally, it's going to be between 50 to 5,000 employees. And the person… and, you know, we do well in the US as well as overseas in EMEA. So pretty much anywhere geographically, North America or EMEA. And the personas, you know, director, VP, manager of sales operations, revenue operations, marketing operations, or director, VP, you know, of sales development, business development, maybe a VP of sales, you know. So you have kind of different… those are… that's the targeting, figuring out the right types of accounts and also who do they sell to, like knowing Are they B2B? Like, who do they sell to? Banks? Do they sell to hospitals? Do they sell to people that we would have good contact information data for? That's the targeting piece.

23:02 Scott Ingram: Cool. And then on to messaging, if that's the second biggest component, what does that look like?

23:07 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah, so it's just being able to know, okay, that's who I'm reaching out to, that account and that person at that account. Well, now what the hell am I going to say to them? You know, so just knowing when you get them on the phone, what are you going to say? In the email, what are you going to say that's actually going to get them to respond? And want to book a meeting. So one of the things with messaging that I try to do is my messaging is very informal. You know, as you probably can tell, I don't talk really, you know, overly corporate and formal and professional. I think a lot of the template emails that, like, there's all these bots and automation and AI and stuff that are blasting out a lot of these template emails, or it might just be like marketing department puts together you know, these template emails for their SDRs to blast out. They always look so like… it's like people don't talk that way. You know, when I see these templates, it's like way too formal.

23:59 Scott Ingram: It'll…

23:59 Jeremy Leveille: you'll see a cold email from an SDR that starts out with, you know, dear Bob, dear Bob, and then off from word one, right? Yeah. And then at the end it has sincerely, your regards, your best wishes or something, and our product does blah, blah, blah, blah. It just seems like it's like People don't talk that way. So, you know, one thing with my language, it's more informal, and then also it's very concise. I try to have all my, like, emails be very concise, right to the point, and be very direct and specific. And really, I don't make it… I don't sugarcoat anything or beat around the bush. Like, when I'm in my email messaging or calls, whatever it is, calls, emails, LinkedIn, I'd be… I'm very direct and specific with who LeadIQ is, why they should demo us, what our value is. And I'm not, I don't beat around the bush. I beat them over the head with it. I'm very obvious about, because the reason why I do this is because these prospects get so many calls. They get so many emails. Like it's insane. You know, like the prospect that I'm sending that email to, they're getting 100 other emails. And especially if they're a director of sales operations, Like, there's graphics that people have, you know, done studies in, like, the number of sales and marketing technologies that exist right now. Like, the market is at an all-time high for how saturated it is. So this person I'm sending this email to, oh, you know, we have great data for blah blah blah, like, there's 50 other companies that are all sending, you know, an email about that. So people are so busy with meetings, they're getting lots of different emails. When they're reading that email that they're getting from me, Just like if they're doing a demo with us, they're getting emails and they're getting Slack messages, they're in the middle of like 10 different projects, they're doing so many different things, their mind's in 10 different places. So I try to be very specific and direct and I beat them over the head with what the value is that we have. So that's part of the messaging as well, is being very obvious with it. And one way I do that is with screenshots. I don't… oftentimes most of my emails are not just words. They're not just text. I'll have screenshots of maybe some of our customers that, you know, they maybe like said something on LinkedIn or they said something in an email or something, they saying how great our tool is and how much success they're having with it. I'll take a screenshot of that and maybe just blur out their name and drop that into emails. So then it looks better. It's not just me saying how great we are, it's our customers saying it. I have a bunch of these different screenshots that I've come up with. Based on like people that have said different things about our tool and the success they've had with it. And I'll just kind of drop those in or, you know, maybe I'll screenshot some of the data that we have on the people that their sales team actually reaches out to so they can actually see the visual of it right there. It's not just me saying how great it is. I'm actually showing them. So that's part of, you know, what goes into the messaging.

26:47 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. Now, as far as channel goes, right? So you're talking about emails there. You're using LinkedIn. I know you're using the phone. What do you find converts the best?

26:57 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah, I mean, I really believe in multi-channel, multi-prospect, and multi-touch, you know. So I'm reaching out to more than one prospect at a company, you know, for one. I'm reaching out to… it's multi-channel, so phone, email, LinkedIn, you know. And to answer your question, I mean, I think more of my meetings are getting booked over email, but it's all this, like, it's all all 3 channels working together, you know, because like if I… I think if somebody is more likely to respond to my email if they also just listen to the voicemail that I sent them and if they're also connected to me on LinkedIn, you know, oftentimes I'm reaching out to somebody because I saw that they posted something on LinkedIn. So the subject line of my email says your post, and I'm just… I'm not going to just put for the subject line your LinkedIn post because I could just put that for… they could read that and be like, oh, they're putting that for anybody. I'll put your post about X, like specifically what was it about, and then an email. I'll even screenshot their post, you know, so it's really direct and obvious. You know, I'll screenshot their post, and so I'm kind of incorporating their LinkedIn post into the email. Or I'm reaching out to somebody who viewed my LinkedIn profile, or they liked my LinkedIn post. So it's kind of all of them are being worked in there together, you know, or I'll say in the voicemail that I leave them, I'll say, that I'm going to send you an email. So they're more likely to kind of respond. So it's really, you know, a strategic use of all 3 channels and multi-touch as well. You know, like I don't… I'm not going to just give up if the first 1 or 2 emails that I sent somebody, they didn't respond. You know, I'm going to try again 2 or 3 days later. Sometimes it takes, you know, 5, 6, 7 touches before they respond, but usually it's within 2 or 3, maybe 4 touches if the targeting and the messaging is good enough before they'll respond.

28:44 Scott Ingram: Right. And then that goes back to your quality versus quantity. You're spending just a little bit of extra time doing that extra personalization, putting in the screenshots. And it sounds like most of those screenshots are about them, which most people find fascinating.

28:57 Jeremy Leveille: Yep, exactly. Yeah. And like, you know, I'll come up with other little things to kind of personalize it about. You know, it might just be sometimes I'll do videos for people. I do a lot of videos. And the videos are personalized to that person. I'll do songs. I have a guitar in here in the office and I'll just play the guitar. And I think part of the reason why these songs that I'm making are getting such a high response rate, like I'll do rap songs where I do like freestyle raps and I also play guitar songs. I think like at one point, out of 10 songs that I made people, like 9 of them booked meetings. Like it's insane, the response rate. But I think with the guitar songs, like, they get such a kick out of it because I don't even know how to play the guitar. So they think it's hilarious. Like, I just literally just… we did a demo for a company, you know, I won't say who it is, obviously. We did a demo for a company, you know, earlier today where the cold email that I sent was a guitar song. And I'll put in the subject line… they're more likely to respond to my email and open it because in the subject line I put Made a cool… made a rock video for you, comma, Doug, or whatever their name is. You know, like, who's not going to open that? And then I just put, hey Doug, made you this cool rock video, colon, and then bam, there's the video using Vidyard. And, you know, they get a kick out of it because I don't even know how to play the guitar, but I have this guitar, it's my girlfriend's guitar, and I do a song. It'll be always less than 60, maybe 90 seconds tops. But when I sent this to this one guy and then he replies and he's like, this is effing hilarious. Just forwarded it on to my entire SDR team. We started using Vidyard, but they're not having that much success with it. But I see that you can help me with blah, blah, blah. And you're different than what I have now because blah, blah, blah. Like I literally, all I sent him was a song, but he was able to piece together what my value prop was and how we could help his team and what we integrate with. Because I was kind of mentioning it was kind of like a pitch in the song, but I didn't even write it. It's not like I took like 20, 30 minutes to write out lyrics and write out notes and stuff. Like I just did it off the top of my head and, you know, I'm able to kind of do this song and shoot it in less than 2 minutes and then send it. Like a lot of SDRs are probably taking more time than that, you know, to just write an actual text email. So it's not taking that much time. I'm still able to kind of scale it and still reach out to a lot of people each day.

31:25 Scott Ingram: That is, I was gonna call out at the beginning of that, I'm like, okay, well, you know, you've obviously got some talent as a musician. What about the rest of us? But what you're saying is you have none of that. You're just chucking stuff out there and having fun with it. And that's getting people's attention.

31:40 Jeremy Leveille: Yep. And another thing like that I do is part of my brand is like I have a collection of NBA throwbacks, like a lot of the videos that I post on LinkedIn.

31:47 Scott Ingram: I've seen that.

31:48 Jeremy Leveille: I'm wearing throwback jerseys. And so like, for example, I ran, you know, if I'm sending a video to somebody in the Atlanta area, I'll wear my Atlanta Hawks Dominique Wilkins throwback jersey in the video. If I'm sending a video to a prospect that's in Chicago, I'll wear my Michael Jordan throwback jersey, you know. And at one point, like, I ran a… I sent a bunch of videos to prospects that are in the Atlanta area, and I was able to kind of scale it. I literally sent the same video to like 40 prospects where it wasn't like anything about LeadIQ. It was just literally me playing the song Welcome to Atlanta by Ludacris for 30 seconds. And I was just like wearing my Atlanta Hawks Dominique Wilkins throwback jersey and just like lip-syncing the words to the song for 30 seconds. And I sent that and obviously I didn't just send that. I mean, I didn't, you know, I put like a 1 or 2 sentence value prop about who LeadIQ is and how we could maybe help their team. And the response rate was insane. Like literally, you know, everybody booked a meeting. So, you know, I try to just be creative and have fun with it.

32:43 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. And we are going to load the show notes with a bunch of examples of these so we can sort of help people understand what this really looks like in the real world. So I'll work with Jeremy on getting a bunch of those going. If you go to top1.fm/55 or top1… I don't think I've talked to another Jeremy yet. So top1.fm/jeremy, that'll get you there too. And we'll pull that all together. That'll be a lot of fun. I cut you off a long time ago and we were talking about the playbook and you were about to talk about kind of building that personal brand from scratch. What does that look like? What are the ingredients? What are you recommending that people do so that they have more visibility and people are able to kind of connect with them in this way?

33:25 Jeremy Leveille: Sure. So I break it up into 3 parts. Like when you're… if you're starting from zero and you have no personal brand, like you're not really posting that much stuff on LinkedIn, here's what I recommend people to do. Your first 1 or 2 months at the company, Just observe, you know, don't post anything. Just observe, just observe what people are posting on LinkedIn and, you know, and don't connect with a ton of people. Just follow. If you see a prospect that you're like prospecting, don't connect with them because they're just going to be there. They're going to see that you sent them an email like 5 minutes ago, or you just left them a voicemail. They're going to see you sent them a connection request. This is just like, they're just gonna be like, all right, this is just some SDR trying to prospect me. Why would I connect with them on LinkedIn? You know, so just follow them, you know, follow other like thought leaders and experts in whatever industry, you know, whatever space that you're in. If you're going to connect, maybe just connect with people that you work with, connect with some of the partners and customers that you have. But in the beginning, just focus on following people that are relevant to your industry, your space, people that like whoever your buyers are, you know, if you sell to healthcare, healthcare CIOs, like who are they following? What type of content are they interested in? Follow those people and just observe for the first 1 or 2 months, like what types of content is out there that's relevant to your buyers. So then months 3 and 4, 3 or 4, you start posting things on LinkedIn, but you're not posting your own original content. What you're posting is industry content, you know? So if you're selling, if you're like in sales space, Maybe like Topo articles or CB Insights articles, Sales Hacker articles, HubSpot blog posts, you know, videos that, you know, maybe the Top 1 FM, you know, podcast that Scott does, or, you know, a different podcast, you know, whatever space you're in, things that are relevant. Start posting content that is relevant to your buyers. And you can do a couple things. Not only are you posting stuff on LinkedIn and maybe you tag some people that might find value in it, and then you can connect with those people. But you're also putting your two… you don't just post it, put like your own two cents about why that content is valuable, why you found it valuable. And then you're going to be seen as not just some person that's posting random stuff, you actually have an opinion about it. And then the people will start following you that are in your space. Maybe some of your prospects will see these posts and they'll be like, oh wow, this is somebody who's actually contributing, you know, some good discussion and some good insight. About content that's relevant to me. It's not just some random SDR that's trying to get a meeting with me. So start posting that stuff. The other stuff you can start posting is prospect content. So if one of your prospects, like, you know, you sell into healthcare CIOs, maybe that prospect, that healthcare CIO recently spoke at an event, or maybe they recently were featured in a blog post, or they posted some content, share that. Or they were featured in a podcast or article. Post that and tag them in it. So there's industry content, there's prospect content. Then finally, and this should be like the smallest part of it, is company content. You know, you don't want to make all of your posts about your company and your product, but you can occasionally do that. So, you know, use the content that your marketing team puts out, you know, and not… don't just put it out there on LinkedIn, but wrap your own… wrap your context around it. Why do you think this case study or that video is valuable? To your, to your buyers. So that's what you can do like your first month 3. And so month 1 and 2, you're just observing. Month 3 and 4, you start posting, but that's the kind of stuff you're posting. Then in month 5, 6, you can start actually posting original content, but don't only post original content. Most of the content you're posting, even in month 5 and 6, should be, you know, industry content, prospect content, company content. But now little by little, you're also adding in there, maybe 10% of the content you post is your own original content, because now that you've been with the company 5 or 6 months, you've had enough conversations with prospects, you know, via calls, emails, LinkedIn, and you have enough of the business acumen on your space and industry you're in, you can start to actually formulate your own posts, maybe do some videos or short-form, long-form posts on LinkedIn that might be relevant to your buyers. And some things that for original content that seems to drive more engagement is posts that have humor or they have your vulnerable side. Don't just try to make it seem like everything is great. If you're able to use humor or some insight, what do you have for insight that is valuable to your audience that they might not know about? What should be keeping them up at night? Kind of formulate that in some posts. Controversy. Don't say anything that's gonna get you fired, but I guarantee if you post 10 things on LinkedIn, the one thing that's a little bit controversial and is taking a stand on something is gonna get the most engagement than the things that are just wishy-washy and not really taking a stand on something. So those are… and then also collaboration posts. Maybe there's somebody that you, that you see as a thought leader in the space and you want to like collaborate with them on a video and post that. Then they're gonna share it with their audience and you're gonna share it. And it's not just you putting yourself out there saying all these things, it's you and another person kind of going back and forth sharing some ideas. We'll get more engagement as well. So that's kind of, you know, the kind of the framework that I've built for getting started with social selling and building your brand.

38:48 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. So we talked about the targeting, we talked about the messaging, we talked about building your personal brand and leveraging LinkedIn. Are there other kind of core segments of that playbook you're building?

39:00 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's just, I mean, that's most of it, you know, then there's also metrics that are, you know, kind of more specific to the company here and what you should be targeting, how to get ramped up as a BDR, you know, getting ramped up to the number of meetings that you should be hitting, but that's most of it. And then another part of it is like, where do you find leads? You know, so you know what the target account is, And who would have reached out to you with that account? Well, how do you find them? You know, that's part of it as well. Just, you know, different lists that we have for some of our BDRs to call on, but we've covered most of the playbook here.

39:37 Scott Ingram: Beautiful.

39:38 Jeremy Leveille: Beautiful. I'm giving away a lot of the secrets.

39:40 Scott Ingram: That's what we do. That's what we do. So let's switch gears a little bit. I mean, we call the show Sales Success Stories. I feel like we should share a story. What's the story of like the most creative favorite thing you did to get a meeting or maybe the hardest one? The one that was just hell in a handbasket trying to get through, but you found a way and you made it happen.

40:01 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah. So one that's pretty cool is, you know, some, a lot of times it takes some time, you know, you really have to be strategic and do multichannel and it might take a few months. There's one where, you know, I was connected to them on LinkedIn and had chatted with them on LinkedIn a little bit, but I wasn't able to book the meeting yet. The process was delayed in booking the meeting because the prospect, they were on paternity leave. Their wife had, had a child. So what I did was, my girlfriend is very crafty. She's not, she's not in tech, she's not in sales, but she's very crafty and, and, you know, makes jewelry and stuff like that. One thing she does is she'll, if one of her friends or family member is, is pregnant having a baby, she makes these like custom, custom onesies with like you know, she'll do, you know, graphic design and put some type of like image that's, that's like an inside joke that she has with that person on the onesie. So I had her like take some onesies and then for the prospect, I took their, their company logo and put that on the onesie. And then the LeadIQ logo, I put just like in small, just like on the corner of the sleeve. So, and then I shipped that out to the prospect and You know, so that was part of the outreach was that, you know, sending, sending that onesie to them. I also did like a screen share, did a screen share video at one point. So, and also incorporated phone. Like I actually had caught the guy, you know, on his cell phone and had a quick conversation kind of qualifying the potential opportunity, you know? So it was, it was delayed. The process was delayed. And then finally, once they were in the buying window and they actually had to, you know, I actually had to incorporate a couple other contacts. You know, because a different contact, one of their account executives posted something on LinkedIn about how they're evaluating different tools and they're, you know, looking for recommendations about different tools that they should use. So I literally screenshotted that post by one, by one of their account executives and put that in email to this prospect that I had already been working with and engaged with. Not only did I include that screenshot of that post where they were asking about different tool recommendations, But the very first comment under that post was somebody recommending LeadIQ, and that comment had like 8 likes. So I made sure that that part of it was also in the screenshot and then sent that to the prospect. And then literally the next morning had an email back from him ready to finally book the demo with us. So, and from initial, the first call or email until they booked the demo was at least 5, if not 6 months. But, you know, you have to have patience and never stop adding value. You know, at no point was I just checking in or touching base or, you know, hey Bob, did you get my email or something like that? Like every touch, every time I reached out to them, I was adding value.

42:53 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, I think it's, you can almost look at, you know, go get the emails from one of your own executives and all of the stuff that you see over and over and over again, never do any of that. And you'll probably be really well served.

43:07 Jeremy Leveille: Yep, exactly.

43:09 Scott Ingram: So Jeremy, what motivates all of this? Like, what motivates you? How do you think about motivation?

43:15 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah, I mean, I really am just motivated to like to do the best I can, you know, and just be as successful as I can, you know. And I mean, obviously money is part of it. Like anybody that's in sales, you know, they want to make money. They want to be able to you know, afford things that they, that they need. You know, money is part of it, but I think also something that, that drives pretty much all salespeople that most of them don't like talking about, it's kind of like a, you know, this hush-hush thing, is ego. And, you know, most salespeople do that. That is a big part of the drive is ego and being on podcasts like this, winning that SDR of the Year award, You know, it motivates me, it drives me, like getting that kind of recognition, getting, you know, being a team lead, you know, that motivates me. And also, I'm always just like looking for what's next as far as sales is always changing, technology is always changing. What works today did not work 6 months ago. What works today is not going to work 6 months from now. So that also motivates me, you know, so it's partly the, you know, the ego drive and sense and feeling of accomplishment, but also it's like, okay, like, yeah, I'm doing pretty good in my role, like what I'm doing right now. Well, what about a year from now when literally everything that I'm doing to be successful is not going to work? Like always being able to stay ahead of the curve and network with people, going to industry networking events to talk to people and exchange ideas and stay on the up and up with what's changing. And, you know, checking out different posts on LinkedIn and reading different books and stuff to always stay ahead of what's next so you don't fall behind.

44:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's awesome. Well, obviously we're gonna break it right now. I mean, now after everybody listens to this, everybody's gonna be mailing onesies. It's not gonna work anymore.

45:09 Jeremy Leveille: Exactly. Yeah, and like all these videos that I'm doing, like right now, you know, calling prospects on their cell phone. Is working because not a lot of people are doing it. And that's one of the things that LeadIQ is able to do is get cell phone number data for people. So that's working. And sending these videos to people, you know, where I'm doing guitar videos and rap songs, that's working because not a lot of people are doing it. Well, you know, and sending onesies and stuff and direct mail, like some of this creative out-of-the-box stuff. But, you know, 6, 12 months from now, you know, some of this stuff will work, some of it won't. You got to just stay up and up.

45:41 Scott Ingram: Well, you know what though? I thought that… I've been saying that for 2 years. And having a lot of conversations with Tyler Lessard, who is VP of marketing over at Vidyard. And I, you know, my original impression was the same as you, right? Like, this is awesome. This is going to be great for like a year and then everybody is going to be doing it. But you know what's different about that tool in particular? And I think there's a couple of others sort of in that genre. It is, it's not, you can't scale it, which is good, right? It takes effort. People actually have to work at it and be human and put some personality into it and you can't send a Vidyard GoVideo to 300 people in a day or 1,000 people in a day. It's not possible unless it's the same one and it's just generic and that's gonna kinda come apart. So I think a lot of the things that you're talking about, a lot of things that you're doing, going back to that quality trumps quantity, if you do it in this way, that never gets old. That's never going to break because not everybody is willing to do the work to do it.

46:46 Jeremy Leveille: Yep, exactly. And same thing with like, you know, direct mail where we sent, we sent like Beatles album to a prospect, you know, Beatles vinyl. And, you know, she responded back like, wow, that's pretty cool. Like, I'm… she actually said, I'm trying to get my team to do more personalized stuff like that. You know, it's going to resonate with people. It's going to help stand out from the noise because you're actually taking the time to be a little bit more personalized and thoughtful with the outreach. You know, you can kind of do with video, with Vidyard, you know, you can kind of record one video and then just, you know, you could send it to like 300 people, but, you know, I just think it wouldn't work as good. You know, it's just the same thing as like if you write a template, you know, if you just put, you know, hey, you know, and you do a mail merge, so you just put the prospect, you just put name and then it inserts their name and, you know, we do blah, blah, blah. If you're just kind of segmenting a list and then just kind of sending that email out to 300 people, like it just doesn't, it hasn't worked for me, you know, being able to do that. I've tried it and then the response, the reply rates, what we've seen is actually more people when you do that and you just kind of blast out that same message in bulk to like 100+ people, what I've seen as a trend is more people are unsubscribing than replying. So, you know, you send something, you know, in bulk to like 200 people, you know, you're going to get like, you know, say you get a reply rate of like 3 or 4% that are actually replying. Well, you know, most of those are going to be not positive replies. They're going to be people saying unsubscribe me or take me off your list or something. But, you know, if that's 3 or 4%, like 7 or 8% of those, of those are going to be people that are clicking unsubscribe. They're like, you know, then once they unsubscribe or they mark it as spam or something, then you're not going to be able to have any of your emails delivered to that person at all anymore. So SalesLoft just posted something on LinkedIn the other day about how just something as small as customizing the subject line of the email makes it, I think they put it like 5 times more likely to get a response. So whether it's mentioning in the subject line a mutual connection that you have, Or, you know, a post that they made on LinkedIn. Or one thing that I do sometimes for subject line, if it's somebody who has been with their current company for a long time, I'll put congrats on, you know, I literally, I just did this earlier today. I went on their LinkedIn, they've been with the company for 6 years, which these days that's like an eternity. You know, people change jobs so frequently these days. Literally my subject line was, Congrats on 6 years at insert company. You know, I'm not going to say the name of the company, but I put the name of the company and then an exclamation point. You know, like I wouldn't be able to, cause I'm customizing the number of years they've been there and the name of the company. Like I wouldn't be able to send that same thing to 100 people, you know, or sometimes I'll leave the subject line blank cause not a lot of people do that either. But yeah, I mean, personalizing as much as you can that way it's not going to look like spam there when they, they, they can tell people you're getting more accustomed to seeing all these templates. They can tell what a template is, and if it looks like something that could have been sent to 100 other people, they're just not going to respond.

50:04 Scott Ingram: Yeah, for sure. So maybe it's that, maybe it's something different, but what do you find to be the hardest part of sales today?

50:11 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, for my company at least, it's being able to kind of differentiate from some of our competitors. We're in a pretty competitive space. 2 competitors in particular that, you know, like 80-90% of the people that I reach out to are using one of them, if not both of them, you know. So for my company in particular, that's the number one challenge, is being able to differentiate from those 2 companies overall. I mean, I, I would think it's just because buyers are so busy, and like I was saying, you know, they're getting… they have so many different priorities and projects going on at one time, and, you know, they being able to actually get them to want to do that project, you know, evaluate your product. Why would they evaluate that instead of the other 50 things that are on their plate? You know, it's so easy for them to just stay with the status quo. You know, it's… they could just, you know, unless the impact isn't great enough, you know, unless the impact on, you know, their future state with your product, they're not able to see how that future state with your product is. If they don't see it being that much different than what it is today with the status quo, then they're just gonna stay with it because they're busy. You know, they don't have time to evaluate, you know, 20 different things at the same time. I think that's the biggest challenge right now.

51:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah, for sure. Well, let's go into… I've been having so much fun digging into all the prospecting, your playbook and everything else. I've ditched most of the other stuff that people like to hear about just in terms of the habits and routines, the way that you're sort of managing through everything. And I know you've listened to the show, so just walk me through, you know, what's a typical day, right? The alarm goes off, What happens start to finish?

51:50 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah, so the first thing that I do is I look at my calendar, my Google Calendar, and I look… so I try to figure out what my day is going to be like as an SDR. Literally, you know, as other people that are SDRs or SDR managers, you know, know that, you know, you don't have a lot of meetings like people that are managers, directors, VPs. Like, they're all… their whole calendar is just meetings, you know. They just go from one meeting to another or whatever. They're one They have one-on-ones with their reps. Like literally an SDR's calendar, it should be, you know, unless they have pointless meetings, literally 100% from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, whatever their entire day is prospecting. That's it. That's their day is prospecting. So that's, you know, and then you can kind of dive deeper obviously and get more granular as far as, okay, what are you actually doing when you're prospecting? But the first thing I do when I come in is I look at my calendar because Yes, 100% of my time when I'm in the office is prospecting, but I do like to sit in on a lot of the demos that I book. So I think that's a very good idea for a lot of SDRs out there. When you book a demo, you should be on that demo and do a handoff at the beginning of the call, you know, and say, hey, hey prospect, you know, thanks for making the time to talk to us. You know, based on our conversation yesterday about XYZ, you know, we could potentially help your team fill XYZ gap and, you know, drive XYZ results. And on with us is so-and-so, my account executive, that'll take it from here, you know. And I'll just kind of do that handoff in the beginning of the call. So I like to be on a lot of the demos that I book. So that's gonna… when I look at my calendar, I'm looking at, okay, I got it. There's a demo at 10, there's a demo at 3, and there's a demo at 4. So that kind of gives me an idea of I want to be on those 3 calls. That's, that's A, I look at my calendar to figure out how my… what calls I want to be on. But B, I send a really quick reminder to each of those prospects, you know. So if I have 3 demos that are going to be happening that day that I already booked, I just go into my Google Calendar, click on the invite, and then hit email. You can just from the invite email that prospect so that it's attaching that email to that invite so they can see it's an invite that's on their calendar, they accepted it. And I'm just, I just literally just all I put is, you know, Bob, comma, you know, look forward to our call at 3 o'clock Pacific, Jeremy. That's all it says and I hit send. I'm not saying confirming our call because that kind of gives them out. They can just reply and be like, oh, it doesn't work for me anymore. You know, I don't want them to, you know, get out of it and not take the demo. I'm just kind of giving them a reminder so that it increases the chances that they actually show up. So that's what I do very first thing in the morning. Check my calendar, figure out what calls I want to be on. And then send those reminders so that the demos that I booked that day actually show up. And then from there it's prospecting and I just figure out, okay, I look into SalesLoft and figure out one, one sales hack I like to do very first thing in the day is bang out, is come into the office maybe like half hour or an hour early, bang out 15, maybe 20 really good personalized emails to prospects. I'll bang out like 15, 20 of them first thing in the morning, bright and early. And then what I'll do is, as you know, people listening to this that use tools like SalesLoft, Outreach, Yesware, they all know the way it works. You get notifications. There's like a little ticker. It'll tell you when people are opening and reading your emails. So throughout the day, as those 20 people that I just emailed the first thing in the morning, throughout the day, as those 20 people start opening the email, SalesLoft will tell me, and then I just click their name and then I click dial. And I have my headphones. We don't have desk phones here, you know, and I just have a headset that plugs into my laptop. And then, you know, SalesLoft has a dialer, and then using LeadIQ, I'm able to get anybody's cell phone number. So I just click the dial and then I have a conversation, you know, and I use that as a trigger to call them because, you know, when it says that they're viewing the email, because A, they have the email right in front of them that I sent them, you know, they're either on their phone looking at the email and I'm calling their cell phone. Or they're on their computer looking at my email and then they're going to answer, you know, in the email. So the email's out there in front of them. It's fresh. So when I say it's Jeremy at LeadIQ, like they're not going to be like, wait, who's that? Like, what are you calling about? Like they're looking at the email that I sent them. So they have that context already. And also they're more likely to answer the phone since they're viewing the email. They're right next to their computer. They're right next to their phone. So that's one thing I do is throughout the day, I'll look at who's opening the emails, pick up the phone, call them right when I see that notification that they're viewing the email. And then at the end of the day, maybe like the last 30, 60 minutes, any of those 20 people that I, that didn't read my email, I'll just bang out like 5 or 10 more calls at the very end of the day and call those people. So then I've called and emailed all those people. So that's kind of one thing that I do throughout the day.

56:38 Scott Ingram: And what's, what's a typical kind of start and finish? I know you mentioned earlier you were in the office till 10:30. I assume that's not typical. What's an average day for you?

56:46 Jeremy Leveille: Oh, it is. I work from 6:00 AM. No, I'm just kidding. You know, it's, I come in around 8:30. Maybe 9 o'clock most days, and then I stay until usually at least 6, if not 6:30, maybe 7, sometimes till 7:30. I mean, you know, yesterday was until 10:30, sometimes until 8, 8:30, but most of the time I leave by like 6 or 6:30, maybe, yes, maybe 7 at the latest. But then there's every now and then days where I'll stay until 8 or 9. You know, I don't have kids and My girlfriend works second shift, so she works until 11 o'clock at night. And, you know, I like it. Like I said, it's not really work for me. It's fun. It's more like a hobby. So I stay pretty late. And I find that in order to be successful as a BDR, you have to put in a little bit more time. You can't just put in, you know, like 9 to 5 hours and then you take an hour-long lunch. So then that's only 7 hours of working because this… it's tough to actually get that balance between quality, number of outreach. Like, if you're putting in all this personalization and stuff that I'm doing and making videos and all this stuff, like, doing all this, like, it's lower volume. So, you know, if you're only working 7 hours a day or 7 or 8 hours a day doing that type of lower volume, you're only going to reach out to like 10 people a day, 15 people a day, and then that's not enough people. So, you know, or you're going to kind of just blast people and just kind of do these mail merges and send out templates if you're able to get the volume up and still only work 8 hours a day. So I think to be successful and have that balance of achieving both the quantity and the quality, you have to kind of… it's just the reality of being an SDR. I think most successful SDRs aren't just working 8 hours a day. They're putting in a little, they're working 45, maybe 50, maybe even 55. I don't want to work more than 55 hours and kind of burn myself out, but somewhere in that range in order to be a little bit more successful.

58:39 Scott Ingram: Sure. Yeah. I feel like I don't know that there's anybody that's really successful at anything that only works an 8-hour day. You know, there's… I joke that, you know, hard work is a given if you want to be great at sales. And it's not an either/or of working smart or working hard, right? I'm yet to talk to somebody on the show who's just like so dialed in and figured this out and so smart that, you know, they're number one and they work 3, 4 hours a day. Like that's If somebody knows that person, please get in touch with me. I would love to figure that out. But I think at the end of the day, it's a combo, right? You got to do the hard work, but you got to be smart about it too, right? Like if you're just an idiot and you're working your butt off, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting great results if all you're doing is loading up your spam cannon and hoping that works.

59:25 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah, exactly. And I think the only person that works less than 40 hours, Jill Konrath wrote the book More Sales Less Time, a good book that I recommend. I'm still trying to put into practice a lot of the stuff that she talks about in there. She says she only works like 35 or 36 hours a week, but I mean, that's Jill Konrath, you know. I mean, she's, you know, arguably the most well-known salesperson in the world, you know. So she only works 35, 36 hours a week because over the past 30 years she's built up herself. She's put in a lot of time to build herself up and be really successful in sales so that now, you know, she doesn't really have to do a lot of cold calling. Like, she's Jill Konrath. Everybody knows who she is. But if you're not Jill Konrath, yeah, you got to be able to put in… you'd have to be willing to put some more time in. Yeah.

1:00:16 Scott Ingram: Step 1, become Jill Konrath. Step 2, work 36 hours a week.

1:00:20 Jeremy Leveille: Exactly.

1:00:21 Scott Ingram: So, Jeremy, any other, like, habits or routines that are really core to the way that you function?

1:00:27 Jeremy Leveille: You know, it's just really learning as much as you can and like putting yourself in the position of the buyer, you know, in your industry. And, you know, if you sell to, you know, the automotive industry, like becoming an expert on that industry and speaking their language, you know, the conversational informal language that I use might not work if I was selling to, you know, insurance company, like if I was selling to CFOs at insurance companies, you know, just know your buyer is really the most important thing. And not just know your buyer, but like figure out what their day is like, what their job is like, you know, what their pain points are and challenges, and just try to learn that stuff as much as you can. If you don't know it when you first start at a job, you're not going to just start at a job and already know all that stuff, you know. Ask your manager, you know, if it's a really technical product, lean really heavily on the product team and your solutions architects or sales engineers just to always keep getting that knowledge that you need and iterate. You know, always be figuring out, okay, here's what I'm saying, here's what my targeting and my messaging is like, you know, and here's what I'm saying. And like, here's what's working. When I say, when I say this, these things, it's working. When I say these things, it's not working. Always be trying to, you know, figure out what's working, what's not working, and then double down on the things that are working. And then stop doing the things that aren't working.

1:01:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So along those lines, what is your information diet? What are you reading? What are you listening to? What are you watching and when? Where does that fit into your day?

1:02:01 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah. So I live on LinkedIn, you know, I'm always on LinkedIn and it's like, you know, LinkedIn is whatever you make it to be. Like who you follow, like their algorithm is going to show in your feed what it's going to show more of the things that you're engaging with. So, you know, if you like a piece of content, like it or comment, share it, and then you're going to see more stuff like that. If you don't like it, then, you know, don't, don't engage with that post. And, you know, the people that you find interesting that are, that are thought leaders or experts in your space, follow them. And then, you know, maybe connect with them and start engaging with their content. You know, and if you're engaging with content that's going to make you smarter and better at your job and you're connecting, following with people, that are smarter than you and that you're, that are in your space you can learn from. LinkedIn is a good place to learn all that stuff. You know, podcasts. I listen to a lot of podcasts. We have our own podcast, obviously LeadIQ. I listen to yours. You know, when I was at my last job, NaviSite, the podcast that helped me out a lot that I highly recommend, if anybody listening sells to IT people, you know, if you sell to IT, you should be listening to CXOTalk, cxotalk.com. It is literally the number one reason why I was crushing my quota as a BDR when I was at NaviSite. The number one reason, because I was selling to IT people and like CIOs, IT directors, IT infrastructure managers. It's like, what the hell do I know about those people and what they do and what their job is like and their pain points are like? You know, these people have been doing IT for 20 years. They went to school for it. I've never had an IT job before and I didn't go to school for IT. So how, how can I have a call or an email that's going to add value to them? And get them to respond and want to book a meeting. So watching that podcast was the number one reason why I was able to do that, because they interview CIOs, they interview these IT leaders that are building these data centers and, you know, doing these data center moves and, you know, doing these digital transformations and put in modernizing their legacy applications and all this stuff. So that was, that was really big for me to just… so like if you're selling to IT, watch that podcast. If you're selling to marketing, maybe watch the Flip My Funnel podcast that Sangram from Terminus does. You know, just learn as much as you can. So in the sales space, I've gotten a lot of value from events, you know, going to events and then you can see the speakers that speak at those events. And then that way, some of these people that you're connecting with and following on LinkedIn, you know, like Trish Bertuzzi or John Barrows, you know, Laurie Richardson, you can go to an event like Dreamforce or, you know, Enterprise Sales Forum puts on different events regionally across the country and AISP. Going to these events, you can actually meet these people in person. And actually build more relationship and connection that way by actually meeting them in person. And then they'll be more willing to help you out and, you know, and give you referrals and stuff like that. So that's also part of what I do is going to a lot of in-person events.

1:04:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Just a litany of greatness. You're blowing up my show notes. So my poor guy who's putting together the show notes, I'm gonna have to pay him extra to bring this together. So guys, make sure you go to top1.fm/55. We're gonna have So much good stuff in there. Speaking of so much good stuff, let's talk about kind of the tools and apps that you're using. So we've already talked about LeadIQ, we've talked about Vidyard GoVideo and SalesLoft. What, what else is in your arsenal that you can't live without? LinkedIn, of course.

1:05:20 Jeremy Leveille: Yep. So those are the main ones, you know, LinkedIn, you know, Sales Navigator. The, the main reason why I like Sales Navigator instead of just the free version of LinkedIn, I already kind of mentioned that one thing that I that triggers me to reach out to a potential prospect is if they viewed my LinkedIn profile, you know? So I'm, I literally click that button and view that page like 3 times a day. That page on LinkedIn that says who viewed your LinkedIn profile. If you don't have Sales Navigator, it limits it. You know, you're only able to see like the last 2 or 3 people that viewed your profile. And then like, if it's 6, you know, so 6 hours later, you're not able to see somebody that viewed you from yesterday. You know, but on Sales Navigator you can see all the way back, literally anybody that's viewed your profile in the last 90 days. So that's really the biggest, you know, thing on Sales Navigator. I don't send too many InMails, but being able to send InMails in addition to email and calling is helpful. So Sales Navigator is something that I leverage a lot as well. CloudApp is an app that helps with some of the screenshots. So I'll take a screenshot and then with CloudApp you're able to kind of, you know, blur out the person's name or maybe kind of edit it, make that screenshot look better so when you send it to a prospect, it looks a little bit more polished when you send it to them. So Clouddapp is another good one. But yeah, those are definitely the main ones. LeadIQ and Vidyard, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, SalesLoft, all contribute to the success.

1:06:44 Scott Ingram: Beautiful. Well, a little hack here. So if you use an iPhone and to the left of the home screen, there's widgets you can add. There is a LinkedIn Who's Viewed My Profile widget if you use Sales Navigator. So you can add that and now you don't even have to go into that because it, I don't know, it feels like it's hard to find that page on LinkedIn for whatever reason. So I find myself using it on there quite a bit.

1:07:08 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah. And another, another app I use a lot is Slack. So, you know, one, one thing that I do a lot on Slack is I don't even know like how many people, you know, do this feature. I think some people I've talked to about it. Didn't even know that you could do it. I mean, it's probably not that like of a hidden thing, but when you have on Slack like for your company, you know, you can have one-on-one conversations, you know, one-on-one chat with different people within your company, or you can have a chat with yourself. And that might seem weird, like, you know, like talking to yourself, but I use it as like note-to-self type of thing, you know, like instead of having pieces like Post-it notes all over the place. You know, all over my cubicle with all these Post-it notes, like, call Bob at XYZ company. I'll just kind of put little notes in my personal, like, one-to-one, you know, my own Slack to myself. So the biggest use case for that, that I do it a lot, is like at trade shows and events. So like if I'm at Dreamforce, which I was just a couple weeks ago, all these people, how are you gonna know, A, who you talk to, and B, what you talk to them about? I posted a video about this on LinkedIn. Like, you should always context… have that context and that personalization when you're reaching out to somebody like that you'd talk to at a trade show or event. They came to your booth, or, you know, maybe you talked to them at the happy hour or whatever. Like, they gave you their card, but, you know, you're gonna get back from that trade show and you're gonna have these cards and you're gonna be like, all right, I don't even know what, what I talked about with each of these people. So what I do is I just take out my phone right after I have that conversation as I'm walking away from that conversation, walking towards what the next conversation might be at that event, just pull up Slack. I click on my personal message to myself and just put, you know, the name of the person that I talked to, what I talked to them about, and then what maybe the next steps are that, you know, I should do with that person. And then I hit send and I hit save. And then that night when I go home or when I get back from the event, I have all of that right there that I can follow up on.

1:09:03 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Well, speaking of weird, I always like to ask if there's something that you believe or that you do that the average sales professional would think is crazy.

1:09:12 Jeremy Leveille: Good question. I mean, I guess like one thing would be, they probably think I'd be crazy for staying in the office until 10:30 at night. And then also I think a lot of people are like, they're like, wow, no way. Like you're making these videos where you're doing freestyle rap songs and playing guitars for people. You know, and so that, You know, that is also a little bit out there and different as well as like the suit that I, you know, suit that I wore at Dreamforce. Like we have the, I have this flamingo suit that is like, you know, looks like out of a movie or something like a Jim Carrey movie or something like, you know, and I wore it at Dreamforce just because like there's 125,000 people at Dreamforce, you know, how am I going to stand out from the crowd a little bit? So, you know, one thing I'd like to do at events is wear a crazy wacky suit. That is going to stand out from everybody there so that, you know, they're going to remember, oh, that was that guy wearing that flamingo suit. You know, so just kind of doing stuff like that. When you go to a trade show or an event, like wear something that is going to be memorable. You know, for everybody there is going to remember that guy wearing the flamingo suit or, you know, doing videos where, you know, you're playing guitars and you're not even holding the guitar the right way. But they're… so stuff like that, I would say is probably a little bit out there.

1:10:27 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. One more picture we're going to add to the… we're going to add to the show notes. I'm going to build you a laundry list of stuff I'll have to follow up with you on to get that all built. Fortunately, we're a little ahead of schedule, so I'll have time to make it all happen. This is going to be very worthwhile. You're going to want to visit that page. It'll be worth it, I promise. What about the flip side? Is there something that the average sales professional or is just part of the sales dogma these days that you think is crazy?

1:10:52 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah, I mean, I think like one thing I kind of touched on is just this notion that the SDR/BDR role is a low-level, entry-level role that, you know, should be just kids out of college. You do it and then hopefully you move on to be an AE. I mean, I just think that notion is a little bit, you know, not correct. Like, it's just different skill sets. And I think, you know, it's changing to the point where, you know, a lot of people are posting stuff like, hey, the hardest part of the the sale is actually finding the deal, like actually sourcing that opportunity and getting that initial engagement from that prospect and getting that, you know, Fortune 500 company to like want to book a meeting with you and take 30 minutes out of their busy day. Like, time is the most valuable thing that people have, and if they're willing to take 30 minutes out of their day to talk to somebody who, you know, they have no idea… before you called them, they had no idea who you or your company were, but you were able to spark their interest enough for them to take 30 minutes out of their time. You know, a lot of people, it seems like more and more these days are saying, hey, that's actually the hardest, most valuable part of the sales process. So, you know, there's still a lot of people that kind of look down on the SDR role. Other than that, I mean, I think a lot of people, you know, are saying a lot of stuff about, oh, cold calling is dead, or, you know, or social selling isn't… is dead and doesn't work. You know, I think people that are, you know, saying those types of things, like, do whatever works for, you know, your industry and your buyer. Like, if they're… if your buyers aren't on LinkedIn, you know, then don't use LinkedIn. If your buyers aren't answering cold calls, then don't use cold calls. Like, you know, whatever works for your industry and your buyer. Like, rule of thumb, like, go, go to your company, and when you get hired, whoever the top sales rep is at that company, you know, don't just don't just be them, you know, because you might not have all the same skills and qualities that that person has, but try to like pick some stuff up. Be like, okay, the top sales rep at my company is doing, you know, these 5 things really well, and this is how they're hitting their number, you know. And if they're making cold calls, don't say cold calling is dead. Like, pick up the phone. Maybe you're not very good at cold calls, you know. See if you can try to work on it and get better at it, you know. So that's another thing that I think a lot of people are trying to say that isn't really true in my opinion.

1:13:07 Scott Ingram: Yeah, nice. Well, here's something that I think you've probably been talking about a lot as you start to build your team. What's the advice that you have for somebody that's just getting into a sales career? Maybe they're walking into their first SDR role. What would you suggest that they do to build a really good foundation for themselves? Besides, I mean, you already laid a great foundation on kind of the personal branding piece, but what else?

1:13:29 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah, I mean, I think if you're getting started as an SDR, Don't worry so much in the beginning about like posting stuff on LinkedIn and building your brand and stuff. First couple months, you know, just observe what's on LinkedIn, observe what people are posting. And more importantly, if you're starting off as an SDR, number one is make it more about the buyer than you, you know, try to learn about your buyer, you know, learn about what their pain points are and challenges, but also, you know, just try to get good in the beginning at calls and emails. You know, being able to get good on the phone, you know, be comfortable having a conversation with somebody who doesn't know who the hell you are, with a stranger, and being able to have a good conversation, be concise, right to the point, be able to execute, you know, a solid cold call, you know, and be able to book a meeting, you know, in less than a 1 or 2 minute call, you know, and then get the basics down of emails, you know, writing skills. A lot of people don't have great writing skills. Maybe you need to improve your writing skills. And, you know, understand the language and, you know, how to… what to say to these buyers, you know, what types of subject lines to use and just get the basics down. Understand your buyer and get good at calls and emails first. Just try to get those basic, that foundation in your first couple months.

1:14:48 Scott Ingram: So I love that piece about getting to know your buyer. I'm thinking back to, and I reference this a lot, I think back to a conversation that I had here on the podcast. We'll put another thing in the show notes. This is an interview I did with Colin Specter. And so Colin was at Namely, still is at Namely, and progressed all the way through the ranks. So he was the top SDR, he was the top AE, he was leading a team. I think he's going back and picking up a bag again. And, you know, the thing that he did that really struck me is he spent so much time in the beginning just trying to get inside the head of the buyer. And I feel like You cannot have too many conversations with your prospect. Doesn't sound right, 'cause that's what we're trying to do, but I'll say even customers, right? Find ways to get access to your customers and have conversations with them and just get into their skin, right? What is, I mean, you could almost run my interview playbook and I'm happy to send it to you if you wanna email me, scott@top1.fm. I'll send you my interview questions 'cause I think you can almost adapt these. And it's just getting into like, how do you structure your day? What do you worry about? And as it relates to your solution, understanding what they use today, or if they are an existing customer, like, why did you buy this? Like, what were you trying to fix? Like, what was it like before? You know, because when somebody buys your solution, there's an issue there, right? Like, we don't just do this for fun. We don't buy stuff for fun. Like, we're always trying to improve something, fix something, or whatever it is, right? So the better you can understand all of those things and what's important in their world, then you can communicate with them in a such more meaningful way that's from their perspective, not yours, because they don't give a crap about your perspective. And that's why I think you're screenshotting their stuff is so… that's so incredibly powerful. It's so no-brainer, but that's what they like the most.

1:16:49 Jeremy Leveille: Yep. People like to hear their name. They like, you know, they, they're more focused on themselves. You know, they want to, they want to, they're more focused. They care more about themselves. And that's why, like, when I do emails, one little small little hack that I do is I don't, like, 99% of SDRs, when they send an email to a prospect, they put the prospect name at the top, but that's it. That's the only place in that email that prospect's name happens. And I always put it in the call to action. So at the end of the email, instead of saying, is this of interest to you, question mark, or, you know, are you free next Tuesday to discuss this, question mark, I'll put that prospect's name at the end. Is this of interest to you, Sam? Or, you know, are you free next week to discuss this, Sam? So I'm putting their name. It's something small, but having their name in a second place is going to make it… A, it's going to be in their head, they're thinking, you know, oh, this is about me, you know, this isn't… and then it's going to look less like a template. Because if you do all these mail merges and templates with all these bots cramming out, blasting out emails, it's only going to have their name at the top. And the other thing I do with their name, a lot of people, not always, but a lot of names, you know, it's somebody like Jennifer or Daniel or Elizabeth, a name that it could be Elizabeth or it could be Beth, it could be Jennifer, it could be Jen. It could be Daniel, it could be Dan. I scroll to the bottom of the person's LinkedIn profile and I look at their recommendations and I see what people who are actually in their network, people they've worked with before, what do they call them? Do they call them Bob or do they call them Robert? The mail merge, if you use like, you know, some type of mail merge thing, it's just going to take their, whatever name is at the top of their LinkedIn profile or whatever name is in your database. But oftentimes it might say Daniel on their LinkedIn profile, but you scroll down to their recommendations and everybody that recommended them calls them Dan. So, you know, immediately if they… you put Dan in there in the cold email, they're gonna be like, okay, immediately psychologically think this is a stranger, they don't know who I am. You put Dan, it might be more likely to be like have some familiarity there. Just like when I call somebody on a cold call and when they say… oftentimes I'm calling people on their cell phone because you get a 3x higher connect rate than calling desk phones, but a lot of companies don't have desk phones anymore. So when I call them on their cell phone, oftentimes you know, as opposed to a direct line on their desk, they might answer and be like, Bob here. Then immediately you know you have the right person on the phone. You know it's Bob. You can go into your pitch. With a cell phone, usually people answer the phone, they just say, hello. You know what 90% of sales reps do if the prospect just says, hello? They're going to say, uh, this is, you know, this is Jeremy at LeadIQ. Is this Bob? And then immediately psychologically the prospect's thinking, oh God, it's a cold call. They don't know. They don't even know who I am. You know, how quickly can I get this person off the phone? Me, I assume that I have the right person. So they say hello and I just go right in and I say, hey Bob, it's Jeremy. I know I'm an interruption to your day. Is it cool if I take, you know, under 30 seconds to say the reason for my call? You know, I assume it's that person. And, you know, so that's, you know, having more familiarity and making it more about the prospect.

1:20:02 Scott Ingram: Love it, love it, love it. I also like to ask, usually I ask from the perspective of the advice that you would give to somebody that's good and trying to get to great. Let me ask it differently for you. And that would be, what advice would you give to somebody that's feeling stuck in an SDR role? Yeah.

1:20:20 Jeremy Leveille: I mean, you know, I think part of it is like, they might feel stuck because they might be thinking, oh geez, you know, I've been an SDR for 6 months or 12 months. How quickly can I get promoted? Well, the better question to ask is, what skills do I have? Are my skills better, best suited for SDR? Are my skills and capabilities… not just your skills, but what do you want to do? Like, what motivates you? What, what… like, for me, I stay at work till 10:30 at night. Like, prospecting, it's not even like a… it's not even like a job. I enjoy doing it. I have a passion for it. But what are they passionate about? Like, what do they think that they would rather, A, be good at, would they be better at marketing and enjoy marketing better? So it's like, what are you good at and what would you enjoy doing? Would it be marketing instead? Would it be customer success? Would it be maybe SDR at a different company? You know, would it be an account executive, maybe a sales manager? So always think about, A, what am I good at, and B, what would I be happiest doing? And where both of those intersect is what you should then go for it, you know, and maybe it's working at a different department at your company. Maybe it's being an SDR, but just an SDR at a different company because maybe that company, you know, doesn't have good culture or they're not motivating you enough, doesn't have the right comp plan. But yeah, that's what I would say.

1:21:41 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. Jeremy, what is it that you would want to know about the top SDRs in other organizations?

1:21:50 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah. I mean, I guess I would probably try to figure out, you know, what are they doing to fill the gap where it's like my number one weakness is like being able to structure things more effectively and being able to know exactly who they should reach out to when, because I kind of just wing it. Like I kind of just am like, oh, this is a, this is a really good account that I know I've been trying to break into for a while. I haven't reached out to them in a few days. Why don't I, you know, call them or email them? Or, you know, this person viewed my profile, I'll reach out to them. Or, you know, this person liked my LinkedIn post, I'll reach out to them. I kind of just wing it and don't have as much of a structure for, you know, it's not like this, it's not like this process that is just nailed down, you know, where I'm like a machine just going through my day and then never missing a follow-up. Because like sometimes, you know, there's a really good prospect where I sent a really good email to them that maybe they didn't respond to that one, and then maybe 3, 4 weeks, or even 3 months goes by and I'm like, oh geez, I totally forgot. I never, I never followed up with that person because maybe it's the, you know, I need to be more regimented with using SalesLoft or Outreach, those, those types of tools to keep me on track and on a structure. But that's the thing where, you know, I, I could definitely get better at that. So I'm sure there's other SDRs out there that, you know, have a more defined process and are more structured with what they're doing. You know, but I feel like if they're too structured with that stuff, then maybe the targeting and the messaging might not be as good because like when I'm winging it, like I kind of, you know, if I'm doing a cadence for somebody, if I'm on like the, you know, if I've done 3 or 4 or 5 emails for somebody, I'm kind of customizing each step along the way, each of those 5. So if that's like the 5th email that I sent somebody and it's day 18, well, I'm sending a certain email based on something that I saw, you know, on LinkedIn or something that day, or, you know, that, you know, so if I wouldn't have been able to really plan out that cadence 3 weeks in advance, like a lot of reps, they, you know, they have these prebuilt cadences, they drop people in and everybody's getting that same cadence. So, you know, some of the times my process of figuring out who I should call, you know, an email when, and then at what point am I going to follow up with them again? That piece sometimes could definitely be more structured and regimented. And that's something that I'd like to, you know, see what other top reps are doing. Got it. Cool.

1:24:19 Scott Ingram: And if somebody has a great answer to that, I'm sure they can reach out to you on LinkedIn, right?

1:24:22 Jeremy Leveille: Definitely. Just, just look me up, Jeremy Leveille on LinkedIn. You can find me there.

1:24:26 Scott Ingram: One more link in the show notes, people. So Jeremy, before we wrap this up, I just want to ask, as we've covered a ton of ground, you have shared knowledge bomb after knowledge bomb. This has been a blast. Is there anything else that you really wanted to make sure that you shared or got across in our time today?

1:24:44 Jeremy Leveille: No. Yeah, I mean, I think we covered pretty much everything, you know. I mean, I think it's just stay humble, you know, don't think that you know everything, but at the same time, you have to have confidence as well, you know. Don't, you know, you have to have confidence, be able to have confidence in your product and in yourself, you know, but not so much confidence that comes across as too cocky or anything. You know, and if you don't have enough confidence in your product and you don't really know, you know, why would people buy from us? What really is the value? You know, ask your manager, ask your customers, ask, you know, the solutions architects, sales engineers, your product managers, you know, be able to dive into the case studies that you have and really figure out what actual value do we really have? Why are people buying from us? Figure that out and then really make that as granular and specific Like I said, people are so busy that they're getting a million different emails from a million different people all the time. Don't beat around the bush, be very direct and specific, beat them over the head with it. Here's why you should take a meeting with me. And I think that's a big thing people take away from it.

1:25:51 Scott Ingram: Great, great stuff. And since I'm trying to build the most epic set of show notes ever, I think it would be valuable here to also call out if you are in sales development and this conversation has really intrigued you and you want to kind of take this further, David Dulany, The Sales Development Podcast. Podcast, the Sales Development Conference, where obviously Jeremy was named the SDR of the Year. He's got some really, really great stuff going. Obviously, we already talked about at the top of the show, the Prospecting Podcast that Ryan runs for LeadIQ, just a ton of great stuff there. So Jeremy, the way I always like to try and wrap this up, we've talked about so many great things. What would you have the listener do over the course of the next 2 weeks to improve themselves and improve their prospecting? Or their meeting setting abilities?

1:26:36 Jeremy Leveille: Yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, just like write stuff down that, you know, what do you, what do you know? Like outline it, put it in like notebook or, you know, Google, Google Docs or something. Have an outline of, you know, who like you're, you're, you're targeting, who, who is your buyer, you know, who, who is your ideal customer profile? And then the buyer personas at that company, you gotta really know that stuff front and back. You know, know your targeting and A, okay, so those are the accounts, those are the leads. How would you find those people? Where are you going to find them? Where are you going to get these leads from? You know, and then what is your messaging? Like, what does good messaging look like? Go through your emails and figure out what am I saying when people are responding positively to my emails? What am I saying when people are responding negatively to my emails? And just spend some time. Like, you know, even obviously don't want to spend all day because then you're not going to be able to actually, you're not actually calling and emailing people. But just take a little bit at a time and try doing some self-assessing on your own, but then take this document that you're building and putting together, this document of, then look, have a document that's all about your buyer and what are their challenges, what are their pain points, why do they buy from us? Put this stuff together and then do it on your own and then go to your manager and be like, hey, I put together this document that I thought might help me. Be more successful, and email it to them and review it with them. And I think that would be a good starting place.

1:28:03 Scott Ingram: Love it.

1:28:04 Jeremy Leveille: Love it.

1:28:04 Scott Ingram: Jeremy, this has been totally, totally incredible. I can't wait to share this and allow everyone to listen. If you're still here with us, I hope you got just a tremendous amount of value. Again, go check out all of the show notes that we've pulled together with the pictures and the video examples and everything else at top1.fm/55. And while you're there, If you haven't already, please pick up a copy of the book, or better yet, get it on audio. It sounds absolutely amazing. You can find all of those links at top1.fm/book. Jeremy, thank you.

1:28:36 Jeremy Leveille: Thank you so much for having me on, Scott. I'm definitely going to check out your book, and yeah, I appreciate you having me on. Have a great day. Good talking to you. 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.