93: Ambition's Andy Duwe is Addicted to Selling

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. This episode is sponsored by the 2020 Sales Success Summit that will happen here in Austin on October 12th and 13th. For complete details, click over to top1summit.com. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Andy Duwe. Andy is the top SDR and team lead at Ambition. Welcome to the show, Andy.

0:44 Andy Duwe: Thanks, Scott. Awesome to be here, man. Really appreciate you having me on.

0:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Really glad that you are here. And let's just jump right in and get straight into the value. And I'll just let you talk about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success. Cool, man.

0:59 Andy Duwe: Yeah, I would say, you know, the theme in my life when I wake up every morning is really just trying to find some space and time to be grateful for what I've got and, you know, realize how lucky I am. And that really fuels me day in and day out. So, you know, gratitude and attitude is definitely the number one thing that I think fuels my success. Came from, you know, I came into sales when I was 31, I started working at this company called Inside Sales Team, which is an outsourced sales development agency, point-setting firm. And, you know, I had just recently gone through a 6-month rehab to help with drug addiction and kind of had to restart my life over. And I went from going through rehab to working in a grocery store at a deli counter at the age of 29, 30 years old. You know, I'd gone to college 10 years prior to that and gotten my bachelor's degree in psychology, and here I was 10 years later working in a grocery store slicing deli meat. From there, I got a job at a clay factory, architectural ceramic factory, doing manual labor, making big blocks of clay. For buildings, learning how to drive a forklift and worked there for about a year and a half until a buddy of mine referred me to Inside Sales Team. And, you know, I told him at the time I was engaged to be married. My second son was gonna be born soon and I really wanted to make more money to provide for my family and be a good dad, be a good husband, and, you know, be able to put the food on the table and pay the bills. And I wasn't getting that where I was working at this place called Boston Valley Terracotta doing manual labor. You know, working 60 hours a week to try to get some overtime. And my buddy Sasha Heitz referred me to this place Inside Sales Team. I said, you know, I did debt collections in the past for about 5 years when I was deep in, in my addiction and really didn't enjoy it. You know, I got out for a reason. It was a horrible culture. And he said, you know, this is totally different. You know, you're on the phone selling stuff, but it's totally different from that. You should give it a try. You can make good money, I promise. And finally I took his advice and applied. And that was kind of the beginning of my career 4 years ago, you know, becoming an SDR at a sales development agency. And, you know, I'd started over one step at a time. And the reason I was there was to provide for my family and put food on the table and pay the bills and be a good husband and a good father. And that fueled me. You know, I was just grateful for what I had. I learned from everyone around me as fast as I could. And, you know, faced my fears about getting on the phone and doing what people told me to do. And I started setting meetings and setting appointments and became successful pretty quickly. And, you know, every day I went in there, I just worked my butt off as much as I could, learned as much as I could, and just became successful really quickly and saw an opportunity to make really good money based on how hard I worked. And that really was a cool thing. You know, I was like, wow, this sales thing's pretty cool. I never knew this world even existed and fell in love with it. And here I am 4 years later, you know, providing for my family happily, you know, enjoying my work. I love my work and love crushing it every day.

4:23 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. That's awesome. You are self-winding. We're already getting a good chunk of the story and we will certainly dig into that. So you started with the number one thing is gratitude and attitude. How does that manifest? I mean, what does that look like on a daily basis?

4:37 Andy Duwe: Yeah, I mean, some days are different than others, but the most important thing that I've learned, and this came from, you know, my recovery and help from others and my spirituality, is waking up every morning and hitting the reset button. You know, waking up, it's a new day. If I take some time to be quiet, you know, I like to wake up early, give myself about an hour before the kids are up so I have some quiet time and some alone time. It's usually the only time of the day that that happens. So getting up early, you know, taking the day on as a new day. I've got a pretty good discipline of, you know, doing some yoga, doing some push-ups, doing some meditation, doing some reading, and just saying thank you, you know, to my creator and saying I appreciate what I have. I'm here for a purpose to, you know, love those around me, be a great member of my family. And if somebody comes to me to for help to help them. And that's kind of my purpose, you know. My job that I get paid for is kind of just one little piece of that. And yeah, just saying thank you, man. I'm glad I'm alive. I'm glad I have what I have. I have more than others and less than some, but I am what I am, and here I am today in this moment. So, you know, that kind of practice in the morning is really important, probably the most important thing to my success. And some days it's longer than others, some days it's more focused than others. You know, you ebb and flow with that stuff. You're never perfect, but it's a practice. You got to do it every day. But that's where my center comes from every morning, trying to find my center and just getting prepared for the day. So when the kids do wake up, I'm ready to spend some quality time for them before now I come down in the basement and start crushing the phones. So that's, you know, one thing that's super important. And that meditation practice really gives me an ability to just weather the day, weather rejection, you know, in sales, especially being in SDR, making cold calls. There's tons of rejection, there's tons of failure. It's inevitable. So just having this buffer between my reaction to life and being able to laugh at myself and just enjoy every moment, whether it's good or bad, and take it for what it is, that's kind of where that gratitude comes from. And then it allows me to have a positive attitude throughout the day. And, you know, when the crap hits the fan, be able to laugh it off or ask for help if I need it or share it with my team, you know, in our Slack channel and, you know, complain about the guy I just talked to or whatever on the phone. Just stay positive and take the next action to keep bringing revenue in for my company.

7:07 Scott Ingram: Nice. Well, we will definitely do a deep dive and unpack that morning routine, but let's round out your top 3. What are points 2 and 3 for you?

7:14 Andy Duwe: Number 2, I would have to say, is faith. So never really a religious person growing up, you know, youngest of 5 kids. My parents both were kind of… they had been raised religious, but not necessarily rebelled against it, but just kind of let it go. So I had a very broad upbringing in terms of religious background, but I've always been very spiritual since I was a young teenager, kind of just believing in more, right? Believing in something behind the scenes. And I think that got me into a lot of trouble and kind of pointed me in a lot of different directions as an adolescent and in my 20s. But I always had this belief, this faith that, you know, there's more to life than what we can see. And I always had that feeling. I always felt like I was here for a reason. And I still, you know, now that I've recovered from some of the trials and tribulations I went through in my 20s, I look back at those times as learning experiences and more than ever today believe that, you know, we all have a purpose here and It's more than just, you know, making money and making sales and buying a big screen TV or whatever, or what kind of car you have. You know, there's more that's going to be revealed throughout my life. And when, you know, my life's over, I go to wherever I go to. Every action I take is important because there's a purpose for me to be here. So super important. And how that relates to my success as an SDR is like It just doesn't matter what happens. I just keep grinding. I'm out here. I'm not doing it to get, you know, a new car or whatever. It's bigger than that. I'm, for whatever reason, in this job, I give it everything I have every day and it continues to pay off for me. And that's kind of how every part of my life is lived. And I just see the rewards always come in and it strengthens my faith even more.

9:08 Scott Ingram: Nice. And that leads pretty well into your third top thing.

9:11 Andy Duwe: Yeah, so pushing limits, breaking rules, taking destiny into my own hands. And, you know, a cliché sales phrase: forgiveness. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. I think this is really huge for me. Again, I've always had this attitude my whole life, and it again got me into a lot of trouble in middle school and high school and college and in my 20s because I kind of did a lot of the things I wanted to do that I wasn't supposed to do. But now when I've matured finally a bit and have started to grow up a little bit in my 30s, I take that attitude into sales. And I think it's really important in sales because there's no silver bullets. There's no blueprint for success. If there was, everybody would be, you know, at 100% to quota. And that's just not the case, right? If you're in sales, you know this to be true. So why don't we all just listen to exactly what our sales leaders tell us to do? And why aren't everybody's sales teams all at 100%? Because there's no silver bullet. Things change. Everybody's different. It's a people business, you know, and every person's different, like fingerprints or snowflakes or whatever you want to say. So there's no one way to do things. And if you only do what you're told to do, you're not gonna get to where you want to get to. But we still need sales leaders, right? We need people to train us, to point us in the right direction, to fix things when there's mistakes, to help out when we need help. But that's just, you know, going to get you so far. It's going to get you to be average. So taking, you know, I guess in sales, the way I look at it is I've got like a bank account of leeway or capital to do what I want to do. And if I do something that maybe is, I'm not gonna say against the rules, but, you know, not something that you can coach people to do or train people to do because it could blow up in your face. If I do something like that and it works out well for me, I've just earned a little capital to take a little bit more leash in terms of my own way of doing things. Now, if I do something and, you know, it results in prospect, you know, emailing my CEO about something I did, then I just overdrawn my account probably. So I've had a really good understanding of how much I have in that account and how much room I have to play with. And I'm always making sure that, you know, if I've made a gaffe that's made a big withdrawal out of that account, I gotta be careful for a while until I build it up a little bit. So just in terms of being creative with outreach, you know, with messaging, Making jokes, some people take 'em one way, some people take 'em another way. Being persistent, overly persistent rather than, you know, bothering the crap outta somebody and walking that fine line. I'm always pushing the limits a little bit, but also keeping track of where I'm at in terms of the balance in that account, if that makes sense.

12:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, it's interesting. I feel like you led us off early with really the secret sauce. I mean, I'm fond of saying the secret is there is no secret. And I think you really tapped into the key thing and what I hope a lot of people take away from listening to these interviews is there is no one way, right? We all have to kind of find our own way and what works for us. So certainly excited to continue to dig into what's working for you, but why don't we put this in perspective just a little bit and I'll have you talk about your role today and about Ambition for those who aren't already familiar.

12:48 Andy Duwe: Sure. Yeah. Ambition. It's a coaching and gamification software for sales teams. So, you know, this whole world of SaaS and computer tech software, it's such a weird world that again, I wasn't even had any idea existed beyond the word Silicon Valley before I became an SDR at Inside Sales Team. But Ambition's awesome. You know, it was founded by 3 guys who met in college and a couple of whom grew up together. Headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee, office in Nashville. They went to University of Tennessee. That's where they really became, you know, tight. And they knew they were going to start something at some point. And I think they all went their own separate ways after college and came back together and built Ambition as a, you know, kind of pet project, gave it away to a logistic… local logistics company. And I believe the story goes that, you know, they were working on something else and they were you know, pretty broke at the time, and they turned the server off that supported the software. And this company called them immediately and was like, hey, what the hell happened? Our Ambition just went down. And they're like, oh, we didn't even know you were using it. And they're like, yeah, we're definitely using it. And they were like, well, how much would you pay for it? And that was kind of the birth of Ambition. They decided, you know, this is something we've gotta put our heart into. And they're still super close to the company and It's just an awesome company to work for. You know, everybody is super passionate. The founders are really involved. It's great. I'm super happy. And the way that I met them was, well, I worked at Inside Sales Team, outsourced sales development here in Buffalo. That was my first SDR job. I worked on a couple projects there and we bought Ambition. Our CEO bought Ambition, so we used Ambition in the office. And then our CEO slowly, you know, worked on getting them to become clients of ours. They finally came on and I was tagged to run the project. So, you know, I flew down to Chattanooga and got trained up on the software, came back and started setting meetings for them and worked on the project for about a year and a half. So I became really close with the team and, you know, at a certain point I was kind of promoted to become more of a manager and they ended up leaving as a customer to build out their own internal SDR team. And, you know, they always told me, if you ever leave Inside Sales Team, you better call us before you go anywhere else. So I did the manager thing at IST, Inside Sales Team, for about 6 months and didn't really love it. You know, I like to joke that I've already got kids and I felt like I had a lot more doing that. So I thought it was time for a change, called up Mark, our VP of Sales, and said, hey man, I'm going to leave Inside Sales Team. Wanted to check with you guys before I, you know, put any feelers out to see if you guys still wanted me. And they said definitely, and came back officially in September of last year as the team lead for the SDR team and just hit the ground running again. You know, it was super familiar to me. I was really familiar with the software already, had a huge network already on LinkedIn in terms of, you know, prospects and stuff. So just kind of hit the ground running and, you know, we've got an awesome manager, head of sales development at Ambition, Chris Horton, who runs the team and I, you know, set meetings and do some call coaching and, you know, best practices and stuff like that, just 'cause I have so much experience helping out the other guys on the team. And we have a lot of fun and set a ton of meetings. And, you know, so what I was saying about SaaS being a weird world, sales tech in general is even weirder, right? Because we're all selling a tool to salespeople to help them sell more. And it's just so like, I don't know what the right word for it, meta, or, you know, it's just so go around and around and around, right? You're selling to sales leaders to help them sell better. And there's a bunch of different sales tech out there and it's just such a small world. But if you're going to be an SDR, it's a great way to cut your teeth because not only do you get respect from the people you're talking to just based on you know, calling people really early in the morning or just having a good pitch or having a good personalized message. They just appreciate good salesmanship. So it's really cool. You're constantly being given constructive criticism and feedback, and it's just so interesting. You know, it's like everybody you prospect is a potential coach, somebody that can give you a tip on how to do better or not to make the same mistake again. And, you know, you get a lot of relationships out of just being good. Because sales leaders appreciate good salesmanship and they want to, you know, be close to that, talk to that, or, you know, give you something in return for having that skill. So it's fun. It's really cool. Every day is different and I just love it.

17:31 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I'm a little jealous of you in that regard, right? Because I don't sell to salespeople during the day. And I think that advantage of just being in that space, talking to your peers, learning from people who you're cold calling is such a fascinating opportunity. I'm enjoying also, you know, in the past we might've tried to redo some of this, but just in the current reality, I think everybody's become more forgiving and understanding of the family background noise. Why don't you just give us the context there and talk about your kids real quick and give us the ages? I think we can pick up on a little bit of it in the background there.

18:05 Andy Duwe: Yeah, they're upstairs. I'm down in the basement, but it's a pretty, you know, thin walls here. So 2 boys, Isaac's 11, Brian's 4. My wife Lex is just amazing. She's a saint. You know, she's a full-time student. She's graduating in May, just went back to school a couple years ago for urban planning. And she also works for the college she goes to, which obviously all of that is done virtually due to the, you know, pandemic for the last couple months. And, you know, I'm still working full-time, so it's been a challenge working from home, but she's just been like homeschooling the kids. Taking them through their work. I think she reorganized everything in our house from top to bottom in the last couple weeks. And yeah, kind of lets me just chill down in the basement and do my thing every day so I can get my calls in, get my activities in, get my meetings set. And then, you know, I'm kind of the dinner cooker, so I clock out around 5 and go upstairs and cook dinner and take the kids outside afterwards. But yeah, she's awesome. And the kids are great. Isaac's 11, so he's got, you know, there's a big difference in age and he's up there watching Brian right now, trying to keep him under control, so.

19:18 Scott Ingram: With mixed results, right?

19:20 Andy Duwe: Yeah, yeah, probably some wrestling gonna ensue here soon, some screaming, some banging on the walls, but I'm sure they'll survive.

19:27 Scott Ingram: Awesome, par for the course. Well, before we talk about the specifics of Andy's results, let me tell you just a bit more about the Sales Success Summit. This will be our 3rd annual event. That is built for this Sales Success Community. It's happening here in Austin on October 12th and 13th. And this event is different from every other sales conference out there because it exclusively features the top-performing sales professionals that you've heard here on this podcast. So, my rule for guests on this show is they have to be active quota-carrying individual contributors who are either the outright number one top seller in their organization or at least in the top 1% of performers on a very large team. So, you won't find any of the quote-unquote sales gurus or sales experts on the stage at this event, only real practitioners like Andy. It's an intimate experience. The theater that we host the event in holds a maximum of 198 people, so you'll get an opportunity to learn directly from each other. I could go on and on about this thing, but the details are available for you at top1summit.com, and the sooner you register, the better your price, as tickets increase $50 per month until they're sold out, and they are refundable. Until a month before the event, just in case something comes up and we're not able to get together in person, or if you don't like the virtual alternative that I come up with. So again, those details are at top1summit.com. All right, Andy, let's talk about what you've done to get yourself into the number 1 spot at Ambition from a results perspective.

21:00 Andy Duwe: Yeah, I mean, I think I work twice as hard as most people, you know. I think I have some like idiosyncrasies, like maybe an introvert who pretends to be an extrovert and not really big on small talk and shooting the crap and just kind of, you know, skipping through the day, seeing what happens. I'm more of heads down, like work for 4 hours straight without taking a break, you know, eat some lunch, go back to it. I feel like when I start working, usually at 8 AM, you know, making calls. I call people early in the morning. I call people in the beginning of the day, at the end of the day. And that's typically when I have the most conversations. As soon as I, you know, kind of sit down at my desk and usually, you know, check my email real quick, check my Outreach instance, check Salesforce and hit the ground with my first call, I instantly feel like time is just slipping away. Like, I only have so much time in the day to take all the actions I want to take. So I just like love it. It's like a video game for me, you know, constantly just making calls while the phone's ringing. I'm on LinkedIn prospecting. I'm really good at multitasking, you know. Yeah, people say multitasking is impossible. You know, I do stuff while the phone rings. I do stuff while my computer's loading, like these little spots in the day where there's time, I'm always trying to do something that's going to result in revenue. I hate doing stuff that, like admin stuff or data entry or putting reports together or writing stuff up for my manager, for whoever. That's like not me making calls, me prospecting, or me writing an email. Like, there's only enough time in the day for me to do that stuff, and I want to do it all day long because I know it's a numbers game and you just got to be out there taking swings, you know. And most people say no, and a small percentage of people say yes, and that's where you make your money. And yeah, it pays to have the skill of a good cold call and, you know, be able to write a coherent, personalized message that relates to your value prop and the prospect in some way, but the number one thing for me is just high activity. And I, you know, that's my number one thing. And it's like I reach a tipping point, right? You like, I could do a certain amount of activity, somebody else on my team could do half that activity, and their performance isn't going to be half of what mine is. It's going to be maybe a quarter of it or, you know, 15% of it because it's like exponential. Like the more activity you put in, it exponentially increases your performance. Just because of, I don't know why, you know, it's kind of my belief that like you just gotta keep moving, keep making things happen, keep taking actions. And, you know, it usually results in a good day at the end of the day. And one of the things, you know, I do is if I make a phone call and I set a meeting, I always immediately like log the call. Yeah, write a few notes just so I don't forget exactly what they said. I immediately make another call. Because like I oftentimes set 2 meetings right in a row. It's just like the energy, you know, I love to be in the zone, tapped into that. And I think that's the biggest thing that sets me apart from other SDRs specifically. You know, I've never been an account executive. Obviously it's a different role entirely, but from a sales development appointment setting, setting demos, prospecting, cold calling perspective, it's just like keep moving. You know, and I came from an SDR shop that we set appointments for lots of different clients, and it was more of that culture, right? Because that's where we made our money, was in appointments. So I was like, that was the name of the game, like get appointments, you know, 100 calls a day, like keep doing stuff. And when I worked in that environment, you know, people knew that don't bother Duwe when he's sitting on his yoga ball making calls because he's not going to want to talk to you. Like, you know, other people around them are chit-chatting and talking and looking at this thing on LinkedIn or whatever, and it's just not Duwe. And people knew that about me, you know what I mean? Heads down, just working. So pros and cons of that are, you know, I'm not really a people person at work, which is why it's great working from home now because I can just grind it out. And yeah, I have really high activity, and I think it exponentially increases your performance as you increase your skills around those activities as well.

25:32 Scott Ingram: Nice. Well, and at the end of the day, you're basically selling or setting meetings for a leaderboard solution. What does your own leaderboard look like?

25:40 Andy Duwe: Exactly right. So another layer to the whole idea of like how it's weird to sell a sales tech tool to salespeople so that they can help their sales team sell more. You know, we are using our platform that is meant to increase rep productivity, accountability to playbook. You know, what is a successful day, week, month, quarter look like? Our platform helps lay that out and provide real-time visibility to everyone on the team, leadership, management, all the reps for who's doing what they're supposed to be doing, when they're doing it, and if they're accomplishing what they're supposed to be doing. And then if those actions or activities result in the desired, you know, result, like they should. If you do these things, this should happen. And if it doesn't, then there's somewhere in that process that you're not doing something right. So it's, you know, I was just talking to our CRO and our VP of sales and our head of sales development on Friday about kind of the current crisis and, you know, what we're hearing from people and how our messaging should change. And one of the things we talked about is using our scorecards in our platform and screenshots of it in our messaging more to just show people like, hey, our product helps pump your reps up, helps them know what they're supposed to be doing and make sure that they're doing it and you can have visibility into it and you can, you know, throw out competitions and automate it and take the manual entry out of it and keep everybody engaged and competitive. And trying to be the best. And yeah, our leaderboards, I want to be at the top of them. You know, there's some great reps on our team that give me a lot of great competition, and I hate not being number one, right? So I think that I get to the number one spot. There's a lot of different spots, right? There's activity, there's results, there's all these different competitions we run for appointments or opportunities, you know. So there's lots of different things to win and I try to win them all. I don't always. We have an awesome team, but really pisses me off when I don't.

27:53 Scott Ingram: Well, walk us through the detail. I mean, if we were to look at your leaderboard right now, what are the metrics that it's showing and where are you not just ranked, but what kind of percentages or numbers are you putting up?

28:03 Andy Duwe: Yeah, I mean, we're shooting for, you know, my quota is a little different than most of the other reps just because of my team lead position and just having the experience under my belt that I have. But, you know, I'm typically well over 200% to quota. I get comped on opportunities created. So SQL, sales qualified leads from the appointments I set. And then we have a quota around ACV. So projected ACV from the opportunities that we create. So there's kind of 2 different levels. And yeah, I mean, typically 200% to SQL goal. And, you know, 300 to 400% to the ACV goal that I have. I'm, you know, probably usually 2 times ahead of most other folks except for the inbound guy. And that's kind of fun. My goal is usually to beat our inbound guy, which to me feels like I'm beating the marketing department, which is kind of cool to me.

29:03 Scott Ingram: I love that perspective. I mean, is that… how else do you think about the goal and what that objective is? Because I often find that, you know, when you're number one, it's especially when you're orders of magnitude above the performance of the rest of the team, like goal setting is a different animal. It's not like, oh, I want to be above plan. That's almost never what the goal is. How else do you think about that?

29:25 Andy Duwe: Yeah, I mean, it's mostly about money for me. It's funny because I don't really buy much. I hardly buy anything ever. My wife buys everything we need. You know, we've got a joke running right now that there's a magic list on the fridge that me and, you know, my 11-year-old, we can just write stuff on the list and it usually shows up about a week later at the door. But I don't need for a lot. Like, you know, I'm not very materialistic, but I love the look on my wife's face when I get a fat bonus check and her appreciation. And we're both just like, you know, We met, you know, just as a quick aside, we met when we were both right out of rehab. We were going to AA meetings and we met and became friends and we kind of flirted with friendship for about 10 months till we started dating and got married. So we both spent our 20s just like being complete crapheads to those around us and our families and would call ourselves probably like the black sheep of our families, you know? And we both made this huge turnaround fell in love, got married, and have this like super normal suburban life that we just wake up and we're like, how the hell did this happen? Like, this is nuts. So I never imagined, you know, making the money that I make now without like going back to grad school and figuring out what I want to do and all this stuff. And it just is so surreal, you know, to make really good money in sales and It's really all about like just getting to tell my wife how big my check is every month. I don't tell anybody else because it's like, you know, that's just kind of rude. Like my family, you know, my friends, you don't like tell people how much money you make, you know what I mean? You can't really tell people that because it's not appropriate. So my wife's really the only one that knows, and that's what I live for, is every month getting to tell her how big my check's going to be. So kind of a weird driver, but I want my check to be as big as possible so I can tell her about it and show it to her and so she can be pumped up and happy. And, you know, we don't buy a bunch of stuff. We're trying to pay off our house and pay off our car and be out of debt by the time we're 40. And, you know, that's all stuff I don't even know how to do. She does it all. I just set meetings and, you know, that's about it. She pays the bills and, you know, makes sure we have what we need. And it's really easy for me. But that's what motivates me. It feels like a magical life we're living that I have this job and I can make as much money as I want based on how hard I work.

31:57 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. You know, there are a lot of parts of your story that really parallel… I talked with Ian Bembenek back in episode 269, almost exactly a year ago as we'll be releasing these. And his story is just a little bit different in that also took the path to sobriety, but he did a lot of his drinking while selling. I'm always curious about the turning points, right? Because I feel like there's maybe a higher propensity in this industry and in this role to, you know, choose those types of coping mechanisms. Obviously, it was a little bit different for you because you were never addicted while in the sales role. But what changed for you? I mean, what was that point that you're like, you know what, I got to turn this around? And it's Again, just amazing to me how big those turnarounds can be and how well some of these folks that have chosen that path of sobriety, how well they do from a sales perspective.

32:54 Andy Duwe: Yeah, totally. No. So I would say 2 kind of thoughts I have about that. The first is, you know, I did debt collections in Buffalo for about 5 years. So I graduated from college in 2006 and moved back to Buffalo and kind of got into the music scene. I'm like a hip-hop artist, rapper. Was kind of into that. I was, you know, working at a coffee shop, barista, and just like bouncing around doing shows and having fun. And then my son was born, my first son Isaac, and that was kind of like, all right dude, it's time to grow up. Yeah, you've been like an idiot for the last however long, but somehow managed to graduate high school and graduate college, and you know, you're still kicking, but you're about to be a dad, so it's time to grow up. And put the fun and games away. But unfortunately, I was like too heavily addicted to what I was addicted to to just make a decision to do that. Well, I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners for about 3 months. That was an experience for sure.

33:54 Scott Ingram: Like door-to-door?

33:55 Andy Duwe: Yeah, yeah. Just like answered an ad in the paper for like, hey, you want to make $500 a week? And showed up to this thing and found out it was like Hey, you're gonna drive around in a van with us for 12 hours a day and knock on doors to offer to shampoo people's carpets. And if you happen to sell a vacuum cleaner, we might pay you something, but for the most part, you're not gonna make any money at all. I actually did pretty good at it, but it was like just super sketchy. And then got a job in collections, started doing debt collections, and was really good at it. You know, you're calling people, asking them for money. But there's this culture of like negativity and like pressuring people and trying to scare them a little bit. And definitely some shops like, you know, walk the line or walk on the wrong side of the line in terms of like what was legal. And that was back a while ago when the laws were even more lenient. But anyway, I did that for about 5 years, but I worked at about 20 different places because yes, I was good at it, but because of my, you know, drinking and drugging I wouldn't show up to work for days at a time or would get in a fight with my boss and quit, you know, stuff like that. But because debt collections in Buffalo especially is such a prevalent thing, you could just like, if you were good, you had a reputation that you could like collect money and anybody would let you come work there for a while until you like messed up enough for them to fire you or you just didn't show up for a while. So for 5 years I did debt collections and just bounced around from place to place. And what you said about You know, that other guy that you interviewed about a year ago totally reminds me of that because I could easily walk in a place and be good at collecting money, but I wasn't good enough at life to be able to do anything substantial for a long period of time. So I think that was kind of the downfall there. And I think that would have been very similar if I would have started at Inside Sales Team while I was still using, you know, and I was still messed up. It would have been, yeah, he's pretty good, But he's super unreliable and he's like a piece of crap and lies to us all the time and doesn't show up to work sometimes. Which there was a few of those people that came through the doors when I was sober working inside sales team and I was a good employee. Those people would come in and they would just like, you know, everybody else would be like, oh, this guy really pisses me off. And I would be like, yeah, I get it though. That was me. That was me like a few years ago. So I would, it wouldn't even really like bother me. I just get it. You know, like, I know where that guy's at. And then, yeah, so I think it is super prevalent. I think the part of me that makes me good at sales is also tied to the part of me that gives me an addictive personality, right? And now I'm addicted to the leaderboard, the recognition, being the best, giving a big check to my wife, you know, that stuff. And like setting a meeting, right? Setting a meeting it's like a quick hit of dopamine, you know what I mean? I get that meeting, our Slack notifications go off automatically because that's something that Ambition does… little plug there… boom. And everybody finds out I set a meeting and bam, it's like that little, you know, nugget for the day. Get a couple of those a day, I'm good to go. So, you know, that's kind of what I'm addicted to now is setting appointments. But I think there's a really strong correlation between some of the characteristics that make a good salesperson and probably lean them towards, you know, certain vices.

37:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's fascinating. What's the favorite meeting you've ever set?

37:22 Andy Duwe: I actually have that right at the tip of my tongue, I think. Okay, so when I was at Inside Sales Team, I, you know, was kind of like a team lead there, right? Like, you know, there wasn't a really strong management core. You know, these appointment-setting shops are typically like you know, 98% reps and 2% management, you know what I mean? It's just kind of that type of environment. So I, you know, was making good money, and the same thing, it was like the harder I worked, the more money I was gonna make. So for some reason, I woke up one weekend on a Saturday, and like all the learnings and things I'd learned and tips and tricks just like synergized in my brain, and I was like, you know what, I can set a lot more meetings than I'm setting. And if I do these certain things, like, you know, do some prospecting on the weekends and set everybody up so I can make like 150 calls a day, and you, you know, put people's names on my calendar and call them 5 times a day and call them at the right times and prospect the right people, and, you know, all this stuff I'd learned, for whatever reason I just woke up, I'm like, I'm gonna start being way more consistent. I want to set 20 meetings this week, this upcoming week. So I made a decision to do that, and I worked like for 4 hours that weekend, like prospecting and tagging people and getting them all set up for the week, and came in Monday and started setting appointments. And, you know, I had like 4 on Monday and like 6 on Tuesday and 3 on Wednesday, and by Friday I was at, you know, like 15. And I needed 5 more. And we left at 3 o'clock on Fridays. So I'm like just crushing the phones, trying to get these appointments. And I got 4 out of 5 and it's 3 o'clock and I need 1 more meeting. And my boss, our CEO of the company, Steve Hayes, he's in the office. Sometimes he was in the office, sometimes he wasn't. And he was in the office and he came up to me earlier in the day and I told him I was trying to get 20 meetings. And then he came up to me at like 3 o'clock and he's like, hey man, can I talk to you for a second? And I was like, no, not right now. I'm almost done for the day. I need one more appointment. So I called this guy Matt Amundsen from EverString and gave him the pitch. He was familiar with Inside Sales Team, so he knew I was an outsourced third-party vendor. And he was like, I could tell you were Inside Sales Team just because of how strong your pitch was. And he gave me all these compliments, but I Walked him through the platform, set a meeting with him. It was the 20th meeting. I'd made a commitment to myself to set 20 meetings. And then he went on LinkedIn and like tagged me and Inside Sales Team in a post about how good of like a third-party agency Inside Sales Team was and like how good our training was and the reps that came out of there, which my CEO saw and was like thrilled about the publicity that we got. So it was just like one of those moments like, wow, I put my mind to do something. I set a goal for myself. I didn't like take a break like all week and just busted my butt. And I actually accomplished it at like the final hour and got this amazing result, like publicity on LinkedIn from it as well. It was just like this moment of craziness. So yeah, that would be my best meeting set.

40:39 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. Now put that in context. I mean, what was the expectation as far as weekly meetings set at Inside Sales Team when you did 20?

40:48 Andy Duwe: Meeting a day keeps the boss away, you know, 5 a week with a, you know, 75% completion rate. You're going to hit 15 a month, which was typically the quota for a rep there. It varied a bit from project to project based on, you know, different factors. Sometimes it would be, you know, 12, sometimes it would be 17, but typically it was 15. Get a meeting a day, have 3 quarters of them happen. You're at 100% to quota.

41:13 Scott Ingram: Nice. So you basically did your monthly quota in a week. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

41:18 Andy Duwe: Yeah, that was the name of the game, man. And it was like, I'm old for an SDR, you know, I've got kids and a family and like, I don't party anymore. And like most SDRs are young out of college and, you know, just figuring stuff out still, which is fine. I think I was at an advantage there based on what I'd gone through, where I was at in life. But like, it always just surprised me when I would try to help and train and coach and just be like, Dude, you gotta do more, you know, just bust your butt more and do more stuff. Because when you do stuff, you learn stuff, and the more stuff you do, the more stuff you learn, and the more luck you have, and the better you get, and the more good things that happen. And, you know, I would just find that typically it seemed like, you know, a lot of people would focus on trying to become the best at like specific actions or activities, you know, like I'm going to spend all my time like perfecting the perfect script and I'm not going to be good until I get that perfect script, or I'm going to get so good at prospecting and social selling on LinkedIn that I'm just going to be the best. But the thing is, is like none of these things are again the silver bullet. There's no silver bullet. You can't just be good at one thing in sales and expect to be a superstar. It's like, you got to have all these different weapons, you know. And I was just out there using all these different weapons all the time, just constantly making calls. And while the phone was ringing, like personalizing messaging and getting pretty good at that. And I was pretty good at cold calling and pretty good at writing an email and pretty good at social selling on LinkedIn. And I was just always doing all these different things, you know, with my 2 monitors and messaging people and LinkedIn and phone calls. And that was the key to my success. I was okay at all of them, But I was doing them all the time and I was doing twice as much as most people.

43:11 Scott Ingram: Well, and you know what the reality is? And this is something that is a huge shift that I had in my career because I was certainly in that camp early on too, of like so strategic and had to have everything perfect. But the reality is you learn more from doing the repetitions, even if they're cruddy repetitions. Like over time you're going to be way better than that strategic person who's trying to figure it all out and have it perfect. It's such a weird dichotomy, but you know, it's one of these things now. I mean, if you look at this last project that I did with the LinkedIn Sales Stars, it took me 2 months to do that. And it was just, let's go super fast. Let's learn as much as we can and connect as many dots as we can. That is going to be so much more powerful than trying to deeply study the issue. And, you know, I mean, most people would probably take 6 months or a year to deliver that kind of a project. Like, no, let's just go. And knock it out, and you get so much better by just doing it. And we're gonna go back and capture your do stuff, learn stuff, accomplish stuff quote because that was so spot on.

44:16 Andy Duwe: Yeah, no, I mean 100%. I think it's unique to sales because it doesn't really matter much, right? If like you don't do well every time, it just doesn't matter if you fail. It's good to fail, and it's the only way you learn. There's unlimited. I haven't heard everything yet, right? And I've been doing this for a few years now, and there's so much to hear and see, to experience, and you don't know how to handle it until you experience it. And then the next time you hear it, then you know how to handle it. So, you know, people, yeah, you just pigeonhole yourself and focus on one thing for too long, and you're just not expanding any other muscles. Just go out there, you know. And Inside Sales Team, because of that You know, I'm glad I started my career there because it was like, just set meetings. Like, we don't care how you do it. Just get those damn meetings, you know? And it was like a 1-week training. You know, you train for a week and then you're on the phones, like making 100 calls a day. You know, that's what was expected of you. So you just, you're forced to do it. You know, after a week of training, like I still have no idea what SaaS even means, but here I go reading off the script and you fall on your face and see what works and see what doesn't. And The reason I'm glad I had to go through that is because I realized that, you know what, it's not all about being an expert on stuff. It's not all about using the right words. It's not all about being the most articulate in your messaging. It's a people business. It's about controlling a conversation, creating relationship, getting respect from somebody, providing empathy, or connecting with a person who is like, oh, I like this dude. I can relate to this guy. He's nice. And they want to listen to you or do you a favor. And that's the meat and potatoes right there. It's about people. And there's, you know, the words don't really matter as much as the energy and the way you go about it.

46:14 Scott Ingram: Okay. So let's double down on that, right? Let's talk more about the meat and potatoes. I mean, what are you doing? What is the day-to-day in terms of the tactics and the things that you're doing and If it is more about the feeling and the emotion and sort of that transference, how are you making sure that that part of your game is strong?

46:33 Andy Duwe: I do it a lot. You know, again, I think there's some stuff I learned along the way in life when I had to try to manipulate everyone around me to get what I wanted in terms of, you know, literally being a drug addict and just, you know, having to manipulate life to get what you need. Now there's 2 sides to that. You can do that in like a really positive way where you're giving back to those around you and you've aligned what you want with what's good for the world, which is what I've done now in recovery, right? What I want is good for the world because I work for a company that's product can help people. Me manipulating people to be interested in learning more about it is good for them. So the manipulation isn't a negative thing. But moving on from that day to day, I believe in what I'm doing. I believe in the company I work for. I believe it can help people. I also know that it's not that serious. You know, it's just not that serious. There's somebody at our company who likes to use the phrase, you know, we're not saving lives here and it's just not that serious. So being able to make fun of yourself or when somebody shoots you down, laugh it off. Is key to keeping that attitude positive. But from a more tactical perspective, I'm making sure that the people I put into my funnel are quality, right? They fit our ICP. They're worth my time. They're the right person that's most likely have a need for what I'm selling. I have a really strong, like, process on a weekly basis that I follow to get my results for the week. You know, I kind of follow like a weekly schedule to get the results I need for each week to hit my number for the month. And that's putting, you know, 50 prospects into, you know, a sequence each week, making sure they're the right people, making sure that I'm spending some time personalizing messaging and that I'm making enough phone calls at the right time. You know, people answer the phone in the morning before their day gets started, then they go to meetings all day. And then at the end of the day, they usually finish up with, you know, taking notes or planning for the next day. So I usually catch people in the morning and I catch them at the end of the day. And in the middle of the day, I'm still making calls and I still get some people on the phone, but I'm also doing a lot of prospecting and messaging. And I just don't stop moving. You know, I don't stop to wallow when I'm rejected and I don't stop to, you know, celebrate my wins and like just sit in it. I just keep going, you know, and I have to take a certain amount of actions each week to hit my number. And it just amazes me week in and week out, it always happens. You know, it feels like a miracle to me sometimes, but it's like this energy I believe in. Like if you just give it your all, it's going to work out in the end. And it usually does.

49:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You know, it's funny, you're reminding me, I had a great friend early in my sales career who said, you know, the best thing you can do when you get rejected hard or just have a bad call is pick up the phone and make another call. And then you talked about this earlier, right? The best thing you can do after you have a great call and you have a great outcome is pick up the call and make another call.

49:50 Andy Duwe: Exactly.

49:51 Scott Ingram: Like either way, it's, it's the solution to both of those things, whether it's, I've got to get out of the bad momentum and turn this around and just make sure that I don't let bad outcome consume me, or It's, I had a great outcome. Let me maintain this momentum and build upon it. Like you said, you get 2 meetings back to back. At the end of the day, it's probably a good thing if you just pick up the dang phone.

50:15 Andy Duwe: Exactly. That's deep, man. It's so deep. Like, I love that either way, just pick up the damn phone. And, you know, the same thing too. Like, if I have 2 bad calls in a row, I can get excited about that because I believe in the numbers, right? And I know that like I pitched 3 people in a row with my typical pitch and for some reason they all are like not even remotely good conversations. The people are like just pissed off that I called and not interested in talking at all. It's really easy to be like, oh man, what the hell's up with my pitch right now? Like, should I change something?

50:48 Scott Ingram: 2 is not a valid sample set.

50:50 Andy Duwe: Exactly, exactly. But I know, you know, because of that experience, it's not a valid sample size. And I know that I've just gotten 3 people out of the way. So keep calling because that meeting's coming, you know, I'm closer to it now. So I think having that numbers data, like probability perspective and believing in that, but also having this like energy positivity, like what I put in will come back to me perspective and put those 2 together is where I really like just believe in myself all the time, every day.

51:21 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

51:21 Andy Duwe: Yeah.

51:22 Scott Ingram: All right. So let's go deeper into this stuff, starting with kind of the morning routine piece, right? So you talked about your pushups and your meditation and the yoga. I mean, walk us through the real detail. Like, when do you get up and what is that process as you kind of start your day?

51:36 Andy Duwe: Sure. Typically 5 or 5:30. It's interesting because, you know, I was already working at home before the whole like lockdown and quarantine and all that stuff, or before everybody was working from home. But since that's happened and the kids aren't going to school, I found myself like for the first couple weeks I was like sleeping in because, you know, maybe we were staying up a little later watching more TV at night, me and my wife, or eating a lot more cookies because we like ordered a lot of food to prepare for apocalypse. So I definitely put on some weight, but I was going through a little like funk, right, from that. And I've kind of snapped out of that again. And that happens, ebb and flow with my commitment to my disciplines and practices. But typically, ideally, 5:00, 5:30, get up, make a nice strong espresso, drink that, do like a 30-minute yoga routine, do a couple hundred pushups, meditate for about 20 minutes, do a little reading, just like usually like a spiritual, like 24-hour-a-day book, read the reading for the day type thing and kind of reflect on that. At that point, there's usually people stirring and it's time to make breakfast for somebody. But if I get that in, like, the rest of my day usually goes a lot better. I feel good. You know, you got the endorphins flowing. You've had some time to just like let any bullshit clear out of your head. And yeah, usually helps the day start. And the rest of the day is usually like I said, a little time with the kids, you know, breakfast and just hanging out before I come down to the cave here and start crushing the phone. And once that happens, it's like I feel like there's not enough time in the day to do everything I want to do, so I just don't stop moving. And I think that really helps me achieve what I want to achieve, but also like is probably a little bit of a weird thing about me. And then it's usually clock out, you know, close the computer down upstairs, Make dinner, eat dinner, clean up, go outside with the kids if possible for a little bit before bath time, and then get those kids in bed. Usually a show or 2 with the wife and then to bed for me. That's pretty typical for a day in the life.

53:57 Scott Ingram: There you go. Now go a little bit deeper in terms of what is the daily structure. I mean, you've hinted at pieces of this as far as, you know, the best call results seem to come early in the day and later in the day. And then you've got your weekly process. So give us just a bit more detail on both of those aspects.

54:13 Andy Duwe: Yeah, sure. So the week usually starts on Friday, right? Because Friday's when I try to identify 50 prospects that I want to put into my pipeline for the following week. That process is usually happening throughout the week. I'm kind of identifying people, tagging people, putting them in a bucket. And then on Friday, I make a concerted effort to like try to get close to 50. And if I don't, I usually spend a little bit of the weekend finishing that off. You know, the process there is like pulling from LinkedIn or we use ZoomInfo for our data tool or people that are already in Salesforce or that we've talked to before. But identifying those 50 people by Monday morning is kind of my goal. And then Monday is typically not great on the phones. I have recently gotten back into calling people early on Mondays. For a while. I got out of it. I used to do it all the time. Most people are really hesitant to call somebody at 8 AM on a Monday. And you definitely get some people like, dude, it's 8 AM on a Monday. Kidding me? But you also get some people that have already been working since 7 AM and are like, you know, totally cool with you calling them. So I usually start the day with some cold calls from 8 to 9, and then Monday is usually really heavy. I try to get like 25 to 30 of those 50 people personalized email out to them on Monday. Now those emails don't send until 6:30 AM on Tuesday because I don't like sending emails on Mondays, but I try to get 25 to 30 of those written on Monday, and then that usually takes the rest of the day, and then make a few more phone calls from like 4:30 to 5:30. On Monday afternoon. And then Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I usually do like 2 hours of calls or an hour and a half of calls in the morning from 8 to 9:30 or 8 to 10, and then try to get 10 or so of those remaining 50. There's like, you know, 20 to 25 left for the week. So I try to get those finished by Thursday, right? So try to do 10 to 15 on Tuesday, 10 on Wednesday, hopefully get them finished off and out. But sometimes it, you know, bleeds into Thursday. So getting those 50 people into sequence, that was Monday, Tuesday, like calls in the morning, getting some emails out and calls in the afternoon. That's really what Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday look like. And then Fridays, usually following up on people I've talked to throughout the week, making calls in the morning and then starting to identify prospects for the following week. And I'm usually where I want to be by you know, Thursday or early Friday in terms of sets. But yeah, that's kind of what it looks like.

56:55 Scott Ingram: Very nice. Are there any other habits or routines that are really core to your success that we haven't already touched on?

57:01 Andy Duwe: I typically have like a really pretty… I don't know what the word for it is, just like not that creative of a strategy. I just stick to what I stick to and it works. I'm really strong on the phone, I think, and I get stuck in my ways. You know, I do the same thing over and over again. But it works from a cold call perspective. You know, I'm on LinkedIn a lot, not really to set meetings, but I'd get a lot of intel from like lower level individual contributors on LinkedIn to figure out which accounts are worth going after and getting some intel on why and how to approach their leaders. So I do a lot of messaging from that perspective. I don't set a lot of meetings on LinkedIn. I do from time to time, but so I'm often like always on LinkedIn answering messages, writing messages, connecting with people. Kind of in the middle of everything else and kind of just go back and forth, bounce around, you know, and then there's a lot of, you know, internal meetings with the team, especially now that everybody's remote. You know, we have standups every morning and kind of a weekly strategy planning session on Mondays and, you know, other company-wide meetings and stuff. So there's a lot of other stuff going on in the middle of that. But yeah, I keep it pretty basic, you know, prospect the right people, call them, email them with some personalized messaging and do a little stuff on LinkedIn to try to find out more about the accounts that I think are worth going after, and I stick to that, you know, week in and week out. I don't try to reinvent the wheel. I don't change up things very often, you know. I don't drastically change things up, but I do make little changes very often, like week over week, just trying new things out, trying new messaging, trying new tactics, like You know, calling people 2 times in a row or calling somebody 3 times, once an hour for 3 hours, or different subject lines and stuff like that. I'm constantly trying one thing at a time, but I never change up like my whole strategy or process.

58:59 Scott Ingram: That makes sense. Where are you coming up with those things that you are testing? And along those lines, I'm always interested in, you know, what folks' information diet looks like. What else are you reading, listening to, watching, and when does that happen?

59:12 Andy Duwe: Yeah, you know, it's kind of interesting. I don't do a lot of reading from like a business perspective, like sales books, articles, podcasts. I'm on LinkedIn, you know, I follow kind of some people that are, you know, out there writing articles on best practices. And I look at statistics on subject lines and stuff. It's funny, like, I have a tagline on my LinkedIn I think it says self-development leader, hip-hop enthusiast, and thought follower. And that's just kind of a play on people being thought leaders on LinkedIn. And there's awesome content out there, but I take everything with a grain of salt because you'll read somebody that you really respect write an article and tell you to do one thing, and then you'll read another article by somebody you really respect and they'll tell you to do the complete opposite of it. And Both of them are completely valid, right? And it just goes back to that thing that everybody's different. So one thing that works for somebody doesn't work for somebody else. And the other thing I've noticed is that, you know, people that I really respect and are very thoughtful, intelligent people describe and try to teach the, you know, sales community about things that work. And they give them like really creative names that are catchy and easy to remember. And a lot of times I'm already doing a lot of that stuff, right? I just haven't given it a name and I've just kind of organically figured out how to do it. I'm not good at giving things names. I don't think I'm good at teaching people. I don't think I'm good at, you know, boiling down my process and trying to make somebody else learn how to do it because it's so scattered and all over the place. And I've never had a lot of success like teaching somebody how to be me. So I think that is one of the reasons I'm not super interested in managing because it's just not my best skill. But I think that I've gotten this far by just figuring things out on my own. So I'm not super concerned with having a consistent diet of what I should do in sales to be better because I've had a lot of luck just figuring it out on my own. And I'm not super passionate about sales, right? Like, I try not to think about it when I'm not working. I try to think about other things like hanging out with my kids and doing projects with them, or I'm really into like spirituality. I'm really into like reading novels, and I just don't really put a lot of time… I don't really set a lot of time aside for learning about sales. And when I'm working, I'm just trying to set meetings. So I'm not really looking to learn either. You know what I mean? So I guess long story short is I've just kind of figured stuff out a little bit at a time along the way. And that's kind of the way I like to do it.

1:02:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You know, it's so interesting that you say that because I feel like that's sort of my job, right? The, the reason I do this is to really get into the folks that are essentially working the hardest and have figured out things for themselves who aren't worried about, to your point, like, oh, I want to be a thought leader and I've got to come up with this great name for this strategy that I use. They're just deploying the strategy and, and using it effectively.

1:02:32 Andy Duwe: Right, exactly.

1:02:33 Scott Ingram: So what's an example of that? Right? Like, don't worry about the name, but is there something you're doing that you haven't seen people talking about or giving some fancy name that you're like, yeah, I've been doing this for years. It just works great for me.

1:02:46 Andy Duwe: Yeah, well, I will use the name because I think they deserve to be mentioned, and I've got 3 that come to the top of my mind. Kevin Dorsey is the first one. You know, when I was early on at Inside Sales Team, I remember just an SDR there, you know, starting to kind of make a name for myself as like somebody that can be pretty successful on any project pretty quickly. Our leadership team, our management team, went to the Topo conference, and this was like 4 years ago, maybe 3 years ago. And our director of customer success, Andrew Goetz, came back and he was talking about this guy Kevin Dorsey, who presented at the Topo conference and shared this thing he talked about, about tone and intonation, about using 2 different tones when you make a cold call. The first is the lost in the city voice. Where you're like kind of asking subconsciously the prospect to help you out by like telling them you're not sure if you're in the right spot, even though you think you're in the right spot. And like the same way you would ask for somebody's help if you were lost in a city and you had to approach a stranger to ask for directions, you'd be like, hey, I'm not really sure if you could help me. You know, I'm not really sure which way to go. Like this really like timid voice, right? So to use that voice when you start the cold call, ask some sort of anchor question or probing question to get them engaged. That's a very loaded question, right? That you pretty much know, like, the different answers they could possibly give and know how to respond to whatever answer they give. And then when they respond, you use the thank God voice. And this is where whatever they say, you're like, oh, thank God you said that. That's exactly what I was hoping you'd say. If you said any other of 100 things, I wouldn't have cared. But since you said that thing, I think you should take a meeting, right? And I remembered him telling me about this, and I looked up the article that Kevin had written. And this is kind of when I started following Kevin. I love his writing. It's amazing. It's super thoughtful and a lot of times not very salesy and more of like spiritual and like energy stuff that I really dig. But anyway, I read the article and I was like, this is gold. I love how he gave these names to these tones and I'm already doing this, right? Like I was already using different tones in my pitch and being very timid and asking for help in the beginning. And then being very excited about whatever they said and framing it up that whatever they said is a good reason for them to take a meeting. And it was like validation for me. It was like, wow, this thought leader, you know, speaker dude who I've never heard of before, who's super like articulate and eloquent when he's talking about sales and like energetic, is teaching this thing to people that I can totally identify and relate to the name he gave it. And I'm already doing it. And it was like, wow, I must be doing something right. This is cool. I like figured this out on my own. And then the next would be Sam Nelson from Outreach, Mr. Blue Hair, you know, love his stuff, love all the live LinkedIn things he does. And his big Agoge sequence he taught everybody in the sales community and like so many people picked up on it and started doing that. A lot of that stuff I was already doing. Right. And I started, I watched his thing where he taught about it and I was like, this is cool. Like he's giving the stuff names. He's explaining why it works. And I'm already doing a lot of it. You know, his understanding in the sequence is great and I totally get it. So that was another validation. And then a third would be Becc Holland, who has been like blowing up with this Flip the Script thing, touring around the country, talking to lots of people. And SDRs are really eating up what she's teaching. And her whole thing is like putting the soul back in sales development and having integrity as to why you're reaching out to somebody and explaining articulately in messaging that relates to what they do and why your product is related to what they do and just like proving that you took time to do it. And anyway, She was at our customer summit last year for Ambition, and she spoke about this, and she was going through her slides, and she was describing the way that she would teach people to step by step go through their LinkedIn page and prioritize what they would find to use it to personalize messaging. And she had all these clever names for it. Which was awesome. And it was just all stuff that I was already doing with how I was personalizing my messaging, you know, and like the descriptions and names that she gave it and processes that she gave it were like so creative and catchy and easy to remember and like really great for teaching somebody that process. But again, it was like, I'm already doing that stuff. Great. Another validation. So that happens to me a lot. And makes me like just not worry about needing to be on the forefront of what people are teaching because I'm constantly trying different stuff. And when it works, I usually like hang onto it. You know what I mean? But it usually stops working after a while too. That's the thing about sales. Like something can work for a while and then it can easily stop working because either too many people are doing it or for whatever reason, you know, things just change.

1:08:00 Scott Ingram: Yep. And I think it's in a lot of cases, it's the first thing, right? It's okay. Hey, I figured this thing out and then It gets out there, right? Everybody starts talking about it. Then when everybody's doing it, it's not novel. It's not unique anywhere. I mean, I remember years and years and years ago where the message, like you hadn't heard from somebody in a while and you'd sort of suggest that they were in some outlandish, ridiculous situation.

1:08:24 Andy Duwe: Like being eaten by an alligator.

1:08:26 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that message, right? Like that used to work great years ago. Now everybody does it and it just, you're like, oh my God, this is horrible.

1:08:33 Andy Duwe: Well, just as a quick funny story, we had somebody write that email at Inside Sales Team. To an executive, like a C-level executive who like either their direct relative or somebody that worked for their company that was close to them's direct relative had recently been eaten by an alligator.

1:08:52 Scott Ingram: No.

1:08:53 Andy Duwe: And, you know, you heard one of these stories like down in Florida or whatever, and this was only a couple of years ago. But anyway, we got some backlash from, from that company about that email because it really hit home and resonated.

1:09:04 Scott Ingram: That's ridiculous. Yeah, but again, it's one of those things and you've got to stay creative. You've got to come up with your own stuff. You've got to find things that work for you. And at the same token, I think you've got to be careful about using the stuff that everybody's talking about because it becomes less and less effective over time.

1:09:22 Andy Duwe: Yeah. And if you're still an individual contributor, you got to be hesitant to be a thought leader on LinkedIn and share what you're doing, because if you do, it's probably going to break within the next 6 months.

1:09:33 Scott Ingram: Right. So be careful of being interviewed by Scott.

1:09:35 Andy Duwe: Yeah.

1:09:37 Scott Ingram: So what are the tools and apps that are kind of core to your process that you're using beyond… I mean, we've talked about LinkedIn certainly, and I think you mentioned Outreach. What else is in there?

1:09:46 Andy Duwe: Yeah, again, I mean, I'm pretty old school, I think, and pretty stuck in my ways. Sometimes I feel like an old man in terms of my one kind of awareness of what's out there. You know, most of the folks on my team are quite a bit younger than me, so sometimes they make fun of me for the words I use that I learned from my son or whatever, but Anyway, yeah, Salesforce, Outreach, LinkedIn, ZoomInfo is basically what I have open all the time. And that's really it. Like, you know, I go to LinkedIn to find out who's doing what, where, and I go to ZoomInfo to pull them into the system and I start reaching out to them and I message them on LinkedIn and via email and I call them. That's really it for me.

1:10:27 Scott Ingram: Like it. Simplicity is good. Is, is there something you believe that the average SDR would think is crazy?

1:10:34 Andy Duwe: I think like I've kind of talked about some of the stuff already. Like if you work twice as hard, you'll get paid off like 10 times as much. If you have a good call, like make another call right away. If you have a bad call, make another call right away. Like keep moving. Don't stop moving. You know, get a yoga ball to sit on, make sure you have good posture. I think that's something that people think is funny. I used to have a yoga ball chair at Inside Sales Team, and everybody, you know, used to make fun of me or think it was funny or whatever. And they'd be like, man, you have really good posture. And one month I was like, I'm sick of this chair. I want to just like recline and sit back. So I switched back to a normal chair for a month, and I had the worst month I'd had all year. And so I switched back to the yoga chair after that month was over. But just little stuff like that, you know, have good posture. You can do more than you think you can do. Push yourself. Like, you know, if you want to make more money, work harder. Be nice to people and believe that if you are, it'll come back to you.

1:11:37 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. What about the flip side? You've been around, you're in kind of this team lead role. You're around a lot of different folks at Inside Sales Team. Is there something that the average sales development rep believes that you think is crazy?

1:11:49 Andy Duwe: Let's see. I would say that believing in like that you need to like learn everything before you can be as successful as somebody like me, you know, you don't, you just need to go out there and fall on your face and take chances and fail and not be afraid to do that.

1:12:10 Scott Ingram: So maybe it's the same thing we were just talking about, but I'm curious what advice you would give to somebody that's just starting out in a sales role today, right? Maybe they're just, I've got this brand new SDR role. I've never done this before. What do you tell them?

1:12:23 Andy Duwe: Yeah, I mean, I think just not being afraid to mess up. I tell, you know, the guys and gal on my team at Ambition all the time, just like go out there and have conversations. Try to keep people on the phone. Try to ask them questions about what they do and why, you know, why they said what they just said. Like if you can have a 5-minute conversation with everybody you talk to, Regardless of whether they take a demo or not, like, you're learning stuff. So just go out there and take chances and stay busy and keep taking actions. And when I say take actions, just keep having conversations. Have as many conversations as you can have, and that's your bread and butter. That's your money. Like, if you can have 10 conversations a day, you're gonna learn way faster than if you have 1 conversation a day. It's gonna take you 10 times as long to get to where you want to be. So The only way to learn in sales is to actually force yourself to have a conversation with somebody. You know, we do call coaching, and I think it's so important that after giving feedback to somebody, we actually role-play and have them say what I coached them on. Because if they actually never say it and I just give them feedback, it's never going to sink in until they actually use the muscle and say the stuff. So until you try to overcome every objection and you know, fall flat on your face and make mistakes and get hung up on and get told that you're an idiot because you don't know what you're talking about, which very rarely happens. But just being vulnerable and not afraid to look stupid or not know something. Just have conversations, go out there and have conversations, and you're going to learn everything you need to know. Love it.

1:13:59 Scott Ingram: What about somebody that is further in? Maybe they've been in that role for some number of months and they're either stuck, like they feel like they're not progressing, or Like they're doing okay, but they're just not at that level of greatness. What do you tell them?

1:14:15 Andy Duwe: I mean, I'd probably want to dig into it a little more and see what might be going on, but it's typically either go back to your fundamentals, you know, are you trying to overcomplicate things? Are you trying to change the script too much because it's not working at first, but really you never mastered it in the first place and you're trying to change it before you mastered it because you don't think it's working. Or it is do more, do more action activity. You know, you can't rely on just phone meetings all the time because some people just don't answer the phone. So you better have an email game and a LinkedIn game too. So where are you getting most of your meetings? Whatever that channel is, keep doing it, but add something else in and focus on something else because you obviously need to work on you know, another channel to convert meetings as well.

1:15:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Now, do you use any other channels besides those 3? So we talked about phone, email, and LinkedIn. Is there anything else that you've found that you're able to use effectively?

1:15:14 Andy Duwe: Yeah, I mean, I use video as well, not as often, just because it's… to do it right, it's time-consuming. You know, if you're going to use video, you got to be, you know, make sure that you're pretty clever and you do a lot of research and make a nice video for somebody. And I've just found that the payoff was never what I needed it to be for me for the amount of time that it took. But I do use it from time to time if there's somebody I can't get on the phone or to, you know, respond to an email, but they're maybe opening my emails but they're not responding and I don't have a number for them. I'll make them a video, you know, because I know that they're going to open it and watch it and maybe that'll be the thing that catches their attention. And the other thing I would say is Referrals, you know, just having a network of like creating a network for yourself on LinkedIn with your current customers, befriending them, and just other people in general that might be able to give you referrals is a huge channel I think that I use that helps kind of put me over the top sometimes.

1:16:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And it's so often overlooked, right? I mean, all we talk about is the phone and email and LinkedIn, and we don't talk about the relationship side enough. And the longer you do this, the easier that gets because those relationships build over time.

1:16:31 Andy Duwe: Exactly, exactly.

1:16:33 Scott Ingram: So is there anything else that you were… I mean, we've covered a ton of ground. Is there anything that you were hoping we'd cover in this conversation that somehow or other we didn't yet get to?

1:16:43 Andy Duwe: Nothing comes to the top of my mind, Scott. I feel like we covered a lot. I think, you know, just like The main theme, I think, in my life is to not take this job too seriously, but also take it super seriously, right? So I leave it all at my desk here down in the basement. I put it all… I give it 150% every day, but I don't take it home with me, and I don't let it bother me if I had a bad day. But I come back the next day and give it everything I got. And I'm not afraid to, you know, be rejected and keep getting up and doing it again.

1:17:22 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. There is one more thing that I'd like to talk about that I think is important. And that is, I mean, you've got some great experience and history. What if somebody is struggling with an addiction problem and they're listening to you, they're feeling inspired? What advice do you have for them?

1:17:39 Andy Duwe: You know, there's tons of resources. But I would say the main thing that held me back for so long, because there was, you know, a good 5 years where I knew I had a problem and that I had to do something about it, but I couldn't figure out how to do it because I always believed I needed to get everything else figured out first. Once I got the right job, you know, the right relationship, the right car, the right amount of money, once I got that stuff figured out, then I could stop because I'd be happy and I'd have what I need to be happy. And that was the biggest, you know, lie I could tell myself because it wasn't until I stopped everything and just let go of everything and said, it doesn't matter what I have, this is number one. And the only reason I did that was because I hit a bottom that was so far down that it was either going, you know, to either jail or die or ask for help and finally give everything else up, you know. And I'd burned every bridge, so it was like I had 2 options. It was either go in this door and get help or go to this door and probably die on the street. But everybody doesn't have to go down that far, but you just… you're not going to be happy and you're not going to fix your life and then be able to give it up. You gotta give everything else up and take a risk at just losing everything and starting over. By asking for help and telling people you have a problem and, and being okay with that. But, you know, it's really hard to do that until you've hit a bottom far enough down that you're kind of forced to go one way or the other.

1:19:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it sounds like it's like almost backwards, right? Like the answer to getting all the things you wanted was to make that choice rather than, hey, I've got everything else I want and then I can make that choice.

1:19:21 Andy Duwe: Yeah. I'd say, though, that if you are listening to this, you're more than welcome to reach out to me. I'd be happy to talk to you about it and point you in the direction of some resources or just, you know, give you some advice.

1:19:31 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it.

1:19:31 Andy Duwe: Love it.

1:19:32 Scott Ingram: Well, we always try and end with something actionable, and that's a great action if that's an action that you need to take and Andy can help you with that. But Andy, for everyone else, what would you have them do over the course of the next probably 1 to 2 weeks while they're waiting for the next interview to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:19:50 Andy Duwe: I would say make a schedule. For you to accomplish, you know, a certain amount of tasks every day and do more than that. You know, don't be happy with just doing what you've set out to do. Do more than that. Try to do a little bit more tomorrow than you did today. Push yourself a little bit farther and, you know, also take care of yourself and enjoy life, but push yourself to take more actions. And I guarantee that they'll result in learnings that will make you better.

1:20:18 Scott Ingram: Well said. Andy, thanks for your time today. Appreciate it.

1:20:21 Andy Duwe: Thanks, Scott. Really appreciate it, man.

1:20:23 Scott Ingram: 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.