The best way to get unghosted

dam Sockel (00:01.271)
You're listening to Bold Calling, a podcast presented by ORM where every episode we're bringing on the biggest and brightest minds in the tech and sales industries for discussion about their biggest challenges and the unique ways they're working to solve them. I'm your host, Adam Sokol, and today I'm joined by Shaheem Alam, CEO of Five Rings Marketing. Shaheem, thank you so much for joining me today.

Shaheem Alam (00:22.645)
Thank you for having

Adam Sockel (00:24.418)
So I know you guys are big, big believers in the space of sales development and we're gonna dive really, really deep into that specifically today around our state of sales development report that will be coming out right around the time of this episode. But before we get there, I would love if you could give our listeners a little bit of background into kind of your career and how you got to be where you are, where you're at now, and then a little bit about Five Rings as

Shaheem Alam (00:50.069)
Yeah, my career. I started in, I've always been in sales my whole life. And I actually started in door to door sales back when I was like 20 years old. Did that for about five years. Lots of ups and downs, but learned a lot. That was a crazy grind. And then after door to door, I didn't want to do door to door for the rest of my life. So I decided to move into tech sales. was an SDR to begin with eventually an AE.

and then co -founded Five Rings Marketing, where we help other tech companies with sales development.

Adam Sockel (01:26.199)
I got to know what were you selling door to door? Because when I was looking for a job a million years ago, I did one day of training with a door to door. was for selling fiber optic cable in different communities. My father was an insurance, he owned an insurance business and I sold life insurance for a while. So was like, I can do this. I made it one day. So I got to know what were you selling door to door?

Shaheem Alam (01:56.357)
I was selling furnaces, air conditioners and water filters for homes. Yeah.

Adam Sockel (02:03.096)
You mentioned a lot of ups and downs. I got to imagine and you can correct me if I'm wrong, knocking on a door and getting told no probably doesn't. It probably hurts more than being on a cold call. I get like, what were some of the lessons? What were the lessons you learned

Shaheem Alam (02:15.941)
100%. 100%. When I actually became an SDR afterwards and I was in an air conditioned office, sitting on a chair, making phone calls, I'm like, I can do this all day. This is crazy. But yeah, no, it's definitely, especially in the beginning, right? Eventually you become immune to it, but in the beginning you're getting door slammed on your face. It was in Toronto that I was doing this. people just like telling you to like F

to get a real job, all these kind of things would happen. But then there are a lot of positives too, right? There would be people that would like, I would have dinner with them, know, I'm closing a sale, but then I'm also having dinner with their family, that kind of stuff too. So was, that's the ups and downs.

Adam Sockel (02:56.882)
Mm -hmm

Adam Sockel (03:00.874)
So I want to add, because obviously at Orem, we talk a lot about cold calling and we're going to get into cold calling in a little bit here, obviously with what you guys do as well. But, one of the things we talk about is how important it is as quickly as possible to start establishing trust and show that human aspect and like getting a prospect to be willing to hear you out for, you know, everyone says 27 seconds or 30 seconds, whatever it is like, and then kind of continuing the conversation. How do you do that in a

door to door moment because that feels even more like shocking when someone rings the door and you open it and they do not recognize the person who is now standing directly in front you. Like how do you start to build that trust and rapport at a stranger's doorstep?

Shaheem Alam (03:45.461)
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a, and there are actually a lot of similarities or lessons that can be transferred from door to door to cold calling as well, which I'll touch on. But you basically have three things you can control. You have your body language, your tonality and your words, right? And there's like some 1980 study that everybody quotes, which said like 55 % of communication is body language, 38 % is tonality, 7 % is words, right? So in door to door, you have body language, which you don't have on the

So what we would do initially to build trust and rapport is well, we're there to sell them furnaces and ACs, right? So it's kind of just looking the part. So we would look more like furnace technicians, right? Rather than look like salespeople, right? So that was kind of the first thing is just wearing like the company logo, but like looking like a technician rather than a salesperson. Then the other thing, there was one thing that we would do is we would always stand sideways. So when you knock on a door,

Adam Sockel (04:28.572)
Mm -hmm.

Shaheem Alam (04:44.851)
you kind of look, stand sideways and like kind of look, look to the side because then you're not intimidating, right? When they open the door, you're not like towering over them or right in their face and you're not confrontational. You're more like conversational, right? When you're like side to side. so those kinds of things would just be like, just through body language would help you disarm. And then it would come to mirroring, which was really interesting because you can do that on the phone too. If someone, you know, there'd be like the big macho man,

Adam Sockel (04:52.084)
Shaheem Alam (05:12.415)
king of the house, like whatever, right? Like you'd answer the door, like what do you want, right? And with those kinds of guys, you have to match their energy. Because you'd like, I'm here for the furnace. Literally, like you have to like do that. And then they're like, wait, what? Yeah, that's what I'm here to do. Okay. And then they're like the nicest people when you actually get in the house and start talking to them. versus if you get like, I don't know, like, you know, an elderly lady, right? She answers the door. I kind of usually take a step back or if there's like stairs, I step down to her level.

Adam Sockel (05:16.7)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (05:20.215)
Mm -hmm

Shaheem Alam (05:41.498)
speak softly, you know that kind of stuff it helps to build trust and rapport.

Adam Sockel (05:45.858)
I'm laughing one just because now I'm going to think about these things anytime a technician or a person comes up to my door, no matter what they're selling or they're trying to, you if that's a Jehovah's Witness, like whatever it is, I am going to think about this now. But I'm also laughing because when I first started here at Orem, we're a fully remote company, but we had a marketing team kind of on site in San Francisco where our VP of marketing is located. And have a lot of sellers there too.

Shaheem Alam (05:54.056)
Ha

Adam Sockel (06:12.601)
And one of our account executives, he's been an enterprise seller for years and years. And he just, he's one of those guys like old school, like likes to give marketers a whole, hard time. And, and he, when he first met me, he was just like, what do we need content for? What do we, what do we need all this stuff for? Why, why can't I just meet? And like, he was testing me clearly. Like you and I, same thing. I matched his energy and like, I was a little rough on the edges with him back and forth. And like the next morning, my boss was

Shaheem Alam (06:29.128)
Hahaha

Adam Sockel (06:40.312)
Are you okay? Like Aaron really kind of gave you the business. I was like, we're great. And like from then on, like we were, but like we've been really good friends. like, cause he told me, he's like, I just wanted to see if you would match my energy. like, that is something. Can you do that? Can you do that on the phone? Is that something you teach your reps or is, is that a little bit different from phone to in -person situations?

Shaheem Alam (06:54.333)
Interesting.

Shaheem Alam (07:03.993)
a hundred percent you can do that on the phone because on the phone you get personalities as well, right? You get people that are just they make a joke when you ask them how's it going or whatever and then they like laugh and you know what I mean? You have a little bit of small talk before you can get into it. But then you have the prospects that are just like, what is this about? Is this a sales call? Right? Like, tell me what you're selling. And you have to get to the point with them and you have to match that energy. So for sure, some people speak fast, some people speak slow, right?

Adam Sockel (07:08.738)
Mm -hmm.

Shaheem Alam (07:32.904)
those kind of differences and you have to match that.

Adam Sockel (07:34.851)
So I want to ask, I mentioned kind of at the top that this episode will be coming out right around when ORM is really releasing our latest state of sales development report. And what we've been seeing in the data that we're collecting, it's a little bit interesting because we're recording this after I got the data, but before I've written it. So I'll be interested to listen back and see how much the narrative changes. But like what we have seen is that sales development through the phone

remains essential even with all of these different tools that are available. AI and people obviously are mass emailing and all this different stuff. But I'm curious for you as a running an organization where cold calling is such an important aspect to how you guys build pipeline. Have your sellers, this may be anecdotal or something that you've noticed, have you guys seen a shift in how people approach cold calls from a prospect standpoint? Like do they seem?

more standoffish since all these different things are coming around or do they appreciate that it's a human calling them? Like, have you seen a shift over the last, let's say, year since AI has become such a big

Shaheem Alam (08:41.993)
You know, now that you mentioned it, like for the most part, cold calling is the same as over the past few years. But now that you mention it, we have been getting more prospects saying that they appreciate that we called. It's so interesting. and they appeared, they're like, yeah, like I don't read emails. I don't read my LinkedIn. Like, you know, it's just, it's, it's, and they actually respect and appreciate the fact that we called them. yeah, I've noticed

Adam Sockel (09:12.353)
That's interesting. I think the way I see it from an AI standpoint is it's like, and really I feel like any change that kind of sweeps across a whole industry is it goes from one extreme to the other and then tends to land somewhere in the middle. when 18 months ago, I actually remember when Chet GPT first became really well known, I had been at Orem for a month and I jokingly asked my VP of marketing, I was like, do I have a job still? What's going on?

We, like at first people were like, I don't want anything to do with this. And then it was like, before, you know, going the opposite way, because it draws clicks into say like sales development is dead, cold calling is dead, AI is the way of it now. And what we've seen, you know, we wrote this other report that came out earlier in the summer about AI and sales development. And what we've really seen, like from a buying perspective is buyers are like, yeah, if I'm making

Shaheem Alam (09:53.681)
Yeah, yeah.

Adam Sockel (10:09.151)
If I'm inserting my credit card to pay for something that's like $80 a month, like fine. I'm okay with AI guiding me along the way. But for larger deals and when there's nuance, they really do wanna talk to a human being. And so I'm curious, like has your team's approach to sales development shifted in the last year so? Or I guess how are you guys looking at building pipeline?

Shaheem Alam (10:36.925)
Yeah. I mean, it's, kind of like, need to have all channels humming, right? They're all, they're all different types of buyers. So you need both outbound and inbound, cold calling specifically. you know, we can get into this a little bit later as well, but really like the approach is always to, start off with good tonality, introduce yourself. And then we always like to ask a relevant question, right? To start a conversation. That's our approach.

and I think if it's a smart question, it's a relevant question, then it works really, really well and people appreciate it. when it comes to other things, like, I think email is actually a channel that can be leveraged really, really well using AI, but not with those fully automated AI systems that are like have popped up overnight, right? That'll find the prospects, message them, and

insert what school they went to and blah, blah, blah, like those kinds of things. Like I got some things like, have you tried this restaurant in Vancouver, by the way? I'm like, come on, man. Like, you know, yeah, it's ridiculous. But what you can do though is like, Hey, and then you have, you have, give a list of companies to your, your target list, right. And then to, chat, GBT, and you have it fill out little blurbs of what that company does. Right. it's like, Hey,

Adam Sockel (11:38.222)
my god, so many of them.

Shaheem Alam (11:59.593)
So for example one email sequence working really well for us right now. It's hey we can We can connect you with more X that do that are looking for X so more so their persona their target persona based on what chatGP thinks is their target persona and then that are looking for Whatever that company does right so now it's actually a personalized email because every email is different right which persona we're they're targeting and whatever it's all

but it's very human still. And again, it's not fully automated. It's used chat -to -beating this way. So I think it can really enable your outreach if you do it right, but you can't fully automate it. So that's where we are right

Adam Sockel (12:39.661)
Yeah. then when you're inserting the cold calls into those sequences, is it usually like email then cold call or like have you adjusted your sequence? Obviously everyone is always tweaking and trying to master what sequence works best, over the lat with the like the rise of being able to automate some of this stuff. Have you guys been tweaking how your sequencing looks from a cold calling standpoint?

Shaheem Alam (12:52.201)
Yeah,

Shaheem Alam (13:03.293)
not really because I'm a, I actually, like, I believe that it's not that important what order your sequence is in. Like, I think people talk about that a lot. Like, this is the perfect sequence. I call, call email, email or email twice first, and then you call and then you LinkedIn connect. I just think as long as you do all those things at some point and do enough of it, you're going to get ahold of the prospect. Right. we do like to email first.

before calling because a lot of our call scripts will start off with, hey, I sent you an intro email. Did you get it? No. Okay. Well, this is it was about, right? So we like to do that. but it's like not, not, it hasn't changed because of AI or anything like

Adam Sockel (13:44.575)
Yeah. I want to get to, you mentioned before about like asking a relevant question. I want to dig a little bit deeper than that, I was laughing. I'm laughing because you talked about, know, like as long as you're doing all these things, eventually you will get a hold of somebody. had two things. One, Kevin Dorsey, Katie, an influencer that basically everyone on LinkedIn and sales space knows. We had him on an event we did earlier this year and he basically talked about it. He's like, I know

if I keep calling people and leaving voicemails for them and I can see that they're opening some of our emails, he's like, eventually they're gonna answer the phone and even if they're irritated, they're like, what do you want? They will eventually answer it. then, you talked about relevant questions. I wanna ask how you guys come around those, we, our VP of sales, Kyle Inspector, he always jokingly talks about, he'll get someone on the phone, especially if it's someone who's standoffish.

I'm not interested in what you've got. He'll disarm them. I'd like, yeah, I'd be falling out of my chair if you were interested in what I, we've been on the phone 12 seconds. You can't be interested. I haven't even told you about it yet. it's like, and then he'll get them to kind of open up a little bit. for you, how do you guys approach what a relevant question looks like and sounds like depending on who the prospect

Shaheem Alam (15:02.281)
Yeah. So, yeah. And we do this like across several clients, right? So all kinds of personas and industries, but it's really about, like, are you calling? What is likely their biggest challenge that they're facing? And we usually have three options in our scripts. And then, you know, for our callers, it's just kind of like experiment experiment. but it has to be relevant to challenges that they're probably facing related to the product we're selling. Right. So just asking about that, like, Hey, how are you currently

handling this. Okay, so I'll give you the Fibrings example, right? Like my own BDR for Fibrings will say, hey, correct me if I'm wrong, but I noticed that you're at, 5 million in revenue. How are you? How are you? What are you doing for your top of funnel to get to the next milestone? Yeah, that's what he'll say. Right. So now it's like a little bit relevant. We did some research, we could be wrong, but whatever we did some research. And then what are you doing to get to the next milestone? It opens up a

Adam Sockel (15:54.39)
And I'm always blown away by the talent of sales reps who do what your team is doing, which is they're able to manage outbound for different organizations and different personas and different industries. that how you guys, are you giving each of your reps different industries that they're dialing into or are you kind of saying like, right, you are going to be working in,

Realty or telecom like whatever it is and like that that's your space. Like how are you determining? Which raps are doing

Shaheem Alam (16:32.147)
Yeah, we definitely don't have like an assigned rep per industry. I think that's it's very hard to build and structure it that way. But I will have you know, like I do have one rep that just ended up getting a couple clients that were calling into pharma. So now the next time that I get into pharma and he has a slot available, I'll assign him over someone else. Right. So it's stuff like that will happen naturally. But not what is it called like deliberately.

Adam Sockel (17:00.612)
How do you guys go about coaching reps who have such a breadth of things that they are calling into? Because obviously, at bats is the most important thing. that's why so many people use alarm. We can get them into more conversations and the at bats are so crucial. like, you know, one of the biggest things we've been talking about is like the nuance around creating interests specific to that prospect. How are you guys going about

coaching reps who are tackling such a breadth of personas and industries.

Shaheem Alam (17:37.533)
Yeah, you have to have really tight scripts. Tight in the sense that it has everything that they could need. So, you know, we get the FAQs from our clients. We'll get objections we can expect to hear from our clients. And as they start to hear new objections, we do pitch practices and role plays with our clients. So then they help us, you know, get the answers and we start updating the script.

And then also within the script, build in, we build in AB testing into the scripts. So like I said, that first question in the opener, we'll have three of those. It's like, Hey, go test these out, see which ones resonate the most. we have a, a couple of different options for when someone says, what do you do or what do want? have like two or three different options of how to answer that two or different, three, three options for the presentation part. And then they try them all out. And over the first few weeks, they start figuring out what works, what doesn't.

Adam Sockel (18:26.799)
Ahem.

Shaheem Alam (18:35.09)
you know, we stick to those. So that's how we go about

Adam Sockel (18:39.428)
So along those lines, I had a conversation a couple episodes ago where I was talking to a fractional CRO who we were talking about basically the concept of trust being iterative. We always say trust is earned, which is true, but it's earned little bits at a time. And so when you bring on a new client and you say, we're going to be testing out different scripts to track success over the next couple of weeks, how do you go about setting expectations for those clients to say,

it might take a minute to get the ball rolling in the right direction. Especially when I imagine organizations who are coming to you for their outbound help probably really, really need that outbound help because they don't have it. How do you go about building that trust with those clients?

Shaheem Alam (19:27.149)
Despite being upfront about it, like I always let them know that there's gonna be a ramp up period in the first month You can expect a couple of meetings second month. We're gonna be halfway to target third month We're gonna be on target or exceeding it and that's just a ramp up Sometimes we go the first month and there's nothing right? So that's why you should always see it through for three months. That's what I always tell them Yeah, just being upfront

Adam Sockel (19:50.352)
Yeah, a little bit. I'm really loving the kind of practical stuff we're talking about here. So I want to dig a little bit deeper. How are you guys, you mentioned having really tight scripts and providing lots of options. Who is managing creating those scripts and things? Is it the reps themselves? Do you guys have ops teams that are constantly iterating? How does that work for your team?

Shaheem Alam (20:12.797)
Yeah. So we have a general, I don't want to say template, but you know, a script template. Like these are the different parts of the script. This is how we usually start talking in this part and then you insert the rest. So we have that. So the rep will build the initial copy and then the team lead will look over that and kind of like make sure it's okay. And then the account manager who's our client's main point of contact will kind of finalize it basically.

Adam Sockel (20:42.548)
In the, this episode will be a part of our kind of our second season of the podcast. But in the first season, we were asking everybody like, what's the thing that's keeping you up at night? What's stressing you out about the job? In my mind, I have spoken to a number of people who do what your organization does. We're like building outbound on behalf of other organizations. And to me, strikes me, it strikes me as like

A space with unlimited opportunity. your reps are good at their job, you can always keep growing by adding more people and people are always going to need help finding more pipeline. So, but for you in this space, what is something that's stressing you out or kind of keeps you up at night wondering like, what's the next thing you have to solve?

Shaheem Alam (21:25.813)
I think the biggest challenge I think that us and firms like ours face is that when we're working with our clients, our clients are startups, right? They're usually series A, earlier, know, few series B. They're figuring it out, right? So their product, they don't have product market fit yet. If they're earlier stage, they don't have a sales process yet.

Sometimes they don't know who to target. We're figuring that out for them. They don't know what the messaging is. We're figuring that out for them. And all of that is fine. The biggest challenge is we can produce the results, get all the meetings on the board, get them all there. But then for whatever reason on the client side, they don't close. Now that can be a sales process thing, or it could be a product thing, right? Because both have not been developed and been proven yet at that stage of a company.

So then if after working with us for a year, year and a half, whatever, they haven't closed any deals, but they have a crazy amount of pipeline, it's kind of like they have to go back and figure something out. Right. And so I try to coach some clients on, you know, sales, I can only get involved so much without offering like a full blown consulting service. but that's the biggest challenge, the firms like us face.

Adam Sockel (22:43.44)
man, that has to be so stressful. so how knowing that there is only so much you can do from that front, but you are kind of relying on them to close these deals in order for you guys. How do you like you said, you can only do so much, but how do you approach that? That stress of being like, my God, like we're booking all these meetings for you, but you can't always have an eye on

Shaheem Alam (22:58.274)
Yeah

Adam Sockel (23:12.201)
their news, how are you approaching a thing that you really don't have complete control over?

Shaheem Alam (23:18.441)
Yeah, more recently, I'm working closer with our clients, especially the super early stage ones, and just helping them develop a sales process, giving them like best practices, talking them through, you know, what they should be doing. And it's the simplest things, right? They make the biggest difference. It's like most of our clients will start off their first discovery call with like talking about themselves and presenting all about themselves. And it's just like, no, just flip that around, do more discovery, put yourself at the end for a little bit, right?

Little things like that go a long way. So just giving that advice, we created some guidelines as well that we share with them too, like tips to a successful discovery call, setting next steps, et cetera. So we try to do that. And then of course we try to continue to improve and improve and get them as qualified a lead as possible. After that, it's like I said, you can only do so much until, unless I decide to open up a full sales consulting arm, right, of the business.

Adam Sockel (24:17.62)
How do you feel about the overall state of sales development? Do you confident it's going to continue to expand, there's going to continue to be interest in reps, cold calling and things like that, or do you have a bit of a stressful negative look at the overall space?

Shaheem Alam (24:37.097)
Yeah. So I think that, all of these AI bots that came out, right. People were trying them and blah, blah. think like that kind of like peaked and it's like, I don't know if it's stabilized, it's going to die out, because it doesn't work. I've tried them myself. It doesn't work. So that's going to like phase out and people will get over that hype. cold calling is coming back in my opinion.

I think people hated calls and it was super saturated, but now it's a channel that everyone should be using because it's not being utilized as much as email. LinkedIn is still good too. LinkedIn has to be done correctly. I think that LinkedIn does have a lot more noise now than like five years ago when we started the company. So you just have to become a lot more targeted with your lists and what you're saying. You can still do it, but it's that whole personization at scale, right? Like have your message be relevant to a specific group and then run a lot of those campaigns.

That kind of stuff. So I think that no, no, I think companies need sales development. Like you need pipeline, especially if you don't have an inbound funnel coming in, where else are you going to get your leads? Yeah, you can go to your events and go to your network, but that's only like so much, right? So you will need outbound until your inbound is working, but you'll still need the outbound because there's a different type of buyer. There are buyers out there that don't know that there's a solution to their problem.

And that's what sales development a lot of times does is you're facing this problem, you know, spinning your wheels, but you don't know that a solution exists. So we educate you on

Adam Sockel (26:12.218)
love that. And I also think it's like, depending on your market and, and the types of organizations you're looking for it. also like sales development. It's a catch all, but like it means so many different things. Like if you're trying to get into enterprise sales development might just be, you have reps calling individual contributors and directors and managers below the line, just to give like, create brand awareness and like, Hey,

we've got this event going on and we've got this webinar going on. Like we just released this report and like not trying to sell you anything, but I know a lot of people in your space who are interested in it. And it's like, kind of create this groundswell. And if it's, yeah, if it's a, you know, a mid market company, maybe you are trying to book that meeting on that first call, but like sales development, people are really like the frontline of a lot of times just informing the market about what you do and they can't be interested in purchasing your product if they aren't aware of your product. And so I agree with you. Like I

A, I mean, I'm biased, I work at ORM. So obviously we're big believers in the phone, but like, it's such a great way to cut through the noise and have a conversation with someone after you get that past that first 30 seconds. And yeah, I agree with you. I think, I think the more people willing to pick up the phone is have a conversation with someone just like you said, Hey, man, I just want to level with you is what we're doing. But I know that you people in your space have a need. can we have a conversation? To me, that's always going to be better

Shaheem Alam (27:14.772)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (27:40.932)
sending out 5 ,000 emails and hoping.

Shaheem Alam (27:41.215)
Yeah. It's, it's also, and I think I posted on LinkedIn about this, but it's also like the best way to get on ghosted in your, within a, within a sales process, right? Like you have someone to have a proposal out or you've sent some stuff to them and are you getting ghosted and so many people just keep emailing and LinkedIn and emailing, just pick up the phone and call them. You have their number, right? Just, just call them. they'll answer and you'll get your update.

Adam Sockel (28:05.536)
Yeah, and even if they don't answer, you know, people are always were so afraid about when voicemails like when they have the written version of voicemails now. I remember when that first happened with iPhones, everyone's like, that's it. Voicemails are dead. It's like it's the complete opposite. Like I might not pick up your phone call, but if you leave me a voicemail, I'll at least read what it says real quick. I'll be like, man, she keeps calling me. I got to get back to him. So, yeah, I love that.

Shaheem Alam (28:18.292)
Yeah

Yeah, for sure. Or even and texting too. Again, within not cold texting, but within your sales process. Exactly.

Adam Sockel (28:33.782)
Yeah, I'm going to see it. might not respond right away, but I will see it exactly. Yeah, I love that. I want to have a little bit of fun here. You mentioned, I want to get into some speed around of the fun questions. What was the first job you had? This could be when you were a kid. I know obviously we talked about going toward a door, but what was the first job you remember having?

Shaheem Alam (28:52.904)
Yeah,

yeah, was, I was a waiter. I was getting paid like below minimum wage, cash job. I worked a total of nine hours. Then I quit. like, isn't worth like $6 an hour. Canadian.

Adam Sockel (29:10.337)
I, that's, I, when I was in grad school, I was a bartender and that was fine. Same thing. It was all cash and tips, but I will say same thing. also, I, I spent one day working at a French restaurant and I love French food. My wife is fluent in French. We've gone to Paris. used to live there,

I was not when I was 22, 23, and I remember spending one day and they're like, you have to hold the bottle like this and you got to do this. And by the way, we're going to pay you like $9 for your eight hour shift. And I was like, no way, absolutely not.

Shaheem Alam (29:38.924)
Shaheem Alam (29:43.762)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I got no tips at that restaurant. Nobody tips. Got like two dollars one night. I'm out. Yeah.

Adam Sockel (29:52.577)
That's brutal. This might be the same answer then, what was the worst job you've ever had? You don't have to name like organizational names.

Shaheem Alam (29:59.477)
that's, you know, there, there was no worst job. Sure. Maybe that one. Right. But I don't know. I wouldn't say that there's a worst job. That's yeah. Cause you just, I did, did like, you know, what is called like landscaping for a couple of days. Right. But again, like that was, it's, yeah, it's brutal being out there for 12 hours in July. But again, you just like, you grow a little bit. Right.

Adam Sockel (30:26.678)
Mm -hmm.

Shaheem Alam (30:28.35)
Worked at Costco for like six weeks and then I got fired, but it was good while I was there, you know? So there's no worse job, I would say. I mean, maybe that waiter gig.

Adam Sockel (30:37.267)
I like that attitude. You know what? I like that mindset. good. Do you have a favorite app for productivity? Whether it's Avoma or Slack or monday .com, is there a tool that you use from a productivity standpoint that you really

Shaheem Alam (30:55.861)
Two things. Well, I'm like crazy with my calendar, color coded everything, you know, like if it's not on my calendar, it doesn't get done type of thing. But also the later feature in Slack. That is like game changer. Anything I need to get done. Slack myself, put it in later and then I work through my later tasks. Like at some point in the day, it's nuts.

Adam Sockel (31:18.139)
That is such a good tip, especially I am one of those people. I have that very specific type of ADD where I have to like clear out notifications. Like if I see four Slack messages, I'm, I'm going to read them right now, even if I can't take action on them. so like it, to the point where like we're doing a podcast right now, before we started, I closed out my calendar and my Slack. I, I just know if I get a Slack message, even though we're talking, I'll just like look over real quick. So yeah, the later and then being able to mark stuff on red after I look at it.

Shaheem Alam (31:26.388)
Yeah, yeah, 100 % same. Yeah.

for sure.

Shaheem Alam (31:39.425)
Adam Sockel (31:48.252)
Oof, big, big blue in those. Do you have a favorite app for fun? Like I've had randomly three different people have said the chess .com app or TikTok or Instagram. Like, do you have something that you use to just kind of kill some time for enjoyment?

Shaheem Alam (31:51.72)
sure.

Shaheem Alam (32:05.62)
I spend way too much time on Instagram and I've set the reminders to I just ignore them. It says you you get your 10 -minute mark and I was like, nope 30 minutes for the day is done. Nope Yeah, like I spent a lot of time on Instagram I would say as far as apps go but no other apps other than that.

Adam Sockel (32:21.719)
Mm -hmm. Those notifications about like, you've hit your limit, always crack me up. There's one in the United States, sports gambling has become very, very popular and where I live in Ohio, it's not illegal and they have all these commercials for like, know, draft kings and all these different, and many, lot of the commercials will be

Shaheem Alam (32:38.77)
Right, right.

Adam Sockel (32:41.851)
Yeah, and by the way, you can set a limit for yourself so that you never spend too much. And I'm like, that is great in theory, but to your point, it's my phone. can just take the limit off at any time. Like, yeah, it best laid plans. Do you have an ideal work day? Like what's the best type of day you could think

Shaheem Alam (32:52.766)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Shaheem Alam (33:03.22)
The best day is when I'm like just actually working and not in any meetings That's like, know the best work day because you actually get work done But you know, I think like the best day is so I like to wake up. Pretty early like a wake up around like five ish And that's because I like to ease into the day You know just get ease into the day and then the best day is yeah, like if my mornings don't have like meetings like 8 a right if my first meetings I'm like

10 or something, say, cool, I get to get some work done. So a meeting light day, I'm able to actually get like some two hour blocks of work done throughout. That's probably the

Adam Sockel (33:45.307)
Okay. And then last question for you. I think I have an idea of how this is going to go, but I want to ask anyway. I ask everybody, what is a cold call opener that would get you to at least hear a pitch? So if someone was calling you, how could they keep you on the phone for longer than that 30 seconds?

Shaheem Alam (34:04.072)
I tend to give people a chance anyways cause like obviously like you know? That's the thing. I'll give them a chance but if I wasn't like that...

Shaheem Alam (34:16.02)
30 seconds. Honestly, even something like Shaheem got him in it. I was like, yeah, what's up? I'd probably say that. Yeah. Which is kind of crazy. I would never ask my reps to do that, but I don't know if it'll work at scale, it might work with

Adam Sockel (34:22.74)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (34:30.445)
Yeah, honestly, I assumed you would be the type of person that would give people a chance. I'm the same way. I work at Orem. If I am not gonna give someone a chance. In fact, my favorite thing is some of our competitors, they have a delay between when you call, when someone picks up the phone, there's a delay. And so if I say hello and there's a two second delay and then they're like, Adam, great.

Shaheem Alam (34:36.646)
Always, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Shaheem Alam (34:49.299)
Yeah, yeah.

Adam Sockel (34:56.245)
I will respond out of spook, hey, what platform are you calling me on? Because there was a pretty rough delay and like it just throws them off. I'm like, I just like completely, I'm a marketer and I still completely switching on them. like, you know, I work for Orem, we do X, Y, and Z. And they're like, they're just totally thrown off. like, I'm to let you get to your pitch, but I'm just saying you guys should check us out. Well, where can people find more about your organization and what you guys do if they're interested in kind

Shaheem Alam (35:11.922)
Yeah, yeah.

Shaheem Alam (35:21.938)
Yeah, five rings marketing .com or just find us on LinkedIn. Me, Shaheema, on LinkedIn, our company, five rings marketing on LinkedIn. Those are the two best places.

Adam Sockel (35:31.949)
beautiful and I'll make sure I drop all that in the show notes as well. She came. Thank you so much for joining me today. This was a blast.

Shaheem Alam (35:38.878)
Thanks so much for having me, Adam. That was great.