De-center yourself in the sales process

Adam Sockel (00:02.102)
You're listening to Bold Calling, a podcast presented by Orem where every episode we're bringing on the biggest and brightest minds in the tech and sales industries for a discussion about their biggest challenges and the unique ways that they're working to solve them. I'm your host, Adam Sokol. And today I am very excited to be joined by Leslie Vannette, founder of the sales led GTM agency. Leslie, thank you so much for taking time to join me today.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (00:27.027)
so excited. If our pre -call is any indication of how much fun we're going to have now that we're live, this is gonna be a good one, folks.

Adam Sockel (00:35.521)
Just a peek behind the curtain, we are going to talk all about sales development and all sorts of really fun stuff that Leslie is absolutely an expert in. we had so many, I had so many notes from our initial call that when I sent Leslie questions the day before we recorded this, she's like, those are not the ones I think we want to talk about. And I was like, I just had notes on this too. it was very wide ranging. will, yeah, we will, we'll keep focused on this. And so for context, are people listening in?

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (00:54.285)
We covered it all.

Adam Sockel (01:01.792)
When this comes out, it will be right around the same time as Aurum is releasing our second annual state of sales development report. And what we did for that report is we did a third party double blind survey of a thousand sales organizations and we got a whole bunch of incredible data on go to market strategies, customer acquisition costs, sales cycles, all the buzzwords and acronyms you could possibly imagine. And I couldn't think of anyone better to talk about some of these topics then with Leslie. So.

We're going to dive right in because Leslie has been talking all day and she's been very, gracious to join me. So we're going to be talking about how to capitalize all the things that you're doing so that you can set yourself up for success in 2025, because we're always, always forward looking. So, you know, first things first, I want to ask you, how do you think about making outbound effective as customer acquisition costs are on the rise, text acts are reducing.

as opposed to growing, how do you think about making outbound effective in this current moment in time?

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (02:06.437)
I think about it in a lot of ways. A couple that pop to the top of my head, one is ensuring that you are always taking a multi -channel approach.

Bye.

go with a minimum of three channels. But at this point, Adam, I'm thinking about like a multi -touch, multi -channel, multi -media approach, meaning you aren't even just like you're cold calling, but if somebody doesn't answer, maybe you are sending a voice note, maybe you are sending a text, you're using LinkedIn, but you're also sending LinkedIn voice notes, maybe you're sending videos. Like how can you create even more diversity in the channels you're using with different mediums so that we are

optimizing the chance of reaching a person where they want to be communicated with with a really good message. I think the really good message piece is another element because when I think about CAC

One thing I don't want to see my team doing unless they are running like an ABM or key accounts campaign is spending 30, 60 minutes researching every single contact before they even pick up the phone. We're still seeing that prescribed as like an activity that should be done for quote unquote good sellers by gurus on LinkedIn. I think it's BS. I think it's nonsense.

Adam Sockel (03:16.337)
Mm

Adam Sockel (03:28.571)
Mm -hmm.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (03:30.913)
Sellers tend to be very black and white thinkers, especially sales leaders, and there's this false dichotomy that has to be like quality or quantity. And I disagree, I don't think that we have to choose. And I think to be the most effective as you can be with outbound and to keep an eye on reducing that CAC, which is the cost of customer acquisition for folks that maybe aren't familiar with the term, you need to...

personalized, but personalized for things that are relevant based on trend lines in the industry with the customers they're selling to with the general persona versus spending, you know, 30, 60 minutes before you even start your outreach. Those are two that popped to the top of my mind, but we could talk about that forever. That could be the whole podcast.

Adam Sockel (04:12.516)
Yeah, I was just gonna say Leslie, need you to know I need everyone to know I sent Leslie like eight to 10, like pretty thought out questions. And then everything you just said right there, I was like, I could talk for 45 minutes about everything she just said. So before we move on, actually, I do want to drill down a little bit because we do have there was some some data points in this report where we're talking about channels. And you're right, people think, you know,

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (04:27.117)
You

Adam Sockel (04:39.103)
If they're listening to this Oram podcast, or they see this Oram content out there that they're always producing, people assume we're going to be like, pick up the phone exclusively, only pick up the phone. like, we couldn't preach that, like a more opposite version of that. We say exactly what you do. Like you need Omnichannel because you need to create awareness in your brand and in what you do. So when someone actually sees you calling and they're like, okay, what does Adam want? And what we've seen is, you know, that the

Biggest three are still phone, email, and then it's like social is this catch all. But then right behind that is video is the fourth one, which is interesting that that's changed a lot even just in the last 12 months. And I'm not going to ask you for like, what's your best sequence? What's your best playbook? Because there's no singular best way of doing that. But I have heard lots of people have different strategies about like, I send an email first, and then I call or I leave a I connect with someone on LinkedIn and I send them a video message and then I call like

If you were working with an outbound team and you were saying, okay, we do want to optimize. don't want you to spend 90 minutes researching insert company here. Is there like a process you would do for those, different channels that tend to work more often for you than that?

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (05:55.137)
It really depends on who the ICP is, I think, and if they live on LinkedIn or not. Because if they live on LinkedIn, I'm going run a social heavy play. If they don't, I'm going to run like an email phone heavy play. A lot of my clients sell to the IT persona. They don't live on LinkedIn. So we like smash the phones in a lot of my sequences.

Adam Sockel (05:57.945)
Mm

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (06:15.027)
But like here's two thoughts that I'll leave the listeners with. One is that even if you don't have high connect rates on phone calls,

Voicemail is still an outbound strategy that increases the effectiveness of the rest of your touch points. So when we think about sequences, there is no best sequence, but something I always, always do is double or triple tap in my very first day one. And so what that might look if a call was involved was call, they don't answer, I leave a voicemail. The voicemail will then push to an email.

And so maybe I'll say like subject line is X or the email comes from, you know, Leslie at sales led GTM, right? Like I'm going to push into the email. The data is undeniable that that increases the email open rates or if it's a social heavy touch, what I'll usually do is connect message.

Adam Sockel (06:55.227)
Mm

Adam Sockel (07:12.977)
Mmm.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (07:13.109)
And then sometimes I'll send an email, depends, like I'll do that double tap where the connect message points to the email, the email points to the connect message. And then I'll use almost the exact same copy for my email number one, which I would also send on day one. So always a double triple tap on day one.

Adam Sockel (07:31.098)
I love that. First off, I am so glad you mentioned voicemail. Oram has a voicemail sequencer, which is great. can leave them at scale with a little bit of personalization, but more importantly, so does a lot of other phone tools. So if you are using a phone tool, whether it's Oram or not, leave voicemails because especially the thing I love most about, I'm going to talk about this several times now, so I apologize to the listeners, is the...

the voice detects that it creates where everyone thought that was going to be the death of voicemail. In reality, it just literally is another perfect brand touch point where it's like, okay, Leslie's calling me. This is what it's about. Okay, and then when you call me back, there is some brand recognition. And then you said double tap. Like my brother is a CRO and his favorite thing is like, it's actually double tap, phone double tap. He'll call once. If you don't answer, he'll call a second time. Then he'll leave a voicemail on that second one. Cause if you answer on the second one, he'll just, he has the like.

hey, you know, it only rang like two times. So I thought maybe it just got disconnected. So I want to try you again. And if he does it, if you don't pick up that second time, then it'll leave the voicemail. But like the amount of times he will get someone to answer that second time is astounding. It's such a like little, I don't want to say like hack, but it's such a great thing that he does it is really pretty cool.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (08:40.279)
Hi, ooh, that's like the only double tap I don't do any longer. I used to do it and let's be very clear, it works. So it's not that I don't do it because it doesn't work. Like it definitely, definitely works folks. But I just, I have already like a ball of anxiety at them. And like.

Adam Sockel (08:45.091)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (08:49.38)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (09:00.694)
You have to be ready. They're gonna be mad at you. You gotta be, yeah.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (09:02.669)
Like my darling husband, like if he's like 10 minutes late from like riding his bike back from pickleball, I'm like, he's dead. He's dead, it's over. And I just don't need to invite that kind of anxiety like into my prospects' lives and into the universe. So I don't do it not because it doesn't work, but just like my personal take on it.

Adam Sockel (09:10.617)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (09:23.832)
yeah, you've got to be seasoned and comfortable with knowing that you're going to probably have someone picking up aggressively. But yeah, it is, it's not for the faint of heart. I will say that for sure. I want to ask you to keep the conversation going. I want to ask you, what should Outbound look like, especially like moving forward and planning for 2025, when right now so much focus is on reducing churn and mitigating loss as opposed to focusing.

as like trying to grow your book of business, like what should outbound look like in this moment where I feel like many organizations are thinking about reduced churn as opposed to grow.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (10:03.507)
Yeah, I mean, I'm assuming that a lot of our listeners are probably individual contributors versus like the CRO persona who actually can change comp structures.

Adam Sockel (10:14.89)
Mm

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (10:16.353)
But maybe an unpopular opinion is that a lot of people should have their comp reduced because if the focus really is on creating, you know, that recurring revenue stream or creating land and expand opportunities, whatever it is, right? Like the majority of the revenue is going to be coming from existing customers versus net new. Then why are we putting so much pressure to chase customers in to the funnel and ultimately into our customer base who we know are going to churn?

after year one, but sellers don't have a choice because they have these quotas, quotas that very few of them are hitting anyway, and they're going to, you know, hustle as hard as they need to to be able to like get their bag. So I think like the comp piece is one issue, but knowing that a lot of listeners aren't going to be able to like go and affect fundamental change on their comp.

Adam Sockel (11:09.929)
Mm

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (11:11.198)
I would say one thing that you can push with your manager and within your organization is crystal clarity on qualifying.

And I don't mean just qualifying like, we use medic or we use BAMP, but like really digging into what makes a customer renew. What a great customer that's been with the organization for three years looks like. Why a customer, like what a customer profile looks like if they're the ones giving referrals, doing case studies, doing testimonials. Because...

Adam Sockel (11:30.312)
Mm -hmm.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (11:44.905)
My experience with sellers is that sure we are motivated by money, but we're also motivated by being team players and by appreciation and recognition and doing right by our customers. So if we have the visibility into who is going to get the most benefit from our product or service, I'm confident that we will lead with that in our outbounding.

Adam Sockel (11:59.174)
Mm

Adam Sockel (12:07.218)
That that's, so interesting. And I will say like, one of the data points we saw as well was we looked at basically who is responsible for driving pipeline in over the past 12 months. So like basically the majority of 2024 and the first, the number one, almost 50%. It said, they said like customer success or account management, like that was where almost 50%. So it was really that like land and expand, which is why, you know, ABM is it's so

big right now and why like we always talk about human centric selling like relationship selling and network based selling all these things where it's like you're building trust is is so important. And are there are there factors that the outbound sellers should be considering like you mentioned kind of like a high level but like, are there specific types of like clarifying questions or things that the kind of frontline people should be asking?

when thinking about, okay, we're bringing in this people, these book of business in the hope and you know, with the hope that they will become a multi year customer or should that really not be their responsibility in the first place, especially with having quota and all these different things.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (13:20.557)
I know, it depends like who is answering this. Is like Leslie the champion of the sales person answering this or is it like Leslie the advisor to the founder that's answering this? I think sales people, the most important thing that you need to do is you. So like hit your, like.

Adam Sockel (13:34.077)
Mm.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (13:46.025)
Don't lie, don't cheat, don't manipulate. Don't do anything that compromises your integrity. But otherwise, you can only do your best with the tools that you are given and your job is to hit quota. That is your number one KPI.

So if there are opportunities to, like I mentioned, get clarity on what a great customer looks like and incorporate more of that, I think that that will equal long -term success, like greater long -term success. But like, mean, you just got to do what you can to drive your own quota. I don't know. I feel like that answer might get me in trouble.

Adam Sockel (14:20.791)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (14:27.423)
Yeah, no, I don't think it'll get you into trouble because I understand where you're coming from. like, are one of the questions that was sent off to the Boneyard that we're not going to use. I was curious about like the AE to CS handoff. And the reason I ask is like, we have some pretty substantial accounts that work with us here at Worms, some pretty big enterprise accounts that the AE who sold the deal is still very much a part of like the CS team that works with them. And I do think

that has been part of the reason that these people, we've had a couple of accounts that actually just signed like two and three year extensions of their deals. And I wanna give the account executives credit for being within that part, but at the same time, to your point, them helping to expand an existing account isn't helping them hit quota.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (15:17.801)
Okay, but it is when you think about the fact that CS is in my opinion the single best source of information about why people buy and why they renew. So it is going to help them hit quota and that it's going to help them sell better, ask better questions, focus on the right benefits and CS is also the single greatest source of referrals.

Adam Sockel (15:29.663)
Mm, that's fair.

Adam Sockel (15:42.548)
That's okay. That's a good point.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (15:43.275)
Like you want to collaborate with your CS team and when it's something specific like a handover where it's not like about the greater good of the organization. It's like I'm doing you, Adam, solid because you are my cross -functional business partner. I want to see you succeed because when you succeed, I succeed. Then yes, that is going to help you achieve your quota.

Adam Sockel (16:02.675)
Mm

Adam Sockel (16:07.548)
Okay. That's, that's a good point. That's fair. So, okay. We're going to steer away from customer success because I can feel myself getting into the weeds and I want to, there's a lot of things I want to ask you while I've got you here. okay. So to get back to the, like the outbound and like reducing CAC and also like reducing sales cycles. One of the things I want to ask you about is like, this is the noisiest time really ever. feels like, there's so, know, inboxes are completely cluttered.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (16:16.306)
Here we go.

Adam Sockel (16:37.479)
If you post even anything at all on LinkedIn and you have even a remotely small following, your inbox is just 95 people pitching you, whatever it is. You know, what are some things, you know, we talked about the different channels, like what are some ways, whether it's messaging or just approaches that people can use and like, what do you teach so that we can cut through all that noise and actually move things along a lot faster than maybe is the norm?

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (17:07.758)
So here's maybe something that's gonna be hard for a lot of people to hear who think that they are nailing it. I get a tremendous amount of inbound. I also see hundreds, probably thousands of emails a year that are being like sent or received by the companies I work for. Most of your messaging sucks.

Adam Sockel (17:24.354)
Mm

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (17:33.451)
So it's like people are always looking for these next level strategies and how do I break through the noise? And it's like, what you're doing is not like you're not even getting the basics right. So here's where I would invite people to start before they try to diversify into some of those like next level pattern interrupt strategies is to go back and audit your

messaging, like whether it's a call script, email, voicemail script, video script, whatever.

Audit it to make sure that it is not like writer centric, that it is reader centric. So that's as simple as removing like all of the I, we, our language, replacing it with you, they, them language, replacing it with voice of customer language. Because most of the emails, and I promise if you like ask your CRO founder, et cetera, to audit their like spam box, all of the emails are like, I saw your, I see that our company does, right? It's all that very like,

Adam Sockel (18:12.485)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (18:26.797)
Yeah.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (18:35.439)
we our language and you have simply not earned the right for your prospect to give a heck about you and your company and your company features yet so audit for the reader versus writer centric language and then go back one more time and do another audit

to make sure you're benefit focused. And this is something I work with when I'm clients work on copy is that I would say about 40 % of the emails that are written are very feature focused and we've all seen those, right? Like here are the three features that we offer. And it's like fine, so do a lot of people, don't really care, why does it matter to me? Maybe another 40 % go to the advantage of those features. Like it's one click. One click means it's faster and easier to use. And you're like cool, but everybody

Adam Sockel (19:13.257)
Mm -hmm.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (19:26.207)
he says that they're gonna save me time and save me money and reduce risk, et cetera, like why does it matter to me? I would say only like 10 to 20 % of sales messaging goes all the way to the benefit and explicitly tells the prospect why it is relevant to them. So the first thing that I would invite folks to do is just really master the skill of making it matter to them.

And then if you want to do some next level stuff, that's where I really encourage you to explore things like voice notes and video and text. And one of my favorite things to do is blur the lines between demand gen and lead gen. So maybe incorporating like an outbound led event play or like finding really creative ways to collab with marketing or product. But first,

just really make sure that you are getting the reader v writer centric and the benefit like relevant benefit focused scripting down so that your prospects actually give a heck.

Adam Sockel (20:31.197)
Yeah, it's the SaaS version of like, people always say, so often it's like, I'm just waiting for my turn to talk. Like, feel like, you know, anytime you have a conversation with like a selfish person, you can see they're just like waiting for their turn to talk. It's like, I feel like the SaaS version of that is like, I just want you to hear how special our AI features are. It's like, no one cares. Everyone has those. What does it actually do for you? I love that. That's such a...

Wonderful tip that you're right. Not enough people do. will say like I'm in marketing so grain of salt for all the salespeople listening. I always say if I can create a message or whatever that holds your attention for a second, then I am awarded the next second after that. Like all I care about is holding your attention and.

Sometimes that means being weird. If people have followed Oram on LinkedIn over the past six months, you will notice that we have been really weird sometimes with like strange videos and just like vibes as our demand gender actor says, but like, if I can hold your attention for a minute, if I can hold your attention, I can keep your I have a chance to keep your attention. And I was like, I've earned the next second. So I but I love what you're talking about, like decentering and putting them first and

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (21:42.946)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (21:50.684)
I feel very schizophrenic because I'm bouncing all around, but so many things I want to ask you about. yeah, yeah, please.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (21:54.069)
No, wait, I have one more thing, because I think that what you said is actually like the analogy you used is so freaking brilliant, because people can feel it. Like people know what it feels like to sit across the table talking to somebody who actually is only there to hear themselves talk. And then that's what we're so often asking our prospects to do is just like show up and listen to us talk at them.

Adam Sockel (22:18.192)
Yeah.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (22:19.533)
So I think that that was just that I felt that I felt that in my chest. And I also love what you said about like earning with one second you earn the next second because isn't that exactly how we teach people to build their cold calls? Your call opener earns you like the next 20 to 30 seconds where you get in your impact statement. And then that earns you the opportunity to start a dialogue. And then that earns you the opportunity to dig deeper. that whole process is

you use that first eight to 10 seconds of the call opener to earn the right to do the next thing to the next thing. Yeah, both A plus analogies there, Adam.

Adam Sockel (22:53.881)
Thank you. I said something on a previous episode where we talked about, said trust is iterative, it's that exact same thing. It's like, the person I was speaking with was, he worked with founders, like sales, basically founders who were doing founder led sales. And basically he was like, they're great at so many things, but they're not great at the thing that they need to be great at next. And so you have to like slowly show them like peel back the onion. And so yeah, that is, that is how I always talk about like

earn the next second for sure. So that I appreciate you, you liking that and please you can steal it. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Please do it. Okay. So I want to ask you about how you would align a revenue organization moving forward. this is a big question because the data we have, like I said, it showed that the accountability connected to who's building pipeline over 2024 has been

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (23:27.765)
It might be a LinkedIn post next week.

Adam Sockel (23:50.294)
account management had the largest number, but then there was also AEs, SDRs, and marketing were kind of like right behind that, sort of like neck and neck. So it's really these four different aspects of, you know, very different aspects of a revenue team. But at the same time, we also saw the overwhelming majority of people who responded to this survey said they expect to hire more sales development representatives in the next 12 months. So they still feel strongly about sales development, which is great. Love that.

So I want to ask you, yeah, I want to ask you, how would you, you can answer this however you want, because align is a very big word, but how would you align a revenue organization to balance like this current and future reality of all of these different aspects of revenue are responsible for building revenue? You've got like CS, marketing, SCRs, AEs. At the same time, people are hiring more SCRs. Like how would you align an organization from a revenue standpoint to drive success moving forward?

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (24:18.871)
Love to hear it.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (24:48.351)
Gosh, so many things just popped into my head. mean, the first thing that popped in my head, and you'll appreciate this as a marketer, is that one of my favorite trends is that folks are replacing drop -down attribution on their websites with fill -in -the -blank attribution. I love that trend from my own business, because I'm a solopreneur, so I can really be like, no, but really, where did you hear about me? Most of my lead flow right now is from LinkedIn, and so if I took it at face value, I'd be like, LinkedIn.

It is people that watched me on a podcaster webinar last year that followed me to LinkedIn and have been then following me there and then saw like a catalyst post that was their moment to reach out. But like the attribution is the podcaster webinar. But if I wasn't asking those questions, I'd be like, I guess I should just keep social selling when it's not the social selling, it's the podcast and webinars.

So I think that we're seeing a lot of that in business as well. I think more than at any time historically, there is comfort in sharing credit. Where I mean, we've always talked about the flywheel and it sounds like this like really sexy, great phrase, but at the end of the day, it's sales is like.

I know that marketing, you know, has 60 points on their MQL score for this, but they didn't do anything. And, you know, like, right? It's the drama. But I think now more than ever, folks are getting to the point where they're like, there is no single attribution for everything. Everything is some sort of blended attribution. all on the same team for heck's sake. Like, let's act like it. So that is one thing that popped in my head. The other thing that popped in my head is

Adam Sockel (26:13.882)
Mm -hmm

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (26:34.885)
One of the things I am seeing organizations get wrong is hiring AEs that were not full cycle AEs. And now suddenly they are expecting these AEs to book their own meetings. And because they have the AE skillset, there's an assumption that they have the SDR skillset. And I think that they are complementary, but different skillsets.

Adam Sockel (27:02.224)
Mm -hmm.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (27:03.401)
And so I would big, big beg of organizations who are going to ask their AEs to self -source, train them.

like train them on like give them that refresher on cold calling and on prospecting and on like territory management from that different lens because so often we're putting this extra ask on our team but then we're not giving like we're just expecting them to suddenly be comfortable cold calling when maybe they haven't cold called in a decade. So I would just encourage leaders to acknowledge that it honestly might be a little bit scary.

for an AE who's suddenly being asked to self -source and to give them extra resources and extra training to enable that.

Adam Sockel (27:50.519)
Yeah, I would add something in having these conversations for this podcast and customer stories, those different things, something that keeps coming up is time blocking. And so I would say like, for as you're bringing on AEs, especially those who are going to be self sourcing, like, feel like there needs to be more training on calendar blocking and being protective of your calendar. Like I have heard so many extremely well.

like seasoned AEs be like, yeah, I, if you look at my calendar, good luck scheduling a meeting with me because I have these blocks. And while it can be frustrating as the person trying to schedule that meeting, it's so important. Like, if you know, if you're an account executive, like you said, and you have to, if you have to schedule your own meetings, you have to schedule demos. But you have so many other things you're doing. You don't have that eight hours to prospect anymore. You might have 90 minutes a day. So.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (28:44.226)
baby.

Adam Sockel (28:45.188)
Maybe exactly. I think that's something where I don't think there's enough training of like explaining understanding like, okay, here's what calendar blocking actually means. Here's how to do it effectively. Like, is that, is that something that you talk to your teams about ever?

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (28:59.085)
Okay, we didn't even talk about this on the pre -call, but this is one of my favorite, favorite topics of all time. If anybody has ever sent me an email or LinkedIn message, then you know that my away message, my out of office reply is, aggressive.

Adam Sockel (29:01.844)
I know, I'm sorry.

Adam Sockel (29:14.514)
It's so good. I love it so much.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (29:17.541)
It's so aggressive, but like that is part of the bigger equation of how I owned my time. And a lot of it is boundaries. So two thoughts on time blocking. Like one is.

The biggest piece of resistance I hear from sales reps about time blocking is that they have like an overinflated sense of importance. And like I'm holding your hands while I say that you are important and I love you and the work you do is valuable,

Nobody's gonna miss you if you're gone for an hour or two. But what happens is that they'll start time blocking and they won't communicate that to anybody. And so there's somebody that for a year of working together always responded to emails in 15 minutes and then all of they're just gone for two hours and they're like, slack is off, know, their slack is off and they're like, where the heck did Adam go? So I highly, highly recommend that you communicate that new style of working to the people around you. And I will, even if I'm just going to be

doing like let's say a two -hour cold call block, I will still set that as my message in my Slack and on my email to internal contacts so that people know when to expect to get a response from me. So that is one thing I would say. The second thing I would say is I'm a massive massive fan of Stephen Covey's urgent versus important framework which other folks might recognize as being called the Eisenhower Matrix. So when I run this workshop I'll like put up all four of the blocks

which are like urgent versus important, important versus urgent, et cetera. And I'll ask people to open their calendars and tell me what block they think everything should go in. And without fail, every single time, 80 % of the tasks that are on people's calendars, they think go in the important and urgent box. And it's like 5%. And so,

Adam Sockel (31:12.742)
Yeah.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (31:14.173)
What I would really challenge people to do is question their own sense of false urgency. And you might be listening to this right now and being like, but it is urgent, Leslie. I have to make calls. I have to send emails. I agree that it is time sensitive. It is not urgent.

All of those activities are things that you know are coming on like a daily or weekly basis. They're things that you have to do, which means that you should be planning for them, which insert Adam's point means they should be time blocked because they are anticipated activities. They shouldn't be these like urgent distractions.

But I think honestly, if people can just embrace those two small things, like communicating boundaries and more actively setting them and then pairing that with a better understanding of what is truly urgent versus what should be planned for and calendar block, it would make all of corporate America so much better.

Adam Sockel (32:13.397)
Yeah, I was very fortunate at a previous job. I worked very closely with the CEO of this global company. I managed our brand and he liked being a part of our brand. And so I would communicate with him all the time and he had a PR background. So he taught me very early in my career. He was like triage. Tell me the most important thing, the next most important thing. You need to know what they are because I don't care about the rest. So I totally agree with you there.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (32:36.555)
I love that.

Adam Sockel (32:37.506)
Okay, two, want to be respectful of time. have two more topics I want to try and touch on and want to try and hit. One is something that people can't stop talking about. So I want to get your opinions on this. So how are you viewing outbound going into 2025 where the reality of AI seems to be less about like, it's going to get rid of everyone's job. And it's more about shifting what sales development representatives actually do. Like how are you thinking about outbound and AI on a very high level without.

talking for 90 minutes, which I know we could like, what are your thoughts on it? And how do think it's going to affect sales development in the coming year?

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (33:14.509)
Okay, I think the overall effect is going to be positive. I think that we are doing ourselves a disservice if we look at AI as being replaceive. Instead, I would invite us to look at AI as being assistive. Big.

misses that I'm seeing with AI are folks not using it to do stuff like automating all of your like CRM input or like there's still folks out there that aren't inviting like a bot to their calls. And I'm like, my God, are you just remembering that? So I think that there are these like incredible opportunities for

Adam Sockel (33:52.683)
dare you?

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (34:02.073)
being assistive and automating those low risk, low value tasks, what I'm seeing is that a lot of the way automation is being used that makes me want to throw up in my mouth is that people are scaling things that already weren't working.

and I see this a lot, like especially I'll see it on Instagram, is that some sales expert will be like, I have the path to revenue for you. You just need to send out 3000 emails a day and you'll get five meetings a week. I'm like, sir, sir, I'm sorry, is the ratio that you just prescribed 15 ,000 emails to like five people buying your $50 course, because that's...

Spam, that's spam. And so we're seeing this like, because it is so, so, so easy to automate, we are seeing a rise in spam, but people are using like sexy words to describe it. So like, don't fall for that. That's garbage, that's spam. One last thought is that I know we sometimes get caught up in our like tech sales bubble, SaaS bubble. Most people are not using AI.

is my experience, or they're using AI, but like not really, like they're using like a calendar automation, but they're not really using AI. So I think that we overestimate how many sales development organizations or how many like revenue organizations in general.

have AI like intimately built into the day to day processes that support their growth.

Adam Sockel (35:52.579)
Yeah. I think we all get a little bit of brain rot of being tragically online and seeing everyone talk about AI on, LinkedIn. And it's like, my God, everyone is doing how much AI and then, and then in reality, in reality, they're like, said they're, they're going to chat GPT and being like, tell X persona that we can solve X problem. And it's like, that's, yeah. Right. It's star. Yeah.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (36:15.495)
Which is cool, like do that, keep experimenting, keep playing. But I think that there is going to be so, so, so much. Like I will say my thing I'm most excited about is when the bots get good enough to do really good role plays with reps, that's gonna be incredible. Like being able to like onboard or test a new product or test a new persona and do an AI role play.

Adam Sockel (36:33.146)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (36:36.591)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (36:44.141)
Yeah. As long as you can also get feedback from a real person manager, there's like, there's a lot of nuance to that.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (36:44.341)
I'm a big fan of that.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (36:51.065)
I mean, it's like the trap of like the conversational intelligence bots, right? Like people were just getting a bunch of like data points and it's like, okay, but how do I, what do I do with that? So if it's not, I mean, that's like a whole nother conversation, but like if AI just gives you a list of stuff.

Adam Sockel (37:01.239)
Yeah.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (37:07.885)
that isn't suit, like if you're like, here are 12 data points, very few reps that I know have the time or energy or maybe even ability to translate those data points into action. So the best AI I'm seeing right now is highly prescriptive and very focused.

Adam Sockel (37:22.902)
Yeah. Okay, last question. This one is a little bit therapeutic for me because I have a boss who is desperately trying to get me to do less and I keep expanding. She literally today said, the scope of projects you are managing at this point, Adam, is frankly unsustainable. Let's try to redo. That was her exact sentence. I adore her. Everyone should get a boss who says do less. Anyway, if you only had budget for three outbound channels, we are saying three.

Hard stop at three. I'm not gonna let you say like well video, but we're gonna use it through three channels, but would you choose and watch?

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (37:57.389)
Phone. Phone isn't easy for, yeah. He did not pay me for this. No, like phone. I have been selling for 20 years and folks, like I genuinely have sold to like, to HR, to IT, to finance, to procurement, to say like I have sold to every persona. I have sold like four figure to six figure plus deals, like product, service it. Like I have sold it all and the phone is and always will be my go -to channel.

Adam Sockel (37:59.406)
Hey, great answer.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (38:26.317)
And I mean, like always, like I don't even see that changing in the next like five to 10 years. But to your point at the top of the pod, like nobody's saying only use the phone. I don't know any sales expert that's actually an expert that's like, choose one channel, good luck. So I would do email and I would do LinkedIn.

Adam Sockel (38:50.749)
I think that's the right triumvirate if you get only pick three. Yeah.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (38:53.709)
For right, for now. For now. I don't know. But like, so many questions. Cause a lot of people, like one of my favorite plays I'm running right now is like an event led outbound play. So like, is in -person networking a sales channel?

Adam Sockel (39:06.666)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (39:13.043)
I love how you're trying to work around this extremely hypothetical question. Everything else I've asked you that involved a lot of thorough thinking, you just off the top of your dome had a wonderful answer. This one I'm like, you only can pick three and you're like, son of a gun. I can feel you getting itchy. Yeah, no, think those,

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (39:15.701)
Yeah.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (39:28.925)
sweating all of the sudden.

Adam Sockel (39:31.539)
Listen, I think you picked the right three. Leslie, you've been so gracious with your time. have I have never said this before to a podcast guest. am openly jealous of whoever is interviewing you next because I know how much fun they're going to have. This was delightful. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Leslie Venetz [she/hers] (39:48.361)
so kind it was my pleasure.

Adam Sockel (39:50.46)
You