The new wave of sales development starts now

dam Sockel (00:01.482)
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 they're working to solve them. I'm your host, Adam Sokol, and today I'm joined by Michael Maximoff, founder of Belkens and host of the extremely popular Belkens podcast. Michael, thank you so much for joining me today.

Michael Maximoff (00:24.266)
Adam, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Adam Sockel (00:27.052)
Yeah. So I mentioned I could not be more excited to have you on and I genuinely mean that because what we're going to be talking today is at time of recording, literally 15 minutes ago, I launched Orem's 2024 State of Sales Development Report. And I know that sales development is something you hold near and dear to your heart as well. And so we're going to dive into some of the questions that arose and some of the pieces of data that we had. And so the first thing I want to talk about

What we found in building out this report and the data that we got from serving a thousand sales leaders was that basically SDRs are responsible for building less pipeline for an organization than a year ago, but they appear to be more essential than ever. The role is expanding beyond just outbound. And, you your company is renowned for generating pipeline for other organizations. I want to know, has the role shifted?

for your reps, especially with the rise of automation and AI.

Michael Maximoff (01:29.044)
Yeah. I've seen the same. I've seen that.

BDR role has expanded into more GTM specialist, growth specialist, anyone that could actually develop a good strategy as we all know with AI being so popular these days. Accessing tools and accessing outbound is affordable, everyone can do that. And because of that, we've seen increase

in email spam, email outreach, calling, you name it, right? So now what my team has been struggling with or where we are and where we are going is how can we expand the SDR BDR role to be able to not just execute the outreach campaign, but also develop strategy behind it, develop different channels.

put it into perspective like run this omni -channel customer experience, whereas, yeah, and I think this is where the industry is going. Now, something that also changed a lot was the fact that most of the companies have been struggling not just building the pipeline, but also getting that pipeline converted into a closed one deals, right? And so the reason is that

there was no alignment between sales and marketing or there was a lot of misalignment, but also there was a different incentives. So very often we've seen in bigger companies BDRs or SDRs being part of the marketing team, not the sales team, and they're working on generating the pipeline. Now they generated the pipeline, what next? Can sales team convert that pipeline? No, they cannot. So then there is this, okay, we cannot convert, we cannot meet our revenue targets, what can we do? So what's start being happening is that

Michael Maximoff (03:30.014)
the sales executive role has also been expanded into full cycle sales back. So now the sales executives start generating their own pipeline, right? And using community, referral, word of mouth, word outbound as they call it, their social selling and so on and so forth. So we've seen that happening. So if a sales exec can build their own pipeline, then what the hell we need BDRs for, right? And that's where the question is like, okay, what BDRs can do? And now...

Adam Sockel (03:34.879)
Mhm.

Michael Maximoff (03:57.738)
having a junior BDR or someone that's starting out and just setting up them with tools and, hey, here's the ICP, here are some tools, it. It's not going to happen, right? So it's more sophisticated. So now you're thinking about the BDR as that GTM growth specialist that can leverage multiple tools, multiple strategies, multiple channels, and build the pipeline aligned with sales and marketing team.

to be able to have not just pipeline build, but also have that pipeline converted into closed deal after that. So we've seen business development in its pure natural form as it should be.

Adam Sockel (04:39.243)
Yeah, I want to expand on that a little bit. I didn't want to interrupt you, but there is about 50 questions I wanted to ask as a follow up. You mentioned, you know, a lot of BDRs and SDRs being under marketing. We actually in this report, we found out the number is about 34%. So it's about a third of all SDRs are now under marketing. And you're right about the either miscommunication or poor relationship handling between marketing sales. In fact, our our events team was just at

Michael Maximoff (04:44.287)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (05:05.91)
HubSpots inbound and we did this huge like outbound at inbound event where there was basically what we called it a dumpster fire because it was the like the event itself was about marketing and sales and their collaboration and basically working better together. And you're right. It is a really it's an interesting and it's a nuanced situation. I like to think of BDRs almost as like a first marketing touch point a lot of times depending on how they're reaching out to people. But for for your

for your reps who, as you mentioned, are like, they're responsible for building pipeline for other organizations. And then to your point, a lot of people are still struggling with taking that pipeline and converting it. Like, are you shifting the way that you, like the KPIs that you're holding yourself accountable for for organizations? I guess like, what is shifting for you in your organization's role?

Michael Maximoff (05:53.352)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So all right, let me put this like this. So we started with email as our main channel. It was scalable. It was effective. We were one of the best in the world that we're doing outreach by email. And the delivery was simple. We've built messaging. We've built the database with leads. We've

set up mailboxes on client's behalf, we've got everything that to our SDR team, then SDR reached out to the prospects on client's behalf, work on responses, converted, book meetings, that's it, right? This strategy starts shifting. So email as a single channel is not enough. You need calling, you need LinkedIn, need PR, you need advertising, need overall, you need like a true omnichannel to be able to not just...

use tactics to reach out, convert and make the interest, but actually how you can identify prospects that have buying intent, how you can build a relationship with them, how you can build an actual effective customer journey. So where the shift is happening with us is we've started employing different channels and we've started collaborating closely with clients, marketing teams to be able to create this outbound and inbound motion and develop this more

more effective customer journeys. So now, when we look at the journey, it might consist from awareness, attention building, then activation, conversion, and retention. And what everyone was looking with the SDR, BDR function is how you can convert, how you can get the list of leads and how you can convert. But they were missing this awareness and activation motion, which was, we built awareness that

Adam Sockel (07:36.831)
Mm

Michael Maximoff (07:47.442)
that clients know about the company or the product or the problem. And then have we been able to show them that we are the best solution to solve the problem? Have we activated them? And only then the conversion. So what we've started seeing is we've started working with marketing strategy. We start building our marketing strategy team and closely working with their teams to be able to develop those customer journeys and then

build into different stages, seeing where the BDR function that we have right now is what stage of that customer journey is at, and then what stages customer is missing, how we can help customer to develop those stages so that everything is working effectively. And it means that, again, working with customer marketing team more closely, helping them to develop other marketing initiatives, except from the outbound, utilizing multiple outbound channels. So we are talking email, LinkedIn, social selling, calling.

Adam Sockel (08:17.065)
Mm

Michael Maximoff (08:44.654)
We call it intent calling when you can actually see what customers are doing with your brand and the web traffic, how they engage with your brand, and then pushing through the calling sequence and so on and so forth, as well as SMS and webinars, events, face -to -face meetings, you name it, right? But trying to create this holistic experience and trend customer journey. And in this way,

Adam Sockel (08:48.362)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Maximoff (09:07.986)
we can be accountable for some results, but also customers share some accountability because one of the things, and maybe for listeners would be interesting, one of the things why some companies fail collaborating with appointment setting agencies or so -called outsourced SDR agencies is that they shift the focus and they shift their responsibility only on the service provider. Like, Belkins is responsible for the results rather than like it's a collaboration effort and we are sharing the effort and we wanted to push it, right? So when you...

So now we're focusing more on that collaboration aspect. And we've seen that if we're taking responsibility from the end to end, we're sharing this with customer and then we're collaborating deeply with our team, things are happening on a much more effective and better level. So hope this answers your question.

Adam Sockel (09:55.724)
Yeah, it does. That's really interesting. And I want to ask you, you mentioned all the different channels that you're using. you know, we in this report, we found, you know, Omnichannel, like you said, is the way it's the best. It's the best way to kind of warm leads up and inform them and start to build that relationship. And, you know, we have found for the second year in a row that the phone is the number one channel for building pipeline, like 85 % of the sales leaders believe it's an effective tool.

70 % of the people we surveyed said more than half of their pipeline is coming from the phone. What that really means is through all of the different touch points, the touch point that they use to like the final touch point when they book a meeting is by getting on the phone and having that conversation. Yeah. I do want to go ahead.

Michael Maximoff (10:30.239)
Mm.

Michael Maximoff (10:37.716)
convert, right? Yeah, but I just wanted to clarify something here. It's very good point exactly like phones are converting more and more and more. But what people are missing is that they think that phone should be the first touch point in the sequence that would convert rather than it might be the second, third or fifth, right? So if you're trying to do just a mass call calling, right, without

prior building any relationship with this customer, you won't see as much higher conversion as if it's a third touch point when you already build some awareness and activation with advertising, with email, with social media, and then you're doing the calling, obviously your conversions will be three times, five times, 10 times higher.

Adam Sockel (11:20.234)
Yeah, and I do want to, so that's kind of what I was alluding to. And want to ask you to kind of dig in a little bit deeper is to your exact point. We work, you know, obviously Oram is a dialing platform, but we work with our customers to that exact point. say like, you know, you need to have contacts when you call, you need to provide them. Like there has to be a reason for your phone call. It can't just be, Hey, this is Adam calling from Oram. Hey Michael, how's it going? You're going to be like, what, do you want? So for your reps who are.

Michael Maximoff (11:44.648)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Sockel (11:50.014)
approaching this the right way with Omni Channel. And it might be different for every type of sequence, but like, when are you like, what is the context behind the phone calls that you guys are making? And how much kind of pre call research does your team have when they start doing so?

Michael Maximoff (11:55.198)
Mm

Michael Maximoff (12:05.33)
Yeah. Yeah, this is great question. So the way we deploy our strategy is we first build the list. So we wanted to double down our efforts on buyer persona research, ICB research, TAM analysis, as well as building a list with, let's say, 1 ,000, 2 ,000 accounts that fits all those criteria. And then we know that at this or some point in time, we need to convert 100 % of them as their

dream clients, right? So we start building those relationships. Now we look at this list and we say, who from the client ends what clients have done with this list in the past? Have they talked to them? What channels did they use? Did they done anything with them? If this is a fresh list, let's imagine this is a fresh list with, you know, this first time we see this, it's a new ICP, right? Then we say, okay, betting on their buyers, like what channels we should utilize first to build that first awareness stage, right? Like,

Adam Sockel (12:33.74)
Yeah.

Michael Maximoff (13:01.98)
Usually we might do LinkedIn ads, we might do Google search ads, we might run some PR or some partnership activity or look for where we can activate those, The way we build awareness. Then the way we do it is we've run an email channel and then depending on the email channel, we might include different links for the case studies or lead magnets or anything that we know would create value for the customer.

And as well as we can discover any type of intent, right? So if we see any type of engagements, know, people start engaging with our brand on social, following the page, liking content, if they start opening our emails multiple times, if they clicked on links with like case studies or registered somewhere or went to the webinar. any action they, and then if you do that at scale with the right audience, then you start kind of seeing that the...

this list of leads start being nurtured in a way, right? So then we've seen this activities and then we hop on the call and we start calling the list because as you pointed out yourself, we have an intent to get a call, right? And then they'd, yeah, I saw you guys, I've earned an email from you guys, I've seen that. So they understand where you're coming from and what you want to do with them, right? And then you have the list and then you kind of build a sequence where you can combine email, calling,

Adam Sockel (13:58.038)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Maximoff (14:23.722)
LinkedIn, SMS messages, well as some other advertising and so on in a certain sequence depending on the buyers. Some sequences can be 20 touches and may take three months. Some sequences can be shorter, two months. But the point is that then when you have a clarity which channel you're using in sequence, then you can see where conversion is up at. And then you can see like, do you need to change the sequence? Do you need

to get more actions, which channel works better, where we're losing it, so on and so forth. And for the listeners, some people mistake omnichannel with multi -channel marketing, which is a totally different game. So I wanted to explain this to people. with multi -channel, you are utilizing multiple channels to communicate your value pressure with prospects, but those channels are not integrated with each other. They just work in simultaneously.

Adam Sockel (15:19.328)
Mm

Michael Maximoff (15:21.886)
There might be different messaging from different platform, different journey. Customer might engage with your messaging from multiple platforms at the same time. With Omnichannel, it's a sequence integrated step -by -step process where you always are using the previous history of engagement to build another second engagement. So this made the journey is more seamless and customers are not pissed off that like, I've been seeing ads from those guys everywhere. Like I hate them, but it's more like...

The next touch makes sense only if there is some kind of engagement from the previous touch, which is, again, more effective and more cost -effective solution.

Adam Sockel (16:01.214)
I love that. Thank you. That's such a good point because you're absolutely right. the whole like multi -channel idea of like you said, like, my God, I can't I keep seeing their ads and they three different people have sent me DMs on LinkedIn. Like these people will not leave me alone. That is not a good it's not a healthy way that you're just going to enrage people. You mentioned the list building and then all of these different aspects that your team is doing from like an omnichannel approach. I'm curious. I've had conversations with other founders who are

building organizations that are doing outbound for other people. like they've had very specific processes for their reps for like they're just dialing and they had ops people building lists. I'm curious for you, like what is your team's approach for that research and the different areas of outreach? Do you have reps that are kind of taking one client and doing everything with them? Or is it kind of, they've got a bunch of different accounts and there you have reps responsible for

Michael Maximoff (16:57.886)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Sockel (17:00.032)
just dialing, example.

Michael Maximoff (17:02.154)
So we've seen that specialization still works fine. So if you have a rep and you say, okay, you're going to be pulling your own leads, you're going to be verifying them, you will be calling the list, you would be masquerading the messaging, you would be doing all of those things, then if your rep is not effective, that you kind of don't know what is that, when that rep or where the rep drops the ball. So it's like, is that they're spending too much time on the lead research and they're not hitting the phone or they're hitting the phone and then doing proper research, right?

So when you have someone like that internally, well, you can figure this out. But when you're outsourcing or have a team working with you, then it's a bad idea. So what we've done is we've dedicated a role called Lead Research Specialists and their job is to work with the market, with the research, with sources and build the list. And they are responsible for orchestrating multiple tools, multiple sources and making sure that the lead list that the SDR gets

is top -notch, it's verified, and they're just focusing on, you know, on honing that profession. And then the SDRs, they're more than work with the client and the lead researcher to pull those leads and then work with them and then provide the feedback as well as work on the messaging and the outreach and so on and so forth. So they kind of work in you know, in the tandem and it's much more effective. So in this way,

SDR can focus on engaging and outreach and then the lead research specialist can focus on lead generation and list building. And to be honest, Adam, one of the things that I still couldn't solve is we tried multiple tools for lead sourcing, like all the tools imaginable, we've done them. And we've seen that we are not able to ensure the highest quality of leads as well as conversion for the SDRs if we're using

any particular source, we need to combine all those sources. So it means that I need to have someone working with those sources. So if I'm using Apollo or ZoomInfo or Lusha or you name it, I just cannot, no one can provide that, right? And getting all of the providers is very expensive. So what we realized is that we might have people that are using free paid sources, some other LinkedIn navigators, LinkedIn, our own internal database to be able to pull the right list, verify each and every contact.

Adam Sockel (18:58.912)
Hmm.

Michael Maximoff (19:25.05)
and provide with the personalization points that they need to be able to create a better personalization as customization for them.

Adam Sockel (19:32.66)
Well, and then to that point, I actually had a conversation with with our founder and CEO, Jason Dorfman, like earlier this week about this exact thing is he is a big believer in obviously having incredibly like well researched and thought out lists and all these different things. But he also believes in having the rep. He's like, you know, you can have you can get the proper data from like what their contact information is, and you can get some intense data. But ultimately, he's like, I do want

my BDRs and SDRs calling and like it's okay if they get the wrong person because they can still get more information about that organization, about what their needs are so that when, and he's like, I might call into an enterprise organization and talk to 15 people who are the quote unquote wrong person, but get more information with each one of those calls by the time I finally speak to the right person, the decision maker, I have so much context.

Michael Maximoff (20:07.273)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (20:28.818)
that I was able to create myself in addition to the intent. to your point, I do think like, like you said, you can pay through the nose for all of these different, you know, lead scoring and, and, know, but ultimately you still do need to like, that's why SDRs and BDRs are still so important because they do need to do that, that legwork.

Michael Maximoff (20:49.716)
Yeah. Yeah. Something also worth mentioning here and to your point about contacting multiple people is buying comedies are as effective as ever. So it's like people are making decisions as the team, right? And when you're working with an account, you need to identify who that's buying comedy is, three, four, five, six people, and you need to start building relationships with all of them. Not just one contact, but a lot of them.

And it means that hitting the phone and calling all of them and, you know, and then again, showing that you've done your research, you know, calling names, calling positions, seeing intent, referring to it, right? Like there's so much work you can do within one account right now to get actual real penetration and actual real engagement with them. Then yeah, SDRs and BDRs are the future. But right now than ever,

what's happening with the role is they're shifting to just setting up tools and running automated outreach like massed outreach to being and deploying a more sophisticated, more smart strategies where BDR, know, when BDR can actually build a strategy and execute the strategy from top to bottom, multiple, you know, using multiple channels. One of the things that when you ask me about what else works for us is the fact that we are trying to

hire people from certain industry. So we've seen that right now, one size fits all doesn't work really well. So using a unique experience from FinTech or manufacturing or construction and using the same lingo, because we've got to the point where people like, it's funny, we've done some data analysis where

Michael Maximoff (22:45.342)
We've seen that in non -tech, non -digital industries like manufacturing, environmental constructions, conversion, our conversions drop down drastically. And we start to obviously, you know, doing some research like why it's happening and some questionnaires. And we find out that people just don't understand what the hell the appointment setting is or what the hell the outbound sales is, right? So it's like they're like, you know, like outbound, inbound, that's what HubSpot created, like this phrase, right? And then you're like, we don't know who the HubSpot is, right?

Adam Sockel (23:04.043)
Mm

Michael Maximoff (23:15.454)
So you're like, hold on. So we need to go back to the lingo, right? So, and very often we don't know a lot of those things within a customer industry. So by hiring reps and focusing on, we call this spots, like we have the sales spots, as your plots, like people that are focusing and honing their skill within a certain industry and are doing very good with that. We've seen that those people can create really impactful campaigns for clients.

Adam Sockel (23:39.412)
I do actually this got to something I was going to touch on in just a little bit, but I want to ask you now. as, as a founder of a company who, you know, you're constantly adding new reps, new sales professionals to your team. I'm always fascinated by how to optimize onboarding. Like how do you ensure that these people who are going to come on, whether they're industry specific, or they're going to have more of a broad approach, how do you optimize?

How does your team optimize the onboarding process so that it's not like, okay, we're bringing in a new BDR and they're going to be ready in six months. Like I imagine you have to really maximize the value. What does that ramp look like?

Michael Maximoff (24:12.703)
Yeah.

Yeah, so for us, it starts with the structure. the way it works right now, as your team is built in like a squad. we have like three, four SDRs with one team lead, and then we have multiple team leads and we have the head of department, right? So when a new SDR comes on board, they start as junior.

Adam Sockel (24:29.707)
Mm.

Michael Maximoff (24:36.85)
whatever you've done previously, you always start as junior, right? Because junior for us is not the skill level, it's the understanding level of all the processes, all the nuances, intricacies of this, so on and so forth. you get in a small team, then we've built this onboarding where the first two weeks you have like a day by day, what you need to do, who you need to talk to, what you need to learn. So it's not overwhelming.

but it's a very introductory step -by -step process. So you learn only the things that you need to learn during the time so that it's get into your brain and you're not rushing things up. Then in a few weeks, you start working with like as a right hand with some SDRs on the client work. So the point is that we need to see that a junior SDR can ramp up and work independently within the first three months, but they're

Adam Sockel (25:06.837)
Mm

Michael Maximoff (25:28.51)
getting the feedback every month. in a way we've seen that within three months that SDR can be completely independent, you know, doing the work and growing from there. And then we have internal training system for that. We've have some courses that we recorded, but I am a huge believer of this go and do this thing rather than just learn about this, even if you make some mistakes. So the thing here is how I can build the balance between

Adam Sockel (25:48.64)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Maximoff (25:58.59)
getting enough work so they feel the pressure of learning and feel the pressure of like, okay, we need to get this done and not burn them out too much so that they're like, it's too crazy for me, right? So we are trying to keep that push as much as we can so that people are on their feet all the time and they know that it's not an easy job, but it's a very rewarding job, but obviously not easy one.

Adam Sockel (26:21.16)
Yeah. One of the data points that we saw in this survey that was completely different from 2023 is that in 2023, over half of all SDRs were basically leaving the role within the last like six months. was like a 55 % turnover. This year, what we're seeing is not only our SDR staying in the role longer, but

80 % of the time when an SDR quote -unquote leaves their role, it's to do something else within that organization. So either they're getting promoted to account executive or team lead or they're going to customer success or something. Is that something like, are you guys seeing new SDRs? Are you kind of treating it as like a talent feeder into the rest of your organization as well?

Michael Maximoff (27:01.522)
Yeah. Yeah. So for me, SDR, for my company, SDR is a profession. So we have SDRs that have been with us for three, four, five years, because for me, it's my product. So it's like, if my SDR is going to be turning over, then it's like, what the point, right? So the way we do it, like you have a team lead, you have senior SDRs, you have different training professionals, so on and so forth. have to have SDRs. Now, with my industry, it's easier because SDR can work with

different clients and they can change industry, change seats. So it's always fun. You always learn a new product, you try new channels, so on and so forth. So that's why they stay longer. Now, I've started, we've recently started expanding internationally, hiring more reps in the US and the UK. And what we've learned from them was the fact that a lot of people right now, they...

wanted to stay at the SDR job, they like it, they like the challenge, they like multiple channels, multiple roles, they like to be able to execute marketing and not being just sales, right? So they treat that as marketing, business development, relationship building. But what they see, they always say, Michael, if we are able to orchestrate multiple channels, contribute to messaging creation, contributing to the strategy, build the relationship, actually,

engage with prospects in a more thoughtful manner, then we love that. Just don't put us on the phone and that's it. Like don't do this. Just don't give us the list and we will be calling out that list every day until the end of our days. We're going to die. But if you provide, if you help us and give us the opportunity to create a more end to end complex multi -channel with, know, campaign. Yeah, we love that. Let's do that. Right. Because they see the, you know, they see that

It's super fun and super challenging and there's so many things happening. Each channel have their own thing going on and they are able to combine that and so on so forth.

Adam Sockel (29:00.427)
So this gets kind of to the last question I want to ask you. We've sort of been talking about it a little bit, and I think we're on the same page here, but I'm curious. know, we wrap up this report by basically saying like the rise of AI and automation. Like a year ago, everyone was like, it's sales jobs are done. They're out. Goodbye. And what we've actually seen is like not only have the sales jobs not gone away, but the people, the sellers from frontline and quote unquote entry level.

Michael Maximoff (29:18.204)
Yeah, yeah.

Adam Sockel (29:29.804)
BDRs, SDRs, all the way through full cycle AEs, they're actually just more impactful now and they're much more talented. So I'm curious, what do you see the BDR role evolving into in the next 12 to 18 months? And do we think it'll even be recognizable from what it is right now?

Michael Maximoff (29:55.763)
So my opinion and my position is very controversial. So most of guys in my industry, they're like pro AI, like, yeah, let's do that. Let's automate everything. And I am against AI in a way. very cautious about the AI in general. So the way I see it is, and let me, I've seen this study a few days ago. Someone analyzed the number of daily cold emails that they're getting.

back 2018, 19, 20, and now, and in 2021 on average, a C level executive can get, let's say in a week, between 200 to 300 call pitches, right? Now this number is 600. So within one year and then the number before that was growing like 5%, 10 % year to year. you've seen 200, 220, 30, 40. And in the nasty last year from 300, we see.

Adam Sockel (30:39.048)
my god.

Michael Maximoff (30:51.018)
the twice growth, like 600, which is insane. The reason is that we've seen so many people utilizing scraping, sourcing, AI, calling, like it's like everyone is just pushing it, right? So what I think there will be two types of companies and brands. There will be companies that want it to be effective and they would be using AI as a tool to help their apps to be effective in a manner, but not over utilizing it so that they are not going to be run.

by AI, but rather than, you know, it's going to be smart targeting personalized omnichannel campaign. And we will see brands that would want to work with mass market and they will be doing a ton of things. And we'll see the discrepancy in customer experience as well as like we've seen right now with ads. have you seen like we, the advertising we see on social, like Instagram or Facebook or whatever, we, we, you know, we have advertising blindness and we only...

only engage with some ads that are cool, they're very nicely done. And those that are poorly done, shitted on, we're just reporting or even not engaging with them. We've seen that we will see the same. so my position is that the more companies will be utilizing AI as their go -to platform or channel, whatever. So they will be completely independent, self -managed. They will get to the point where they would have very poor conversions. They will have, you know, very low ROI and they will try to do a lot of mass, a lot of scale.

Adam Sockel (31:50.89)
Yeah.

Michael Maximoff (32:14.438)
but not putting a lot of thought into the process. And there will be some other companies that are more sophisticated. Obviously, it's going to cost them more, but the overall outcome of it will be higher. And then just to close up on this, with AI and with the crisis that we've been in in tech for the last couple of years, or not crisis, I don't know what to believe anymore. the point was that

They show a lot of short -term planning. So people are like, okay, I'm going to do this campaign right now. I'm going to generate some leads. I'm going to do AI. And what I think is we need to go back to that three, five year planning and say, look, okay, how am I brand going to look like in five years? What kind of relationships I can build? Will those relationships be genuine or not? And if yes, then...

Will my clients that would pay me six, seven, eight figures want to engage with AI and sort of like, build a relationship with AI? They won't. They want people and personalities and characters behind them. So our job is to build teams and keep them interested, keep them motivated and retain them. So, because the people are the future of your organization, right? The reps that works with you, you want, so you don't need to replace the reps. You need to build.

Adam Sockel (33:12.939)
Mm

Michael Maximoff (33:34.756)
reps in a way and work with them and manage them in a way that they want to stay with your organization, that they believe in the product and they want to work with you for five, six years and they don't want to leave it instead of just replacing them with AI, which is again, don't go anywhere.

Adam Sockel (33:47.913)
Yeah, I love it. Michael, I mentioned you're the founder of Belkins, but as we wrap up here, where is the best way for people to find more information about your company, about you, about your podcast? What's the best way for people to learn more?

Michael Maximoff (34:00.712)
Yeah, so I'm very active on LinkedIn. So you can just Michael Maxim of LinkedIn and you can reach out connect. Yeah, I always post my podcast on YouTube. It's Belkins podcast. I do my own newsletter and just generally you can reach out to me at Michael at Belkins .io. It's pretty simple. Yeah, I check my email every day. So if case anyone has any questions. Welcome.

Adam Sockel (34:24.844)
Perfect. That's amazing. I will put all of those in the show notes so that everyone can get easy access to them. Michael, thank you so much for joining me today.

Michael Maximoff (34:33.33)
Adam, I have so much fun. Thanks for thoughtful questions. Really appreciate them.