Michael Pedone on Investing in Yourself

Adam Sockel (00:01.095)
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 Padone, founder of SalesBuzz. Michael, thank you so much for joining me today.

Michael Pedone (00:20.815)
Yeah, Adam, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to this.

Adam Sockel (00:23.334)
Yeah, so for people who may be tuning into the first episode, a quick reminder, we're going to talk about Michael's experience, his career, and then his company first. And then our second segment, we'll dive into the things that are stressing him out and how he's working to resolve those. And then we'll have some fun after that with some speed round questions. So first things first, Michael, do you want to kind of introduce yourself and take our listeners through your career path? And then we'll dive into Sales Buzz.

Michael Pedone (00:52.087)
Yeah sure so first of all hi everybody my name is Michael Padone I founded sales buzz calm I want to say between 2008 and 10 ish is kind of when I started it I started it after I sold my last company which was a search engine optimization company which I started back in 2002 and I was fortunate enough to grow it and sell it for a seven figure cash deal and then I was like well what do I want to do next I started sales training what did I do before that

I've always been a straight commission sales rep. Look, I never went to college. I barely graduated high school. I grew up poor. I actually wanted to be a rock star when I was growing up. Before I met my wife, I was waiting to hear back from Ozzy Osbourne if I was going to get the guitar gig. But sales was really a lifeline during that time period. And it's like one of the things that I loved about sales is that

the better you are at sales, you could literally live like a rock star, right? Because there's no salary cap ceiling. The better you are, the more you sell, the more money you can make. And growing up with the background that I had, I definitely wanted to have a better future for myself and my eventual future family. And sales was something that I could walk in as a straight commission sales rep. I didn't need a college degree. I just had to get really good at sales and hit the phones. And that's what I did.

Adam Sockel (02:10.308)
I want to ask you about that because I'm the son of a salesman. My father owned an insurance agency for about 30 years. He was a State Farm insurance agent. And he too was straight commission, obviously based at 100 % of the money he brought in. And my brother is a CRO now and he was working straight commission for a long time as well. And I'm curious and I'm sure there are people listening in who are maybe new to the sales space and maybe it's stressing them out.

Michael Pedone (02:19.12)
Sure.

Michael Pedone (02:22.802)
That's right.

Adam Sockel (02:38.691)
How did you grow to get comfortable with that uncomfortable feeling of knowing, like, okay, my next paycheck is 100 % dependent on the work I put in, or was it something that you were just always naturally comfortable thinking about?

Michael Pedone (02:53.876)
No, I don't think you could ever, I mean, comfortable, that's an interesting word to say. So if we go back to the beginning, I had no other choice, right? I mean, if I didn't have a college education, right? And things of that nature, like what was I gonna do and make a good living at it, right? So it really was, I mean, the sales was where you could...

Adam Sockel (03:01.059)
Mmm.

Michael Pedone (03:13.844)
easy to get into and if you learned the right techniques you made a lot of money. Providing you get with the right company and things of that nature. There's right companies, there's wrong companies, things of that nature, but it's a trial and error.

Michael Pedone (03:33.013)
I think today's sales reps, it's a really good question. I don't think anybody's ever asked me that. How did I get comfortable straight commissions? I just don't think I had another choice. I didn't want to repeat the lifestyle that I had to grow up with. We know your parents get divorced, things of that nature. It's in the 80s, whatever, 70s, 80s. You know, because I'm aging myself a little bit, right? But it was different times, but it's like...

Adam Sockel (03:42.433)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (03:54.593)
You

Michael Pedone (03:57.75)
It was the only way out. And it's like, I, you know, I think my desire to have success, it was the driving factor. So I didn't care.

Adam Sockel (03:59.521)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (04:07.223)
you know, what it took to get there. And, you know, I always believe that, you know, if somebody else was doing it, I could do it too. I just had to make sure I learned from the right people. The last thing you want to do in anything is take advice from somebody that's achieved less than what you're after. So you definitely want to go ahead and find, you know, find the right people and whether it's through books or mentors or just watching. But I think you just had, you know, I think it was a necessity.

Adam Sockel (04:09.568)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (04:23.36)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (04:33.303)
I needed to do it. It was either sink or swim. And I appreciated that.

Adam Sockel (04:33.632)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (04:39.392)
Yeah. I think one of my favorite things about the sales space is that it's one of these things where it is a like the bar of entry. If you just are getting started and you take a entry level position is relatively low. It's be willing, be willing to learn, be willing to fail and learn from those failures, be willing to in our situation, pick up the phone, you know, be willing to

reach out to people, whatever it is, as long as you're willing, like you said, be willing to learn, be willing to go find the right people to learn from. And it is something where it's easy to start and it does take a lifetime to master and you can always continuously improve. But I do love the, like, for a space that people tend to talk about negatively about the stresses of quota, the stresses of finding that next deal. I do appreciate the positivity aspect of like,

Anyone can sell if you are willing to learn how to sell and that's not true for like Not everyone can be a rocket scientist. Like I I love the ocean. I couldn't have been a biologist. I can sell. Yeah. Yeah

Michael Pedone (05:46.776)
That's true.

Right, okay, that's fair.

Yeah, I definitely think there's sales is a lot more acceptable. Like there's a lot more opportunities to learn it. But one thing is I don't think it takes a lifetime to learn it if you learn from the right people. I mean, there's so much bad sales advice out there. And just when you know with internet and things. Remember, I was in sales before the internet was around. Right. So basically, you know, if you want to learn how to sell, you could only learn from the peers around you or you buy a book or you go to a seminar. Right. Now you got the internet.

Adam Sockel (06:02.077)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (06:12.925)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (06:18.749)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (06:21.741)
up stuff because there was no YouTube back at the time but even now there's so much misinformation where people you know they you don't know if they're really successful or not I mean they're acting like it in the video and things of that nature but when I watch their sales techniques a lot of times I mean there's very few people I think you know they've got it right and and and so that bad information is just getting spun out there all the time and I'm sitting back especially today because I'm seeing so many SDRs and things of that nature struggle and they're not

not focusing on the one thing that will solve that. Like, it can't be that. It has to be something else. And I'm like, you just need to learn what to say, how to say it, why to say it, when to say it. And you're and follow a very simple process and you're going to do well. You know, again, providing that you have a good product or service or solution, things like that, and all of everything else being equal. But today, I think people just expect to send emails and a text and a funny video and a little LinkedIn message and they expect to hit their quota.

Adam Sockel (06:55.548)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (07:21.455)
and they're getting paid ungodly amount of money on a base salary and I think those days are coming to an end soon. I think the companies are starting to realize that we're way overpaying for the results that we're getting for a lot of sales teams and I'm starting to see the ramifications of that now.

Adam Sockel (07:27.964)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (07:38.171)
Yeah, so this actually transitions really well into talking a little bit about SalesBuzz. I want you to, you know, I would love for people to learn about your company and the ways that you are providing proper sales instruction. And yeah, just kind of walk through, you know, how it came to be. You know, you mentioned being fortunate enough to sell your previous company and like, I would love to learn about how SalesBuzz came to be and its current iteration, something you and I have talked about previously.

Michael Pedone (08:05.051)
Yeah, yeah, sure. I appreciate you asking. So yeah, let me just give you the whole story. I mean, I was working as a straight commission sales rep. My wife wanted to start her own business right when we were about to get married. And she was working for this company where she was going to resell software.

She got in. It was a large company. It was a company called Best Software at the time. They're now they were bought out by Sage, whatever. But they had this big conference that was down in Tampa. She got invited to as a VAR. And we went there and there was awards handed out. This is a true story. The awards were handed out. She didn't win an award. Other people won an award because they created this. They created a website. What the hell is a website? Like that's how new this was. Like they created their own website and they started getting leads through the internet. And like she was like she took it. You know she was

Adam Sockel (08:43.225)
Yeah.

Michael Pedone (08:51.103)
fine okay I didn't win a award but I felt like she was slighted. I felt like she felt like she was slighted and I took it personally and so then I actually went and did research on you know websites and how to build websites how to rank well and I'm like I'm gonna build you a website and I'm gonna get you ranked I'm just competitive that way right so you can get your company going and then you know I went and learned all about this SEO stuff and I built it and then like you just wait like 90 days and because it takes that long for the search engines like within 30 days all of a sudden

Adam Sockel (08:54.489)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (09:08.377)
Yeah

Michael Pedone (09:21.213)
she started getting all these leads she started closing business and then she went from like you know over she went from like an individual to all of a sudden she's got like a team of 10 -15 people like is it all of the leads that we were generating and i'm like man i got something here so the the economy was crashing this is back in the 2000 .com bomb era if you if you're old enough to remember that right and so i'm like

Adam Sockel (09:38.232)
Mm -hmm. Yes.

Michael Pedone (09:42.525)
I went off on my, I had a full time job at the time, but I would go home at night and I would research and I started my own side hustle, a search engine optimization company.

And I, you know, I kicked off in 2002 and I used all the sales techniques I learned as a straight commission sales rep. So not only do I have a full -time job, but I got this side hustle and it got to the point where my full -time job was costing me more money, right? Because it was building. So I left and I just went all in straight, straight commissions, built it. And I used all my techniques. I hired people. I mean, if the salespeople that I hired, if they were half as good as what the resume said they would have been, I probably would have sold it for 10 times more.

Adam Sockel (10:06.135)
Yeah.

Michael Pedone (10:21.279)
But they weren't so I quickly learned that they're using bad techniques. They don't have a system They don't have a process and I know that this is a simple process to follow I want them to be themselves, but I taught them my these are the questions You have to ask and why and how and whatnot they started doing it next thing you know company starts really growing and then I got fortunate enough to get on the radar of a Swedish company that was buying companies they came and they made me an offer I couldn't refuse and I cashed out and So yeah, so that that's how

Adam Sockel (10:39.735)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (10:47.703)
Mm -hmm.

Heheheheh

Michael Pedone (10:51.199)
That's what happened then and then I was like, okay, what do I want to do next? I mean, listen, you get seven figures. It was a lot of money for somebody that grew up in a trailer or whatever. So now I got this cash. What do I do next? And it wasn't enough to live forever off of it.

Adam Sockel (11:00.183)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (11:06.909)
So I was like what do I want to do? I had a couple of business ideas and I'm like you know I'm really passionate about teaching people the right way to sell because I know what it feels like to have the phone feel like a 25 pound weight you don't want to pick it up anymore or you're getting rejected call after call and then you don't even want to pick it up now you can just email and just you can pretend like you're researching or you're doing this just trying to keep your manager off your back for a little bit but at the end day if you're not producing you're not putting extra money in your pocket and I know exactly what they were doing wrong and I'm like let me

Adam Sockel (11:19.862)
Right.

Michael Pedone (11:36.863)
Let me teach people what I know. And that's where we went. And that's when I started Sales Buzz.

Adam Sockel (11:38.998)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (11:42.998)
And then so SalesBuzz started, if I remember you telling me correctly, it started as like a lot of in -person presentations and kind of walking through, or am I misremembering?

Michael Pedone (11:52.701)
No, actually it was always, I was always by the phone. Actually this is what I did. When I started the first company, when I started the first company for eTrafficJams, which was my SEO company, I went to a really big company, a well -known company in Tampa, said let me do it for free so I could get your name recognition. I got that, went ahead and I...

Adam Sockel (11:58.358)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (12:18.749)
did the work on there, built that up to where it had a big name and I could use that to other people. That's how I was getting business in, it was always by phone. So even though I was working full time and then I did this other side project with a big name company that everybody would know, I got them great results, they gave me a good testimony. And then I would just get on the phone saying, hey, we recently helped so and so get these results, I think I could do the same for you, I just need to ask you a few questions, would that be okay? And they're like, yeah, let's talk. And then I'm in, it was all on the phone, yeah.

Adam Sockel (12:42.774)
Mm -hmm.

So your kind of opener, as people like to say from a cold call standpoint, is very customer story based, using experience of organizations that they might recognize the names of to kind of give that credibility to your services.

Michael Pedone (13:02.429)
So I have a couple different templates that I use when it comes to an outbound opener. So there's the straight up cold call, there's the referral, there's my favorite one, I call it the competition one.

Adam Sockel (13:08.342)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (13:16.509)
That's what I was using. And when I say competition, I'm using somebody else's name. So I might call a certain vertical and let's take a doctor's office, right? I call another doctor's office. Hey, Dr. So and so we recently helped Dr. X solve this. There's a and they got this as a result. There's a chance we could do the same for you. I just need to ask you a few questions. You know, would that be okay? And they're like, who says no to that? Right? Like, so that's so there's different types that I use during different scenarios. But the competition one is my favorite. And that's where I use the name of somebody else's name.

Adam Sockel (13:35.35)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Michael Pedone (13:46.463)
that they know that's similar to what they do. Yeah.

Adam Sockel (13:48.118)
Yeah, I love that. So I ask every guest who comes on this question, what keeps you up at night? And you strike me in the few conversations we've had as someone who at the now probably not a lot is keeping you up at night. It feels like you you you very passionate about what you do and you clearly, you know, are very, very good at it. But but is there something that is currently stressing you out job wise? And how are you? If so, how are you actively working to address it?

Michael Pedone (14:11.837)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, listen, I want to, it's funny you say that. I guess a parent is, you know, first and precious things that mean a lot. I gotta tell you, I don't know any...

entrepreneurs or whatever that you know on the front side they're looking at there's always issues on the back that are keeping you up. You're right there it's always going to be there and and the to be really frank that the biggest one that case me up at night and I'm almost ready to I don't say throw the towel in but forever is like I want to help as many salespeople as I can but salespeople inherently will not invest in themselves that's why they primarily focus on helping companies like I'll contact a small business owner or the CRO

Adam Sockel (14:32.374)
you

Michael Pedone (14:56.959)
or the VPS sales or the business development director, right? And then get the conversation going because it's a lot harder to get five grand out of a company to train a few reps than it is to get 500 bucks out of an individual rep. I mean, most sales reps won't even spend money to buy a book.

Adam Sockel (15:13.398)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (15:13.789)
you know, to invest in themselves. And I think that's just, I've noticed that throughout the entire industry, through my entire almost 30 years of selling, very few salespeople will invest time and money in them out of their own pocket to do stuff. And so what keeps me open, I still try to market to them sometimes and I'll like, and try to find like, even like try to find a way to get the right price point to help them out. And it's just like, you know,

Adam Sockel (15:38.902)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (15:42.301)
They don't want to help so I just focus on the companies. But that's what keeps me up at night because I'm like I'm so passionate about it. I'm like dude you could be making so much more money if you just did these things. Spend 500 bucks, a thousand bucks, two thousand bucks, whatever to learn this stuff and you're gonna make it back a hundredfold.

Adam Sockel (15:45.878)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (15:59.27)
Have you, have you seen, as a person who has been training sellers for a while now, have you seen shifts, even like in the past couple of years in the ways that you need to train people to get them to buy in or to, like, have you seen tactics that have shifted and how you need to help them approach their prospects over the past couple of years?

Michael Pedone (16:27.421)
Yeah, that's an excellent question. I come very direct. Look, I'm Italian. I'm from New York, even though I live down here in the Tampa Bay area, Florida right now. And I'm like, I don't want to hear about your feelings and things of that nature. Look, this is how it's done. Okay, do whatever you want. But this is how it's done. I'm using the same sales process now that I learned over 20 years ago, and it still works today, because I'm using the framework. Like, for example, the if you really dissect the competition template example that I gave you with the doctors or whatever, the formula is the

Adam Sockel (16:39.446)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (16:57.375)
is the same no matter what industry you're in. It's the first thing I have to do is I have to peak their interest in the first few seconds of the call. How do I do that? Well with the competition. So I'm peaking it by mentioning somebody else that they know that's in their industry and then I mention a problem we helped them solve and then I mentioned the result they got out of helping them solve that and then I don't say I guarantee I could do that for you because now if that takes a different shift I go I might be able to help you do that but to figure it out I would have to ask you a few questions first. So what it does is it unlocks

It peaks their curiosity and unlocks the door and they go, yeah, come on in, ask me some questions. Rather than, you know, and here's why I don't like the popular, the 27 second opener that's out there. Hey, I know you're not expecting my call. Do you have 27 seconds to hear why I'm calling? Most people are gonna be pleasant and just go, okay, sure, just shoot your shot, right? And then they do a data dump.

Adam Sockel (17:32.182)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (17:49.654)
Yeah.

Michael Pedone (17:49.937)
and they just barf up what they're doing and then they try to take control of the sale by asking a question because that's what they were taught and the problem is

the prospect's guard is still up. So now you're starting to get those short one word answer responses where my way is I tell them right up front, agitate their pain, and pique their interest and gain permission. And next thing you know, they allow me to ask them questions. And so now I just need to know what the right questions are to ask them to get that problem recognition. And then once we get that green light, then we go to the next one. And this is the system I teach. And so to answer your, it's a long answer to your question about do I have, I had this shift, I think

There's two types of people that there's three types of people that come to my training, right? When the company signs up and there's I usually get some of the vets that have their arms crossed at first. They think they know everything.

Adam Sockel (18:29.91)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (18:35.249)
I get the younger generation that they don't even want to pick up the phone even though that was in their job description. They're making 50, 60, 70, 80K space salary and they don't want to pick it up. And then you get the eager ones that really want to pick it up. But what I can say for sure is some of the greatest things I've gotten is testimonials from the sales director saying our top guy who didn't want to take the training is loving this stuff and now their numbers are up. And it's just because it works. It's just a process.

Adam Sockel (18:45.302)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (18:49.142)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (19:03.094)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (19:05.157)
that you have to follow. Yeah, sure.

Adam Sockel (19:06.614)
Okay, I wanna dig into that a little bit because the, so the eager people, you're right, like that you take that segment, of course they wanna learn, they wanna learn, they're going to learn. The people who don't have any experience have actually had several conversations with some other kind of like sales influencers and people on various platforms for Oram where we talked about, there is this young generation right now of people who they're coming up in their SDRs and their BDRs and they just have no experience on the phone because even growing up like,

I am old enough where growing up we had a landline and I would call my friends if I wanted to go. I have experience picking up a phone and they just, you know, my nieces and nephews don't talk on the phone and so if they were to become BDRs, they don't want to. Those people, I feel like they can be molded a little bit and you can talk to them. I want to talk about those more veteran people because everyone has come across those. I love the team we have here at ORM, but we have some of those people where I'll have a conversation with them as a -

and they're like, I don't wanna talk to you, I just wanna do my work. How do you help those seasoned slash grizzled veterans? How do you show them, hey, this is worth your time. Like how do you get them to continue learning and growing?

Michael Pedone (20:06.708)
Yeah.

Michael Pedone (20:22.741)
Yeah, that's a great question. So I let them just take the course. So first of all, the course is all on demand, right? So I have a hybrid so that the actual training is on demand. And then I have live weekly classes that they could join and ask me questions. I could role play, fix their script if they're running into it. But the actual training is on demand. So how do I get them to go from the first module and willing to watch the next one? Right. And the modules are short. First of all, they have to be short, short and right to the point because as salespeople, we have

Adam Sockel (20:37.686)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (20:52.694)
the attention span of a goldfish anyway. So anything that's too long we're just gonna fade out. So it's designed and it's animated too. It's not just me it's me speaking but it's not just a video of me speaking. It's animated so it's capturing their attention. They get to see what we're talking about and it gives them actual sales techniques to say let's see if you're resistant just just just listen to this thing. Okay now go try it. And they go try it and they go holy shit it worked.

Adam Sockel (20:54.294)
Hehehe

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Pedone (21:15.732)
Okay, we'll try it again. it worked. Okay, try it again. Okay, that did work out. Keep trying it. Okay, well it worked, you know, eight times out of ten. You know, now we got something. And then now they're like, that's where I usually hear after one week. I actually recommend that they only do one module a week over an eight week period. So basically once, that's the other thing too. If you're going to train salespeople, it has to be in short chunks. I mean, this half day, whole day training stuff, even if it's the best information, it's too much for us to absorb. So what I do is I say, just set aside one hour.

Adam Sockel (21:36.678)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (21:45.686)
week of study time and then for the rest of the week put to practice what you've learned and then you tell me if it ain't working and if it's not working for you come to the live class let's role play it and I'll fix it for you. That's how it that's how we change it.

Adam Sockel (21:47.078)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (21:57.624)
That's so smart because one of the things we've been talking a lot here on recent pieces of content is time blocking and how important, especially for account executives who have to self -source, we say, okay, well, you better time block 90 minutes a day or two hours a day, whatever it is, to do your own cold calling and all these different things.

Michael Pedone (22:08.66)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (22:17.413)
And yeah, the idea of going to a team of AEs who also have to self -source and be like, I need four hours of your time for the next four days. Like they're just not going to do that. So I imagine that really does help like pick up rate, I guess, if you want to say it, like from an account executive or even SDR saying like, okay, Michael, yeah, I can set aside an hour a week. Like that's such a smart way of approaching it. I love that. That's great.

Michael Pedone (22:29.524)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (22:39.732)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Now that's what our week of the training you know that includes you know watching the videos there's there's exams that they have to pass in order to unlock the next video things of that nature to make sure they're doing but then I also give them role playing assignments listen the only thing salespeople hate more than cold calling is role playing but I assure you iron sharpens iron and you have to practice it the right way so when you learn the right way to do it and then you adapt it to your vertical and then just do five ten minutes a day of role playing as a team to get better what's going to happen is this everybody's

Adam Sockel (22:57.188)
Yeah.

Michael Pedone (23:12.342)
start to get better or the people that are we're never going to get better are going to fade out and then that's fine. I mean if they leave whatever because you know one of the things I heard a long time ago was you know the worst thing a company could have is a good employee and I was like what and I like yeah because you know a great employee will take your company to the next level a bad employee is easy to recognize they're not going to take the next level you just get rid of them but a good employee does just enough you know to keep their job but they never help the company get to the next

level right so when you're doing the role -playing if they don't want to do it or they can't do it they're gonna get uncomfortable enough to where they're gonna go I need to leave because that seat needs to generate just like a restaurant every table has to generate a certain amount of money every night those sale seats have to generate a certain amount of money every week every month every year every quarter whatever right and you need the right people in there and they have to be willing to learn

Adam Sockel (24:00.515)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (24:06.211)
I love that. That is such an important way to realize it. And we've actually talked about how in the past, if an organization thought like, we want to double our revenue, let's just double our seed count, that's not true anymore. You have to take into account all of the money that goes into finding people, bringing them in, training them, onboarding them, getting them more.

assets in your tech stack, all these different things, like you said, and then on top of all that, they are still responsible for X amount of dollars for their seat. So yeah, I really do love, like, we always talk about our platform, it's not just about 5Xing productivity of your sales reps, it's about 5Xing productivity of your best sales reps. It's about taking that cream of the crop and helping them be even more dynamic. And one question before we get to some of the lesser stressful stuff,

Michael Pedone (24:33.62)
you

Michael Pedone (24:58.612)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (25:00.61)
I'm curious as a person who has spent your entire career in sales, do you ever feel like you're able to take a breather? Like do you ever feel like, okay, like whether it's end of quarter, end of year, whatever it is, like do you ever feel comfortable? Because that was something my dad always told me. He was like, I never felt, no matter how successful he was, and he was very successful, he never felt comfortable because he was always worried about the next thing.

Michael Pedone (25:26.877)
Yeah, no, the answer is yes you can. And the honest answer is for the last year it's been no, because there's definitely been a shift in the last.

Adam Sockel (25:34.337)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (25:37.853)
year year and a half whatever now we can blame the economy and all the crazy stuff that's going on and I'm sure that has a lot to do with it for sales reps myself included things of that nature but at the end of the day I really think that the industry itself might be cannibalizing itself what I mean by that is you know so Aaron Ross you know wrote the predictable revenue book right next thing you know every over the last 10 years everybody just hires SDRs buys lists sends emails out and just you know spray and pray and hope they get some appointments and things of that nature

Adam Sockel (26:07.551)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (26:07.807)
And it's really not working anymore. And there's definitely a big swing coming back to we got to pick up the phone. This is one of the things I know we're talking about me right now, but this one things I was excited that we talked is I've looked at your program. I like I love it. I think it's fabulous. You're your dialer that would definitely make my job easier. And I got these leads. I got I got you know, calling up right? So but with that being said, there's there's so many people that are afraid to pick up the phone and they need to learn how to do that, that it's, you know,

Adam Sockel (26:21.535)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (26:38.013)
When there's challenges like that, maybe some people are buying less. Just adding more people to the team is not going to help you get your revenue numbers. It might be better, you might have to cut some dead weight and maybe take some of that salary that you saved and put it to marketing to generate some more inbound stuff. But you better make sure that the team that you do have

Adam Sockel (26:50.207)
you

Michael Pedone (27:01.085)
can handle inbound and outbound and know exactly what to do because you need to close that revenue. And so again long answer long answer your question can you ever take a break you can but the last year has been difficult it's been it's been balls to the wall for the last year for sure.

Adam Sockel (27:03.455)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (27:16.862)
Yeah. And I think the, the way that I think about people's apprehension on the phone is it's the reality of understanding that you're going to hear an active no versus a passive no. Like on the, on an email, you're going to get a passive no, people are going to ignore your emails or, you know, one out of every a hundred is going to send you a snarky response. If you pick up the phone and you make a hundred, 150 dials a day using Aurum and you get 40 connections, if you book

five meetings that day, you're crushing it. That means 35 other people told you to go a pound salt. And so it is that like just getting that thick skin and realizing like it's not personal. It's just part of the business. 95 % of any industry is not purchasing at any given time. It's all of these things. Or maybe you just weren't very good on the phone and you got a pretty harsh rejection. Yeah, exactly. So.

Michael Pedone (27:48.125)
You're crushing it.

Michael Pedone (28:08.285)
It's both.

Yeah, it's both. I mean, you know, so you have to be able to like I roleplay with so many people and like they've been in sales forever, right? Okay, let's roleplay. They're nervous whatever. Okay, I'll give you a redo do it again and you can still tell that they're like Even if they've been in sales for 10 15 years the simple formula of peak interest gain permission to call That's the only thing I want to teach them in my first lesson How do you peak interest like like for example if I was calling somebody? A sales director or even a small business owner and I said hi, this is Michael Pino sales buzz. I offer

sales training want to see if we can set up a meeting with your team I could hear no thanks not interested we're all set we already use somebody whatever right but if I call and I say yeah the reason for my call I specialize in helping outbound sales teams overcome call reluctance there's a really good chance I might be able to help you 5x the number of appointments are setting a month I just need to ask you a few questions about your team first would that be okay all of a sudden it's the same sales call it's the same same purpose same call but I just wordsmith it differently the formula peak interest and then gain permission now they're going okay

Adam Sockel (29:02.012)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (29:09.983)
yeah sure I have a second go ahead or I can't now but call me at two o 'clock whatever right okay but now the biggest challenge I see with sales teams up there let's say they set that meeting what are you supposed to do next most salespeople don't know what to do next what even if they if the person says yeah I got a second go ahead they don't know what step number two and that needs to be fixed

Adam Sockel (29:23.899)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (29:29.179)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (29:32.605)
Because if they, every salesperson should know before they pick up the phone, there's only three things that's gonna happen. They're either gonna get the prospect, gatekeeper, or voicemail. They need to know how to handle each one of those, no matter what scenario they are, and that's how you get rid of call reluctance. And then once you can do that, then you have to know, okay, wow, I got them on the phone, they agreed to talk, hmm, not used to that, what do I say next? You have to know what the next step is.

Adam Sockel (29:32.731)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (29:54.203)
One of the customer stories that I wrote over, I don't remember the company specifically at the moment, but we had account executives tell us like one of the biggest benefits of Aurum is because you're using our parallel or our power dialer and it's one number after the other after the other and it automatically drops voicemails for you. So if people don't pick up, you don't have to worry about that. But they basically told us to your point, he was like, what shifted for me from manually dialing all of these prospects to ...

using your platform is I now expect someone to pick up relatively soon. So I am expecting to have that conversation. So to your point, he's like, I'm ready with my opener. I'm ready. I know what I'm going to say. And I'm thinking about the conversation at all times. Whereas like when I'm manual dialing, it's, you know, three minutes for every phone call. I don't expect them to pick up. And when someone does pick up, I'm like, this is Adam from Oram. What's up? And they're like, they just wrote, they wrote just like, I

Michael Pedone (30:27.421)
Right.

Michael Pedone (30:40.925)
That's right.

Adam Sockel (30:50.906)
anticipate someone picking up now and see your point so they're like I'm thinking about the call and so I think that's such an important thing because you're right like you can't anticipate a no if you're anticipating a no when they say sure Michael I'd love to hear more and then when you're like shit I was supposed to say something else here like yeah I you're right you got it you have to keep going so

Michael Pedone (30:56.573)
Yeah.

Michael Pedone (31:09.277)
Yeah.

And that comes down to training. I mean, look, right now, I think I noticed that the Tampa Bay Bucks are already doing their training camp today, right? You know, they're getting their players. They're getting, okay, they're walking through the scenarios, you know, the notepads on, things like that, but these are the plays, you know? And so many salespeople are against scripts because I think there were like salespeople out there that were afraid of scripts, so they said, don't use them. And I think that's the biggest mistake ever because, first of all, let me just say this. I will be the first to agree that most sales scripts

Adam Sockel (31:23.032)
Mm -hmm

Michael Pedone (31:41.119)
create more problems than they solve because they're not written the right way and they're not taught the right way. But at the end of the day if you want to grow your team they all need to be on the same page. They all need to know the plays to run. I mean can you imagine showing up on opening day football and the team just goes out there with no playbook right. I mean you have to know right. I mean you know first and 10 at the 20 this is the play we're running. Now sure the other team might have something to say about the play you're running so then you have to pivot in real time but you had a framework to work with and most salespeople don't

Adam Sockel (31:42.712)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (31:56.696)
chaos

Michael Pedone (32:11.039)
a framework from the start all the way through the end and that's what I fix.

Adam Sockel (32:15.639)
For what it's worth, I'm from Borne and Bredding, Cleveland area. I've been a Browns fan all my life. So for a long time in my childhood, it did kind of feel like our team did not have a playbook and they just were showing up on game base. Better now, but I digress. Yeah, I could get in the weeds with you about this all day, but I wanna transition to our kind of third segment here, which is just some fun, lighthearted questions. The first one, what was the first job you ever had? This could be as a kid, this could be...

Michael Pedone (32:19.581)
Okay.

Michael Pedone (32:28.445)
I understand.

Michael Pedone (32:38.685)
Sure. Yeah.

Michael Pedone (32:44.829)
Yep.

Adam Sockel (32:45.398)
out of high school, what was the first shot you had?

Michael Pedone (32:47.229)
No, the first job I had, I was a kid. First of all, I was born in 1970, so that means in the 80s. And I'm a hard rock, heavy metalhead, right? I got my idol Angus Young back here on this tapestry, right? And so I was fortunate enough to see all the best concerts of all the best hard rock, heavy metal, ACDC, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Kiss, Ozzy, Black Sabbath, Dio, I seen them all, right? But we were poor, so the only way I was going to that is I had to go borrow my grandfather's lawnmower and go knock on doors.

Adam Sockel (32:56.822)
I can see it, yeah.

Michael Pedone (33:17.183)
This is when I knew the tickets were gonna be coming. I need to figure out how to generate 25 bucks, 10 bucks a lawn, start my, and ironically I would quit as soon as I got enough money and bought the ticket. Well there's, shit, I'm gonna need a concert shirt. Better go mall soon, more lawns. So that's really how it started. That was my first job for sure.

Adam Sockel (33:31.766)
I love it. That's fantastic. What was, you don't need to name names of the companies, but what was the worst job you've ever had?

Michael Pedone (33:37.917)
I, that's easy. It was most likely Denny's. See, I was a midnight dishwasher.

And it was after, you know, like I said, I never went to college. It was after high school. And I was actually in Youngstown, Ohio, not far from you at the time. And I had a band. We were playing a hard rock, heavy metal band in the area and things of that nature. But I also had to have a work. And the only job I could get at the time was, you know, where it was I was washing dishes, you know, and they could still smoke. And during the time during the restaurant, so you get some nasty dishes back there and you just felt like a loser. You know, but I had a dream. And with the music that I was going to and things of that nature and

Adam Sockel (33:49.748)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (34:13.087)
You know the music ended up didn't working out but after after that I ended up getting a believe it or not my first sales job was was selling cars it was Greenwood Chevrolet in in in in Boardman Youngstown, Ohio area I was horrible at it and then I went to work for a music store like a physical where they sold instruments

Adam Sockel (34:21.62)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (34:32.436)
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Pedone (34:33.533)
And then all of a sudden everything clicked maybe because I was in my element but all the techniques that they taught me where I was afraid to ask for the order and things of that nature and I was like I just started it just started clicking and then I started researching and I started buying books and things audio tapes I'm aging myself again audio tapes and things of that nature and just started learning and learning and learning next thing I know I'm making you know making more money than you know my stepdad was at the time right and it's just like okay so this is kind of a good thing so that's kind of how it all kicked off.

Adam Sockel (34:55.956)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (35:01.554)
I love that. Listen, as a person who I in college and in graduate school, I like to play poker late at night. So I have been to Denny's in the middle of the night many, many times. So I definitely know the people that you are speaking of. Do you have a favorite app on your phone from a productivity standpoint? Like, do you have an app that you use to time yourself to create content or anything that you use on your phone just from a create a productivity standpoint?

Michael Pedone (35:10.653)
Ha ha!

Michael Pedone (35:29.006)
actually going to go a different direction. I actually the other day deleted the LinkedIn app off my phone.

Adam Sockel (35:35.282)
Wow, say more about that.

Michael Pedone (35:36.558)
Yeah, yeah, I was like, you know what? We've been burning the midnight oil for 12 months. Things have been rough out there. You've had to work extra. You know, you're getting all this thing. And sometimes it's just stressing me out a little bit. I'm like, you know what?

I don't think this app, having them getting notified all the time and having to repost or respond to somebody in real time is not healthy for me and I'm just gonna delete it and I've been scheduling time to go on LinkedIn and do things a lot less. But believe it or not, sometimes I think we have to, sometimes there's addition by subtraction.

Adam Sockel (35:58.802)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (36:12.401)
Honestly, I love that. I'm a distance runner and there's an app called Strava for people who may not be familiar. It is basically just like a social media app for runners. It's where you can track all of your workouts, but you can also kind of create a community of people to connect with. A few weeks ago, I severely rolled my ankle and haven't been able to run in a couple of weeks. And same thing, I like stopped looking at it and my dad was like, I haven't seen you like active on there because my dad's also a runner. And I was like, yeah, I was crushing my mental health, seeing everyone else's runs, knowing that I can't.

Michael Pedone (36:29.23)
Oof.

Michael Pedone (36:36.91)
Nice. Yes. Exactly.

Adam Sockel (36:41.648)
I love that. That's really, really great. How about for fun? Is there any app you use for fun? Again, I mentioned Strava, but is there anything, you know, are you a fan of like scrolling through Instagram or anything? Is there an app that you use?

Michael Pedone (36:50.705)
Yeah.

Chess I should be better at Instagram and all that other stuff like I really need to get better at the social media thing right as for you for to grow the business But really the for fun, it's the chess comm app, you know, I really like playing chess on there

Adam Sockel (37:05.656)
I love that.

You are the second person in like the, I think, 10 interviews I've done so far for this podcast. You're the second person to say the chest .com app. That's interesting. What would be your ideal workday?

Michael Pedone (37:17.041)
Yeah, it's fun.

Michael Pedone (37:23.644)
the ideal workday would be lots of quote requests coming in right you know that that would be it but you know I mean I think I'm I'm living the day that I want I've really structured the company to where it's like you know it's on my time

Adam Sockel (37:27.664)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (37:40.66)
And what I've had to do recently where I've made that shift if we go back to earlier in the conversation where I was always trying to get help the individuals and have pricing on there to help individuals make it easy for them to sign up and then it was actually bringing my business down. So I've actually had like throw them out of the boat basically and just focus on corporations that need my help. That's where the money is. And so now it's like I can just raise my prices. They're still I'm told they're still way you know they're way fair for what they're getting. So that's nice. But I just raised my prices so I could I

Adam Sockel (37:55.886)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (37:59.694)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (38:10.613)
need less clients and you know that that's what I'm doing. I get a couple you know get a couple quote requests. I do some of my cold outreach. I get a couple deals and I'm just I think mental health is a big thing and so where I've been where I've seen a lot of people are saying you have to do a hundred dials a day or whatever. Listen if you have an auto dialer sure you can do a hundred dials in five minutes but you know the big thing is is you need to measure talk time.

Adam Sockel (38:32.11)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (38:36.627)
And so, you know, my thing before the auto dialers were a thing, it was 60 dollars a day, 60, 60 dollars a day and or three hours of talk time. That was the goal to try to average. Most salespeople average 10, 15 dollars a day and an hour of talk time. What are you doing with the other seven hours of the day? Like it's not the activities that's going to pay you the most. And I think if you're getting a high salary, anything over 40 grand as a base salary, I think you're going to

Adam Sockel (38:55.822)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (39:06.537)
start to see companies cut back on that or your job might be in jeopardy if you're not producing that high level of a thing. So with that being said back to my workday I make sure that my perfect workday I've got all the systems running where I got inbound leads I got the time to do my outbound stuff I'm helping the clients I can and then I'm not stressed out after work you know it's just I live down here in Florida and Dunedin now and it's time to go outside and enjoy it enjoy the weather a little bit.

Adam Sockel (39:34.828)
I love that. And then, okay, last one of these. What cold, this is very on brand that we've been chatting about. What cold call opener would get you to at least hear a pitch? Obviously I know the way that you work, but if someone was calling you, what would that at least let you, you would be like, okay, let me hear what you got.

Michael Pedone (39:46.358)
Sure, yeah.

Michael Pedone (39:52.374)
Yeah, anything that piques interest in the beginning of a problem that I might be having.

Adam Sockel (39:58.124)
Yeah.

Michael Pedone (39:58.486)
You know the number one cold calls I get right now are for IT to see if I need any IT development stuff or if I need cleaning, office cleaning stuff. That seems like a repeat. And I'm like they didn't do any research at all. First of all I'm a small company so technically I feel like I'm a solopreneur. I have a team but they're outsourced teams so it's fractional marketing things of that nature. It's just a smarter way right now. But I also work from home. So I don't need a whole office to clean.

Adam Sockel (40:09.26)
Mm -hmm.

Adam Sockel (40:24.972)
Mm -hmm.

Michael Pedone (40:28.44)
I'm like, why are you, you know, and I think this is a lesson for all salespeople because you will burn out really fast if you do not know what your ideal client looks like. And if you do not take the time before you get on the phone or send emails to build a list of people that match your best clients and what they look like, you have to know what your ICP is your ideal customer profile. And the basics could be from location to title to average income or revenue and

Adam Sockel (40:31.084)
Yeah.

Michael Pedone (40:58.316)
employee size, things of that nature. You just get some of the basics down and then you build your list of people that probably have a problem that I helped solve because they look like all my other best clients. Build that list and then just be direct with them. Know that you have to agitate a pain, scratch an itch at the beginning. You gotta mention a problem that the you don't know that they listen even if you know they have a problem you can't call and tell them they have a problem because they're gonna doubt it. That's that's when you hear things like yeah I hear you but you know this is the way we always done it or we're you know things of that nature.

Adam Sockel (41:21.642)
Yeah.

Michael Pedone (41:28.219)
But you know, when you come in with a problem to something that maybe they're not even thinking about and you agitate that pain, scratch that itch, all of a sudden they're curious. So anything that's going to mention a problem that I might be dealing with, I'm going to listen to what you have to say for a second.

Adam Sockel (41:43.37)
I love that. Michael, give our listeners some information. Where can they find more information about SalesBuzz? How can they get in touch with you if they're interested in some training and all that good stuff?

Michael Pedone (41:53.945)
Yeah, salesbuzz .com has everything you need. It's going to have the entire curriculum right there. You'll see what you know, every lesson that's included in there. And if you're interested, whether you're an individual or or I'll just tell you right now, it's 1000 bucks for an individual to take the course. But I have I have great discounts for group rates that are on there. But it also includes not just the on demand includes alive includes progress reports and tracking for managers to see where everybody's at and how they're doing. And like I just got to right before this, I got to test

The guy says we've only been doing this for 30 days and we've set five, we five extra appointment setting. I'm like, that's great. And it just, and it was, they're not even halfway through the course yet. And it was just the beginning. And that's where most of it is. If you just fix the basics, you're going to make so much more money. I feel like sometimes I'm yelling at the top of the mountain and nobody's listening. So that's why I got to get better at social, you know, to get, to get them there.

Adam Sockel (42:44.775)
Amazing. Well, Michael, I appreciate this so much. Thank you for joining me today.

Michael Pedone (42:49.757)
Yeah, Adam. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.