Is Cold Calling Dead and if Not, How Do You Go About It Effectively? With Guest Michael Pedone

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Marketing podcast, where every week, your hosts, Mark LaCour and Matt Bertram share proven strategies and real-world tactics to help you connect with customers and close more deals. Let's do this. Hey, welcome back everybody. We're actually, Matt and I are doing something a little bit different. We have a guest today, but before we get to the guest, Matt, we actually got a review and I love this. All right. I don't know how this industry worked without this podcast. And, Matt and Mark, I firmly believe that you're correct that marketing and sales should be joined

at the hip. This is from Jay Fred from the United States. So, Jay Fred, thank you for the review. We appreciate that. If you like what Matt and I are doing, we'd love to hear from you. Leave us a review if you have suggestions for what we can improve throughout the review as well. And our guest today is Michael. It's Padone. That's right. Yep. Which audience, I have been a fan of Michael's for over a decade and just never got around to reaching out to him and talking to him about it till we actually start this podcast. I'm like a little fanboyed out to actually have him on the

show. And our topic today is cold calling dead. And if it's not dead, how do you go about it effectively? Michael, real quick, introduce yourself unless she's jumping to the topic. Yeah, sure. Well, one thanks for having me on. My name is Michael Padone. I'm the founder of salesbuzz.com. I've been a street commission's inside sales rep for basically most of my adult working life. Never went to college. I barely graduated high school, grew up, I would say, poor at times below the poverty level. And sales was a lifeline when it was something that

the better you get at, the more money you can make and then you could pull yourself out of certain situations and then you could live a better life. And really, that's exactly what I did. Absolutely. Very effective. You built a very good business. In the oil and gas industry, a lot of the sales seems out to have inside sales support. And traditionally, that inside sales support was literally dialing for dollars. And now there's some controversy in the industry. Like, does that still work? Does picking up the telephone and reaching out to people you don't

know still work? And what is your answer? Yeah, so yes, it works for sure. The reason it doesn't work for most is because they don't know what they're doing. They had improper sales training. They don't want to do it. But first of all, let me say, I don't think anybody wants a cold call. I don't want a cold call, but there's a necessity at times. If you don't have enough inbound leads coming in, listen, if you're in sales, your job is to generate revenue. You have to generate anywhere from at least a minimum of four to five times of what you're being paid if you're on a

salary. In order for that just to make sense for an organization. Now, I've been a straight commission sales rep forever today. So it's like, there was extra motivation there for me, right? It's like, nobody was handing me, especially when I got in the sales way back in the day, nobody was handing me a base salary or whatever. It's like, here's the leads, here's the phone, get to work. And if you don't close deals by the end of the week, you're out of here, right? And it was really that simple is how I got into it. And let me back up for a second. When I first got into sales,

I was hired at this organization. And like, it was a traditional boiler room. Like before, boiler rooms were popular. I get there and there's 80 sales reps are all on the phone. And most of them sucked. But there was always the same four to five people. When I would go to look at the plaques on the wall, year after year, month after month, whatever, always the same four or five people. So it was working for them. I was watching what they were doing. So it worked. And I listened to what other people were doing. And they were not doing what those people were

doing. Yes, it can work, but you have to learn the right way to do it. Now, with that being said, I do not want salespeople to have to cold call if they don't have to. I would rather them handle inbound worn leads, and then do your job from there. But the problem is this, is a lot of times salespeople think they're great because they're getting fed leads. And when the spigot dries up, they start blaming everything else. There's no leads, the marketing, the industry, the inflation, whatever. At the end of the day, none of that's going to keep your job. You have to make something

happen. You have to do the outbound stuff. Now, the good news is this is when you learn to be very successful at doing outbound cold calling, and you follow the process and you get really good at it, guess who gets the warm leads when they start coming back in again? The top rep who's proven themselves, because the thing is this is cold calling and handling inbound warm leads are virtually the same process as a step by step process that you go through. Cold calling, especially when you're on a straight commission type of style, like I was, is you have to learn what those things

are and you have to be really good and you have to perfect them. You have to know what to say, when to say it, how to say it, and you have to be in the moment for that, right? Well, it's the same thing when you get inbound warm lead. The problem with warm leads for most salespeople is they skip so many steps because they, oh, they're interested, and they go, well, let me just tell you about it, and they do a data dump, they create a proposal, they send it out, rinse and repeat, and if that was low hanging fruit, they get deals and they think they're a great salesperson. When the leads

start to dry up, their numbers go down and they don't know what to do, and that's a problem. Yeah, totally agree. I actually like to cold call. I have one day a week that I think about, because to me, it's like hunting big game. If you do everything right, takes a lot of preparation, you'll just jump into it. A lot of research, a lot of preparation, and when you do it right, not only do you make that big kill, but you now have a client that's happy that you reached out to them and educate them about a problem that you could help them solve. It just feels good.

What I think cold calling is not is bugging the crap out of people and trying to get them to buy something they don't want to buy. And that's what I think a lot of salespeople think it is. And I think it's really problem-solving. It's educating people that don't know that you could help them solve a problem. So both things can be true. See, people just say, you don't call you're interrupting them. Well, all marketing is interrupt marketing, right? That's what it is. But let me digress for a little bit. So it can be true that you could randomly call somebody

that shouldn't even be pre-qualified as a suspect. And that's a cold call. And you could contact somebody that matches your ICP, your ideal customer profile, and go, you know what, they qualify to be a suspect. And now let me see if I can help them. And then you start that offer. So both things can be true. But let me give you a perfect example. I had this idiot send me this LinkedIn message today. First of all, I hope you're doing well. I trust you're doing well. Something stupid like that. And then there's this long thing about wanting to know if I ever need any help with web

app development. Now, let me ask you a question. What would make them think that I would be qualified to even reach out to? I have nothing to do with web app development. It's not even on my radar. They were probably using an automated whatever to just, right, spam people. Exactly. And so with that being said, that's happening at mass scale, emails and through LinkedIn. And now everybody is on LinkedIn, complaining that it's harder than ever to engage with you. And at first, I was going harder compared to what because I'm going, when I got into sales,

it was, there's a phone book, most people don't even know what that is. There's the white pages, yellow pages. There's your phone, start dialing. Today, you have things like LinkedIn, you have things like you can do webinars to generate mass amount of leads. There's tools that you could research to see that is that prospect even there before you call rather than call randomly and go, that person hasn't been here for five years. Mike, we used to have to call directories and dial like one number up and one number down and actually have to build the org chart of who

those people were and then write in what their needs were like, we had to start building the information database that's already there with LinkedIn, etc. Exactly. So when they say it's harder than ever, like, I'm talking to some of my colleagues, I'm still friends with that, we started way back in the day with them were laughing like harder than what, but I get it now. What they're saying is it's harder than ever now because ever since Aaron Ross wrote predictable revenue, I think that's what it was called. If you don't know Aaron Ross, he was one of the

digital sales reps at Salesforce. And instead of calling people, he started to email blast everybody. And then it started to work and I grew it and scaled it. So I wrote a book and 10 years ago, whatever, everybody started doing that. What people don't understand from Aaron's perspective is there was a massive need for a cloud based and before cloud was a thing. CRM, let me give you a perfect example. When I first started my first company, I needed to get like a CRM system going at the time it was gold mine, there was act,

I was going to have to buy this hardware is going to have to install it here, and couldn't be remote like I'd have to be in the one location that to access all that. I go, man, this sucks as an entrepreneur is a small business person when I wanted to start. Well, Salesforce comes around and everything's in the cloud. It's 25 bucks a month at the time. I didn't have to spend thousands of dollars on this. There was a need for something like that. So of course that worked. It was one of those things where it would just blow up,

but he writes about it. He says, everything's great. Everybody tries to do it at scale. And sure it might have worked for some people for a period of time, but it's so played out now. I mean, look at the message I got earlier today on LinkedIn. It's just a definitely like, why are these people sending me this stuff? And it's like a waste of my time. So now prospects are very guarded because they're getting bombarded with garbage day in and day out. The funny thing, Michael, that you don't know is on the show, we have a segment at the end,

and it's called the LinkedIn Fatal on the tip of the week, because that's how bad it is. It's now a segment on our show. So we have a lot of sales management that listens to us. It sounds like we all agree that cold calling does work, but it has to be done well. If you're thinking about building an inside team to cold call for your company, how should you think about this? And how should you go about getting the right people and training them? Okay, well, those are two separate issues. The first issue is getting the right people.

So the right people is during the interview, you should put them on the spot and ask them to role play with you 1000%. If they shit themselves, they're not the right person. So with that being said, if they're willing to role play, no matter what they do, unless they knock it out of the freaking park, give them a little bit of a critique. Okay, I like what you did there. I would like to see this a little bit different. Let's try it again. And if they do it, and they were coachable, or even if they didn't do it exactly, but they were willing to try,

that's the person you hire. Because I would rather have somebody that's coachable over everything else. If they're defensive and this and that, or they want to train or role play, then don't hire them. So that's the best advice I can give as a base level, if you're going to start hiring people for sales. The next thing is this is you have to properly train them. And if you don't know all the steps, if you cannot tell your team exactly what to say in each step of the talk track, there really is from the time you pick up a phone to the time you get a final answer,

there is a specific step by step talk track that doesn't matter what you sell that every prospect has to go through. To help people visualize this, I asked them to think of baseball. Every time you pick up the phone, you're in the batter's box. Your objective is to get the first base first. Even if you hit a double, you can't run from the home plate across pitchers on the second base. You still have to go to first base first. So you have to know what the steps are. And if you can't teach them what the steps are, if you don't know what the steps are, and you don't know what to

teach them on what to say to get to each phase, then you have to get some outside training to make it happen. It's so funny. One of the things that I did, because I was literally like you, I was given, here's actually like a training manual, and here's the phone, and it's a DOS like CRM system. Go for it. And it was kind of boiler room, like old furniture, all this. What I had to do is I didn't have anybody teaching me anything. So I just read the book, and I wrote down all the things you say on the intro, and I put them on a piece of paper. And I said, okay, I'm going to say these

things. And I'm going to see if I can get to the next step. And then these are the things I say on the next step. And I wrote them all out. And I had this big chart. And I would try different things. And then I would get down to like, these two or three things typically worked and then whatever. And then I kind of built a script that worked, let's say 80% of the time that would get me through that. And then I would deviate a little bit. And then after that, I didn't need that. But when I was starting out, I didn't have any support. I didn't have any crutches. And so I had that all written

out because I wasn't right in front of them. So they couldn't see me on the phone. And that's what helped to get me through it. It's pretty interesting. I had built it out, taped it all up with pages and all that. It sounds very similar to kind of what you're saying. It's exactly because a lot of people say, Oh, don't use salescripts because they sound scripted. No, that's not how this works. Because don't forget every Oscar winning actor and actress all had a script. They just didn't make it sound like a script, right? Yeah, you have to know what

the process is. Now to help salespeople, I'm going to be the first to admit that most salescripts create more problems than they solve because they were just built on a fall basis to begin with. So when you break it down for them, and you go step one, and you just don't tell them what to say, but you teach your sales team what the purpose is of what you're about to say. First, once they understand what the objective is, let me give you an example. You're opening value statement. Every time you pick up the phone, first of all, you should always approach a sales call

with, let me just see if I can help this person, right? If you approach it from that, it takes the stress and the pressure off of you, your tone will be better, right? You won't have that stress. Let me just call and see if I can help them. Now to call and see if I can help them, I'm going to be able to have to ask them some questions. And to ask them some questions without them being resistant, what do I do? Well, I have to have an opening value statement that does two things. The first thing it absolutely has to do with in the first few seconds of the call is,

it has to pique your interest, okay? And then you have to gain permission and continue the call. So how do you do that? Well, you have to create an opening value statement that what you say after hello, my name is agitates a pain or scratches an itch just enough to get them curious. And then you follow it with, and if I caught you at a good time, I'd like to ask a few questions just to see if we have an offer might be some help to you, would that be okay? When you pique the interest first, and then you followed up with what I just said, nine times out of 10, if you're calling the

right lead list, they go, and when I say by lead list, you're calling your ICP, people that are pre qualified to be a suspect, nine times out of 10, they'll go, okay, sure, I got a second. So what did you just do? Your opening value statement job, your first mini sale was to pique their interest and lower their guard. And when you do that, okay, now you just bought yourself five seconds. What do you do next? So then you teach them what the second step is. And then the third step, I call it a red light yellow light green light system. You're on step one, you got to get the first base, I got

to pique their interest that I do my job that I get a green light. Okay, if I did great, now I got to go to step two. And if I get yellow, I handle it, if I get red, I try to handle if the stage red, I'm off the call because what you said earlier, and I wrote this down, you were talking about how like 80% of time that what your script would work when you were calling your job as a sales rep is not to close every lead you call your job is to close as many qualified prospects as fast as possible. Just because they match your ICP doesn't mean they're going to be qualified at that moment for

your service. But you're still doing your job. This is why it's important for sales people to know this because sometimes they'll get the perfect script, they get the perfect training, it's working, they tried it nine times on the 10th time it didn't work. And now they want to change everything. You have to realize when you find what you know to be true is working, just work the plan and stick with it and don't worry about the couple of times that it doesn't. The problem is most sales people, it's one out of 10. And that's too low. The ROI is not there and they get frustrated

and then they go, this isn't working. Let me go to LinkedIn and see what's working. Oh, these people are saying send LinkedIn messages. Let me try that. Next thing you know, you do it for two, three months, no deals are coming in, you're out of a job and then it's rinse and repeat. I love the fact that both of y'all dated yourselves mentioned MS DOS call directories, phone book, but the reason I think that ties in everything we're doing right now is I'm starting to see a change in my own call calling in that just right before the pandemic,

say 2018, 2019, with all the noise with social media and with the number of technology tools that allows a rep to do $300 a day, it was really hard to get somebody to spend a few seconds with you on the telephone. Now I'm starting to see that, remember this is through the eyes of oil and gas, I'm starting to see companies that are so fed up with all the social, all the noise, all the LinkedIn reachouts that they're now more open to having a phone call with a real human, and it's in some ways it's getting a little bit easier than it was just say four or five years

ago. You think that's pretty accurate, Michael? I think there's a lot less phone calls happening for sure by far. I don't have any statistical data, but if I had to guess, I'd say it's probably at least 80% less. People are sending messages through LinkedIn, they're sending emails, things of that nature, they're spending their time posting what people want to hear to get people to like them on LinkedIn, they're trying to build their brand up that way. That's not generating revenue for most people. It's working for a few, right? But for the majority of people, let's see, if you're

hired as a business development rep, you have to get people on the phone. The biggest problem is, is that they try a couple of phone calls, they don't get the results, they say this doesn't work, and then they stop. It'd be like if you're 100 pounds overweight and you go to the gym for two or three times a first week, and you don't look like Brad Pitt, you're like, I'm out this thing working. No, you got to perfect it, you got to dial it in. It's a grind every day. And for me, the magic formula, when I was a sales rep working for somebody else as a straight commission sales

rep, the magic formula was very simple. It was 60 dials, six zero, and or three hours of talk time. And this was no auto dialers, right? This was picking up the phone and dialing. I remember companies wanted me to do 100 dials a day. And I have a longer story I'll share with you one day, but I said, I can't do that. And they're like, why? And I'm like, I'm really good at getting people on the phone. If I'm doing 100 dollars a day, I'm not speaking to anybody. And they're like, okay, so can you at least give us 60 dollars a day? That's the really number we want. We just tell

everybody else 100, because we know they're not going to do it, but at least we'll get close to 60. And I'm like, well, listen, I usually do about 40. But okay, listen, this guy that was telling me this, he was a VP, he started the ground up, he was successful. I have a habit of listening to people who have already achieved the level of success I'm after. So I was open to I was like, okay, great, 60 dollars a day, and or three hours of talk time. And he said, listen, some days, you're gonna do 60 dials, you're gonna have like 45 minutes of talk time, just the way it's going

to be. There's gonna be other days, you have 23 dials, and you have four hours of talk time. I just need you to be consistent every day, have that goal. And then he taught me shoot for 40 dollars before noon every day. Because if you can do 40 dollars before noon, to do 20 dollars from between one and five is like cake, right? So it's like to eat the frog mentality, like get the hard part out, get at least two thirds of it done before noon. Because if you try to flip that, it's like, if you fool around the morning, you make some follow up calls here and there,

you're suffering paperwork, whatever, and you only do 10 to 20 dollars before noon, you come back after lunch, dude, it is so hard to have the energy to try to blast those calls out between one and six or one and five or whatever. So that was the formula and it's proven to be successful over and over again. If you know what the game plan is, once somebody picks up the phone. So this actually leads me to my next question, which is, let's say you have an existing team that are doing calls for you, and they're not performing. Can somebody like you come in and

diagnose what's going on and help troubleshoot and help reset our train where there's gaps? Yeah, you don't even need me to come in because it's so simple to solve. I just put everything into an on demand course and one, yes, people used to hire me and I would come out and it was tens of thousands of dollars. Now I just put into a course, now it's a couple hundred bucks, they could take it and they fix and solve the problem. But I can do it at mass scale because the thing is this, I don't care if it's only gas, computer software, technology, it doesn't matter. The sales process

is the same. Yes, your industry is unique to you. The problems that they have and the solutions you have are all unique. What's not unique is like the game of baseball. It doesn't matter how you get the first base, whether you hit, get walked, get paid pitch, whatever, you got to get the first base first, then the second, third, and then home again. So there really is a formula there. And then you can custom create those steps to your vertical industry, but the steps are the same. So take an example. And now I guess you've got a team of five, they're struggling, you don't know what to do.

They have to learn that to pick up the phone. Step one is you have to pique their interest. How are you going to do that? You have to agitate a paint scratch niche. Well, how do you do that? Well, then you have to give them some examples, then you create the script for them, you customize their vertical in their industry, and now you role play with each other. And the only thing sales people hate more than co-calling is role playing, but iron sharpens iron, get them out of their comfort zone, and get them role playing for a few minutes, and then get them on the phone.

But then the next thing is, okay, you know what, the opener, it's working. I'm getting people to take my call. So let me give you an example of a bad opener. And I'll just do it in my industry. Just be easier that way. So if I called the sales director and I go, hi, this is Michael Padola, salesbuzz.com. The reason for my call is we provide online sales training. And I'd like to just set a time with you to see if what we have offered could help your team. They're going to be like, yeah, no, thanks. Nice. We're all set. We already have something that does that because

I'm bleeding with the solution. They probably already have some type of internal sales training. But if I call and say, the reason for my call is especially in helping outbound sales teams overcome core reluctance by improving their prospecting skills. And if I caught you at a good time, I'd like to ask you a few questions just to see if what we have to offer might be some healthy. Would that be okay? It's going to be really super hard for that director to say no to that because even if they have an internal sales training and they hired some top sales reps,

chances are they're still struggling with core reluctance, their prospecting skills aren't generating the results that they want. Now, out of one out of 10, if they go, no, we're killing it, we're crushing it, there's no problem. Great. Listen, do you ever run into a situation where the team is just not performing to the level you need them to be and some uncomfortable conversations start to have happen? I'll send you an email, my contact information, give me a call, I'll see if I can help you then. Fair enough. And they're like, okay, I planted a seed,

they got my contact information, I'm on my way. Three months later, I get a call back. All of a sudden they miss or quoted two months in a row. Guess what? I'm getting a call back. But meanwhile, I'm on to the next person because I'm agitating a pain, scratching it. I'm leading with the problem that they would have to have in order for them to want to hear my next solution. So yes, this is teachable. Every industry, every sales rep should know how to create a customized opening value statement that'll pique interest and gain permission to continue the call. Now,

the question is, what do you do next? I usually get phone calls after they take the first class and they go, we're getting more people on the phone than ever before. We don't know what the hell to say next. And we're like, okay, we'll go to the next module. But yes, these things are teachable. Absolutely. I actually had a marketing question, Mark. I wanted to jump in here before we run out of time. Michael, I wanted to get your perspective on inbound HubSpot, coin the phrase, like inbound marketing, certainly content marketing, some of these types of things like

podcasting, one to many, that sort of thing, certainly more scalable, because when you're on the phone with somebody, you can only be one to one in that three hours, you can't share it with anyone, right? Unless you're recording, I guess, to repurpose it. So how have you seen the dynamic change with the rise of digital marketing as it relates to because the numbers that you had the 60 calls a day, the three hours, that was actually my metrics when I was recruiting, right? Those are the exact metrics. And those were the metrics from the 50s. And like, they've

always tended to work. And I think they work even today. I'm just curious how you've seen that kind of merger happen with digital marketing and sales to be the most effective. I love digital marketing. I want sales teams to be so busy that they're getting inbound leads that they have to qualify them in. It's just not always the case. But here's the good news. First of all, inbound marketing is expensive. If it was organic Google, somebody had to write that article, do research, write that article, get it listed, and get it in the box. And now

you're at the mercy of somebody searching and they find it and they bring it. But it takes a while. And I know this because the first company I built and sold was a search engine optimization company for organic results. So I know that that can take a while to get those results. But there's money in there. And when that lead comes in, you want to make sure the sales rep that you assign it to has the best chance of qualifying, presenting, and closing to get that deal. Same thing if you're doing PPC inbound marketing or whatever, that shit's expensive.

So who are you going to give it to? The sales rep that can't pick up the phone? Or you're going to give it to somebody that, well, since leads were low at first, this one sales rep was making the outbound, he was generating revenue. I wanted to go to that person because I know they've mastered the sales steps on a co-colon that's working. Chances of them closing a warm lead is even higher because they're going to follow the steps. They're not going to skip steps and the sales process. Yes, I think marketing should be generating

leads for sales reps. And there's multiple types of leads too, right? So let me give you an example. I use marketing automation. Mark, you mentioned like you've been reading my newsletters for a while, right? If somebody reads my newsletter and then they pop on over to my course outline page, my marketing is going to send a notification that, hey, out of 10,000 people that read this blog post, these 10 went to the curriculum page afterwards, right? So guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to stop what I'm doing. I'm going to pull them up in my CRM. My CRM is connected to

LinkedIn sales navigator. So it pulls in their profile automatically. So I can see exactly who they are. If they're an individual sales rep, low on the priority poll, right? But they're a sales director or a small business owner or somebody in that nature, right? That's more my ICP. I stop what I do and I call them. But I don't call and say, hey, I saw you were on my site. I call and use opening value statement that's going to agitate a pain, scratch an itch to get the conversation going. That's a smart way to, even though they didn't technically raise their hand, but if they

showed some interest on my site, that's a way for me to reach out to. Companies should be doing this for their sales team, but it's going to go to waste if they're not prepared on how to handle those leads and how to start that phone call. If they're just not comfortable, they're just being a captain wing it, flying by a sea of their pants, you're going to get poor results. But when you properly train them, it's a win-win. It is a win-win. I will tell you something else, Matt, from a marketing point of view, and Michael mentioned his newsletter. That's also a dripless for him. So he puts out

good, high quality, easy to consume content and haven't even sent anybody his way in years. And yet, I'm very aware of what he was doing. And when we had this issue with people wanting to understand about cold calling, who's the first person I thought of? Michael. So for all your sales organizations out there that are working with your marketing teams out there, understand that staying in front of your prospects, even if they don't want to buy now, is something that's worth your time trying to figure out how to do. And Michael, you do it extremely well.

Thank you. I appreciate it. All right, guys, we're getting close to winding down the show, a couple of things. So first thing, Michael, this has been fantastic. I would love to get you back on somewhere down the road and do maybe a little more advanced section. But if people for sure want to reach out to you, we're going to stick both the link to salesbuzz.com and also your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. So everybody has to go there. If you need some help with generating leads, reach out to Michael. His training is excellent. I appreciate that.

Oh, you're welcome. Like I said, I've been following you for over a decade. Matt and I are inside a group. We're still working on it. We're going to launch that early next year 2024. In the show notes is Matt and I's all of our social links. Also, two newsletters we have. Matt, we've went from zero to 20,000 subscribers in five weeks with our Sunday update, which Michael is a new newsletter we launched. And even I can't believe the success it has. So people go check it out. We have everything in there from behind the scenes, to all filled recipes, to all kinds of

just really cool and fun stuff, cost you nothing. Same with all in gas events newsletter. That's the links to the show notes as well. This is the time at the end of the show where we have our LinkedIn fail or the tip of the week. Michael, you mentioned a fail already. Do you have a LinkedIn tip and we can pause it right here and edit the silence out if you want to think about it for a second? No, no, that's okay. I think the best tip I've seen, first of all, if you are a business development or a sales development reps, I don't know why you're on LinkedIn posting stuff honestly

unless you're in groups that your target audience is in, and you're bringing up problems and then getting conversation started. I mean, that's what I used to do when LinkedIn first started way back in the day. I would join groups. I would put a sales question out there. I already knew the answer to and I would watch all these people come in and try to answer it. And then I would point out, well, no, if you do that, this is the problem you would have, and this is the better way. And all of a sudden I gained this following. You really can't do it that well these days anymore.

But with that being said, I would be in targeted groups with my target audience. Other than that, I would just be using LinkedIn to build the prospecting list and to confirm that those people are there that match my ICP. But then you definitely don't want to be doing that during calling hours. I mean, you have to have call block time. Like I said earlier, have a goal to do 40 dials before noon. By the way, I'll give you one quick tip that you can double your calls today and with very minimal effort. Okay, I call it the double tap. So what this is is every time I'm calling a prospect

for the first time, and if it gets to that fourth and a half ring, you can sense it's about to go to voicemail, I hang up, I wait just a half a beat and then I call it again. And like 20% of the time, they pick up on that second call because they think it's important. Yep, what a great tip. With that being said, I've sat next to people where they've tried to like, oh, I accidentally dialed the wrong number, right? They're like, they're trying to cheat the system to get their numbers up. And if you do that, you're just going to cheat yourself. But this was one hack that I

had, I called the double tap. If you do that, look, an extra 20%, they pick up on that second time, and you could really get your numbers up and be productive and get conversations going. But the key is you have to know before you pick up the phone, you should already know what I'm going to say if the gatekeeper answers, if I get voicemail, and the prospect answers, how many people listening to this call and got the prospect to answer, and it threw them off their game for something like, oh, I didn't expect to get you, right? So that means you're not prepared before

the call. You're going in the battle here. You should know, okay, three things will happen, prospect, voicemail, or gatekeeper, you should know what to say to each one of them. And then once you get past that section, you should know what to do next. And you need to learn it. And then once you master that stuff, sales is a lot more profitable. That is fantastic. I've actually seen that in my career numerous times, where I had a new inside salesperson I was training, and they called and they got the person they were trying, and they literally for a full one second

didn't know what to do. So that was a fantastic advice. All right, guys, we've got to get out here. Michael, once again, thank you for your time today. We want to get you back a little bit later, do some more advanced stuff. Matt, this has been great. Next time we can do a bit more marketing. Remember, folks, make a difference and not a sale. Check us out next week for another enriching and cheeky episode of oil and gas sales and marketing podcast, a production of the oil and gas global network. Learn more at oggn.com.