This episode of the Grow Fast Podcast featuring Scott Leese, CEO & Founder of Scott Leese Consulting, a Fractional CRO, GTM Advisor, and sales expert, focused primarily on the challenges of modern sales in a digital landscape where attention and trust have become scarce resources. Scott discussed how the shift away from traditional phone and email outreach has prompted sales professionals to rethink their strategies for connecting with prospects. Building a robust network on LinkedIn, creating engaging content, and leveraging referrals were highlighted as essential practices to maintain visibility and build trust. Scott shared his own approach to networking, emphasizing the importance of consistent engagement and thoughtful outreach to develop meaningful connections.
Another key theme was the importance of adaptability in a rapidly changing sales environment. Scott advised startups and salespeople to hone their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and focus on building genuine relationships rather than relying solely on automated tools. He stressed the value of referrals and partnerships as powerful growth channels and encouraged sales professionals to invest in their skills, stay updated on trends, and embrace continuous learning. Scott’s insights underscored the idea that the future of sales lies in a balance of digital acumen, network-building, and resilience in navigating constant change.
You can find the whole episode of the Grow Fast Podcast with Scott Leese here:
Scott Leese Consulting
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This is the transcript for this episode:
Mark Shriner [00:00]
Welcome to The Grow Fast Podcast where we talk with leading sales, marketing and personal growth experts about how companies can accelerate sales, optimize marketing, and grow their businesses fast. Let's go.
Mark Shriner [00:15]
Hey, Scott, how are you?
Scott Leese [00:16]
I'm good, man. How are you?
Mark Shriner [00:18]
Pretty good. What's up with the what's the bills mafia.
Scott Leese [00:22]
My family is originally from Buffalo, Niagara Falls, New York. My parents both went to Niagara University, so, you know, go Bills.
Mark Shriner [00:31]
No, no. I mean, it's amazing football dynasty. And when I was growing up, football was my sport, and Buffalo was always just a basket case. It was like Buffalo in Chicago. They could never get anything going, man. And an amazing it turned into an amazing dynasty.
Scott Leese [00:47]
Yeah, that's it's been fun recently. And prior to that, there was 20 years of pain, lots of yeah, when I was it's fun when I was a kid, and it was pain for my parents when, right before they had me.
Mark Shriner [01:02]
So, I mean, you have like, 100,000 followers on LinkedIn, more than that, I think. And you've helped so many different startups accelerate their growth. And I want to talk to you about that. Before that, I want to do a little chit chat, you know. And I did take a look at your bio. You played a lot of sports growing up. I mean, pretty much all the main majors, but you're also a surfer, right?
Scott Leese [01:25]
Yeah, yeah. I started surfing pretty late, pretty late in life. Actually, I didn't start surfing until I was 27 but it's fun hobby for a while. When did you started?
Mark Shriner [01:37]
I started, we were living in Japan, and I would bundle my kids up in the car at 4:30 on Saturday morning, and we'd drive to the coast and try to try to surf, and then, and it was awesome. It was awesome. Great, great workout. And then the most satisfying feeling ever is, like, you know, we'd stop and get, like, a burger or something, and then, like, literally, 30 minutes later on the way home, they'd all be asleep, because everybody was exhausted, right? But let me ask you, dad, yeah, yeah. Let me ask you, on the spectrum of difficulty with all the sports you've done, I know you've played, baseball, soccer, basketball. How would you put surfing in terms of the spectrum of difficulty? Because I have my opinion, but I want to hear it like, from you, like, how difficult is it? And, you know, why do it?
Scott Leese [02:23]
It's very it's very relative to where you learn how to surf. So, if you learn how to surf in a warm water, you know, small wave, no wildlife out there, no rocks and reef. Then I think it's, you know, it's not that hard, but I learned how to surf in San Francisco, which is horrible. It's absolutely freezing. There are sharks in the water, there's rocks, other sharks, you know, crowds, there's everything. There's big waves and stuff.
Mark Shriner [03:03]
Were you like halfmoon bat over there. Were you, like, Santa Cruz, or were you anywhere
Scott Leese [03:09]
Anywhere from like Monterey, all the way up to Bodega Bay. All that whole coast.
Mark Shriner [03:15]
The water's cold, man.
Scott Leese [03:18]
You know that triangle? Yeah, that water's freezing. Yeah, it's freezing. Very, very difficult.
Mark Shriner [03:26]
Yeah, I'm from Seattle, and I had the family down in Monterey, and I'm like, hey, it's California. I'm going in the water. And I went in the water, it’s like, I'm getting out of the water. It's cold, man, it's cold! Yeah! So how, how difficult is sales compared to surfing?
Scott Leese [03:46]
That's a great question. I think sales is a lot harder than surfing. A lot harder. You have to get comfortable with an unreasonable amount of failure as a salesperson, you know, I came up in sales in the world where it was kind of a boiler room, almost, and you had to make 100 something calls a day. And, you know, you were trying to close one deal a day, right? If you close one deal a day, you're like a superstar. You get paid really well, in that environment that requires a 99% failure rate. What other sport can you fail 99% of times? What are there anything in life? Can you fail 99 times and be considered great? You know a baseball player fail seven out of 10 times? Do that long enough you're a Hall of Famer
Mark Shriner [04:42]
Hitting a baseball is like one of the most difficult things, you know, like, from a legit pitcher. It gets crazy, but you know, back to sales, like, literally, I totally agree with you.
Scott Leese [04:54]
Those guys, those guys are 30 times more successful than us, right? They get it right. 30% of the time. If we're lucky, we get it right 1% of the time. So mentally, you know, you have to be built very, very differently to pursue and stick with this career. You know, for a long time. You know, it really beats people, beats people up.
Mark Shriner [05:19]
Can you teach it?
Scott Leese [05:20]
I think a little bit, you know, I think you can teach people a little bit of resiliency, a little bit of toughness, a little bit of mental strength and stuff like that. I think it can be taught. I don't think I can teach everybody to get to the same level. One person's ceiling might be shorter than somebody else's ceiling. You know, some people have gone through some really, difficult things in in their life, and they can use that as a reference point and anchor to be like, think cold calling is hard because it's other stuff I've already dealt with in my life. This is a joke by comparison, right? But if you don't have that kind of experience or anchor, then I don't know if you can, you know, deal with as much. So, I could teach it. I might be able to take somebody who's naturally at a level one and get them to a level three or level four, but if somebody's already naturally at a level four, I can get them to a level six or seven, right? So, I can't teach everybody to get to the highest level, but I think I can teach everybody to improve.
Mark Shriner [06:27]
Yeah, I think one of the hardest things about teaching sales is, you know, it involves our communication skills, our big part of our personality, and you're asking people to change their internal motivations, the way they communicate. And some people are open to coaching, and some people, they take that it can be kind of painful if you say, hey, you know what? When you talk to people, you need to, like, look at me, I need to do this. And you're, you know, these are kind of like superficial examples, but you do need to make some adjustments there, and that can be painful for some people. Some people embrace it, other people because this is the way they've been doing things their whole life. It can be challenging for them.
Scott Leese [07:10]
Yeah. It's difficult for people to separate. I'm struggling with this thing versus I'm struggling with who I am, you know, and sales is so personal, you give it your best shot and then you get rejected. It's very difficult to not take that personally and feel like, well, Mark just rejected, Scott. I am a failure. I'm not good. It's like, no, Mark didn't reject me. He rejected this offer or this product or this thing, and that's tough for some people to differentiate those things out, you know, to not take it personally.
Mark Shriner [07:52]
No, but I think that's critical. Just separate it from me, you know. And even if they reject me, I'd be like, you know what? That's their problem. That's not my problem. But, back in the day, when I first got was starting in sales, I did take things very personally, and it's this emotional roller coaster, and that's no fun. So, if you want to get off that roller coaster, what you said is just kind of, you know, separate. What are they rejecting? It's they don't like the proposal. It's not me, you know. So, I get that, tell me a little bit, because you do coaching, and then you also, you work with startups and help them, kind of, you come in as a like fractional CRO type role. Talk a little bit about the coaching and some of the more common challenges that you're seeing your coaches face, and how you walk them through that?
Scott Leese [08:49]
Well, I primarily work with founders and or VPs of sales and trying to coach them up on go to market strategy, go to market execution, messaging, process, recruiting, enablement, training, all of this kind of stuff. The number one thing that everybody's dealing with right now is I can't fill the top of the funnel the way that I used to. I can't get a hold of people. I can't get people to pay attention to me. People don't pick up the phone like they used to. People don't respond to email like they used to. That's everybody's problem right now, and you know, that's what everybody's trying to figure out how to solve for. You know, it used to be, well, Mark, you're not getting hold of anybody. Just make more calls. Well, that doesn't really work anymore, because we just as human beings, don't, don't use the phone as much as we used to. So, I just that's what everybody's searching for. So, I'm helping them navigate that.
Mark Shriner [09:52]
I just heard a great quote from Seth Godin, and he said in the post scarcity war. World, attention and trust are the new scarcities, and because, how do you get people's attention and how do you get them to trust you? Because everybody's inundated with so much noise and so much signal, right? So let me throw back to you. You know, as much as you're willing to share, how what are some things that help people navigate through this challenge? I mean, what can people do?
Scott Leese [10:28]
Well, number one, you should build as big and strong a network as humanly possible. You know, you talked about the size of my LinkedIn network. I would be nowhere, arguably, without that network that I've that I've cultivated. You know, so many relationships. Perform there, personal as well as professional. I create content there, multiple times a day, every day for the last seven, eight years, building an audience. You know, fighting for attention, for lack of a better phrase, from folks, and trying to deliver helpful, you know, value, as well as some inspiration and maybe even some entertainment along the way. And then that attention then becomes the opportunity, you know, to build some trust, because I get messages from people who are like, Scott, now I've been following your content for years. I've got some questions for you. Would love to know a little bit more about what you do. And I'm like, I don't even know who this person is. They've been following me for years, right? I've built trust without even knowing that. I've that. I've built trust. And so, by the time they come to me, you know, we're able to have a good conversation. This does not involve any outbound emotion on my part whatsoever. I'm not out here cold calling people or cold emailing people, prospecting anything like that. I built up a strong network. I'm very good at, you know, keeping that network engaged. I'm good at keeping their attention. I've built up trust. I give away all sorts of things for free all the time. And you know, I have different offers out there that maybe appeal to different people, small ticket priced items, up to big, large ticket priced items, right? And so, I practice some of this referral motion that I preach, I practice this, you know, getting introduced to somebody so and so knows somebody, how can I get a meeting with them? And so, I'm just instilling that awareness and that strategy, and a lot of the people that I, that I work with, to give them a leg up. It's, I'm not telling people to stop entirely doing all the other stuff. I'm just simply saying you need to augment what you've been doing with some of these other things as well, because the old ways do not work as well as they used to.
Mark Shriner [12:56]
I love everything you just said there. Totally agree with you and but it's challenging because, you know, I'm, I'm old school, and I used to pick up the phone and just call people, and they would like, hey, okay, I'll live with you. My mantra for all of every for eternity has always been, get the meeting, get that face-to-face meeting. And then like, and then we, we've in this post COVID world, and it's like, and, but I, you know, so you have to, Bob, and you have to weave, and you have to evolve. Let's, let's focus drill down on the LinkedIn thing, and the fact that you've been, been able to build this amazing community. A lot of people love the idea of doing that, but it takes time, and it takes strategy. Distill down some of the key lessons that you've learned through this journey of building up. You tell me it's 120,000 followers, something like that. I mean, it's crazy.
Scott Leese [13:55]
Yeah, I think it's 115,000 or so right now. It takes it takes time. It takes time. Contrary to what you'll see on LinkedIn these days, where people are saying, I grew to 100,000 followers in three months. You know, it does take time. It takes consistency. You have to prioritize things, and you have to be careful of what type of audience you're creating. I mean, there's a way to go about it where I can pick up 100,000 followers that are worthless. You know, that mean nothing. They're not my ICP, they're not, you know, people I can help or make an impact in any way. Just numbers. Yeah, exactly. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't optimize. I don't optimize for that. I'm trying to get you know the right people to follow me. So, I usually just tell people there's because it can feel so overwhelming. There are three phases that you should, should follow. Don't move from one phase to the next until you've got a good rhythm and a good grip on the first phase. So, the first phase is just grow your network. Literally. Just get on LinkedIn and send 10 to 20 connection requests out every single day. Make it a daily KPI for yourself, same way we used to track how many calls you made back in the day, how many connection requests did you send spay you send them to people that could be prospects of yours. They could be peers of yours. They could hire you one day, anybody that you might be able to help or might be able to help you, which is damn near anybody, okay, but stay within your you know your industry, of sorts. If I'm a salesperson, I probably don't need to connect with 1,000,001 plumbers, right? So, connect with people who are in like VP of sales roles or other account executive roles or CEO roles. Just connect with people. Just start growing the network. When you get to a place where you can do that consistently every single day and it's, it's no big deal. Then you move to Phase Two, and Phase two would just be, just start commenting 10 to 20 times a day on other people's posts. Don't create anything on your own. Just riff off of somebody else's post and I don't mean comments like good post Mark, I mean something thoughtful, like, hey, Mark, love what you wrote about XYZ. Have a follow up question for you. What do you do when the following scenario happens? Or, you know, love that post, Scott, would you apply it differently? Would you think about this differently if you were in a billion-dollar company versus a brand-new seed stage kind of company, so just be thoughtful with it. But do that 10 to 20 times a day, what will happen is you'll start to get on the radar in the map of people who are following that particular creator and even that creator themselves. So, you'll start to attract some inbound connection requests. So, in addition to your outbound connection requests, you'll start to collect some inbound ones. You'll start to find your voice as well. You'll get you'll start to learn how to write on LinkedIn. How long, how short you know, what style you know. Am I Am I funny? Am I serious? Am I data driven, and that's part of the routine of building up, you know, a network and putting it to use is now more than ever. Your writing skills are extremely important. So, you're learning how to write, you're learning how to find your voice. If you get to a place where connecting every day and commenting every day is doable for you. Now you're ready to start creating content on your own. So now is when you share things that you've gone through, your experiences, things you're going through right now, don't start talking about things you've never done before, right? But share some more stories, right? Some. Everybody loves a good war story, you know, talk about stuff that inspires other people in in a way, you know, things that you've gone through and overcome. Talk about some of the learnings that you've had. You know, hey, I've been in sales for 35 years. Here's one thing that's changed massively from each decade I've been in sales. You know. Here's three tips to you know, close more deals on your demos, whatever, to educate people, right? You get to a place where you can do that, you know, a couple times a week now, now you're on your way, and you do these things long enough, you'd be shocked at the impact it will have on your life if you did that for a year, you'd probably go from zero to about, you know, between five and 10,000 followers and connections bare minimum for one year. Right? The number of opportunities that come your way are astounding when you start, when you start building a network and putting content out there like this, you get people to ask me to come on podcasts. You never know what a podcast you're on. Somebody listens to that drop that drums up a piece of business for you, right? You get asked to speak at different events. You get asked to, you know, do you do any coaching? Do you do any consulting? All of this kind of stuff, you know, spawns out of this. Now there's influencer marketing, where people can get paid, literally just to put content out there on behalf of brands and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's it takes a while, but the journey, you know, has really been worth it for me.
Mark Shriner [19:38]
Thank you for sharing that it's what motivational, but also educational, because a lot of people start, and after a couple months, they're like, I'm not getting it, you know? And they start when I say, they start. A lot of people start kind of haphazard. Oh, I'm going to create a post. Oh, I'm going to follow this person. I'm going to send out some requests. But. I like how you build it up through stages. First build like a core group of community or people that you're, you know, connected with. Then start to comment on other people's content in a meaningful way, and then start to develop your own content and figure out what your voice is. I think that's just, that's a podcast condensed into a five-minute response to my question, right there. So, thank you for that one tactical question. Yeah, perfectly when you are sending these outbound requests. I mean, I'm assuming these days, you probably don't send too many outbound because unless you're very..
Scott Leese [20:36]
I actually can't, because I'm already maxed out.
Mark Shriner [20:41]
Okay, so should I, because they always ask you, do you want to put a note in there? Or should I just send the request? What do you what do you advise?
Scott Leese [20:51]
I always put a note. Now, the type of note is very important, because if you put a note in there that in any way feels salesy or, you know, marketing driven, or inauthentic, or whatever, then it's worse than not putting a note. But if you can put a little note that says, hey, Mark, looking to learn from some other sales leaders out there, let me know if I can ever be helpful to you. That's, that's literally the copy that I used when I was able to send connection requests out. And you know, I get a good, good response to that. Now, as somebody who receives connection requests all the time, right now, I have almost 2000 connection requests that I can't do anything with, all right, because I'm already maxed out. So, if I go in there, 90% of them have no note. So, by leaving a note, you already stand out a little bit. Okay, when you don't leave a note, what happens when trying to connect with somebody like me is, I don't remember who you are. I have no context for why you want to connect with me. I'm like, does this guy want to sell me, does she, you know, need my help? Like I don't know anything. I don't know why you're here, right? So I am significantly less likely to accept connection requests from anybody like that. And for me, who's already maxed out at 30,000 in order for me to accept a connection request. I have to go into my network and delete somebody. I have to disconnect from somebody to make room for you. So why would I disconnect from somebody? When you gave me no context on why I should connect with you, right? I wouldn't do that, right? I'm in a different boat because I I'm higher up the, you know, LinkedIn tone, of course, in terms of my connection requests and stuff like that. Yeah. But for me, I always think sending a little bit of a note, you know, is a little better than sending nothing at all.
Mark Shriner [22:56]
Cool. Let's, let's jump tracks a bit here. So, I'm running a B2B SaaS startup, and do a little shameless product placement here. It's called Breeze docs. Breeze docs help SMB, small, medium sized businesses to respond to RFPs, security questionnaires, other type of questionnaire, type documents, in a really super-efficient way. But we have just launched our MVP a few weeks ago. We've onboarded a few customers, but our GTM or go to market, we were just getting through it right. And we have our what's the word? We have our idea of like, what we want to try. We've got some interesting things in the GTM that other people aren't trying. But you advise companies like us, if we were having an initial discovery call, what would you be asking me and what things should we be talking about and thinking about?
Scott Leese [24:01]
Yeah, I mean, I think you should be trying to build a foundation and a playbook of sorts for your go to market strategy, so discussions around what is your actual ideal customer profile. I can't begin to tell you how many times I talk to people about this, and they're like anybody on the planet, not how you build an ICP
Mark Shriner [24:28]
The TAM is 8 billion people.
Scott Leese [24:33]
Yeah, well, exactly, how can, how can we narrow down our ICP as much as possible, lock it in, right and figure out who are the best people for us to go after first, you know, right now, and kind of slowly expand it down the road, you know, understanding our buyer personas and the different people going to be involved in the buying committee. What's the company landscape look like for us?
Mark Shriner [25:01]
How granular Do you want to be on your ICP? Because like for example, we're targeting SMBs, who either are or want to be responding to RFPs but you could go much, much granular than that. You could go by industry, by region, by company size. I mean, you there's many different ways. How granular do you want to get from the get-go?
Scott Leese [25:27]
Very I mean, if I just pick on you and your example here, SMBs, who want to deal with RFPs, or already deal with RFP. Okay, so are you equipped to handle companies from China, in Japan, in Indonesia, in Mexico?
Mark Shriner [25:50]
Oh no, we're North America. 60 million of us.
Scott Leese [25:55]
We just narrowed your ICP, right. Okay, but we just narrowed your ICP, right. Okay, yeah. So now we're in North America. Let's just stick with geography for a second. Okay. Do you think that companies are more receptive at all in certain parts of the US or Canada than others historically the coast are more receptive, and Middle America is more of a later adopter. So, if I'm trying to get started for the first time, do you think I'm going to call North Dakota and Nebraska and, you know, Montana and places like this? I'm not. I'm probably starting with La San Francisco, New York, Boston, right? Because they tend to be earlier adopters of new technology and new ideas, right? What about the size of the company? What if you sell to a company that does a million bucks versus a company that does a billion dollars? Right? Are you? Is your product built to handle companies of both sizes and scopes? Most are not. And I can tell you, selling a billion-dollar company is very different than someone that's at a million dollars of ARR and very few, if any, early-stage startups are equipped with a sales process that can sell to both, let alone whether or not the product is ready for both. So, what size company do we work with best right now? Where can we get a hold of people fastest? Who's going to, you know, go faster through procurements or legal or, you know, a billion-dollar company has 17 people who need to sign off on this thing. The million-dollar company has one person who needs to sign off on it. Where do I start? For me, I'm optimizing for low effort, high yield, right? So, I'm starting on the on the smaller end. That's probably my ICP at the beginning. This is where we kind of go through boot camp, right? And we sharpen our swords and toughen up, right? And learn what works and what doesn't work. And I slowly go after bigger and bigger opportunities as I kind of graduate and grow into them, right? So, it's these types of things to your question about granularity that I'm pushing people to come up with answers for and the more hyper specific we can get, I believe we have a better opportunity. Same thing with industry, right? You said SMBs, okay, but is that restaurants and bars that do RFP? Is it lawyers? Is it real estate agents? Is it software providers? I don't know the answer, right, but I do know that there's very big deltas differences between some of these industries. And some of them are probably going to be more receptive than others. Some of them are going to be bigger average contract values. Some of them are going to be, you know, faster sales cycles. And again, I'm trying to optimize for low effort, high yield. So, what's the easiest people to get in contact with? What's the fastest sales cycle, with the biggest average contract value that people are going to be most receptive to us who have the most kind of glaring problem, that have a simple buying committee and process? This is how we get started. This is where we refine our approach and our messaging and our process and everything like that. Essentially, we test it on the smaller fish, go after a big fish. If so, I'm ready.
Mark Shriner [29:31]
Makes a lot of sense, and actually, thankfully, thank goodness it aligns with our strategy, because in our space, there are some enterprise solutions out there, but they are, you know, $30,000 a year minimum, and we're going after the SMBs, which are, you know, our solution is 20% of that cost and probably delivers what we believe is the right feature set for our ideal cost. Customer. So, we're trying to right size our solution, but as the platform develops, we're going to add more and more and more, and we will offer enterprise solutions and go after those big fish. So, but if we go back now, because everything you said, I totally agree with, like I said, thank goodness it aligns, because it would be really embarrassing if you said something totally different from, we're going after. Let me ask you, like, I'll give you an example of something that we're doing. You know, we're going after SMBs. It's a there's so many of them out there. One of the things that we're doing is partnering with RFP consultants and SMB associations, where we will go into RFP consultants, and because each RFP consultant maybe have 20 to 50 customers every year, and we get them, quote, unquote breeze certified, and then we work with SMB associations to provide like Best Practices webinars for their membership and offer preferential pricing. Okay, this is something that it's not commonly done in our space that we're in right now. First off, I'd like your comments, and please be honest on our on that kind of unique part of our approach, because we're doing all the traditional stuff, the SEO, the SEM you know, the blogs, the podcast, etc., the AdWords, but, but we're doing that on the side. Please give me your comments on that. But also, please share with us what you can some unique approaches that you've seen companies use to accelerate their growth at an early stage.
Scott Leese [31:33]
Yeah, well, I think the thing that I'm most bullish on right now is referrals and partnerships as a as a go to market channel that can scale, that has been ignored historically, and as everything becomes more and more automated and AI driven. And you know, every email can’t trust who sent it, and we get 900 of them a day, or whatever. Tim Cook's famous quote is about any emails a day he gets, and we don't answer the phone. Everything is screened out. Goes straight to voicemail or ringers off all day long. It's like I don't trust anything. What I trust is somebody I know telling me, hey, you should talk to my buddy, Mark if you have this problem with RFP? I don't know if you do, but if you do and want to chat with him, I can vouch for him. He's a good dude. The company is doing good things, and then that person is like, oh, I trust Scott. He trusts mark. I do kind of have that problem. Okay, I'll take the meeting, right? And people have failed to scale this for God knows how many years in in SaaS in particular, you raise money. Everybody tells you, you know, ask your investors, ask the board for introductions, and that's where you get your first customers. But everybody stops right there, right how often do you ask them? How often do you ask your internal team if they know anybody? You'd be shocked. You know, I have a client who had who asked their engineering team, they sent him a list of prospects, and one of the engineers knew two people that he went to college with opened up hundreds of thousands of dollars of pipeline right there, just because they asked right? What about consultants? To your point, what if you go to all those people and say, hey, I'll cut you in on any deal that you intro us to, assuming there's no compliance or legal issues, but that I would do that all day long if I was you. What about industry insiders? I don't know famous people who are or in this particular industry who speak at events and stuff like that. What about LinkedIn influencers, right? What about people like me who have 100 something 1000, you know followers, right? You send me a list of 100 prospects that you're trying to get a hold of. I might know two or 3% of them. Well, you have 100 versions of me that all know two or 3% multiply that by whatever your average contract value is, you're talking millions of dollars of pipeline that can be open, and then send a new list out every couple of weeks, right? This is how you scale this referral motion. And I don't understand why everybody's sleeping on it. Still, I've been running this motion with all of my companies that I invest in, that I consult with. I've also been running it as an individual, you know, making money for myself by connecting people with certain vendors that I, that I work with. So, this is by far, you know that the trend that I'm seeing the most success with that people are sleeping on.
Mark Shriner [34:46]
Dude, I'm so happy to hear you say that, because I mean, well, one, it's kind of a cornerstone of our go to market, but it's also something that kind of puts us a little bit different from what our competitors are doing. Today, they might change tomorrow. That's fine. I don't care, because I think we'll be better at it. The other thing that I like about it is that, well, me back up. I've found that our brains are wired in a way like you and I, we have no problem asking people for Hey, by the way, who else should I be talking to? Or do you know somebody at this organization? It's not an awkward question. It's, it's like we've delivered value and now we're just saying, hey, who else can we help deliver value to? But I think there's an assumption a lot of salespeople are worried, oh, I don't want to, what's the word kind of I don't want to intrude on them. I'm afraid to ask this question, because it'll be awkward. And a lot of people that you help, the customers, their brains not wired like us either. Because they're not just going to come to you and say, like, hey, you should talk to these people, because that's not how they work their brain. But if you ask them, if you just ask them, most people want to help. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that.
Scott Leese [36:06]
Yeah, I think most people want to help, but I want to emphasize something that I glossed over a little bit, which is, I think you should incentivize them. You know, gone are the days where I think everybody's just feeling super philanthropic about this stuff, especially if you're asking me to utilize my network, like I've spent years building up this network, right? And you want me to just do this out of the kindness of my heart. I don't know. Yeah!
Mark Shriner [36:36]
Come on, Scott, come on.
Scott Leese [36:39]
I think to myself, I think to myself, yeah, I think to myself, you know, mark your deal. Size is 100 grand, alright? If I can make an introduction for you, and you can get an opportunity opened out of it, what's that worth to you? You know, if the deal closes, what's that worth to you? You didn't have to cold call anybody or prospect. Didn't have to pay an AE or an SDR, you didn't have to pay for equipment. You didn't have to pay for office space. You don't have to pay taxes; you have to pay health insurance. This costs you nothing, if you take 10% of whatever your average contract value is and pay it out to a referral partner, like me, and you pay me fast, and you communicate with me, and you keep me abreast of the progress of this deal and everything that I'm doing, I want to help you, and I'll keep helping you, and in help and in helping you, I'm also helping myself a little bit. And every single company can make that math work for themselves, right?
Mark Shriner [37:38]
Awesome.
Scott Leese [37:39]
And one of the mistakes people make is they try to get stingy. They try to get cute. They don't want to pay people. Come on, man. You know, listen, no disrespect to what you're building, but I can think of three other companies building this exact same thing that you're building right now, let's assume that all four of you come to me, and they're like, Scott, you have a big network. You talk about all the time.
Mark Shriner [38:00]
I'm going to give you more than they're going to give you. The partnership agreement is in the middle right now, man.
Scott Leese [38:11]
So, that's the point that I'm trying to make, though, is people, people have spent a long time and a lot of work, and they're putting their own reputation at risk by endorsing you and reaching out to their network. And there is value there, and disrespecting or overlooking that value is a mistake. So, if you really want to activate this kind of channel, you've got to incentivize people to do so, and it has to be worthwhile, like, if you're trying to get introductions to senior level people, okay, you probably need referral partners who are senior level who know senior level people. Senior level people are not motivated by $100 gift card or by $300 of commission, right? I literally gave a talk on this yesterday, and in the spur of the moment, I use an example that I literally can't take my boys to Chipotle and get out of there with a less than spending $100 okay, that's how expensive it is. Do you think I'm motivated by $100 or 300? No, if you get to $3,000 now you now, I'm paying attention. You get the $30,000 now, you got my full attention. You do $3 million deals, and I'm making an intro, and you're going to pay me 300 grand. I will do a lot more than just make an intro. I will do a lot of other things to try to try to be helpful. So, the bigger your average contract value, and the bigger the check for the referral partner, the more motivated they're going to be right. Don’t be stingy with it, is my kind of guiding light.
Mark Shriner [39:49]
I love to hear you say that, and it aligns what we're doing. We're not doing $3 million deals because we're targeting SMBs, but if you look at the lifetime value of the contracts, it's significant. And I. I think a lot of companies have short sighted in terms of, oh, well, we have to give up 10% of this deal. I was like, yeah, but the 10% of a deal, that's even if it's $20,000 or $10,000 in your average company, if they stay with you for 10 years. You know, what is that worth? Right? You know it's like. And the whole exact cost of acquisition is, that's the biggest cost after you got product, and you got your CAC and if you can bring that down, and, you know, it's so much easier to upsell an existing customer, because that's also should be, also should be part of the strategy, I would think, is upselling, right? Got this relationship. Hey, Scott, you bought Plan A, guess what? We have now plan a and a half, or a plus, or whatever, right? So, so that's just getting the foot in the door is so important. Hey, let me ask you this. We're coming up on our time limit here. Just, you know, put your surfer’s hat on and just kind of riff for a second. What advice would you give to two areas, people like myself who are running a startup and two aspiring salespeople who want to up their game.
Scott Leese [41:11]
Well, same advice we talked about a little bit already, but start building a network. Yeah, start growing a network right now. And you can't run this referral motion in either direction if you don't have a network. So that's the first place, that place that I would start, I think, you know, don't be afraid to ask for help and get help and pay for help. It's a lot more expensive to try to do something on your own that you don't know how to do or don't like doing, and you break it, and you mess it up, and then you have to go back and fix it later on. That's a lot more expensive than you know, trust me, maybe paid somebody to help you with something.
Mark Shriner [41:55]
We are switching CRMs right now because I'm dumb, and I picked the wrong CRM, and it's like, yeah.
Scott Leese [42:04]
Yeah, you thought you saved money. Yeah, you thought you saved money up front, but you end up paying more in the in the end. So, you know, get coaching, get help, surround yourself, surround yourself with a network of people that you know can help you get where you want to go. And for salespeople, you really need to become a student of the game. You know. You need to study what works. You need to study trends of where things are headed. You need to be proficient in a lot of different disciplines. It's not just phone calls anymore. It's not just copywriting, it's all sorts of things. So, you need to get creative and stay on top of everything that's happening. Do you have you have to treat it like a career, basically?
Mark Shriner [42:52]
Well, absolutely. Do you have any recommendations for books, your podcast, for example, and other kind of resources for salespeople.
Scott Leese [43:05]
Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things I'm talking about when I say, become a student in the game. You can look at my bookshelf behind me, and 75% of them have to do with sales or business in some way, shape or form. So, I'm always trying to learn stuff. If you're not a book person, maybe you're a podcast person, you know, listen to podcasts where you run or walk the dog or drive to and from wherever, wherever you're going. There's a lot of events that you can go to, you know, small events, bigger events. There's a lot of communities, micro communities, large communities, you know, you just, you just need to immerse yourself with people who are going through the same thing you're going through, or people who have already been through it, and you can pass some of that knowledge, knowledge down to you. There's never been more information available, you know, than right now. Most of the stuff we've been talking about didn't exist when I started in sales 20 something years ago, right? So, yeah, be a student of the game.
Mark Shriner [44:06]
I that's going to be my takeaway, as always be learning. And I really appreciate you taking the time to be on The Grow Fast Podcast. We had some scheduling issues, and I'm up here on the roof of my hotel in Venice Beach. There's some surfing going on out there. I'm not going because it's way too cold seeing the beach, but thank you so much, man. And I think you know, I love your podcast in your posts, because it's just kind of like, hey, we're out we're out there fighting the same battle, but it's nice, like you said, to surround yourself with people who are, you know, aspiring to do the same things and learn from them. So, thank you for being on The Grow Fast Podcast.
Scott Leese [44:50]
Yeah, no worries, man. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
Mark Shriner [44:06]
Cheers.
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