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every time as a sales professional we talk to someone that could actually turn into an opportunity later there's a power in following up but I'm not just talking about traditional following up I'm talking about a systematic way to making sure that everyone you touch actually can turn in an opportunity later it's a Snowball Effect and we're going to teach you that today you're going to love it hey hey hey everyone welcome to another great episode of the evangelist podcast I'm your host Donald C Kelly the sales evangelist and I'm so excited for another great episode I'm so excited to be here with you today on this episode we have a fantastic guest my good friend Mr Brian liel now Brian and I met online and fortunately we were able to meet last well last month I went to Peak a conference that his company ambition that they host and we have information about that conference Peak down below as well as information on ambition you can connect with Brian on LinkedIn but Brian and I we we started just having this discussion about this idea of the Snowball Effect and how this can help sales professionals and specifically when it comes to building effective awesome amazing pipeline nowadays it's really difficult to be able to get the right people in the funnel and we're going to give you a strategy that Brian has used and seen that worked data backs it up and just it's just plain simple if this is your first time listening to this podcast is designed to do two things one help you to three or five exra sales Pipeline and help you to close twice as many deals as we go into the episode today you'll get a chance to hear about Brian you'll get a chance to hear about this concept as we unfold it and give you some specific strategies on how we can Implement Brian welcome to the show hey Donald thanks for having me on I'm looking forward to this I I mentioned in the teaser how we got a chance to connect and been connected online and then now got a chance to meet in person um recently at you guys event um which was really dope and I'm putting information down in a show notes so if folks want to go check out ambition and learn about you guys and your events they can look towards that for next year um but I I bragged about you a little bit there in the beginning tell us go deeper though you probably do way better than I can tell us a little bit more about what your role is right now yeah appreciate that so I'm the director of sales development here at ambition so we're a sales coaching platform um so I lead our total outbound and inbound SDR team um you know we we have a really interesting pers perspective over here because we have the honor and Fortune to reach out to salespeople so um it's a really cool spot where day in and day out not only am I working with our internal sales and sales development teams um but I get to talk to people like you and people like our audience that are you know in other Industries and other companies kind of doing the same thing so yeah man I'm I'm really excited to hopefully share a little bit more about this uh stuff I got stuck up in my head well I'm looking forward to your thoughts on this then um and some of the things that you can do to to best help us out um let's go ahead and dive in this idea of the snowball like right now for many of us as sales professional it's we got to build pipe we're coming up on the end when we're recording this episode it's the end of Q and almost the end of Q4 um and we know that you're not getting pipeline now that are closing these are things that you've you know you're you're building stuff for the next quarter but for sales reps who are looking to start off the year right who are looking to make q1 really really robust and even Q2 we know there's more to it to building pipeline than just making phone calls there's got to be a strategy and you have the Snowball Effect um principle and I'm curious about this why don't you take a second and walk us through what exactly it is and then we can go a little bit deeper on that yeah so at a high level right obviously our you know Frontline account Executives and full cycle sellers have their existing pipeline already so deals that are in pipe they've already qualified um and they may close at the end of this year or early next um but the Snowball Effect is really a principle that applies to the complete top of the funnel right the initial conversation between you and a prospect so there's thousands of tools and pieces of technology that help us do our jobs better right there's 500 different objection handling techniques and you know things that you can do but at the end of the day it all starts with the human to human interaction right it all starts with a conversation um and The Snowball Effect is essentially uh the initial cold point in a conversation with a prospect in an account that is the beginning that is the first snowflake that falls in curating at the end of the day Pipeline and close one Revenue now each one of those individual conversations can start rolling downhill right so think about a snowball rolling downhill picking up steam it may not be ready to pick up and throw at somebody uh you know at that initial point but if you're keeping track of these things in a very meticulous documented organized in efficient way uh The Snowball Effect in what we're going to dive into is going to be how do you take that initial conversation from point A uh and get it to point Z at the end of the day now um to wrap that all up think about one conversation and now I want you to think about 70 two conversations so 72 conversations is the average amount of quality conversations a top of funnel salesperson or SDR has with a cold prospect that data comes from the bridge group so I'll leave it there let you get 72 for to get was did they have for one Prospect for uh in a month so let me backtrack so okay gotcha gotcha gotcha for our audience I want you to back up and think about out it's day one in January uh and you're brand new to your role right over the next 20 days you're going to be making dials you're going to be sending emails you're going to be reaching out to people on LinkedIn um and the industry standard right so uh the bridge group basically pulled this Enterprise SNB midmarket and took a really solid average of um data points and identifi that the average top of funnel uh Prospect will have 72 conversations over the course of a month um so that that's kind of where that data point comes from 72 unique conversations so um I'm going to talk to yeah 3.6 people every day if you know everything's kind of working to to my advantage so that's where that number comes from okay so go guide us through um how do we use this Snowball Effect now yeah so we're going to start with a little bit of of math and then we're going to get into the actual tactics so oh come on man you going to give me some school I am going to give you some math it is boring I'm not an analytics guy I'm in the weeds let's get after it kind of person but I think it's important to frame up um right you all right get my pen pen out right now yeah get it out get your calculator um but this is important because I think us in specifically what you're doing here with Community right we need to we need to reach out to people outside of our organizations to really understand what the Baseline is right if you're a professional athlete you can go to the uh you know the NBA's website or the NFL's website and you can see what good looks like it's really hard to do that in sales because you you really only have the data within your company and these external sources so the first thing I'll call out 72 conversations in a month right if you're an SDR or a full cycle AE that's prospecting and you're not having 72 quality conversations um you need to ask your manager for help maybe you need some better data uh maybe um you know there's an issue with your lead list you know there's there's a lot of things that lead into that but we won't go into there so when you think about 72 conversations the average conversion rate which is essentially you taking a conversation and turning it into a net new meeting right so that person has talked to you and they're ready to learn more about your product or service we'll take 20% as the average conversion right so you should be converting in a month 72 conversations into 14 net new meetings um now what happens to those other 58 conversations Donald right think about that you had 72 conversations 14 turned into meetings there are 58 other people that you spoke to in that month that didn't go anywhere right so what does a conversation that doesn't turn into a meeting sound like well maybe it's a followup right bad timing maybe you were referred to somebody else right you had a good combo Donald wasn't the guy and they pushed you over to GB she's the decision maker um maybe it's not a good fit right maybe they dced themselves out you learned a little bit about you know them not being a good fit from any you know Myriad of reasons and then lastly they're just not interested right so hey sounds like a great offering ambition has but just doesn't sound like a fit for us right so when you have 58 conversations with with a person right you now have 58 data points on an account right so I'm going to pause there on that math when you think about it from a Snowball Effect that's just one month over three months that's 174 conversations that don't go anywhere right over a year that's 696 right so dang come on put these numbers down some big numbers so we're about to get into what do you do with that right how do you actually uh basically take all of this data right take all of these conversations and it turn turn it into a tactical way to execute and come back to these prospects that you spoke to you learned something um but it wasn't the right time to meet what do you do with that right that is the the key Miss I think with a lot of salespeople and and the rant is we're always looking to be you know a Wordsmith on the phone or have the craftiest subject line or you know level up our our our training and and seek all of this external like uh flash right all these flashy sales things organization and efficiency are two of the very like unheard of unspoken things in the world right now the best Prospectors are the most organized when it comes to documenting all of these things things that we do so I'll pause there Donald and before we get into the the tactics what do you think uh did I lose everyone this is awesome no no no I got it here 72 20% about 14 convos 58 non um TR n non uh progressing conversations that leads to 174 overall for the um for uh the year or no no 174 for the month because that's a weekly 508 for the weekly I believe right for the quarter but I know sorry for the quarter gotcha gotcha and then 690 yeah so that makes sense and 696 is for the year um that we're not progressing pretty pretty significant at that point so that that's where we are and and I I there's a couple pieces that you one thing that you mentioned that I mean a lot of stuff you mentioned is interesting but one that stood out to me was a very last point we talk about a lot about this with our planner and our training program is that the Oregon organization I want you to go deeper on that why you say so like we because then now it's like okay you're getting me into a lot of like you know um you know admin stuff now but why do you say and what are some of those things that this top perform and Prospectors track um when it comes to their research or the preparation me organization yeah I'm I'm glad you use the word admin right uh we think about CRM hygiene and admin work is this not sexy thing you know salese want come on man I don't want to do that crap yeah exactly exactly like no one does but that is the difference right the the difference between good and great is in the details and those are the real details that matter um now why is this important right let's start with why and we're about to dive right into tactics right um there's a lot of great tools that provide intent data and account scoring and help you kind of reach out to the right companies at the right right time but there is no more recent accurate data than a human conversation you just had on the phone or via email right that is the most accurately close picture you can have um what's going on at that perspective account that you're trying to book a meeting with that you're trying to close a deal with so um there are four kind of top of funnel admin things that you need to be doing after each one of those conversations and if you do these four things over the next 30 60 90 120 days that snowball keeps rolling it gets bigger it's gets bigger and you go from having cold outbound conversations you know which are pretty tough you're getting hang up on you're getting you know not as far as you feel like you want to be and you're going to move into this very fluent warm conversation um basic basically motion that you get to run so like the first six months is a prospector and sgr are pretty dang hard but if you follow these four admin details you don't need to be the best talker you don't need to be the best email writer uh if you do these things you're going to book more meetings more meetings are going to qualify uh and you're not going to have to worry about pipeline so what are the four things you should be doing after every single conversation you have with a prospect the first one is account level note transcription right so you just learn something on that call or in that email that is relevant right maybe you learn that they just went through a CRM migration uh maybe they have a new VP of sales that's launching a new coaching initiative right you need to document that those pieces of information that you learned and those pieces of information need to be visible um because not only is that going to help you when you reach back out to that Prospect in 90 days when they asked you to uh but it's also going to help you with other conversations in the account a lot of folks on here are probably reaching out to three to five contacts at each account um and man instead of I may have learned something from Donald and I didn't book a meeting with Donald but when I called GB who also works at Donald's account I now know these things about her company then now make me come off as I'm not a stranger right I I understand a little bit about what's going on in your world and I may have a better conversation with you so the first most important thing is after every conversation you have you need to take a very accurate one to two sentence note that's easily accessible in your CRM or your engagement Tool uh that you're going to be able to come back to and it's going to live there forever don't do it in a doc don't do it on paper it needs to be easily accessible to you and your team okay the second thing is tag a tagging system so if you're using an Outreach or a sales off or a Groove uh or really any type of Engagement or CRM tool you're going to have the ability to T tag that contact UM now what is a tag it's essentially an easy way to pull a list of like things right so uh on Twitter uh you may search the tag uh Thanksgiving bloopers or you know Buffalo Bills fails right whatever it is when you when you search that tag it's going to pull every single tweet that that thing happened and was talked about so when you tag a prospect in a CRM an engagement tool think about what you've learned about that Prospect right you know they pick up the phone right you know they answer what's better than having a cell having a cell that they pick up the phone on right so tag a direct dial um think about the type of conversation you had this was a referral I want to tag that referral uh maybe I learned that they are using a competitor right that's extremely valuable knowledge that if you didn't know before I want to tag that so so when I come back around I'm going to be able to pull hot lists of prospects that are maybe they referred me maybe they're using a competitor maybe they're a direct dial and what that does is again going back to the Snowball Effect doing that after each conversation sounds meticulous but if you do that every single time over the course of three months six months nine months you're going to have this these very easily accessible hot lists of people that you can call when it's the end of the quarter you're you know $50,000 in pipeline away and you need to get that last meeting on the books to to hit your number so tagging is the second kind of most important thing to do after every conversation is there so you named a lot of different tags here that we could potentially utilize they didn't give a lot but you gave some ideas of words it's like it could be it's person that picks up phone maybe this is a um recently acquired I don't I don't know uh whatever tags you might have is there a certain number that you should have where do we get to excessive does it matter and do you keep a log of what those tags are yeah it's a great question Donald I don't think there's a there's a Max number right but normally there's three to five data points so um to answer the second part do we keep a log you should be keeping a log right if you're if you're Frontline manager or your director if that's not part of your playbook having tags that are like Universal across your team do it for yourself right figure out a way that those tags work for you um but without a doubt you should have some type of log because you don't want to forget those tags right so uh a fun one that I do is on all of my follow-ups I just talked to Donald it was a good conversation I because I talk to him I know he picks up so I tag direct dial but then he told me to call him back in February of next year so I'm going to tag February 2024 followup so on February 1st the first thing that I do when I get into my desk and I put my headset on is I bring up my February 2024 tag list because now I have this list of warm prospects that I get to start my month with that I'm not calling cold that have a purpose for me calling back right so I'm much more likely to convert them and they're much more likely to go into a qualified deal right because I learned something on the initial call so gives you momentum right nothing's better than hopping into your seat booking five meetings the first two days of your month and like really running but does that help a little bit with kind of like sure it does how do you leverage it right yeah sure does so the last two things right the the third one everyone probably does this but if you're not it's really important is adding that person you just spoke to on LinkedIn and sending them some type of note talking about hey Donald really appreciate the chat can't wait to reconnect with you in February um if you're not a big LinkedIn person or your industry isn't um you know some Industries aren't on LinkedIn like we are in SAS right you could be reaching out to Logistics you could be reaching out to healthcare and like SAS isn't the only thing in the world right so like if it's not LinkedIn it's a followup it's a very quick short we just spoke email and the reason you do this is Donald I'm not important I'm just a you know director the little sales coaching company here in Nashville Tennessee but my inbox gets flooded and I get hit up by a lot of people and you're probably reaching out to people way more important than me that are getting inundated and hit every single day with cold Outreach when you create that touch point it allows them to reference that conversation so they're going to forget right Donald's going to forget that he to spoke to Brian four months ago so when you have that touch point you can reference it very easily um and it allows that person to go I do remember that guy I do remember that girl we did speak about that initiative I had and I did tell him to call me back because it's right here so that third thing you need to be doing after every combo is a very quick LinkedIn note or short email no longer than a sentence or two saying we just spoke what you spoke about and when you're going to reach back out the last thing right and this is where yet we need to use technology is creating that task or adding that person to the follow-up Cadence uh in order to uh essentially mitigate human error right um when you create a follow-up task in your CRM or your engagement tool that's your fail safe right so tagging is the first thing if you got that tag you're going to be able to reference them but I like having a fail safe just in case right so when I create that follow-up task I know without a shadow of a doubt I'm not going to miss this followup right I'm not going to miss this second conversation with Donald um and the reason all of those fail safes are so important is because that warm conversation with Donald is 10 times more Valu valuable to me in creating pipeline than a cold conversation with somebody that I don't know anything about right yeah so um the reason those details and that mat ulness is so important is because if you do these things right these tags you have these conversations you keep these notes you create these tasks going back to that snowball after after a few months man you're going to start every month with 20 to 40 warm leads that you've curated personally that are two times more likely to meet with you than a cold Prospect and that are three times more likely to convert into a qualified you know meeting that you can essentially put some ACV on because that you you've learned that like you've learned the timeline or you've learned something about them that wasn't good for them now but now is a way better time it's much more likely for that Prospect to uh to engage with your company to engage with your offering it's not our job as Prospectors to book meetings it's our job to learn something right when you're picking up that can you say that one more time for the people in the back yeah it is not if you are a prospect an SDR uh an AE it is not your job to book meetings when you're prospecting it is your job to learn something about that person or about that company because if you do that every single time over 30 60 90 you know 365 days you go from cold calls cold emails cold Outreach to warm calls warm emails warm meetings that are way more likely to convert and it it's a process but man if you stick to that it's not hard that's M detailed yeah I feel that this is like this is straight up gold um and here's the reason why like go back to what you're saying like when you go look back at the you know the gold rush and the the era when people were doing a lot of like um you know mining and prospecting some of the people that were the most successful weren't the ones finding the big rocks right the these Prospectors um were the ones that were finding Flakes and collecting a bunch of Flakes and there's a story a famous story heard it I don't know if it's famous but this prospector Old Prospector was out in the water prospecting some young whipper snapper came from East and he came to California and he was like man I want to get some um I'm gonna go big with the gold rush and uh then dude um all of a sudden he went out there and realized he wasn't catching that Jack Diddley squat getting anything um so he saw this Old Prospector with stuff on his waist and he this SL Satchel on his waist and he's like what are you doing and um and he's you know it's like how you C getting all this stuff and the dude just showed picked up two rocks and he knocked them open and he had some flakes that he got some gold flakes or whatever he was he got some gold flakes um and uh the guy's like the I'm not looking for Flakes I'm trying to look for the big stuff and essentially the dude was telling them this is what this is how you get the big stuff it's collecting these flakes um collecting these little bit here in the water um that's what led to me having this big sashel on my waist with all this gold um now we don't know if the person robbed them or whatnot but the point though is that you collect those those small little pieces collect over time and for many of us we are letting these opportunities slip right by us because we're looking for those big rocks those big pieces of gold and then we get frustrated and said SES sucks you know what I mean come on man that that visual that's why that's why you are doing what you're doing Donald because that is a a that is a perfect metaphor I'm picturing like just that little basket sifting I know right sand and catching those little flakes but it it's it's so true right and it's like it is a without a doubt man that that is a that's perfect because once you figure that out yeah life gets so much easier you know top of funnel cold prospecting is one of the hardest things out there because you just get dunked on all day yeah um and this meticulous gold sifting process turns it fun right bro this is money in a bank all day every day like I'm I if you're selling I mean if you're a sales rep and you're doing anything like what Brian mentioned if you're out there trying to build top a funnel and you don't have this written down if you're not following this then you're missing something um and you're going to keep missing because even when you're walking through all through this uh Brian bro I was thinking about this and from my perspective I'm like dang like there are so much there's so many that I could have over the course of like you know three six months like my pipeline could be ridiculous at that point um when it comes to stuff like this like it's just very easy um way of going about doing it it's making every piece count and another analogy just to kind of you know me and my analogies but as a kid growing up in Jamaica we were um you know you are you're you're we we sometimes had animals that we would um we would kill Butcher and um you're going to eat that animal you're not just going to eat the bacon off the pig like everything uh even if you don't we don't eat it but somebody will probably have like p uh pig skin soup um they'll probably have like uh you know the the head and boil something from it or this like everything gets eaten they get used and I think the same way as opposed to us just dumping we get a warm you know we're getting a hot lead or warm leads and and those people who are ready or answer a call that's who we're taking we got to make sure we are being resourceful with the resources that we have so Brian money in the bank bro I love this um I know to wrapping up here I want to respect your time if there's one thing you want a sales leader or a sales rep listening to this episode to walk away walk away with what's that one major piece of advice yeah I think the the one thing to walk away with here uh whether you're a sales leader or a Frontline sales rep is have a documented process right like don't don't just go through the motions and don't just you know run full steam ahead like once you start executing like Define your process and then iterate right so like this process is pretty Universal for for most organizations but maybe your technology doesn't allow you to do that right maybe it's it it isn't a great fit like having defined process um so like documented places where these plays live whether you're an Enterprise company or a series a startup right um this this this allows you to reference something um and make sure that when that person is struggling right when your new rep isn't on boarding as fast as they should um when one of your old reps is burning out right you can Resort back to these plays right and you can give them a play right instead of that hey man just work harder hey just grind a little more like like no give them a tactical thing to do right not just volume right smart volume quality volume those are the things that I think really matter when it comes to prospecting um so yeah that would be my one bit of advice is document it make sure that little detail right that may not seem that important that could be a little gold flake you know falling into the dirt that you never get back again so um that would be my uh kind of end rant uh there Donald but appreciate me on absolutely loved it man if folks want to get in touch with you learn about ambition or you guys event what's the best way for them to go about doing so yeah so ambition.com uh is where you'll go we are a sales coaching and Performance Management platform so part of that is what we do right we help you execute those plays we help your managers coach those reps um and then we show you if it's all working or not so ambition.com or feel free to add me on LinkedIn Brian leeville I'm sure Donald will have it in there but reach out uh if you just want to say hi uh and talk sales I'm there for you um but yeah manam again couldn't uh couldn't thank you more for having me on this was a blast Brian man appreciate you much love man thank you again for have for being here see you hey that was my good friend Brian if you haven't done so already go ahead and connect with him I have a link to his LinkedIn profile down below in the show notes tell him that you heard him here on the sales evangelist podcast and specifically man I'm telling you I love the idea of now how you can have those warm contacts every month if you started doing this like now for the next three months imagine what you're going to look like in four or five months from now your pipeline's going to be able to be a lot more secure because you're going to have people that have a higher chance of one talking to you and two who may have interest right now because they told you talk to them later I mean there's so many things check out the tag idea no matter what software you use use it wisely again I want you to three to five ex your sales pipeline not with garbage but with quality opportunities it's tough these days to be able to hit that number but if hit your quotas but if you can have the right pipeline size pipeline opportunities will come your way as always thank you for listening to the podcast thank you so much for sharing this with your friends and for passing the word along tell one more person about the show and how they can help them get benefit from it as always I want you to raise your level of thinking I want you to go out and do big things make that [Music] money