In this digital age, it can be so easy to lose sight of what we want to achieve, and how we plan to get there. Distractions come at a rapid pace and saturate our daily feeds. All too often they are filled with quick fix shortcuts that misdirect and derail our best efforts. Thankfully, there’s hope.
On this episode of INSIDE Inside Sales, Darryl speaks with Scott Einaugler, the extremely successful Sales Manager at Informatica. Scott provides some terrific and actionable gems that will help you to focus on your process. He’ll discuss ways to separate yourself from the noise, the importance of preparation, and how to keep your pipeline robust with a mutli-touch strategy.
Scott also mentions ways to time-block your day, as well as tips on how to form a solid connection with your prospect. It’s all here on this episode of INSIDE Inside Sales.
Not in the mood to listen? No problem, you can read the transcriptions below.
Host: Darryl Praill, VanillaSoft
Guest: Scott Einaugler, Informatica
Darryl Praill: And we are back again folks, for another episode of INSIDE Inside sales, I am Darryl Praill with VanillaSoft, of course, you know that because you come back week after week, after week and you partake, and I am grateful for the time we spend together. I’ll share a funny story with ya, and this is honest to God true. I’m driving into work today, and I get a notification. And I get the notification it says that the latest episode of INSIDE Inside Sales is actually out in Pompous and everything so what do I do? I physically press play and I listen to myself. Is that Vain? Is that bad?
Darryl Praill: I do like to listen to myself and my guest periodically with kind of fresh ears if you will. To simply listen to the advice and the conversation fresh. Clearly, I’m there the first time, but I’m so focused on connecting and understanding and drilling them that often I don’t have a chance to actually hear the takeaways succinctly and make sure that you, the experience you have is productive and valuable and clear and concise. And I liked what I heard, I was listening to the one with Shiera, Shiera O’Brien, we talked about linguistics and I had fun just listening to her over again. She had her Irish accent, and then I got really excited, because I knew I was going to be doing the next recording like we’re doing now.
Darryl Praill: And this recording king of blends a couple of different topics. So, let’s set the stage here. When it gets to what we do in our daily life, what we do is we’re always reaching out right, whether we’re taking marketing qualified leads and trying to sales qualify them. Or we’re generating our own sales leads and then qualify them and pass them on, either to an account exec to physically pursue them, or maybe we’re the ones pursuing them. It doesn’t really matter but we take those leads and before we can get to that opportunity stage we really need to engage and connect with each and every prospect. And you know sometimes that can be a lot of fun, other times that can be a real grind. Right, its like ugh, I’m doing the same ole same ole over again and its killing me, shoot me now!
Darryl Praill: And sometimes, I don’t know about you, but I know I’m guilty of this, I suspect you may be as well. Is that we kind of start taking short cuts, and we don’t always perhaps follow the right cadence, the right playbook, the right sequence of touches that we should do, because we skip steps. Or sometimes when we do do it, we do the least amount of effort required. We pull up a template, maybe it’s a templated of an email for example, and we just press send. We don’t personalize it, we don’t customize it, we don’t do any research on the recipient. And then often we’ll sit back and we’ll get frustrated and we will wonder why we’re not having the success, the connect rates, the results that we were hoping for, perhaps that we used to have. And often when you’re really close to what’s going on, what’s the expression? You can’t see the Forrest for the trees so you don’t know the mistakes you’re making.
Darryl Praill: I have been really guilty of that before. I have fallen into bad habits, I have gotten inattentive let’s go with that. I don’t wanna say lazy, because I don’t think I’m lazy, but I do think sometimes I take short cuts with the best of intentions, and I have felt the pain. And in worse as you all know, the pain is you’re not hitting your activity, right, whether it be phones or emails you know, whether it be daily, weekly, quarterly whatever it might be. You’re missing those numbers. But even more pronounced, is that the pipeline contribution drops.
Darryl Praill: So, I know I’m guilty of this and I thought perhaps you might be too. So, we’re going to learn together to kind of go back to basics here. I brought a wonderful fellow in, Scott Einaugler, and I hope I said that right Scott, if I didn’t you will correct me, and he is a sales manager at Informatica. And he and I connected on LinkedIn, and we bonded on over one of 1,000 articles that I put out there and videos that I do of my talking heads, and we were talking about this. And how it’s a real, something we bonded on shall we say, for we all fall into that trap and its imperative that we fix it. So Scott, welcome to the show, man.
Scott Einaugler: Well thank you so much for having me, it’s really what you did, is you personalized your message when you sent something on LinkedIn of what you were speaking to your direct audience. And it resonated with me, and I feel that a lot of individuals don’t take the proper time to do that because they don’t see the immediate payoff. There’s not an immediate payoff with outreach. Every once in a while you hit, you get lucky, perfect timing, but a lot of it’s grinding it out and that’s really why I think we both resonated on it, its about customization continuously in multiple different places. Whether it be email, phone call, LinkedIn, videos, I think it has to go across the gauntlet on a precise cadence.
Darryl Praill: So let’s cut to the issues we’re talking about here, right there is kind of, I heard you say a precise cadence. You know and the classic, you read about it, you hear about it, and this is just one of many folks, is you here people say oh seven touches in seven days. Or, you know, fifteen touches in thirty days, whatever and I know Scott you’ve got some cadences that you’re a big advocate for. That’s the first part it’s a regular frequency of outreach. And the second you touched on, is personalizing it, customizing it and they do go hand in hand. So, let me ask you, Scott, what do you see with your sales team in the Industry that was the catalyst for you? That you know this is a problem that we need to revisit, cause you see it first hand.
Scott Einaugler: Yeah I mean, for me personally, I was in management before I was in sales, I was grinding away. I started my career as an SDR, setting appointments for the outside sales teams. That’s where I started myself. So I know the value, and what it takes, and when I saw, when I joined my organization that the outreach was good, but it wasn’t like really speaking to the individuals in a way that you’re separating yourself from the noise. You have to understand there’s so many sellers out there, but there’s only an infinite amount of buyers. And if you’re not raising the bar with everyone else that’s sending a mass marketing email, you’re gonna get lost in the noise.
Darryl Praill: So, that’s how you began. Now, you are in management, and you’ve got a team. Do you see them doing the same thing? Are they falling in to the same mistakes, the same trap, the same shortfall that you fell in to?
Scott Einaugler: Sometimes they do, and we’re all guilty of it, we just get busy and we just wanna get our activity out there. So what I focus on with my team that’s been really successful is, when you take a look at your accounts and who you’re reaching out to, taking the time at the beginning to really understand who they are, what they go through. We put together a plan of who’s your account, what are the challenges in the industry, the challenges the companies be going through and then what types of things can we solve them for? Not products, but what can we solve their challenges and then customizing it that way, so that when you look at an individual you say well this person could be challenged with, this, this and this.
Scott Einaugler: I’m gonna just really look at their LinkedIn profile, look at the stuff online and see if I can match that up to make sure that when I’m speaking to him, I’m speaking to that individual directly, because, individuals care about what their person’s needs are. If you can have that conversation, that one to one method, the chances of the response are much higher than if your just trying to talk about the business objectives.
Darryl Praill: Alright, so let me challenge you on that. Which is, and you elude to this, I am tasked with having a set activity, a minimum activity every day. Whether it be x number of phone calls, or emails, or social touches or what have you. What if, what I’m hearing you say is, it’s not just enough that I understand the needs of the marketplace, or the industry or what have you. And how my problem, my product, or my service addresses those needs, but I also need to understand how that affects the individual persona.
Darryl Praill: You know maybe I’m calling into a head of sales prospect A, but I’m calling into a head of marketing in prospect B, both my target buyers, because they have different roles in the buying process potentially. But they have different needs, sales has different needs and marketing the different parts of the funnel all that kind of stuff. So now I need to understand and personalize based on the buyer, the persona that I’m selling to, and then I heard you say I also need to understand the account. You know the actual target account and what their challenges are. Isn’t that a lot of time and a lot of effort that will negatively impact my ability to do the research, to customize and personalize my engagement while still hitting my activity numbers?
Scott Einaugler: It’s a very very valid point. It’s really about the first step is preparation. You have to prepare, you have to have an account plan for each of your accounts. And you have to work smarter, not necessarily harder. Now, any person managing a team of SDR specialists, BDM’s whatever acronym you wanna call them. If they do 100 calls and 100 emails, which is their number but get no responses for weeks at a time, you’re not gonna be happy with that. But, if they do 70 calls, and 70 emails every day, and get pipeline consistently, is any manager gonna say, well you’re missing your numbers in outreach? I don’t think so
Darryl Praill: See now you’re actually raising a very interesting conversation. I know we’re getting a bit off track, and I’m okay with that a little bit of time. You’re talking about the whole quantity versus quality. So, if you can’t establish your activity benchmarks, your quotas, because your basically researching, but the results suck. But you can get good results if you invest a little time, do less activity, but it’s quality activity and you have better results, then perhaps is it fair that the SDR should have a conversation with a manager? With you? And say, Scott, I know I’ve got 100 calls and 100 emails, but if you give me permission to do 70 or 75 or 80 as opposed to 100 I promise you I’ll have better results. Is that a reasonable response? And if your SDR came to you and asked you that, how would you respond?
Scott Einaugler: See I like to keep the goals where they are because once you lower those goals, then they’ll say well if I can do 40 in 40 then I’ll be good. So if you keep that 100, 100, and they’re coming up 70, 70 but you know, getting consistent pipeline, their still striving for that 100, 100. Once you start lowering the goals, and you have to lower it across the entire org then you change your whole entire metrics. If you keep the goals where they are, but with the depending on what the focus is, for my team the focus is pipeline. The number goals are what we want to get to, but if you’re driving your pipeline a little less, we’re okay with that, as long as you are consistently producing pipeline and your customizing your messaging and understanding your customer base, and being able to actually show value across in multiple ways.
Scott Einaugler: And I think it all comes down to, are you doing the multi-touch attribution model. Are you touching them in all the different spots they need to be in or are you just doing what a lot of people are doing today and focusing strictly on email and at the end of the day saying, well I sent out 250 emails. And it’s like, well if you sent out 250 emails today, how are any of them actually customized to individuals you’re talking to?
Darryl Praill: Alright, so I guess I’m finished, that’s the part of the conversation, if you maintain your activity at 100, 100, 100 you know 100 emails, calls, etc. And they come back and they’re consistently doing 70, 70, 70 so their missing their activity number. But their pipeline contribution is meeting or exceeding what you hope for. Would you challenge them on increasing their activity? Or would you say I know you’re not hitting your activity numbers, but I like your pipeline contributions, so keep doing what you’re doing.
Scott Einaugler: I’d probably stick with that because you have to keep consistency across the board. So, it’s all how you phrase it, and as we all know when you manage multiple individuals, they all have different personalities, and different things that motivate them and keep them going. So you may have someone that’s just a total phone jockey that wants to just smile and dial all day, and they do less emails. So it’s about turning the dials on what’s important for that individual to keep them motivated and keep them active. But yeah, I would probably say you know let’s try to aim for that 100, 100, but we’re doing okay at 70, 70, but let’s strive for that 100. So it’s about how to keep them motivated for excelling to the next level.
Darryl Praill: And something to consider here right, folks is that the activity numbers are not meant because we have perverse pleasure in watching you making 100 phone calls a day, or send 100 emails, in fact all it is is a numbers game. The math goes, in this example, that if you did 100 calls a day and 100 emails a day that would, that math would generate this pipeline. So in the end, the measurement that matters is not the activity, the measurement that matters, as Scott says, is the pipeline contribution.
Darryl Praill: So, I would challenge you, that if your boss doesn’t understand that, that you circle back and you say, can we agree on pipeline contribution. Or SQL’s, call it what you will as the key overriding? As long as I hit that, then your happy I’m happy and away we go. If you come to that agreement then you now have the chance to start investing the time potentially to personalize more and overcome those challenges that you were hearing. So, not everything is easy, some of the stuff you can do, sometimes you need it done in partnership with your management team I love that.
Darryl Praill: Okay, so what we’re gonna do, is we’re gonna take a quick little break, and when we come back, I’m gonna ping Scott, and find out exactly how you can personalize. Give you some real-world examples, techniques, tips, and tricks you can do so that you can do this fast and efficient, and hit those numbers. Stay tuned, we will be right back.
Darryl Praill: Alright, we’re back and all I could think of during the break was, I wonder how Scott is gonna approach this. I know how I might approach this, but I wonder if he’s gonna approach it the same way I would. So, I’m not gonna tell you how ima do it, I’m gonna let you go first, Scott.
Darryl Praill: What’s the easiest way, the most efficient way, that you’ve learned, that you’ve applied, tactically used, taught to your team, to personalize those Cadence touches?
Scott Einaugler: So, I think it all starts with preparation first. You have to have an account plan for each account you’re working on. It’s sometimes a daunting task if you have multiple accounts, but you have to have some sort of framework of a process of how you approach each account. Once you have that in place, you could start doing the proper research. If you have 15 accounts a day that you wanna target, you do your research, you time block your day, that’s where it starts.
[bctt tweet=”You have to have an account plan for each account you’re working on…but you have to have some sort of framework. ~ @scotteinaugler #SalesStrategy #SalesTips” username=”VanillaSoft”]
Scott Einaugler: Time blocking your day, I’m gonna give a solid plug to a book that if you haven’t read called “The One Thing”, it’s by Gary Keller, highly recommend it to any sales professional, it’s a way to really understand how to concentrate on the one thing that’s gonna motivate and get things done most effectively in your life. And you have to understand what is the one thing you need to do each day and set your goals to that, and once you understand that, then you can actually do the proper research, you can understand who they are on Linkedin, who they are in their personal life and get that first line of personalization so that they read past that first line.
Scott Einaugler: The goal of any email is can they read past line number 1. The stats show across the board that once they read past line 1, they will read the entire email. So it’s about how you connect with that person, using either personal information, using something they may read about in the news or something that you see out there that is relevant to the industry.
Darryl Praill: Okay, so now using your example, if they get 15 accounts a day, and you get multiple contacts with each account, you’re time blocking your day, I love that, and so give me an example of what a time block might look for you in your typical day.
Scott Einaugler: So a time block for me and how it looks on my day is, I will actually do it the morning as I walk in, I’ll set up what my day looks like, what meetings I have and make sure that there is things I need to do. Like for me personally, social selling is huge for me. So, I have a half hour time block every single afternoon to do 30 minutes of outreach to executives and a list of accounts that are important to my people. I also have another time block put in of things I need to do for my team. So I put little times in my calendar that it’s my time, that no one can book on.
Darryl Praill: So then, you’ve done that so now when do you time block the actual research? What are my goals today, what are my accounts, and then now you do the research, when do you do that?
Scott Einaugler: So let me give you an example for one of my reps how we did that with them. So we sat there the Friday before and looked at their calendars and what important meetings they had with their reps, or meetings that they had internally. And we looked at what times were available and said, okay what do you have for this week, what are your goals for this week, alright you need to get this much opportunities. Well alright, you walk in the morning, get your coffee get all that stuff, 9:00-9:30 we’re gonna prospect and do research on these accounts. And then we’re gonna hit the phones from 10:00-11:30, and then internal meetings 2:00-4:00, then we’re gonna do more outreach from the research we did this morning.
Scott Einaugler: So it’s about having a distinct reality of what your day looks like. Otherwise, you are just going in so many different directions, and you have to look at the time block, that that’s my time that I put on and if someone tries to come to you, you have to own that time. I’m sorry,I have this on my time right now, we can talk at this time or that time. And you really have to make sure it’s yours.
[bctt tweet=”You have to look at the time block as that’s my time that I put on and if someone tries to come to you, you have to own that time. ⏰ ~ @scotteinaugler #SalesTips #SalesStrategy” username=”VanillaSoft”]
Darryl Praill: That part is huge, because people, you know I time block, and the problem is, is my team knows I time block, so they know I have a block every single morning and it’s called Darryl’s task. And they don’t need to know what it is, its Darryl’s task, I’m doing my stuff. And, initially they avoided that, and now they just kinda say, yes can we do that at 9:30. And I’m like, fine. So, I relent. So it’s two things they ask, ’cause they know it’s just Darryl’s task, that can’t be anything important and then I relent. And, your point about saying, you have to own it, you have to protect it, is huge. Have you run into that same challenge, where people started taking your time blocks for granted?
Scott Einaugler: Oh, 100 percent. You know, I always say to them, you know if one of your reps that you’re doing prospect for closing off your time block, there like oh, I have to take this call. And I’m like no! You say to them, “Hey, I’m right now prospecting on your account to track more pipeline, is this more important than what I’m doing right now?” And 9 times out of 10 their gonna say no.
Scott Einaugler: And the same thing with me, if they have a time block and I say hey, I need you to go to this meeting they’ll say to me ” Is this meeting more important than what I’m doing now which is prospecting?” And we have the understanding that if it’s something that’s really important, coming from up above that needs to get done, yeah I’ll override their time block, but that’s very rare. Otherwise, I will say, yep that’s your time.
Scott Einaugler: So, it’s about getting understanding with your management, getting understanding with your field, letting them know when you say to them that they have to really understand, is this really more important. Is this a deal that’s gonna get done, or someone that needs to happen from the VP, yeah maybe that can override it, but for the most part, that’s your time.
Darryl Praill: All right, so let’s talk about the personalization. You’ve done the research, you’ve gone and I’m assuming you’re looking at their Linkedin profile? So you get some hot buds maybe their career, maybe some of the things they’ve done. Maybe they volunteer, I don’t know I’m assuming you’re getting that. You’re also looking at their personal life, how are you looking at their personal life? How are you researching that?
Scott Einaugler: Well I mean, personal life and if they’re doing things outside of work you look them up through a google search on them that’s gonna pop up some things. You can also see if they’re maybe involved in some sort of charity that you could look up what they’re doing in that charity. But also, a key thing to look at is what they did at their previous roles. What they did, because a lot of times when you move from one role to a new role, you have a lot of information from that previous role because a lot of times you’re updating your Linkedin profile to try to get a new role and you’re showing all the great things you did. You could use that stuff in your outreach as well.
Darryl Praill: So can you give the audience an example, I’m putting you on the spot here, I apologize about this of perhaps what, now you said, you craft that opening line on your email, if you get past that opening line then you’re gonna read the rest of it. What would a personalized versus a non-personalized opening line on an email, look for someone selling what you sell?
Scott Einaugler: Sure, so let’s just say we’re targeting the director of IT, and a role for software, that’s what most of these individuals can really relate to. You can easily write to them ” I saw based on your profile, that you are in this role. People in this role typically experience challenges when it comes to this and this. And that’s related directly to the individual, that’s one example.
Scott Einaugler: Or, you could just look at, let’s say their big in to habitat for humanity, and you say “hey, I noticed on your profile you’re very big in to habitat for humanity,” and if you are as well and say, “I actually built a house last year in this area. Did you ever go to a country like this?”
Scott Einaugler: And then, the next line be like, the reason I’m reaching out today is…and then you go into it. So its really about that connection. Can you form a connection that first line to something whether it be a college, whether it be something they do like charity work, whether it be something they did a Ted talk on, anything like that. Can I actually relate those individuals and do it in a really unique way. And it’s about, how do I separate myself.
Darryl Praill: So other ones I’ve seen often, is when I get an email that says you know Hey Darryl, its Scott, clients of mine will often approach us when they are having a problem with A, B or C. And of course, A, B, or C, is tied to the accounts or what we know about the opportunity. Is that something that you’re currently actively trying to remedy? Or not. Now, if I were to open that line to you, would you tell me that was a good personalized email or a bad personalized email?
Scott Einaugler: I think it would be in the middle. It’s good that you’re putting challenges associated with people in this, but you’re not being specific enough to, is it people in your role as VP, is it people that are in this industry, or is it people that are in this type of work. So you have to go one step further, it’s good to have different challenges for them to choose from because you don’t wanna assume one challenge is theirs, but you also want to make sure you’re relating directly to the individual. People care about themselves, so if you look for something that relates to that individual the likelihood of them responding goes way up in just replying to something in regards to industry trends.
Darryl Praill: All right, so then how does this personalization approach change when I move to social media or I move to the telephone?
Scott Einaugler: It really actually doesn’t change that much, because you want to keep the same type of cadence across all them. I call it a multi-touch attribution model, I don’t know if that’s trademarked somewhere, but that’s what I like. And it’s covering them over phone calls, emails, social, and then all last stop if nothing else works, a handwritten letter is the last most personal thing you could possibly do. That’s how you edit everything.
Scott Einaugler: If you touch them on 26 times, and they never responded, a nice handwritten note, kind of recapping why you’re reaching out to them with your business card sent to their desk, your open rate is gonna through the roof. But, I’ve gotten a lot of my reps that have gotten responses from those, even deals done from those because you’re separating yourself from the noise.
Scott Einaugler: So it’s about sticking to your cadence. Here’s my step process. Day 1, I’m doing this, day 5 I’m doing this. You make sure day 1, you’re doing that, and day 5 you’re doing that, because if you do one on day 1, and then the next one on day 9, you lost your entire process and you also lost momentum. You’re gonna have to restart on day 9 and hopefully, you follow day 16.
Darryl Praill: So really it’s a case of, it’s a double whammy. One, is I’m touching them, a set cadence, which we’re a big fan of here at VanillaSoft. We’re all about that and you wanna have a playbook where you’re touching them as many times as required across multiple channels, phone, email, social, etc, and so you’re always top of mind with them. You’re always in their face a little bit so they can’t forget you. But the second point you’re making, which is really really powerful is personalizing, not just that first touch, every single touch.
Darryl Praill: So that you’re building a rapport even though they may be ignoring you until that 6th or that 8th or that 8th or that 10th touch when you finally have worn them down. By that point in time, they feel that they know you a lot more and they can trust you because they’ve seen a lot of connection points to build that trust upon, therefore now we can have a conversation about the challenges I’m facing and can you help me, or not. It’s really a two-prong approach, is that right?
Scott Einaugler: It’s so important, I mean one of my largest deals of my career, I reached out to the same person, ’cause I finally found out who it was for almost nine months every Friday at 4:00, I’d write an email and leave a message. And finally, after 8 months they picked up one day, and literally what the person said to me, like you’re not gonna stop until you get a hold of me. I go well, I’m just trying to add value to your day. And I obviously didn’t add the value or its not right timing, but until I know that I gotta keep trying because I know you’re the right person based on A, B, and C.
Scott Einaugler: It was one of my largest deals ever, and it was just persistence. All my emails had value understanding who they were, understanding what they were going through and just keeping to my cadence that every single Friday at 4:00, I was doing that. And they knew that an email and a phone call was coming from me, and eventually their either gonna tell you to buzz off, or their gonna say this is the right timing and I’m ready to speak to you. So its really about consistency its such a key thing. We get tired, you get fatigued, I’ve reached out to this person so many times, they’re probably sick of hearing me. Well actually, they probably haven’t opened half your emails, and the ones they did open, maybe you just caught them at a bad time.
Scott Einaugler: But if you stop there, and another competitor writes them tomorrow, and it’s kind of similar to what you offered, you may lose that because they think it’s you because you stopped the consistency.
Darryl Praill: So, I love this, My last Episode was with Shyera O’Brien, we talked about the power of language and what you say matters. You’re building upon that, and you’re saying you want to establish a personal connection with them, and you want to be consistent and almost relentless with the right cadence. Scott, if they want to get a hold of you, what’s the best way to reach you?
Scott Einaugler: Linkedin is always a great way to get a hold of me. I’m here to assist and help, I have over 16 years of sales experience, management experience, always looking to have conversations about sales. That’s what brought me and Darryl together, we just like talking shop, and so I’m always here to help and feel free to reach out any time.
Darryl Praill: All right, so if you guys are having some bad habits, now is the time to re-visit them, fix them, it’s easily done, make the effort, time block your time all right. Research the companies, research the industries, research the personas, and then just be relentless be constant with your outreach. That’s the secret sauce, it ain’t new, it ain’t hard, but it’s something we sometimes simply get out of habit of doing. So, go back, assess what you’re doing, and look at where you can better optimize your time, better optimize your message and you will better optimize your results. My name is Darryl Praill folks, I’m with INSIDE Inside Sales, I am so pleased you joined us today, we shall talk to you soon, take care, bye bye.