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Nobody taught you how to handle it when a prospect hangs up mid-pitch. Or when your biggest deal goes dark on a Thursday. Or when you're one call away from quota and your stomach won't stop turning because you don’t know what to do next.
That's the stuff we’re here to talk about. Josh and Eric, two former athletes turned sellers, break down what it actually takes to compete in sales right now. The plays that work, the ones that don't, and the embarrassing stories in between.
No suit-and-tie energy here. We want to help you get your head in the game and make you the hero of your own sales story.
It’s time to get game-day ready. You in?
Eric Salvo (00:00):
Those exact sales leaders two years later now who are like, "Yeah, we kind of fucked up. We got to bring back our human SDRs. We've realized we actually can't scale this. " And even some of the companies in that space have kind of gone sideways. They started out super hot because everyone's like, "Yeah, let's replace the stupid dumb grads that are coming out of college that don't know what they're doing." But at the end of the day, that's still your next gen of your AEs. That's your G League team. That's your farm team. You have to kind of massage those folks and make them better as reps.
Josh Rasmussen (00:33):
Brought to you by Hero, this is Game Shape where we teach you everything they forgot to before your first day in sales. I'm Josh.
Eric Salvo (00:41):
And I'm Eric.
Josh Rasmussen (00:42):
Let's get into it, huh?
Eric Salvo (00:43):
Yeah. Today we're talking about lead gen. Two guys have been doing it for over five years now, Josh, maybe a little longer for yourself at this point, but we want to talk about what actually works in 2026 and the diferences from what we've seen back when we first started, what used to work, what doesn't anymore and what everyone is still doing wrong today. And Josh, what gives us the audacity to actually talk about this? I mean, like I said, we've been doing it for a minute now.
Josh Rasmussen (01:08):
We've been doing it for a while. This has been an opportunity to get to toot my own horn, but my team has been hitting 100% for the last couple of months since we re-stood up our BDR team. Vivun previously had a BDR team. They got rid of it. We don't even need this anymore. Then it was like, we do need a little bit of lead gen. So we went and got an offshore team. And then it was like, wait, we really need some lead gen. So let's restart. Let's rebuild this thing from the ground up. So I got to build this thing from scratch, bring in my own playbook, bring in a rockstar team of BDRs. And we've hit quota three months in a row now. So I may not know everything. Chances are I actually don't know everything. And maybe I just have really good reps, but I do think that I know a thing or two about lead gen.
(01:53):
And I know you're still doing a lot of lead gen yourself and building your own pipeline. So again, we probably don't know everything, but we do have a good sense of direction of what good looks like when it comes to booking meetings.
Eric Salvo (02:04):
Yeah. We've gone around the monopoly board a couple times now. We've hit the hit jail, hit the collect 200. So we've been a part of it for a little bit now. Josh, one of the things that we're seeing everywhere is outbound is dead. We replaced our team with AI agents. I want to start there because that has been the hot topic and it's every billboard and SF is, hey, let's get rid of them. And speaking to sales leaders on a day-to-day basis, I got some really strong opinions on this and I know you do too, especially running a BDR team, but I want to get your thoughts on what you're hearing on that side.
Josh Rasmussen (02:35):
Yeah, it's a horrible idea. The biggest thing that we know is AI is great for building efficiencies and helping you be more productive in the areas where you need productivity. But when it comes to most AI SDRs, we're familiar with the term AI slop. Everybody is blasting these emails that look and feel the exact same. They have the exact same prompts. It's a keep this email under 120 words, lead with observation, then give some type of value statement. And then what do we do? And a call to action. And every single email looks the exact same to every single person. And the people you're reaching out to have a hundred of those emails in their inbox. Transparently, again, something we're not very good at. I don't know if either my team's really bad at writing emails. I really don't love writing emails. Emails is my least favorite channel.
(03:32):
I just think people have grown basically callous to their email inbox and that everything is just getting deleted. I don't think people are reading emails anymore unless you are Shakespeare and you're spending really quality time crafting some really quality emails. And even in that case, it's not a silver bullet. So I don't know. My hot take is email's dead. People are talking about cold calling and LinkedIn. I think email's dead, but I think AI SDR is the reason as to why it's dead because there's been so much nonsense that gets thrown in people's inbox that they're just tired of having to scrape through it and break through the noise. So I think it's dead. I don't think AI SDRs are the answer either, but maybe you have a bit of a different take.
Eric Salvo (04:17):
No, I actually feel pretty similarly. I think it started when, what was it, 2024? That's when AI SDR became very hot, very hot topic, popular. Everyone was getting rid of their SDR teams, their human SDR teams. It was all over LinkedIn. Every day some other sales leader would come out, big bold take, "Hey, we got everyone." And I'm actually having conversations with those exact sales leaders two years later now who are like, "Yeah, we kind of fucked up. We got to bring back our human SDRs. We've realized we actually can't scale this. " And even some of the companies in that space have kind of gone sideways. They started out super hot because everyone's like, "Yeah, let's replace the stupid dumb grads that are coming out of college that don't know what they're doing." But at the end of the day, that's still your next gen of your AEs.
(05:02):
That's your G League team, that's your farm team. You have to kind of massage those folks and make them better as reps. But a lot of sales leaders I speak with are bringing back SDRs. They realize the AI SDR thing didn't work. And it doesn't work for two reasons like you talked about. Outbound, it doesn't work because it's very difficult for them to scale. They can scale hyperscale, but it's very difficult for them to actually hyper-personalize these things. And then the fact that everyone else can go buy it doesn't make it different than anyone else that can do it on the market. Yeah, the volume's great, but it's not actually producing any sort of results. The one place where I'm seeing any sort of success with an AI SDR is any sort of inbound lead funneling, lead routing. Yeah, that can do that. That can handle a general early discovery and set you up with a rep to have a conversation.
(05:48):
Can do that all day. Understandably so. Inbound SDRs probably won't be a thing in five years from now. But outbound SDRs, that's where their true skill, grit and tenacity comes from. Like you talked about, Josh, from an email perspective, every email out there is pretty much the same thing. And that's where that AI is infiltrating things. But I think at this point, and we'll talk about this, the three different channels, the only way to stick out on email is if you're going to have even some picture or some video or maybe a G drive shared file in there, which we'll talk about later today, which is the first time I've heard about this. But that seems to be kind of the place. Email's becoming more automated than ever, and now we're talking about LinkedIn and calling and there's tons of automation happening there too.
Josh Rasmussen (06:34):
Yeah. And let's do it. Let's get into the playbook. Let's talk about our playbook. By the way, if you want our playbook, feel free to drop Claude in the comments or feel free to be happy to shoot us your way. Just kidding. That's one of my biggest LinkedIn pet peeves right now. I don't know about you, but so many people, I guess we maybe fit into this. But trying to be LinkedIn influencers, it's tough. And there's so many people that are like, drop a comment, do this. But again, what gives us the right to talk about it? We're early career AEs. Again, I don't think either of us would admit that we know everything. And so I think it's useful to talk through what's working and what's not. And I'd be curious to hear from you, you're early career AE, you're still working on building and generating your own pipeline.
(07:21):
How are you booking meetings yourself and continuing to build things in a world where there's so much noise?
Eric Salvo (07:27):
So it's really about standing out, which is we talked about in other episodes here that we've created. But when I've been booking meetings, it's got to be something that's different. I don't really send cold emails. If I do, they are very intentional. I'm taking a company logo, putting it on my chest, and I'm doing something stupid with it to kind of fit some sort of narrative that I'm putting into that email. But it's differentiated from what else is out there like you talked about, which is the typical email where it is hypothesis, problem, value statement, CTA. Those emails, you can write those all day with AI and send them away. If I'm at all doing those, they're only just to make sure that my name is continuously being brought up in that prospect's mind, but nothing else outside of that. So from an email perspective, that's my one way to do it.
(08:11):
LinkedIn, it's LinkedIn videos. Very easy to create. It's basically a cold call, but they have the option to listen to it or not, which I know sounds very reminiscent because it's also you can do a regular cold call. But with the LinkedIn videos, it shows you put in time, it shows you're human. A couple mess-ups on that video also as you stumble over your own words, doesn't hurt either. I'm finding a ton of success there around a 20 to 25% reply rate. They're not always a meeting, but at least someone will say, "Hey, I love the outreach here. Not a fit for us, but I'm getting the answers that I need." And that's what every rep wants to hear. And then cold calling too, something I've started to pick back up in the last couple of weeks and forgot the enjoyment for it. And it's funny, I actually feel like I really like it way more now now that I'm a rep where I don't really have real hard metrics where I have to hit when I was in SDR.
(08:59):
It's more enjoyable. I actually get more excited to get on the phone. So it seems like it's LinkedIn and it's dialing, that's it. And if we're using email, it better be something damn good and it better be something that's going to catch someone's eye. That's the three ways I'm doing it today. And I'm curious on your take here. Again, you're running an SDR team in 2026. We're not far away from more AI and automation coming down that pike there. What are you pushing your reps to do today, Josh?
Josh Rasmussen (09:26):
Yeah, I think it's exactly what you said. I think the key is one, play to your strengths. If you're really good on the phones, pick up the phone and dial as much as you can, but don't let that be your one source of success. And so I really try to push my reps to take the multichannel approach. Also leaning more towards really focused on quality versus volume. So we have to do volume, of course, be able to hit our numbers, but quality is always going to win. And so I encourage my reps to do this three touch aproach. It's you're hitting somebody on either the phone or email first. So you either send them an email or you call them first. And then if you call them, you're saying like, "Hey, I sent you an email, leave a voicemail." My previous sales leader used to say, "People only leave voicemails when it's important.
(10:12):
It's also an easy way for people to connect your outreach." I think that's a really big thing. And we'll talk about later with spam, but if you're calling somebody 10, 20 times and they have no idea who you are, the chance of them picking up continues to decrease and you reach that law of diminishing returns. But if you're thoughful with your touches and calling people maybe once or twice a week over a month and sending them emails saying, "Hey, this is me calling, this is what I want to talk about. " Again, I don't think cold emails, I think those are completely dead. But if you're sending emails adding value and letting people know why you're trying to connect with them and then connecting that to your LinkedIn outreach, connecting that to your voicemails, that's the best way that at least my team has seen success is it's usually on the fourth or fifth step of the campaign or the sequence is they've sent one or two emails, they've sent a message on LinkedIn, they've left a voicemail, and then they get that person on the phone and they're like, "Hey, this is so - and-so from Vivun.
(11:13):
Does the name ring a bell?" And they're like, "Yes, I've seen your emails in your LinkedIn. Let's book some time." So I think it's using all the channels at your disposal. And I think when you can do that, you are again, being more thoughtful and doing the complete opposite of what the AI SDR is doing and just spamming and blowing up your inbox.
Eric Salvo (11:30):
100%. I love that, man. And we talked about it a little bit there. Volume is the answer in 2019 and in 2026 it is sort of that differentiator that we talked about. It seems like the way your reps are doing right now, it is persistence. They're getting in front of them. Like I mentioned too, it really is, I'm using email and those other channels just to put my name in front of them. So by the time I actually get the chance to connect with them live, we're good to go. They know who I am. I have the ability. I've built that kind of not rapport, but belief in like, "Hey, I actually am reaching out to you for a real purpose here." There's actual credibility behind what I'm going to say.
Josh Rasmussen (12:06):
LinkedIn videos. Tell me more about this. I have my personal thoughts on this. When you're sending these videos, tell me more about what's the structure? When are you sending them? How often? Talk to me a little bit about that.
Eric Salvo (12:16):
They take a little bit longer than I think I prefer. I'm trying to find ways to make that a little bit faster to automate it. But the hard part is you don't want to automate it too much because at the end of the day, you want that to be human approach. I try and keep them between 45 seconds and a minute, but I do have a couple videos that go a little bit longer than that. See a lot of success because again, it's different. A lot of reps right now are using LinkedIn automation solutions out there to just send more messages rather than actually send messages that are differentiated. And it's not hard. I'm basically using the same sort of script that a cold email or a cold call would use. Hey, this is X, Y, and Z. I'm reaching out because of A, B, and C.
(12:55):
Typically, I'm flagging some sort of hiring notification, not really a funding round because I feel like everyone attacks those. Or I'm citing a certain new hire. You've got a new CRO and I'll name that person. It's Ashley or it's John or it's whoever. That way you can grab their atention in that first 10 to 15 seconds. Then it is the problem or value statement. No crazy there. And what I think our hypothesis is. Here's how we help teams that are in that same position today. They're going through a new CRO or what you're likely running into. That is how I structure it. And then my call to action is like, let me know if this makes sense, if it makes sense to have a further dialogue about it. And I really don't go for much more than that. Typically, the CTA is light. They respond to it.
(13:34):
I will send one, maybe two messages within a week to a week and a half after just to ping back and say, "Did you see it? Did you appreciate this? " After two messages of that, I'll send a GIF, which is just like a guy swinging the bat and missing. And that typically gets replies. GIFs, videos, images, it's different than just plain text. I'm seeing success doing it that way. I think some of your reps are actually doing this too. I've spoke to a few of them who've done well with it, but curious in your thoughts. Is it kind of the same format of what they're doing today or is it a little different?
Josh Rasmussen (14:05):
Yeah, I'm a huge, huge advocate of LinkedIn videos for various different reasons. But I think the biggest thing you talked about, there's even tools now that are doing LinkedIn automation and we're slowly approaching the same issue we're seeing with email where it's just like you're getting so much crap in your inbox that people aren't going to respond to you anyways. And somebody sees a video of you in there, first of all, it looks a little bit off. When I've done it, it's like I'm not sending like, "Hey Eric, thanks for connecting," and then hitting you with the video. It's like the first thing you're getting from me is a video. And I want to give a shout to one of my boys, Dylan Decker, but he pioneered this thing at our last company. And it's like what you said, follow a very similar structure, but it's easier to bring energy and show who you are as a person.
(14:54):
It's really hard to do that over email and on LinkedIn. But when you see a video of somebody and can see their excitement and then try to find something personal, it's really, really easy to connect with that person right off the bat. And I've had times where people will take a meeting with me just because like, "Hey, I like this outreach." And sometimes it's as simple as that. And then that's really your goal is just to get somebody to a meeting and then you can have the conversation and do the discovery and maybe there's a fit, maybe there's not, but the idea is just to get to a conversation. And I think people are, if they want to meet with anybody, they want people who are taking a little bit extra time and adding effort. So I think if you're not sending videos, you're doing yourself a disservice because it's different than what most people are doing.
(15:35):
We've talked about there's no silver bullet in prospecting, but if it takes you a little bit longer and you have a 20% hit rate versus what you're getting on email and cold calls, maybe it's worth the time to spend doing it. So I think that's reason number one you should be doing it. Reason number two, you can make a hundred cold calls. Industry standard is 2% pickup rate. Let's say you make 95 dials and then somebody picks up on number 96 and you're like, oh shit, stumble, fumble through my talk track. Now your shit out of luck. I think I personally, I set up my day, I'll do a time block of an hour and I'll just like, here's my hour of making videos. And it kind of just warms up. Again, we have a pretty similar structure with what we're saying in the video.
(16:21):
And so it's like a warmup to the game time. We talked about in one of our previous episodes, you've got to get a mindset to go cold call. And so this is my pregame warmup is I'm going to go make a couple videos. I practice my talk track, I feel comfortable, I feel confident and then jump right into it. But it's a really easy way to practice talking out loud, having good pace, all of that stuff. It's super cringey to go back and watch your videos. Sometimes you got to do it. But I think again, if you're not sending videos, you're really doing yourself a disservice, I think it's a nice hack. Hopefully not too many people steal it and then it becomes an automated sequence that people are doing here. But I do think if you can start sending videos more consistently to your prospects, it's going to be a really easy way to stand out in somebody's inbox.
Eric Salvo (17:09):
Absolutely. I think a lot of people, even more of our website I talk to that we're interviewing here are saying they're doing it. Curious if they actually are. But I agree. I think the method's great. And like you mentioned, you have the ability to fuck up a couple times, retake the video. And then after the end of that hour, you feel pretty good. It's like, all right, I've sent my 10 or so, maybe 15 LinkedIn videos. I know I'm going to hit 10 to 15% reply rates. I know I'm going to get a couple of replies there. Maybe I get a meeting or two, and now I'm going to go rip dials for the rest of the day. Or maybe I'll rip some dials for three or four hours and then finish up the day with some more videos. So full agreement there. LinkedIn videos are a phenomenal resource here too.
(17:48):
And then it's also then I want to talk about one more avenue and that's cold calling. We talked about it a little bit. There's so many different AI dialer solutions out there at the moment. And then there's folks that say, "Hey, we don't actually believe in AI dialers because then you're not able to personalize at scale." And it's kind of the rinse and repeat cycle of we're just looking at volume rather than personalization. I want to just tap into that real quick, especially since you've been managing a team and exploring things like that. What are your thoughts on all that so far? How does that kind of fit into a workflow? I don't
Josh Rasmussen (18:20):
Think there's a right answer to this question. I think I'm a full believer that cold calling is still very much alive. In my opinion, it's the best channel to go after. How much volume are you doing? It probably depends on who you are as an organization, what are your metrics? All of that stuff plays into it. I think there's a lot of really good tools out there that help with making dials that help with data enrichment to make sure they could get you a higher connect rate. At a minimum threshold, I think if you're not doing 200 dials a week, you're probably not doing enough.That should be the floor. I know there's some teams that they're required to do like a hundred dials a day minimum. Sometimes that can feel like a little bit much. But again, I think it's completely dependent on your own strategy, the volume you need.
(19:08):
I've coached my team and most of my reps. Again, I don't want us to be this brand prayers. If you want to be the 500 dials a week, go for it. But I feel like you start to lose some of that intent and intentionality in your prospecting. And so if you can pick and choose where you spend time and you're more thoughtful with how you're going about making your dials, then you're going to see a lot more return than if you're just like, "Here's my list. I'm going to call down this every single day and hope that somebody picks up." And so I've seen most of my reps in the ones that I've had success with in the past, they're really good. I met with a mentor last week in something they do with their teams, but they just as a team, they read through Atomic Habits.
(19:49):
And one thing I talk about there is systems and processes. And the best reps that I know, they have a system and process they follow every single week that they're organized with. And so it's like, I'm going to hit these accounts on this day and these accounts on this day. And then that's a really easy way for them to bring that strategy of I'm going to cold call them, I'm going to email them, and I'm going to hit them on LinkedIn all at the exact same time so they know who I am. And so that's what gets you to your 200 dials a week and your 200 emails. Awesome if you want to do something different. But I think if you're using some of those tools, you still want to be intentional with where you're spending time and not, I'm going to just pick up the phone and try to spam people because I don't think that that's ever going to be a good option.
Eric Salvo (20:31):
No, I don't think so either, man. And I kind of want to just wrap up the topic here on the playbook of what does lead gen look like for the future? We've talked about email's dead. We get that. LinkedIn is going to, I don't know, maybe die in the next couple of years. I don't know. It's getting a little scarier with how easy it is to create more automation on LinkedIn. And obviously cold calling, everyone's doing parallel dialers right now in some way, shape or form. We still see that as a very viable channel, but do you think there's a new emergence of a fourth channel? I'm hearing Reddit, but I don't know how much I believe that. We'd love to hear what your thoughts are if we're just stuck with these three channels forever, if there's maybe some sort of exploration. Is it physical gifts, events?
(21:16):
I don't know. Would love your take here on that.
Josh Rasmussen (21:19):
Yeah, it's a really good question. I think if you look at outbound prospecting five years ago, we probably would've known that we've gotten to this point and every channel's been exhausted. I haven't heard about Reddit personally. I think that the biggest thing is just continue to be different. And if you can break through the noise, you're always going to find success. It's not going to be perfect every single time when you're going to have people who aren't receptive to it. But again, I think both of us have done things like you did that blizzard campaign when you guys got a shit ton of snow last winter and it was different. It stood out, it worked, and you were able to build some pipeline from it. And I think if you continue to be creative, I think it's an underrated skill that a lot of even leadership doesn't press on and encourage.
(22:01):
I think a lot of times people get into a system and it's like people create more robots than they do flexibility. I think a perfect way, it's something I try to do. I'm not always perfect with it, but if you can give them a playbook of here's what works and a structure that you can follow and then let them go be creative and have fun and divert off of what you have created. One, it's more fun. Try to make it a game, make it more fun. And that's something that I used to have fun with. And you talked about using GIFs or I even remember creating memes of stuff and would send it to people just because it's different and it's funny for me. And sometimes people never talk to me again because this is unprofessional. But whatever I thought it was fun.
Eric Salvo (22:45):
It's different. And sometimes when it hits, it's an automatic booked meeting. And do you know what? That's going to get shared around with internally from the company. Look what this person did for their outreach. Thought it was great. And also to hint at it, it's maybe a job offer at one point in time. I've had that come on my side too where they're like, "Hey, are you looking?" And they're like, "No, I'm good right now." But yeah, that's a part of it. People really, really appreciate the ability to be creative and different, especially in a world in AI today where people lack the creativity, but personally I think AI has even made me even more creative, the ability to think outside the box and go to different lengths.
Josh Rasmussen (23:20):
Yeah, that's one of the compliments you can get from somebody is like, "Are you looking?" There's so much consistency with how so many people are doing outreach that if you're just a little bit different in how you're going about doing it, that it stands out. But if you take one step further and do even more, people are like, "Wait, this is awesome." I think we talked about at the top of the show, my team has been awesome and we have been hitting quota, but you have even shared it with me like, "Hey, I just got off a call and the prospect said how fantastic this outreach that I got from X rep was and it happens consistently. And so again, I can't take all the credit. I'm extremely lucky that I've been blessed with an amazing team, but I do think that goes a long way.
(24:05):
And then once you do get some of those compliments and people sharing that, it only boosts the confidence in what you're doing as a BDR or SDR and continues to give you that freedom to go have fun and try to be creative. All
Eric Salvo (24:19):
Right, Josh. Well, that's the game plan. But let's be honest, we both have been doing outbound for five years. That's five years of success and also five plus years of some failures. Would love to hear maybe your side, a humor or horror story that maybe popped up, one that really resonates with you. And I've got one that's actually super recent that I can't wait to cover. I'll kick it over to you to get us started.
Josh Rasmussen (24:43):
Yeah. I think, like you said, we both have a massive library probably of some outbound fumbles. One that will stick with me forever. This isn't even a personal story. I was participating in this, but we talked about when we did the cold call, one of my BPs, get into a Zoom room with some of either your colleagues or friends and just let it rip. Somebody had posted on LinkedIn, they were like, "I just got a cold FaceTime." And I was completely caught off guard, but I answered it. And it was a BDR. They were respectful, got to the point and basically agreed to book a meeting. And so me and my friend group though, "Hey, we have this genius idea. Is this something that could work?" And so we were like, "Let's all give it a go. " We called it FaceTime Friday. We got into a Zoom.
(25:33):
I went first, I was like, "I'm going to give it a go. I'm going to call this prospect, FaceTimed them, didn't answer." And then next person went, same thing, didn't answer. And then finally one of the guys in the room, he FaceTimed somebody and they answered and the prospect absolutely lit them up. And it was over Zoom. We could hear the guy talking. And basically it was like, "This is the single worst idea you've ever had. Never do this again. Never call me. " And I think to this day, none of us have ever FaceTimed anybody again. But again, that's one of those channels you talked about, is that something that's coming in the future where we just start FaceTiming people? Probably not. Looking back on it now, it's funny. And in the moment we felt kind of bad that it had happened because it was a good prospect at a good company.
(26:19):
But yeah, the FaceTime Friday failed. It's a conversation topic that still continues to come up in the group chat to this day.
Eric Salvo (26:26):
I heard about that through the grapevine. I personally never tried it. I'm assuming if I did, I would've run into the exact same thing. It is a very unique way to stand out, but the prospect just has to be that sort of person that will be receptive to it. And I think you and I would both argue that if we were to dial a hundred people on FaceTime, you maybe get one out of a hundred. The other 99 are going to ring you out just like that. So it's going to be going to be pretty bad. I'll actually, from my story, I'll share one that is pretty recent that I just did. Not super horrifying, but just kind of a funny contrast of like, "Hey, I did the exact same thing and one was really successful and the other one completely flopped." And honestly, it felt more embarrassing because I took a stupid picture of myself to make it happen.
(27:09):
But Josh, like you talked about, I did this snowstorm outreach where if you check out my LinkedIn thing, I've got it pinned on there. I went outside. We had a snowstorm up here in the Boston area, took a picture of myself with the company logo and said, "I'm freezing for you, " or something along those lines. And it really crushed, sent it to a lot of my target accounts that are in Boston, Boston based, and a lot of them loved it, resonated, built some pipeline. People started saying the same thing like, "Oh, are you looking? Blah, blah, blah." So it was a great outreach. And I thought, "Do you know what? I'm going to do the exact same thing in the summer when it's super hot out. " So same thing came around, hundred degrees. So we're the complete opposite. I went outside, took a picture of myself laying on my porch here, covered myself in water, laid down, put the logo across my chest and said, "I'm melting for you.
(27:53):
" And it got nothing. Absolutely nothing. Maybe the stupidest picture I've taken sent to some larger companies and not even a single reply. We got to go back to the drawing board. He's on one for two right now and we got to figure out what else can I do. I'm cooking up some ideas with Claude and GPT right now, but big fail on my side. And that was recent, hits home considering I sent the same amount of volume, same level of prospects, slightly bigger companies and just complete dud. And I had my wife take the pictures. So that was also more embarrassing too because I'm also involving other people to help me out and it still didn't work.
Josh Rasmussen (28:30):
And it's okay. 50% hit rate on your ideas though is still pretty solid. We'll
Eric Salvo (28:34):
Take it.
Josh Rasmussen (28:35):
If every idea was a good idea, we'd be in President's Club every year, I think.
Eric Salvo (28:40):
We'd be running our own company at this point.
Josh Rasmussen (28:43):
That's even probably better. Yeah. Creativity and being different, it's okay to fail, but as long as you're trying something different and trying to break through the noise, give it a go. Who cares? It makes it more fun. You feel less robotic. And I do think if you can continue, even though it's you as an AE, if you continue to be creative, it's only going to help you in your role even more and getting lost in what you're doing every single day.
Eric Salvo (29:07):
It's a lot more fun to fail being bold than to fail being simple-minded. So yeah, it's way more fun to do that. So big fail, but we're going to move on and we're going to try something else. Maybe we'll do something with some mudsoon or grass. I'm not sure, but we're going to mix something up real soon there. But that's some great stories about some outbound fumbles from Josh and I. I think let's go over the crowd's favorite segment, closed stall kill. Got a good segment this week, especially with the fun topic of talking about outbound, talking about AI and the changes that we've seen from the 2019, 2018 range to now where we are in 2026. And AI SDRs are rampant, but so are new human SDRs here too. I've seen positions everywhere are still being posted. But I'll give us the three lead gen tactics that are either having momentum or on life support or probably should be buried Permanently.
(30:01):
And then I'll toss over the scenarios and then you decide, hey, are we closing on it? Are we stalling it or are we killing it? So you ready to go?
Josh Rasmussen (30:09):
Let's do it. Let's get into it.
Eric Salvo (30:10):
All right. First one we got is buying a lead list or an AI SDR and running high volume automated touches. That's our first one. Second one here is building a personal brand on LinkedIn. And our last edition of closed stall kill is asking every closed one customer for one referral within 30 days of signing. These are some interesting topics here, but Josh, I'll pass it over to you. What do we got? What's the thoughts here?
Josh Rasmussen (30:36):
Yeah, this one feels pretty easy this week on the closed stall kill. I think we talked about it at the top of the episode. AI SDRs are not the answer. You're trying to buy a list and let an AI go blast off some emails and some LinkedIn messages. I don't think you're going to get a ton of value. We even tried it as a company here and it didn't work. I think kill the AI SDR in buying a lead list. I think I would stall on asking every closed one customer for a referral within the first 30 days. One, I don't think it's a terrible tactic, but within the first 30 days it's probably a little bit too soon and aggressive. And so I would stall that, reframe it, maybe wait till 90 days after they've signed or just work with whoever's on the customer team to see if they are willing to make some introductions and see if they know some people.
(31:27):
And then easy clos for me, but building your own personal brand on LinkedIn, I think as we talked about, even with sending LinkedIn videos, if that's going to be a channel that works for you, like if somebody adds you on Facebook and you have no mutual friends, you've never posted the chance of somebody responding to you is pretty much like it's not going to happen. And so if you can build your own personal brand on LinkedIn and you're sending thoughtful messages, it's only going to help enhance what you're doing. And so I think the only thing here is don't just go into Claude and say, "I want to get famous on LinkedIn." If you're just copying, pasting and you have really dry posts, it's going to be really hard to stand out. And I think there's some people that do it really well on LinkedIn.
(32:11):
There's SDRs, early career AEs who are crushing it on LinkedIn and they've done a really good job at building their own personal brand. And I think it probably helps them because one, they're getting a ton of traction on their posts. So it makes it easy to go ask people for a meeting or a conversation from engaging with that. And then you're probably also getting some inbound from what you're doing and naturally organically helping the company get inbound as well. I think that's the easiest close we've had is absolutely take your own personal approach to building your LinkedIn profile, have some fun with it, be creative. Don't fel like you got to be robotic. I think it's something people maybe look at it a little bit differently because it's a professional network and so they refrain from pushing the guidelines a little bit too far. But I think if you can have fun with it and be creative, as long as we don't start to make it look and feel like a Facebook, we're posting some crazy shit on there.
(33:07):
I'm absolutely in favor of in building a personal brand on LinkedIn.
Eric Salvo (33:10):
It feels like sometimes I see some posts on LinkedIn and it does feel like we're getting closer, but there's a fine line between authentic and overdoing it. And it feels like that some folks are crossing that line now, but if you can build, like we both talked about as advice to any early career AE or SDR, do it, post. Whether that's about your industry, about what the struggles you're feeling on a day-to-day basis, people love that shit. They love to hear about other people's lives and hear what they're doing in their day-to-day and what's working for them. And not every post we wrote on the GPT. Sure, you want to refine some of your posts and look at it, but if I see the word honestly or MDashes, I know it's a GPT post and we really just hate those here. So be authentic. Go out, build your own content, build your own brand.
(33:57):
And also again, like we talked about earlier today, being creative, being different, standing out is going to not only make that brand for your overall company better, tie yourself to that brand, but also give you the ability to find more success outside of your current company when you eventually want to make a move. People will recognize you know who you are and know why you're looking and create more job opportunities for you outside of just the inbound flow on this side too. And I've seen that from a lot of reps. When you have 5,000, 10,000 followers on LinkedIn, people know who you are and people want to hire you because of that following. I mean, shit, we're hiring LinkedIn influencers out as we speak to do to talk about our own stuff and we're in that same realm. So yeah, that stuff is very, very important.
Josh Rasmussen (34:38):
Yeah. I think that's a great point too. Even if you don't want to be an influencer, it could happen by accident and then all of a sudden companies are paying you just to make posts, which sounds pretty cool. But again, even if you don't want to be an influencer, I think posting on LinkedIn is an absolute must have. Even if it's company information, it's posting whatever, just post on LinkedIn because it makes you look and feel like you're an actual person and not some random person who had to get LinkedIn because they needed a job and then now they have a job and you're that random person who's adding people on Facebook. You don't want to be that person.
Eric Salvo (35:13):
Show you exist.
Josh Rasmussen (35:14):
Show you exist. Be a real person and try to have some fun, be creative and you might even earn some money from it from being an influencer.
Eric Salvo (35:20):
Maybe. Ideally.
Josh Rasmussen (35:22):
Jump into the people's second favorite segment of the episode, flag on the play. This week you've got three different pieces of content that have been posted on LinkedIn from sales coaches. I'm going to ask you about them. Let me know if it's a flag. Is it a first down? Might even be a touchdown. We'll see. First piece of content is outbound is dead. This is what the post said. Outbound's dead. I'm not getting voicemails. I'm not getting emails. I'm just getting spam blown up all over my phone. Flag on the play, first down, touchdown, just blowing people's phones up.
Eric Salvo (35:56):
Blowing people's phones up is a flag in the play. And I'd also second that I've seen some reps that will double dial folks. They'll call them once and then call them again as a way to show that they're more important. That is crazy. Please do not do that. And I have also heard reps calling people at breakfast, at lunch, and then right before they log off at five when they're heading to dinner. Also crazy because again, that's just not helping anyone out. That's blowing up one of the main channels for folks to do lead gen today. And the more you do that, the more you're going to hurt people's perspective on SDRs, BDRs, AE salespeople in general. So please, please stop doing that. That is an absolute flag in the play. It's not good.
Josh Rasmussen (36:41):
Not good. I agree. Especially if you're showing up as spam in somebody's inbox, they're never picking that shit up.That ain't going to fly. And the more you call people and they don't answer, you increase spam risk. So you're just like you're doing yourself a disservice by continuing to blow people up. So stop doing that shit. You're making us look bad. This is a new one for me. Maybe a hot take, but sharing a Google Doc with your prospect. What do we think?
Eric Salvo (37:06):
I want to hammer insane in a flag, like massive flag here. I think it's a really creative idea. Just the likelihood you get anyone to open that is probably lower than a cold email in 2030. It's going to be below 1%. If anyone has half a brain, they're not opening that email because what in the world is in there? I don't know, but they could be at risk for a massive IT security failure here. So please, I don't think this is effective. If people are doing it, hit us up. We would love to hear success and failure stories with that, but I just feel like this can't be effective. I'm throwing a flag in the play here, but I'm not kicking whoever it is out of the game that this is a flag, but I'm a skeptical flag. I just don't think this is very, very effective.
Josh Rasmussen (37:55):
Yeah, I agree. I think it's funny. It's the first time I've heard it. When I saw this post, if somebody shared something random with me, to your point, I'd be like, "What is this? " It's almost to the point where it's like it piques your curiosity. But again, most people who have gone through the security training and know not to click on sketchy links. So you're probably shit out of luck, but it is a funny and unique tactic. So if it has worked, let us know because maybe it's worth trying out. But for now we're still going to call it's a flag and we're backing you up. We've talked about it a little bit this episode already and maybe your thoughts have changed since we've talked about it. But last piece of sales content, sales leader, kill your entire SDR team, hire 20 AI agents to go build pipeline themselves.
(38:39):
What do we think about that?
Eric Salvo (38:40):
If this is two years ago, every sales leader, every C-level executive is jumping up on the table saying that's a touchdown. That's a wilt hundred point game, but it certainly isn't. We've seen that. We've actually ran through that entire scenario and what we're seeing with sales leaders today, it's not a raging success. It's actually been a pretty large failure. Like I mentioned, if you're going to use it for just inbound purposes, get it, makes sense. I'll applaud you for it. But if you're using it for the scale outbound and you're that company that's sending 30,000 cold emails a month or even a week in some cases and using AI bots to make AI cold calls, absolutely not. Huge flag in the play. Get out of here. We'll see you next season. It's not an effective tactic. We've seen it failed so many places. And as someone that preaches on creativity and being authentic in your outreach, then I can't stand behind it.
(39:36):
It's a massive flag on my side.
Josh Rasmussen (39:38):
Yeah, I completely agree. AI SDRs are the way of the past and not the way of the future. People still want human interaction, especially later in the funnel. Again, I think it does work for that top of funnel inbound stuff and being able to answer some of questions, help getting meetings scheduled. But ultimately, if you're not breaking through the noise, you're not getting meetings during pipeline. So that's what we got for this week's episode. It's time for the replay. Here's one thing for you to do this week. Pull up your current outreach sequence, whatever you're running, it's emails, it's LinkedIn to your cold call talk track. Read through it like a stranger who's never gone through it. And if you can tell within 10 seconds why it's relevant, what the problem is, if it's breaking through the noise, you probably need to rewrite it. Relevance and creativity are the only thing that are going to cut through the noise.
(40:26):
Everything else is a sonic boom and people are putting that shit straight to the spam filter and in the trash box. So go through, do some revision, see if you can add some tweaks. Eric, what are we getting into next week?
Eric Salvo (40:39):
Yeah, next week is actually something that's super near and dear to my heart and something I've had the opportunity actually to be a part of. And that's discovery calls. Specifically what questions we should be asking and how to open up people to make them feel like they're rather than being heard and they're not being interrogated. It's something I've actually been experiencing a ton in that last year going from SCR to AE and now handling first calls. But we'll be diving into that, talking about the questions, talking about how to run a proper discovery call. And we'll be able to show you kind of what that looks like from two guys that have been doing it for a little bit now. So that's what's next week. Disco calls. We talked about lead gen today, but we'll talk further down the sales cycle next week.
Josh Rasmussen (41:19):
Heck yeah. And that's a wrap. Congratulations again. You just got better at your job. You're welcome.
Eric Salvo (41:24):
Follow the show, share it with someone on your team who needs it and come back in two weeks because we are not done with you yet.
Josh Rasmussen (41:31):
This is Game Shape brought to you by Hero. Now go close something.