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#97: Host Tyler Lindley is joined by Jack Knight, founder of CallBlitz, to discuss coaching SDRs in cold calling. Jack explains the four types of call coaching and what he sees as the pros and cons of role playing. He shares specific tips to get reps comfortable making cold calls and the role of an SDR manager in developing their team.
Jack and Tyler compare notes on effective scorecards to provide actionable, useful feedback to sales reps. Lastly, they discuss coaching in a remote work environment and how to develop culture when your team isn’t regularly sharing an office.
Explore the human side of sales and business with host Tyler Lindley. Leaders in their field share a dose of inspiration through stories about life and business. Sales professionals provide tactical tips you can put into practice today. It all comes together to help you chart your path forward.
Achieve your goals on your terms — get inspired by stories from extraordinary people, elevate your performance with the latest outbound tactics, and find the lift you need to take your career to the next level.
Outbound Sales Lift
Episode #97
SDR Coaching: Cold Calls with Jack Knight
Hosted by: Tyler Lindley
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[00:00:00] Tyler Lindley: Hey y'all. I'm Tyler, and this is Outbound Sales Lift where you can elevate your SDR team and transform your sales development efforts. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy this show, please consider dropping us a rating to help others find us, and you can also subscribe to get each episode delivered to you on Tuesdays, right when they're released.
On today's episode, we'll be covering SDR call coaching, and I have the pleasure of being joined by Jack Knight. Jack, how's it going?
[00:00:37] Jack Knight: It's going amazing, Tyler. Thanks for having me
[00:00:39] Tyler Lindley: on. Thanks for coming on. Jack is the founder of CallBlitz and the senior manager of business development at Fourth. Today we're gonna be talking about SDR call coaching.
Now, before we started recording, you told me there's four types of call coaching. You said there was mock calls, call recordings. Baptism by fire and then real time call coaching. Can you walk us through like what are those four types? Yeah,
[00:01:04] Jack Knight: totally. So the way I think about coaching is when you grow up, you play sports.
Everyone's familiar with practice, right? Practice comes before the game. So when you take a look at role playing, for example, doing mock calls, maybe that's for practice, right? You're jumping on with your team. You've got your manager, your coach walking you through everything. And you know, it's a safe contained environment running through the place.
Yep. Then when you get on the field in sports, you've got your coach there helping you adjust and adapt in real time depending on what the other team is doing, depending on how your team is doing. And after the game, we're all familiar with game film. Right. And that's where your call recording analysis comes in.
So the way I think about coaching is just relating it directly to sports. And how each one of those pieces is necessary, but each of those pieces has pros and cons
[00:01:55] Tyler Lindley: with it. Yeah, a hundred percent. A lot of pros and cons, Uh, baptism by fire, which basically means what? Not coaching at all. I mean, Yeah. Are there any pros to
[00:02:04] Jack Knight: that?
unfortunately that's probably what most SDR programs do today.
[00:02:09] Tyler Lindley: Why though, Jack, Why are most SDR programs not coaching at.
[00:02:14] Jack Knight: That's a great question. I have two theories. One theory is no one teaches these managers how to coach. They're just, they're, they're top performers as sd, they have this kind of managerial skill set, so they get moved into this position and then they're just flooded with stuff to do.
No one sat them down and taught them how to actually be a coach. The other thing is, I think bandwidth, right? Most SDR teams, they're probably eight to 12 SDS per one manager. That's a lot to put on one
[00:02:45] Tyler Lindley: manager. Exactly. Eight to 12 is a lot. I think that number should go down, honestly, like I feel like eight to 12 is too many because the SDR role is so nuanced.
They're doing a hundred different things like this. Call coaching is just one piece of it. I mean, there's all kinds of other things that you're doing as an sdr if you're running an omnichannel strategy. And so I agree. It also can be hard just because like you said, they're that first time manager.
They're probably the top sdr. Maybe they were an AE that came over. Has anybody taught them how to coach? Did they have a good example of coaching from their manager? I mean, there's a lot of questions there, and I feel like a lot of companies just wing it, . They
[00:03:21] Jack Knight: do wing it. And if you think about, if you have a high performing outbound team and you're making, what, 50 dials a day per rep, Hopefully you're having three to five conversations a day.
That is three to five conversations that you need coaching on every single day, times the amount of reps you have. It's just, it doesn't scale. You can't do that.
[00:03:41] Tyler Lindley: Yeah, it's just too many conversations. Right, right. Baptism, unfortunately, it sounds like a lot of companies are doing that. They just don't have, either their managers don't have the time or the managers weren't taught how to coach, so a lot of folks are just winging it.
It sounds like that Baptism by fire option. Now what I see more commonly, Is, you know, role plays, right. I'm, I'm involved in a lot of onboarding of SDRs and that's a very common practice during SDR onboarding and just as an ongoing practice, we're gonna do some role plays, whether it's with your fellow SDRs, the managers.
Tell me what you think, like pros and cons about role plays.
[00:04:13] Jack Knight: Absolutely. So each piece of coaching is super necessary. Role plays. It's probably the best way to get someone who's brand new to the phones into the flow, into that experience that environ. Because again, you're safe. The only people sitting, sitting there judging you are your teammates and they're there to help you.
You can fail, you can mess up. They'll laugh with you. I think the pros of role playing is, again, it's very comfortable for someone to ramp in a cold con. The biggest con I see with role playing, super realistic.
[00:04:46] Tyler Lindley: Mm-hmm. . Why is it unrealistic though, Jack?
[00:04:49] Jack Knight: For, for two reasons. One reason. You're either too, And you don't actually want to give this new hire critical, constructive feedback because one, they're too new to pick on.
Yeah. It's you
[00:05:02] Tyler Lindley: can't, You don't wanna hurt their confidence.
[00:05:04] Jack Knight: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They're still building relationships. They don't wanna feel like these big, scary, ramped reps are calling 'em out. So there's like that personal dynamic. The other potential that happens is you're way too harsh and you come up with these very unrealistic scenarios.
They pick up the phone, someone is like, Screw you, bye. And hangs up like Sure. Does that happen like one out of every thousand dials? Yeah, but we're in b2b. We're not doing b2c. B2B people are way friendlier than I think we, We like to think, Right.
[00:05:37] Tyler Lindley: It's funny, when I'm doing call coaching, I definitely, or when I'm doing role plays, I definitely skew more towards the two harsh, like I like to tell reps, Rarely do you book a meeting with me now.
Usually it's not like what you said about just immediate hangup, but I like to throw objections at them sometimes right outta the gates. I'm very difficult on the meetings. You gotta ask me 3, 4, 5 times. If you had to choose, would you rather a manager in role play be a little bit too easy on them or onto that harder side?
Like which one do you think is better? It could be either.
[00:06:05] Jack Knight: Tyler, you nailed it. As a manager myself, I always go on the harder side. Yep. But I notice my reps always go on the nicer side, . And it's very consistent how that happens. I think you need both. Like I, I think again, the purpose of a mock call is not to teach that rep how to be effective at cold calling.
It's actually, for me, it's to get them comfortable with the concept of cold calling. You're gonna be trying to, to initiate a conversation with someone who doesn't know you. How do you sound comfort? How do you deliver tone that's gonna engage this person? It actually, for me, has nothing to do with like value prop or overcoming objections, stuff like that that comes later.
First, I need your tone to sound confident. I need you to be comfortable with this whole concept of cold calling. Yeah,
[00:06:51] Tyler Lindley: that's interesting. You talk about the concept of cold calling. I do think that exists and there is a stigma, uh, especially around a lot of newer reps, which SDRs, a lot of newer reps. That cold calling is this terrifying thing that is so hard and nobody picks up the phone and you're gonna, you know, only one person at the company's good at it and everyone else is terrible.
You know, she'd focus on LinkedIn and, and emails cuz you're cold calling so hard. Why do you think that stigma still exists? And that concept of cold calling is still a daunting one for reps.
[00:07:20] Jack Knight: That's a really good question, and if we can solve for it, I think you and I are gonna make a lot of money. . Um, I came into sales knowing nothing about sales other than, you know, the, the classic used car salesman.
Right? Right. And that was my perception of what sales was. I didn't even wanna get into sales because I didn't want quota, didn't want pressure. I didn't want any of that. And a, a friend's dad convinced me to do it anyway, fell in love with it and, B2B sales is so different because you're actually delivering a valuable solution.
So I think most of what cold call anxiety, cold call reluctancy is you're just anxious. Like you're just afraid of all of these false ideas of what it is. So as we continue talking about coaching, I do think there is some merit to this concept of baptism by fire, but unfortunately, most people. That's all they do.
They don't do the mock calls. They don't do the call recording
[00:08:16] Tyler Lindley: analysis. Well, at some point I think the baptism by fire becomes good. But it's like, it's almost after you've done all these other things, right? It's after you've done role plates, it's after you've done the call recording reviews, it's after maybe you've done some real time call coaching, then go for it, right?
And then we can kind of dial in a little bit less on the back end. But if you're just doing that on the front end, I mean, I imagine a lot of these reps are just gonna come apathetic and just scared, anxious, you know, just feeling like, Oh, the call cold calling doesn't work. You know, that kind of attitude, which is a bad place for one of your reps to.
[00:08:47] Jack Knight: Absolutely. I mean, anyone that says cold calling is dead, hasn't cold calling or they have and they haven't been coached on how to do it. Yeah. Cold calling works. It's super effective. Now, does it fit every persona on every industry? No. Totally fair. It doesn't. But if you can learn how to cold call, if you can learn how to engage people on a phone, not only does it help you book meetings in the short term, but you're developing confidence, you're developing negotiation skills, you're developing conversational skills.
So super, super important piece to any salesperson's
[00:09:19] Tyler Lindley: arsenal. Yeah, a hundred percent. One other thing I wanna touch on with like the role playing or doing the mock calls, this is one thing I've always thought about but never really talked about is what information do you need to do an effective role play?
Like especially as the manager or as the leader doing that role play, What do you need in order to have an effective role play and be able to play that part of the prospect?
[00:09:43] Jack Knight: Absolutely. It needs to be realistic. That's my main thing, has to be realistic. And the way to do that, if you're out there, you know, running an SCR team, you want to come up with a mock call program.
Yep. Just talk to your reps. Go listen to the recordings, try to bucket like the most five common conversation threads. Yep. Is it someone that answers and they say they're in a meeting? How do you handle that? Is it someone that answers, you have a conversation and a competitor comes up? There's stuff like that where you can basically bucket the most common scenarios.
I would recommend doing that to start. And there's also technologies because what you have to think about with a role play, a mock call. You're probably pulling in the manager, the new hire, probably a teammate, maybe. That's a lot of people and a lot of time that's not actually being used to go outbound.
So there's technologies. Uh, second nature comes to mind. They're an AI driven mock call tool. Okay. So they have an AI robot take you through these common mock call scenarios with certifications, stuff like that. You can do it. Just make sure it's realistic. Yeah. And especially for a new hire. Keep it simple.
Yeah. You should not be teaching them the complexities of competitors and value props. They need to understand tone. They need to understand pace and.
[00:10:58] Tyler Lindley: Yeah, you almost wanna start with the basics there too, and you talked about, I love those common conversation threads, but maybe only introduce them one at a time.
Like, let's do this conversation thread. Let's nail it. Get your tone down, get your delivery down. Let's get you comfortable. Then let's move on to the next one. That's another mistake I see managers making. Is they're trying to do, they're trying to coach to five, 10 different things on one role play, and what does the rep take away?
It's like, Okay, I need you to work on this, this, this, this, this, this. Are you ready to go again? Ring, ring. Hello. It's Tyler. The rep's like, Ah, I don't know what to do. Versus if I said, Hey, Jack. I really think that your tonality is not really indicating that you feel very confident or that you're even just interested in this conversation.
Maybe let's do another round and let's just work on your tone being a little bit more confident and firm so the prospect might be a little bit more interested. How does that sound? That's way different, right?
[00:11:47] Jack Knight: Way different. And you know how to coach Tyler, and that's why you know that. You can't throw three things to focus on at one time at a rep.
I mean, again, go back to sports. When you were growing up, your coach would help you one at a time with what you're focused on. You know, maybe it's a stance, maybe it's a a foot pattern you're taking. Whatever that is, it's just one thing. Hey, for the next few practice place, focus on this one thing. Nail that, Then we can move on.
Four quarters is better than a hundred pennies .
[00:12:15] Tyler Lindley: Yeah. I love that analogy. That's awesome. So in addition to role playing, right, the mock calls, the other one I see most commonly use is the call recordings, right? Where we're gonna go back and listen to the tape post game, right? This is after the call.
Strengths, weaknesses, advantages, disadvantages of like doing the call recording reviews, especially as we compare it to the role plays.
[00:12:36] Jack Knight: Yeah. So the pros are, And I grew up playing football. So we would go play our game the next day. We'd all get together as a team and go through the game film and one play at a time.
We would analyze each person what they're doing, and for me as a player, I could see visually what I didn't see during the game. And you grow this awareness. So on the phones, you hear yourself talk, you hear how you respond to these things, and you. Wow. I didn't know I sound like that. I didn't know I was going that fast.
I didn't know that they actually said that. I didn't hear that on the call. So you grow this awareness of yourself as you're on the phone, so super helpful. Another thing, great thing about the recordings is it's a lot of written feedback. So you're actually storing these notes and you're kind of building a library of your own coaching scorecards, whatever it is.
Yep. So you can pull out themes and as a coach, as a manager, you should be pulling out the themes between each of your reps calls and saying, Hey, we talked about tone two weeks. For the next week with your cold calls, I want you to focus on tone. Yep. Then you look at those call recordings and you just grade on tone for the the week.
And again, back to what we were just saying, that one focus area is gonna drive a ton of impact. Yeah. A ton of pros to call recording analysis For sure.
[00:13:56] Tyler Lindley: One thing you touched on there that I wanna double click on is you talked about a scorecard, right? Which I think can be really effective even in a role play setting.
It might be effective, but especially for a call recording. Like have you seen examples of what good looks like there for a scorecard on a call recording?
[00:14:12] Jack Knight: Yeah. So template wise, I don't want to claim to have like the best score part ever , but I. With anything you do as an SD coach, s STR manager, you have to keep it simple for the reps cause they're balancing so much on a day to day.
If you want to be effective, keep it simple. My self motto is kiss, keep it simple. Stupid. Yep. Just cuz I know if I focus on one thing at a time, it's gonna be way better. So, template wise, the way I like to to build my scorecard template is who are you, why are you calling me and what's in it for me? And the reason I do that is because when you get a cold call, when someone random calls you, you don't recognize the number.
You pick the phone up. The first thing you're wondering is, who are you, right? And then as soon as they say their name, who they're with, Okay, why are you calling? Like, why are you interrupting me? Why are you bugging me? But for good reason. , and then that's when you share, hey, the, the reason I'm calling you today is X, Y, Z.
Mm-hmm. . And then get right into, Okay, what's your point? What's in it for me? Yep. So the way I format my scorecards is who, why? What's in it for me? Yeah. And in that is like kind of the sub scoring of when you did your opener, how was your tone? Mm-hmm. , did you tell them who you are? And did you answer that question?
And then why are you calling me? Okay. Did you get to the point right away? Yep. Specifically calling you because XYZ reason, and then what's in it for me? That gets into value prop. That gets into here's how we might be able to help it.
[00:15:40] Tyler Lindley: Hundred percent. I like framing it that way cuz I feel like some of the scorecards I've seen for cold calls are, are complex, you know?
And that I like the simplicity of that because at the end of the day, like those are also the same questions that we're trying to answer, right? It's the pro, the questions that the prospects are asking and the questions that we're trying to answer. So what else would we wanna score on? I mean, we could have a one to 10 rating.
Da da da da. But like, okay, cool. You were a seven on this and a six on this, and an eight on this and a 10 on this, and overall I'm gonna give you an 8.2 or a 2.8 or whatever. Like, does that help the rep versus those are the core components of a call. Let's see how you did in those areas. I really like that framework, Jack.
[00:16:21] Jack Knight: Yeah. We need to think at all times about if we received this email, if we received this cold call, how would we feel? And I think we get so complex from our point of view as the sales people. The easiest thing to do is just put yourself in your prospect's shoes. If you got an email that said this, would you actually be interested?
Yes or no? Yep. If you got a cold call and they, they talked about this, would you be interested? Yes or no? And it's just always putting yourself in the receiving person's shoes to understand like, Hey, they're human. We might be different. We might have different goals, different focuses. At the end of the day, we're both human.
I know what resonates with me, am I messaging stuff that resonates with them? It's easy to build it out when you think from your prospect's point of view. Yeah.
[00:17:05] Tyler Lindley: Yeah. I like that a lot. We talked about a lot of the strengths of call recordings. What do you feel like is any weaknesses or drawbacks to doing call recording reviews?
[00:17:13] Jack Knight: Yeah, I actually, I'm passionate about this one because there's a lot of cons in my book. Okay. Um, first of all, call recordings don't scale, and we touched on this a little bit earlier. one manager's gonna have eight to 12 reps on average. They're gonna have way too many calls every week to go through and actually provide meaningful feedback.
So one doesn't scale well. Two, the, the, uh, the feedback is old, it's stale. It's not relevant, it's not timely. Maybe a good manager is reviewing calls most likely the day after the call. Yeah. That rep is in a whole different mindset than they were the day before. Cause now they have a whole new day, whole new prospects meetings, all of that.
They're not going to remember that coaching session from the day before and they're not actually gonna be able to apply it. And that's a third thing. There's the, the best way to learn is to go do, and you know, Tyler being a coach, reinforcement is the way to, to drive. You cannot reinforce call coaching unless you go jump on a call block with that rep and say, Okay, I watched your, your analysis, or I listened to your recording, did the analysis.
Here's the one, two things we're gonna go focus on. Let's go call people now and let's go. Make sure that happens. There's no warranty on call. Recording analysis. What you're probably doing is you're getting into a tool like Gong or Cho. , you're writing some notes, you're tagging your, your rep, hoping they read it.
When you know full well, they're probably gonna skim your feedback and then move on with their day. Yep. So it's a waste of time for you. It's a waste of time for your reps. Yeah.
[00:18:46] Tyler Lindley: Yeah. I mean, all those things are true and I think especially when we think about this remote world that we live in, I mean, do you think all those things equally apply to reps that are hybrid or in office?
Like do you feel like there's more of opportunity, like if you're actually still maybe on the sales floor from time to time with your other reps? Like is that, do those rules only apply to fully remote reps or do you think it applies just as equally maybe to in-office hybrid reps?
[00:19:09] Jack Knight: That's a great point, and I think my answer would change because if you can be elbow to elbow with your routes, you can be there to warranty your coaching to make sure that these things are actually happening.
The, the virtual sales floor is, is kind of a new thing. Yeah. And. Remote teams, most managers don't have a way to go jump on a call block with their team and go through this coaching, this live
[00:19:33] Tyler Lindley: feedback. Yep, yep. No, I totally agree. And I mean, it's just, even if, even if you are in office or it's hybrid, what's the likelihood that like everyone's calling at the same time and then.
How could you co I mean, it's just, it's hard. I mean, in office coaching is hard. A lot of the SCRs I talk to don't wanna be in the office as much. Yeah. I think the world is still skewing to a hybrid, remote type of setup, and I think a lot of reps prefer remote and managers have to figure out how to coach in that type of setting.
Almost first. That's the default coaching style Hybrid in office is like a, Well, that's nice, but we do that occasionally, right? Yeah. A hundred. Awesome. So that kind of brings us to like, the other bucket that we haven't really talked about is that real time call coaching, which kind of touches on a lot of those drawbacks of call recordings.
That's actually like building that virtual sales floor building or, or in person sales floor, like having that real time feedback. Why do you think that is? It sounds like you think that might be the, the best way of these four, but why, why is that the.
[00:20:34] Jack Knight: So imagine if you were playing soccer, you had a big soccer game on Friday.
You practice all week. Practice, practice, practice. You show up to your game and it's just you and your team. No coaches anywhere. You'll probably do pretty well. Yeah, but where's your coach? Where's that? That coach that's gonna give you that live feedback, That live strategy. The live adjustments. That doesn't, it hasn't existed for virtual sales teams, remote sales teams until, you know, a tool like Pulitz, which is a side hustle that I put together Yeah.
Came onto the scene. And if you were that soccer player without your coach on the field, you're kind of wondering and hoping like, are we doing well? Like, are there things that we could be doing better? You don't have that oversight, that support, so that's kind of where. The virtual sales floor enters the scene where your managers, your coaches, can be on the field with the players.
[00:21:30] Tyler Lindley: Mm. Yeah. That's interesting. You know, it almost makes me think of like halftime adjustments and they, you talk about like game day coaches. Those are the coaches that are able to see like, okay. This is what they're giving us. This is what we're seeing on the field. Here's my recommendations based on being in a lot of games and, and understanding the strategy behind this.
Now here's what we maybe should change for the second half. It's almost like live coaching allows you to make some of those halftime adjustments so that then maybe the next call goes a little bit better or you know, it's a little bit smoother because we're working on those things in real time.
[00:22:00] Jack Knight: Right? A hundred percent.
And contrast that to call recording coaching. Yeah, you're writing feedback down. You're hoping the rep reads it and you're hoping the next day when they do their next calls, they're gonna remember your specific feedback to go implement that. Now, can you warranty that shirt? You could ask that rep like, Hey, I want you to send me a recording of you doing X behavior.
But what's way more impactful is you're on the floor with your team. You hear a rep make a call, you give them that live coaching, the live adjustments. Now go call again, and then you jump in on that next call two minutes later. And you, you're there to hear it and you're there to give more reinforcement, more
[00:22:37] Tyler Lindley: adjusting.
Yeah. So one of the hard things about doing this live coaching would be you gotta get everybody in the same room at the same time, which could be for some teams, easier said than done. How much should this happen and should it happen in conjunction with these role plays and these call recording reviews?
Or do you think like, this is the only way, like if you're gonna go down this path, like do the live and just make it work with like scheduling and.
[00:23:01] Jack Knight: That's a great, great question. I've seen teams do it. Again, it depends on your industry, depends on your persona, depends on like how much does cold calling make sense for your team.
I've seen teams do a weekly formal call blitz. I've seen teams do daily standups. I've seen teams do twice a day, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. So I, I would leave it fluid for your market, for your team, whatever makes sense. But you should. Because the live experience is gonna provide the best coaching for your reps.
However, that doesn't mean you don't do anything else. Again, I think mock calls make a ton of sense for a new hire. Yeah. I also think mock calls are super helpful for adjusting kind of these, uh, more advanced behaviors. Like if you're going through a competitive objection, something like, But you could still do that live.
You could get off that call and be like, Wow, they brought up X competitor. Right? Here's how you handled it. How do you think we should tweak that? And then go into another conversation? So even with the live sales floor, you could still do mock calls in a way. And again, I think call recording analysis is huge too.
And the goal there, from my perspective as a coach, I want to teach my reps how to coach the. I don't want to be the single source of truth and have all the wisdom, and you must come to me to get the answers. Now I want to teach you how to find the answers yourself, cuz that's how you're gonna learn how to self-diagnose, self adjust, and you're gonna be that much better to where you can come to me and say, Hey Jack, I, I took this call.
Here's where I think I should change what I should do better. What do you think? Yeah. And that to me is a mature rep. That's someone who knows how to coach themselves. Yeah.
[00:24:40] Tyler Lindley: One thing that I wanna get your thoughts on is I've always thought during call blitz, like you had the advantage of getting some of that real time feedback, right?
Doing some of that live coaching. Let's talk about this right now, Right after it just happened. One disadvantage in my mind. The reps are probably not making as many calls during a call blitz. If there is kind of that in between chattering conversation going on, should the expectation just be that that's the nature of the beast and, and a call blitz is almost used for calling and coaching so that it's okay to be less efficient or, or should reps be held to the same number of calls per hour blitz that they are normally when there isn't that like real time coaching happening.
[00:25:18] Jack Knight: Right. And I think this is where we need to remember. Our reps are humans, and if they're gonna lose 10 minutes on a live call blitz to build relationships and have fun and laugh and make it fun, like that's amazing. You should be happy that's happening. Now, should you come up with pretty specific goals?
Should you incentivize your reps? Like, Hey, whoever makes the most dials, get the most connects, you're gonna get a gift card, whatever. Yeah, for sure build in that competition, but let them be on a sales floor together like we know in the office, so many hours are wasted at the water cooler. , but that's what builds team, that's what builds relationships.
And uh, a tool like co blitz allows reps to all call at the same time. Yeah. So even if you get into a coaching session after a call, that's not gonna disturb the rest of the team. Yeah. So everyone can still maintain
[00:26:06] Tyler Lindley: productivity. Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and I think, you know, the culture piece is important too, because how, especially in a remote world, how do we build culture?
On a sales team. I think that answer used to be easy in the office because it's just like, well, the culture is just, we show up and hang out every day together. But in a remote world, it doesn't just happen. You've gotta, you've gotta be intentional about that now, and I think some companies are, and some companies are still figuring that out.
[00:26:36] Jack Knight: And the ones that are figuring it out are the ones that say we celebrate culture. We love culture, and it's culture is an active thing you have to invest in. So what I've done with my team is biweekly culture huddle where we get together for 30 minutes, open mic, anyone on the team, and we lay out the pillars of our culture, what we want to see be reflected in our culture.
We ask ourselves, what are we doing today to make sure this stuff happens? And what could we do tomorrow to get even? So you have to be actively investing in culture. Some of it happens organically, but to make sure that it's strong, you have to be active with it.
[00:27:13] Tyler Lindley: A hundred percent. Yeah, I like that biweekly culture huddle.
Um, so leaders out there steal that. If you feel like you're trying to build that remote culture but don't know how. Sounds like that might be a good place to start. Any parting words of advice Jack out there for STR leaders trying to figure out call coaching and anything we haven't touched?
[00:27:32] Jack Knight: I think the biggest thing I see reps and managers struggle with in terms of cold calling, it's very serious and it's scary and it's anxiety invoking.
Just have fun with it. Make yourself laugh on a call, get hung up on, laugh with your team about it after. Manager, get on the phone, you're gonna suck. And that's okay. , no one's expecting you to be the master. And how weird does it look to your reps if they think you're the master, but you've never gotten on a cold call in front?
That's bizarre. So get on the field with 'em. Have fun with it. I like to make the cold call blocks. We do fun. Like I'll wear a silly hat, we'll play music. Like we just have fun with it. Yeah. And that, that produces a culture. Being okay with failure. Hey, it's okay if we screw up cuz we're gonna learn from it.
We're gonna get better, but we're all here together as a team. We're gonna have fun and we're gonna make each other. Don't be so serious.
[00:28:27] Tyler Lindley: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Well, Jack, thanks so much for coming on. Great conversation today. If you wanna find Jack, you can find him on LinkedIn and you can also find out more about call blitz, call blitz.com.
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