#102: Amelia Taylor joins Outbound Sales Lift to describe the role of sales evangelist and why more companies should consider investing in the position. An evangelist is focused on networking, connecting directly with prospects to build strong, trusting relationships.
Amelia explains that evangelists typically focus on social media, making connections online then having one-on-one conversations with prospects. She believes that no matter what stage of growth a company is in, the sales evangelist role can help develop key relationships that drive sales.
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 #102
Embrace the Sales Evangelist Role with Amelia Taylor
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 striving. And dropping us a rating so that others can find this episode. And if you subscribe, you'll get each episode delivered straight to you on Tuesday mornings, right when they're released.
So on today's episode, we're gonna be covering why every company needs to embrace the evangelist role for 2023. And I have the pleasure of being joined by Amelia Taylor. Amelia, how's it going?
[00:00:41] Amelia Taylor: Hello, Tyler. I am so excited to be here and for our listeners. Through a Hail Mary over Tyler's, uh, Tyler's way.
And I was like, Hey, is there any way I can join you? And he said, you are on my short list of people that I want to join me. So here we are. I'm super pumped to be here and chat about this topic. Uh, big, big conversation to have and, uh, yeah, definitely subscribe you guys. Amazing people who are coming on here.
For
[00:01:10] Tyler Lindley: sure. Yeah. Love it. Awesome. Amelia, just so you know, is the lead evangelist at reggie.ai, and we're gonna start off by just getting into what does that mean, Amelia? What does it mean to be the lead evangelist at reggie.ai ?
[00:01:26] Amelia Taylor: I love that question because it is a big question mark for so many people, right? You see this title that people.
Showing up with of a chief evangelist or lead evangelist, and you're like, what are you, like, what is going on ? So I went to people who had those titles, pretty much said, what are you doing? Because I wanted to know what they were doing. Realized, okay, you're doing what I'm doing, literally verbatim what I'm doing of meeting my buyers where they're at, or simply networking.
where people that I have a solution, they have a problem, I'm going to those places, and not just being the face of Reggie, but really being someone who is more like a peer or a trust advisor. Somebody who they can go to and have this guard down of, Hey, I've seen you around. I know that you are gonna be straight up and honest with me.
Like if this is for me, great. , gimme the low down, is this what I need? And then being really this walking talking bridge for them to go to the solution that Reggie provides, which is content creation for go-to-market teams and you know, supporting the whole entire sales cycle or blogs or, you know, anything content related, which everybody needs.
So it's really educating buyers where they're at, but I don't have to know everything in order to be someone. That people trust. Yeah, so that's a big factor with all of this is where the sales kind of falls out of the equation, whereas you're bringing in revenue, right? Mm-hmm. if things close, but you're doing the inbound motion in a sense, by being that person that is kind of the lead source of where things are coming from.
But yeah, you know where your buyers are at, where you go.
[00:03:26] Tyler Lindley: It sounds like you're kind of just a badass SD r, almost like you're, you're just like a sdr with a personal brand who's gonna like meet your buyers where they are. It sounds like you're just like a really, really, really good SD r. Is that that a way of looking at it, or you think that's oversimplification there?
[00:03:43] Amelia Taylor: I think it's. Mm, both. So I think that that is an element of it, for sure. Mm-hmm. , because you are being the one teeing things up, but it goes past that because you're always gonna be that trusted person, that initial person that they talked to, and you met them where they were at. Speaking their language because you did your homework.
Knowing what you're supposed to do, like every rep should a, I don't, because I don't think a lot know exactly how to do that. That goes into a whole nother spiel when it comes to leadership and coaching and training the right way. I, I leave that for another time. Really, it's the aspect of, okay, if I can hold your hand through the process, be someone that you can call me or shoot me a text after you get off your third demo with stakeholders or whatever.
I'm on there too with you. Or might hop on, hop off because I wanna follow through with the whole process too. I'm also not trying to waste my time cuz I'm still trying to go out there and be. The evangelist, which Yeah. You know, break that down. The word in then, you know, in and of itself is spreading the good word.
Mm-hmm. So that's what evangelist is. So you're spreading the good word of whatever it is that you do. Right. If you embody this at all, there's gotta be passion behind it. I mean, for what you do. If you do not have passion for what you do. . I don't know how you can't just call BS on everything that you're doing out there, because that's exactly what it is.
I mean, right. If you're showing up in an unauthentic way, which I'm, I'm not a fan of the word authentic, it has become a buzzword, really. Mm-hmm. , you know, genuine, authentic, all that. You don't have to say it to be it, you can just show up and do it. So, showing up, doing that, and you know, if somebody. A problem and I've got a solution, but maybe Reggie is not the fit.
More than likely it is. But, you know, tossing that out there. But it's, I'm also going to be a good human. Mm-hmm. and not tell them to go spend their money where I don't think that should. Be going. Right.
[00:05:58] Tyler Lindley: One thing you mentioned there, Amelia, though, is like meeting the buyer where they are. What does that mean exactly?
Where are you meeting the buyer? Whether it's I guess digitally or physically or wherever? Like how do you meet as an evangelist? How do you meet the buyer from where they are and how is that different than say an S D R or an AE or somebody marketing meeting the buyer where they
[00:06:18] Amelia Taylor: are? Would be a big diff, you know, that's another factor of what evangelism is, the stacking effect of this role where you have the evangelist or you know, this glorified, if you will, s d R, who's doing this, but then you No, I said
[00:06:34] Tyler Lindley: badass, not glorified.
I said badass. Yeah.
[00:06:37] Amelia Taylor: glorified slash badass. Let's go with like, Almighty ,
[00:06:42] Tyler Lindley: but do you sit in sales or do you sit in marketing? Like where does this role
[00:06:46] Amelia Taylor: sit? Depends very much. It depends. So there are evangelists who are under marketing, there are some who are under sales. Mm-hmm. doing badass things, and making shit happen 100%.
But it really falls under where the company needs them to be. Mm-hmm. So right now, Reggie, we're kind of figuring it out as we go, which is. and I have an opportunity to create something that I have a passion for, which is I have a passion for people. I wanna go and help people. I've been a writer all my life and I didn't realize how much I enjoyed content and just creation of it.
And I've got notebooks full of just journals that I would write even in the high school days. So going back and reading those too, it's kind of like, oh my gosh, that gives me back, you know, brings me back to this whole how I do this because I have a passion for what I do. You know, when I see that. Yeah. a handful.
Sure. Under marketing, if there is that heavy focus of, let's do a lot of demand gen along with this, let's have different KPIs to where they might differ from the KPIs you'd have if you're carrying a bag under sales. Mm-hmm. . So where you are also, you know, able to close. So it really could be what you make it out to be.
But there has to be some sort of overall, here's our box of things that we wanna do. Here's how we're going to measure things. Here's the metrics we're going to use. Here are the different factors that play into this, this role. But, and with any role, how do you establish that? And that's been an ongoing thing that a lot of people are trying to figure out, but it simply starts.
you gotta start. Yeah. And you gotta just rear your buyers list. So let's go back to that really quick, what you we're asking. How do you go, how do you, how do you know where your buyers are at and where do you meet them here? So that, that question is been something that I've, I think, naturally done instinctually, but it can be taught 100% with knowing there are communi.
There are dark social, and that is not dark web. You guys, no one think that. Please, please, please. Mm-hmm. , do not go in the dark web and search for people. It's like, God almighty, please don't, but go on dark social, meaning even texting your buyers, right? Or mm-hmm. Dark social or
[00:09:08] Tyler Lindley: dark social, just meaning.
For those that don't know, just. Basically it's being social with people, not in a public forum. It's more of a private
[00:09:15] Amelia Taylor: forum. Private forum in unorthodox ways. Right? Right. So it's WhatsApp groups or Instagram, you were exchanging messages, you know, things like that where people TikTok, right? Like I did a post the other day about TikTok and it kind of blew up because people are very much so like, oh my gosh.
I've been wondering if I should jump on here too. , and then some people are like, no, no, no, no, no, don't do it. The government, blah, blah, blah. Mm-hmm. Okay, that's fine. But then there's the people who've been doing it for a while and they're like, yeah, the ROI is there. Mm-hmm. , you jump on there, but you've gotta look at it from where you're at, what you provide.
Are your buyers there? Do you think that if you're selling cybersecurity, your buyers are gonna be on TikTok? I'm gonna probably go with. If you're in a B2B SaaS software company, right. Do you think that your buyers are on TikTok? I'm gonna go with probably, yeah. And if you don't have somebody who is within a company trying to figure that out and finding this new channel, this new way that the industry's going, the market.
Yep. Shipping and testing that, how are you gonna know? Right. And your competitors might be doing it, so they're gonna be the ones keeping up. Yeah. While you're right. Staying in the safe zone, if you will.
[00:10:33] Tyler Lindley: Right. So how do you know when your company is ready for this evangelist role? Is it a certain stage of growth that you have to have a certain size of sales team or marketing organization?
Or is it just, you know, you should be hiring these people alongside your first reps? I mean, or can this be a dual role? I mean, like, I don't know, there's so many questions about like, what is this role and how do you know when you're ready for. . I
[00:10:57] Amelia Taylor: think anybody, and this is a whole lot of thinking because there's, there's my opinion and I'll, you know, anybody can take it.
But, um, or the advice that I share, you can hear it. You don't have to take it. But I, I do believe that it needs to be part of that sound, you know, that foundation that's being established in any, any, any, any operation. Because think of it as almost being a part of rev ops, if you will. You know, there's. The foundation that is either built like a sand castle within companies to where they make it look really pretty and they can build it really high up until storms come and everything crumbles because they didn't build on solid brick or stone or something that was gonna last, so they didn't do it process by process brick by brick.
and implement process over, let's throw 500 bodies in and let's call it growth, and we're gonna thrive and go on the NASDAQ sign next year. Wait for it. Like that's not growth at all. That is literally, you're gonna fail. That's what that's called. So you're either building on something solid. That's what the evangelist role is trying to do.
I mean, the evangelist is trying to build something solid that's sturdy with the buyer. So the buyer knows, oh, I know that person. Oh, yeah, I've seen their content. Oh, I, I know they, they are a part of this company, but I know them more so I trust them because I've heard their name from so-and-so too, because people talk, right?
So if there's a bad buying experience, you're gonna be associated with that. So bringing the right people. in that are kind of these sales ready leads as well, you know, that are qualified, that are ready to buy, that's going to help the process go smoother. Mm-hmm. gonna help the reps be able to actually close more and say, you're on the sales side of this, you close more if that's where your KPIs are at.
And that really is a determining factor within a company. But I do think you have to try in. Fail and learn and grow, right? You know, there will be failures like any company that you have to have in order to know what works and
[00:13:12] Tyler Lindley: what doesn't. So Amelia, like why can't sales reps, you know, to play devil's advocate a little bit, why can't sales reps just be evangelists themselves, right?
SDRs, AEs. Why can't they just go out and evangelize the product and kind of be a dual role, right? Sales rep and evangelist. Why do I need to kind of have that be a separate
[00:13:29] Amelia Taylor: role? I love that question. I don't believe that is the right move at all. Hmm, why not? But there's going to be, So many different factors that play into that.
Okay, where's lead attribution coming from? Because they're playing a little bit into, they're dabbling in the marketing side of things. If they're going out and doing, you know what, we gotta change lead sources all within, and then there's gonna be people who are saying, that's my account, my account, my account.
Oh no, I talked to this person. Okay, how do you attribute that? If you talk through Slack and there's so many things like that. So why not have someone say someone's really amazing at their social? I mean, . That's where they, they just get it. Mm-hmm. , they get it. Mm-hmm. where they are super strategic and they don't feel as though the phone is, they're a strong suit.
They're like, Hey, I love to do things and sell through social or book meetings through social. That's where I go and play and make it happen. Great. Find that person and lift them up to be this kinda evangelist, if you will. Yeah. There can be someone maybe, The sales side doing that, I think everybody should be doing right own content creation, but quit hashtagging your company.
Quit hashtagging. Whatever your value prop is, do it with. intention of, Hey, here's what happened today and this is what I'm wondering. What do you think, you know? And having an approach of, I'm trying to figure things out because I'm trying to learn and grow. That's really where I started with things. Then I would ask certain people, what am I doing
What are like, does this make sense? Does this not make sense? Can you help me understand? So I started just getting amazing people kind of in my corner. I was showing up for them. They were showing up for me. . So where my content was being distributed to their networks, and it was me just simply showing up and asking them for guidance because they were already showing up and doing so.
Hmm. But when you have too many cooks in the kitchen, it's not a good thing. So you cannot have so many people trying to do the same thing, because I think the message of what you're trying to accomplish, With there being sales is doing this, marketing's doing this, what is it that we're all in alignment with, which is a totally just tricky one by itself.
Sales and marketing alignment that. is something I'm trying to literally lay down. I'm trying to just lay on the ground and be that like connector between the two.
[00:16:00] Tyler Lindley: Mm-hmm. , uh, to keep between sales and marketing, right, Amelia? Yeah. Really
[00:16:04] Amelia Taylor: it's to keep these two like pillars standing. I was like, okay, I gotta like plank right here, right in between the two or whatever to make sure, I don't think a plank would work, but we're gonna go with it.
That would be that almighty sdr. Right, right, right. . Like, levitating, right. Like, you know, ensuring that the two are saying the same things, doing the same things, and everything is leading to, okay, we trust this company. This company has a great reputation because what they're saying and doing is all in sync.
The messaging that is being shared through their marketing efforts and their sales. is in alignment. They're not saying, you know, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that. And then you get to, you know, okay, we're going through the process. Oh no, that's not what we can offer. We can't help in that area, but we can help here.
Like, oh, you gotta buy this in order to get this. But that was overpromise under delivered. Yeah. So you have here there of you don't want too many cooks in the kitchen because I think messaging gets skewed. So that by itself, and then I, I think there's a big factor. . Um, I think your best salespeople, and this is for a lot of just leaders out there, your best salespeople are not on your payroll.
Your best salespeople are gonna be your, your customers you already have who are advocating on your behalf. So one Cs is gonna play a big part in that if they're doing what they should be doing. But that's where the evangelist role comes in big time too. Mm-hmm. is, if they brought those people in, there's a really great possibility.
that you're gonna have someone who's basically encompassing this marketer kind of role. Yep. Being the evangelist who has brought this tribe of people together who are kind of singing the praises of your company on your behalf because you did your job well, and you did it right, and you did it with passion, and you had the energy that matched where you were like, Hey, come on, let me show you something.
Like, let me lead you somewhere that's gonna be really awesome for you right then, I mean, you have to have a team that's going to. embrace this too. Uh, because if there's not the embrace of this is the way things are going, cuz people are going to buy from people, they will ask their peers who they should buy from or they're going straight P lg.
Mm-hmm . So if you want a straight PLG motion kind of thing, I don't know if evangelism is the place you need to be at. Um, and thriving, you know, to really get towards, I think that really. . I think anybody should have it. I don't think PLG should ever be the sole focus within an organization. Mm-hmm. , I think that's a lot of freemium, a lot of free users, a lot of reps who are trying to look for a better way to do things.
It's also just there's an influencer within the organization. You gotta now get to a champion within, get them to kind of convince them, you gotta go to that next person line, next person. So on and so forth. We all know how tech is.
[00:19:04] Tyler Lindley: So one question, one follow up question I have is what's the difference between evangelism and social selling
[00:19:10] Amelia Taylor: then?
Well, social selling is different in the sense that that would fall under sales. Right. And you think
[00:19:19] Tyler Lindley: that's done by a sales rep?
[00:19:20] Amelia Taylor: Yes. Okay. So I did strategic social selling. That was really what I have done in my sales career without realizing. Social, selling those strategic, I just knew there was a better way to do things than sit on the phone all day.
Mm-hmm. I knew that I could go and I could do a slack huddle with somebody if I met them in a Slack community and just say, Hey, do you have a second? Do you mind if I huddle you. and people were so much more receptive to things like that than can we set up time at this time to do this? And it's like,
[00:19:50] Tyler Lindley: than the typical, just like cold outreach.
Yeah. So it's almost like more, it was a little bit more creative and it was leveraging social Yeah. Communities that you were in, it sounds like.
[00:19:59] Amelia Taylor: Right. And you know, if I went to and, and the people that I knew who gave me the advice line, if you could, Airtable. Mm-hmm. , there's a whole list. Airtable Dot.
Back slash communities, I think, don't quote me totally. Something like that. Go Google all that together. But it'll give you a total list of all different communities everywhere that are free communities to join. And you can see how many people are there, where it's, you know, originated from, if it's in India, if it's in New Jersey, if it, whatever, if it's geared.
Marketing automation if it's geared towards different people, investing in different companies and trying, you know, all different things. Everything under the sun. So, I mean, there's some weird ones in there too, for sure. But, so it's kind of fun. Go
[00:20:46] Tyler Lindley: check it out. So is that kind of where you started on your social selling journey, was just joining those communities trying to figure out a different way to do it?
Sounds like outbound, right? You didn't wanna sit there in cold call all day. You were trying to figure out a new creative. . Yeah. And I,
[00:21:00] Amelia Taylor: I didn't try to challenge leadership in the sense of saying, no, no, no, no, no. I pushed back. I don't wanna do that. It was a what about this? Because if things have always been this way, those are the seven most dangerous words that you can say in any business.
It is all, you know, this is the way or whatever it is. We've always done it this way. Mm-hmm. . Okay. No, that's not how things should go, because then. Complacent, you're stagnant. You're not keeping up with where the market's going. So when you take a step back, look at things in a different perspective, and I, I would challenge leaders to embrace looking at things from a different perspective and hearing what your reps are saying.
Because some of these, some of these reps who are young, they were born with the phone in their hand, I swear. They're like tech goers. And then some, they're in these groups already, like they already know a lot of this. They're catching on to a lot of what is already going on. Hmm. So listen to the people within, make them feel heard.
I know that when I was trying to figure this out, I realized there was a gap between sales and marketing. I would jump in marketing meetings at this one company I was with. I was not a part of marketing at all, but I remember seeing Vinyard had this awesome, like 12 days of Christmas promotional email thing.
They. So I was like, we need to do this. Mm-hmm. , what are we doing? So I jumped at the marketing meeting, not invited. I'm like, Hey, you guys, um, can I share something real quick? And they're like, oh, okay. Hey Amelia, what's up? Like, how'd you get in here? Kind of thing. And I'm like, real quick, I just sent y'all all over an email and I forwarded it came from video.
We need to do something like this. I just firm believer this looks like this is totally revenue. . It was doors that would open and it was like the 12 days Christmas, but it was littles from different partners that they had. Hmm. So it wasn't just them throwing their stuff out, it was also lifting their partners up too.
Then that's just building even more of a community with people that you quote unquote partner with. Instead of just saying, oh, we made a partnership with them and you're actually doing something about that partnership. So I jump in meetings like that. Then I. . I said, okay, here's two different job descriptions I've put together.
Which one do you like more? Because I was not going to jump, I did not feel as though SDRs were trained the way they should be. Mm-hmm. with knowing who exactly was going to be revenue generating and not churn at some point. Uh, so within the AE role at this company, I, I knew I jumped in there. I was not gonna be getting what I needed and.
I have always been my own self prospecting because I enjoy that hunter kind of mentality. Like I like the, oh, I, I did this on my own. I like that win. You know, like I like to feel as though I did all this. And so I first jumped into Reggie. I was helping with some of the sales stuff, the sales efforts. I kept apologizing to the SST R, who was trying to help some, and I was like, I'm sorry, can you do this?
Like, thank you so much. I'm so sorry. And he's like, why are you saying sorry? And I was like, because I've never worked with an S year before. I don't know, but. , you know, it's the grut work. It's the hard mm-hmm. effort. That's the prospecting to, it's the foundation. So you, I wanna, you know, if you train your reps who are at that foundation to understand and think more like rev ops and to have this social selling mentality, there's better ways to do things too.
Not everybody has to embrace that. Some might thrive on the phone. Great. Let's have different ways to go about doing things because. have small few people, you know, a few people who can try certain things. Mm. And test things and then iterate if it makes sense, or mix it all together. If it's like a total failure.
You don't have to have total team failure and you know, in order to grow and learn what's best for your team, right? Few people just test things out who are willing and already showing up in social. So all that said, I, I kinda showed up with two job descriptions saying which one, and I was a liaison a bit between sales and marketing, doing just strategic, um, strategic sales.
I mean, really what I'm doing now, evangelism and bringing, and people, and then working solely with sales directors. .
[00:25:15] Tyler Lindley: Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, then that's great. Well, Amelia, yeah, I know we could go on and on about evangelism. Great conversation today. Just so you know, you can find Amelia on LinkedIn and if you click on her LinkedIn profile, uh, streamline your content at the top.
You can find out more about her book some time. Learn more about Reggie. And I hope you enjoyed this episode of Outbound Sales Lift. If you need help elevating your SDR team, please visit our website at thesaleslift.com to learn more. Also make sure you hit subscribe wherever you get podcasts. Check out next week's episode filled with more great ideas on transforming your sales development efforts.
Thanks again for listening, and remember, no sales starts until you book that meeting. See ya.