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Welcome to "Future Proofed," the podcast for forward-thinking professionals eager to keep their career and company at the cutting edge.
Traditional go-to-market (GTM) strategies have become clunky, inefficient, and bloated. This show explores the intersection of AI and GTM strategies to ensure you cut the GTM Bloat and build a future-ready approach.
Each episode of "Future Proofed" dives deep into how AI redefines what it means to craft effective go-to-market strategies. From actionable insights on integrating AI into your sales, marketing, and product strategies, to expert interviews that shine a light on the new best practices changing industries, this podcast is an essential resource for anyone looking to upgrade their GTM playbook.
Our host, Kyle Coleman, is a seasoned expert in GTM and AI innovation. He breaks down complex concepts into practical, actionable advice. With "Future Proofed," you'll learn how to:
- Leverage AI and machine learning to supercharge your GTM strategies.
- Navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by new technology trends.
- Adapt and thrive in the fast-paced digital economy.
- Foster a culture of innovation and agility within your team or organization.
Don't let the wave of the future leave you behind. Tune into "Future Proofed" and stay ahead of the curve as you learn to leverage the power of AI for your GTM strategy.
Nathan Thompson (00:01)
Hey and welcome to the second episode in season two of Future Proof. Our first one we kicked off with some cold calling and this is part two in the three part series on cold calling. Today we are with Aaron. Aaron, you are doing some cold calling at Copy.ai with a lot of success. You and Bree, we've heard from Bree and now I want to chat with you. So feel free, introduce yourself, tell us who you are, what brought you to Copy and then we'll dive into some cold calling tips.
Aaron Adza (00:25)
All right. That sounds great. Thanks, Nathan. My name is Aaron Adza. I guess I'm making many, many cold calls. I'm sending many emails. I'm what they call an inside account representative here for the, for the common man that that's SDR sales development representative. I taken a great interest in AI in the last few years and actually at my prior company, LiveRamp, the CMO, former CMO of CopyAI, Kyle Coleman.
did a sort of a demo and he painted a portrait of what sort of copy AI can do and really what AI can do and the way sales and marketing orgs aren't leveraging it when they can be. I was sold. So when it came time to transition my career, I knew exactly where I wanted to go, where I wanted to apply. So now I'm here leveraging our own tech.
Nathan Thompson (01:21)
And I love it. We've been seeing it. It's a weird experience from the outside because I'm not on the sales team, but it's a weird experience going on LinkedIn and seeing all these posts about cold calling is dead. It's not working anymore. It's silly. But then seeing all of these slack notification updates that says, hey, X-Raisers just booked it from a cold call on this person, a demo to here. So clearly, you, Bree, and Scott, who we'll hear from later, are doing something right. And I really want to dig into what that is.
Walk me through a day in the life of Aaron.
Aaron Adza (01:53)
Okay. So to keep this cold call specific, I want to tell you what my past experience has been to show a contrast in the past. Very, ⁓ very, it was very email heavy shop. lot of our meetings were booked through emails, little LinkedIn, not very much, not very many vehicle vehicle. And that can do oftentimes with whether it's data quality with getting like the correct mobile numbers.
Or it can do with the culture. So when I, when I began here and I knew we were going to, found out really, we were going to be making a lot of calls at first. That sounded quite daunting, but whether it's the fact that copy AI has access to very high quality data and a lot of mobile numbers, or is it the fact that in these last few years, it's the markets become so saturated with emails that that's not working quite the same way. I don't know, but.
It's working and the majority of my meetings right now are being set like, I'm saying the cold outbound meetings are happening over the phone. Now I'm still emailing these people so I can reference the email. say, Hey, did you have a chance to check out my email the other day? And almost always they say no, or, I didn't get just a look at it. ⁓ but there's buzz around this about like what we do here. And that's very good conversation starter.
The day in the life, Nathan, just to kind of actually get to handle that directly, day in the life is I was making anywhere, I don't know, let's just say 60 calls a day using outreach. We've very excited to have taken on a vendor that is a parallel dialer, which allows me to call three numbers at once, for example, and the first person to pick up, it'll instantly transfer the call to that person. So I'm able to have mostly talk time.
and actually validate a lot of data instead of click, call, click, call.
Nathan Thompson (03:57)
Yeah, has it happened that two people picked up at the same time and you were like, ⁓ shit, like I gotta.
Aaron Adza (04:02)
That's
what they say. so what happened with very rarely does that happen timing wise, even if it's a second difference, it immediately cancels the other call. And then you have a list of canceled calls. They recommend you call back with a different number. You can create 10 numbers, but wait, I'm going to back up. This isn't a pitch for parallel dialers. This is a pitch for talking about like what's working. So regardless of what, how I'm getting a hold of them, I would love to talk about what happens when I get a hold of them.
Nathan Thompson (04:32)
Yeah, 100%. I do think it'd be interesting because nobody talks about parallel dialers. Nobody talks about the nuts and bolts on what makes it successful. And it does sound like that is taking a burden off of your role and freeing up some mental energy to focus when somebody picks up on who it is. Is that fair to say? Instead of like you said, call, click, call.
Aaron Adza (04:49)
Unbelievably so, Nathan, and there's a feature. And I don't, I think we can bleep it out later. I think I can, can I, can I mention our vendor or would you prefer if I, yeah, so it's a company called Nooks. looked at ⁓ Orem, we looked at Nooks, we chose Nooks. Now, one of the really cool things about what we have here is that I can, I have a voicemail that I've, that I've recorded and I can do a setting so that every person I call is getting dropped this voicemail. Hey, this is Aaron.
Nathan Thompson (04:57)
Yeah, yeah, truly.
Aaron Adza (05:15)
And I keep it very vague. Hey, this is Aaron. Just was hoping to check in on your go-to-market. My number is XXXX. And I'm getting a lot of calls back. Now, sometimes it's the wrong number. And then we have a hilarious like interchange. they think I'm that person that they just apply it like, like, are you, you, are you this job calling me back? And it's a little awkward interchange, but sometimes it is the right person and they spill the tea and that tea could be.
You gotta go through marketing. Sales has no choice in this matter. That sort of thing.
Nathan Thompson (05:48)
That's great. Okay, let's get away from, like you said, the parallel dialers and let's dive into someone picks up, hey, it's Nate, who is this? What are you, are you doing anything to stay prepped before the call? It's a very hard job with people saying no all the time. Are you showing up with a certain amount of enthusiasm? you like, what's your hook? Even if it's not the words, how do you get people to keep talking to you?
Aaron Adza (06:09)
That's a great question, Nathan. as you know, as everyone is, I'm a work in progress. And so I'm getting better each day. I'll still have the call. A call, I had one today. It's where I cringe. And I look around the room to see if there's anyone who was watching, because it's embarrassing. But there's a few things. I came into this job, a little rusty. And I had just read a book called Cold Calling Sucks. It's by two of the former Gong.
Nathan Thompson (06:14)
I'm going to go.
Aaron Adza (06:37)
individuals and actually our Kyle Coleman had a little, think he was quoted in that or at least featured in part of it. This is what they had suggested was to say something along the lines, instead of saying, hi, this is Aaron with Copy AI, how are you? They suggested saying like, hi, this is Aaron working with a lot of, let's just say, working with a lot of content marketers in your area right now. Just curious or, then, that's like, ⁓
to build some familiarity. did that in the beginning and it worked a few times and I had one guy say, I forgot what it's called. What did he say? Are you 20 miles to President's Club? It's very famous. So pardon me on anyone who linked in that I didn't know that. But he knew the pit. It's become known, right? It's lost a little bit of it because it's known. So this is, am in contrast to Bree and it could be Scott too. I bring in, sorry.
Nathan Thompson (07:25)
Yeah.
Aaron Adza (07:35)
I should, I'm not gonna be like in contrast to them. bring what I say in contrast to them. I don't have like dial points like right there. Um, don't particularly prep because I'm, I am looking for quantity right now and I want to stress to the audience. I am really interested in. I'm, I'm disinterested in spray and pray when it comes to emails because of things like deliverability domain health. But as it comes to dials, am.
Currently, I am calling a very large number of people and essentially it's kind of like winging it. It's like practicing improv. So, so what, like some of the ways it'll start is like, and sometimes I'm unsure of their numbers. So it was, so I'll say something like, Mark. And they might say, yeah, I'd be like, Mark, Aaron with copy AI here. Does that ring a bell? And I'll say it kind of choppy to break up the monotony of a regular call. And
Nathan Thompson (08:31)
Does that ring
a bell? That's a great line.
Aaron Adza (08:33)
Does that ring
a bell? And I didn't invent that, but that's one I've always liked. I worked at Abfolio years ago and my manager, Erica, taught me that one, which is, that ring a bell? That's nice. And a lot of times they say no, but if they say yes, ⁓ boy, does that set up a nice conversation. If they have, if they have. ⁓ Sometimes I'm having people now, like the calls can go any direction. I'm now having some people though,
Nathan Thompson (08:48)
You're in. Yeah.
Aaron Adza (08:58)
They're not interested. might not even work there anymore. Maybe they didn't update their LinkedIn yet. They start giving me feedback like, oh, you know, I've heard of you guys. Hey, by the way, you you should talk about, you should actually say that you should say that you leverage, you know, perplexity, open AI and anthropic and make sure if you say that to say we have best inbreed, we carry out, have access to the best inbreed AI. So I'll get tips from people because I'm, you know.
call it sellers and marketers. That's something that adds some excitement to the job.
Nathan Thompson (09:29)
That's cool. That's super cool. It's like almost like building your own network while you're selling for this stuff too, which is kind of neat.
Aaron Adza (09:35)
Exactly. Some people have just left their job and they say, hey, why don't you email my personal email? Because I'll be starting somewhere else and I think what you're doing is really cool. So I'm able to do that as well.
Nathan Thompson (09:44)
That is so neat. Okay, I am curious and we're trying to keep these somewhat short, I'm gonna make it if it's okay a couple more minutes because I want to know how are you using copy AI to make your life easier at this job?
Aaron Adza (10:00)
Yeah, I'm really excited about some of the updates that we've done internally. So when I first, when I first got a demo of copy AI, when I was at my prior company, like it, of course, like I thought these capabilities are cool, but I, I didn't have the chance yet to see, to imagine how as an individual contributor would I be interacting with the platform. And what I was told is, Hey, you don't have to interact with it.
But guess what I want? I want to interact with it. So what we're doing here at Copy AI now is we have a button on any, on any account page, click a button, you get account research on any contact page, click a button, you get contact research. What I'm really excited about is you can also click a button that says cold outbound. It will produce five cold outbound emails. And I would say like to me, it gets me 80 % of the way there. At least I'm not completely missing the mark.
I think I would suggest to any other SDR out there, definitely edit it a little bit. Like, of course, like you want to personalize, you don't want to sound like a machine, but I'm also able to generate sales, like collateral using our same thing. I can create a one pager. So what I'm doing right now is I'm not including any links or one pagers in that first email just to avoid any like spam filters. But what I'll ask at the end is, and if I mentioned like,
what we can do is say, would you be interested in, or mind if I send over a one pager showing XXX? Then when you call, if you do send it on the second email, there's something to reference.
Nathan Thompson (11:36)
That's cool. You have something to talk about. It's not just talking on the phone with nothing. That's cool.
Aaron Adza (11:42)
Yeah, exactly. I also want to say, I've explored workflows a ton within Copy.ai and there was at one point that, and I'm not doing it now, but at one point I was using it ⁓ to scrape the web, find information on recent films, and then run an analysis and help even produce a tweet. So I just think it's really fun besides my own job.
Nathan Thompson (12:07)
just playing with all this stuff. it really is. It's good to obsess over. It's also fun to see people using this.
Aaron Adza (12:08)
Yeah.
Nathan Thompson (12:17)
how they need it to be used rather than this, you know, this rote, this is how you use this workflow sort of thing. You're building it for what you need, which is really neat, for fun or for work. ⁓ Last question. Let's say I was just starting out. on day three as an SDR and I'm feeling super discouraged because everyone's just telling me no and it's horrible and I hate my life and I want to switch everything. Do you have any words of encouragement that might help me?
Aaron Adza (12:26)
Yeah, absolutely.
Nathan Thompson (12:44)
pick myself back up and keep going. What could I do differently that I'm probably overthinking right now?
Aaron Adza (12:50)
Sure. I wish I could tell myself, my younger self, it's great to seek advice, ask questions, but also take everyone's word with a grain of salt because some things are gonna work better for others. It could be their level of intensity. It could be just luck. Like, who knows? You might attribute your success to maybe the wrong thing sometimes. Take it all with a grain of salt and imagine your character in Rocky and you keep getting beat down and it's the comeback story. And I guarantee you when you do have a win, which you will,
It feels really good and it makes to me, because I like sales, I like commission, I like money, it makes it worth it. And I do want to say, I want to say this, it needs to be said. If you hate calling, you hate emailing and you hate anything to say with sales or marketing, then you, it's nothing wrong with choosing a different path. But if you're in, you're in.
Nathan Thompson (13:39)
Yeah, that does make sense. Do you think a lot of people like the idea of more and then they get in and they're like, oh, I'm out of here. This is awful. Do you think people, it's a hard job. I've done cold calling a little bit in the past. I wasn't successful at it. I'm too sensitive. Everyone, people said, no, I cry under my desk.
Aaron Adza (13:55)
Yeah. Yeah. One of the, think one, like my, my wife was interested in the sort of the sales development thing, but one of the things she hates most of all is to be an imposition. And you are naturally, you're going to get the vibe someone wants to get off the phone and you're to have to go against your instinct because in real, in like regular life, I'm not, I'm trying not to be in like an annoying person. You're going to have to be okay with the person maybe thinking like a little bit of eye roll. If you can handle a little cringe,
I think you a little outgoing, handled some cringe. I think you can do it.
Nathan Thompson (14:26)
is really a good handle a bit of cringe and you're set. That's a whole career if you can handle a little bit of cringe. That's cool. I like that framing. I can handle a little cringe. That's I thought about that. That's neat. All right, Aaron, thank you so much. This is awesome. We're excited to see the leads coming in. ⁓ If you have any questions for Aaron, I imagine LinkedIn would be the place to go.
Aaron Adza (14:29)
Gah.
Yeah, just a little cringe.
Thank you, Nathan.
LinkedIn,
if you even want to get a little time on my calendar, I love to talk shop.
Nathan Thompson (14:53)
That's awesome. throw in both your LinkedIn and your Calendly ⁓ on the show notes and on the blog post that this is on. So you check those out. This is awesome. Thank you so much, Aaron.
Aaron Adza (15:02)
Sounds great. Bye, Nathan.