WillAitken.com

I provide training, coaching, courses, keynotes, and merch for sellers and sales teams! Check out my offerings on willaitken.com

Chief Vice Directing President of Managing Things

Sales Feed

B2B Sales Media company Sales Feed

We make content that helps sellers sell and brings a big ol'd smile to their face when they need it most

Co-Founder

Sell Better 

I'm one of the hosts of SellBetter's epic daily sales shows

Host

Orum

Content Producer

Aligned

Assisting Aligned's content and social strategy

ZoomInfo

Chili Piper

Lavender

Head of Social

Head of Content

Evangelist

Vidyard

Use Vidyard to leave an impression with your customers

Content Creator & Event Speaker

Trust Me, I'm a Salesperson 💜🧙‍♂️ | Lavender | Tiktok Creator | Dad | Mentor | Founder | Advisor | SKO/Event Public Speaker

Just another LinkedIn sales influencer... but funnier and better looking than most.

Born in 1994 in the roundabout filled town of Milton Keynes I was always the odd child at school. 

After getting the worlds most pointless degree at University of Brighton I decided to go “find myself” by working in a French Ski Resort, backpacking through south-east Asia, before temporarily settling down in Sydney Australia. 

It was in Sydney I met my Canadian wife and found a passion for earning lots of money as a recruiter. 

Like a high quality European Lager she imported me back to her hometown in Charlottetown PEI.

Now in North America I was determined to work in SaaS sales because I saw on Reddit that you can make BANK selling software.

Just a couple of years later after trying to find my footing I was the top rep on my team.

This gave me time to open up TikTok and on April of 2021 I made my first video, then I made one everyday for 6-months. 

This opened up my love for content creation and led me to my current career in marketing, keynotes, book writing, and sales training. 

Expertise include: New Business Development, Account Management, Cold Calling, Sales Proposals/Presentations, Marketing Product Knowledge (SEO, EDM, Retargeting), Recruitment Services, Headhunting, Email Prospecting, Vice President (SEO purposes), VP, CEO, LinkedIn Recruiter/Sales Navigator, Boolean Blackbelt, Training, Sales Kick Offs, Speaker, Speech, Sales Management, and Fixing Up to Look Sharp.

Sales live on Sell Better with Sara Plowman at 12pm ET 

https://hubs.la/Q02spLQT0

#BetterInBrooklyn

Will Aitken

CEOs meeting with the Product Team

Ft. Leslie Douglas, Sara Plowman, Jason Bay (amazing commitment), and Jed Mahrle

Filmed at Sell Better #BetterInBrooklyn

Inspired by @itsevanwilliams on TikTok

What if other departments got treated like sales? 🤔 (Part 4)

Here’s the part a lot of folks won’t show you when it comes to cold calling… 

Even if you’re half decent at it, chances are you’ll still get shot down more than you win

The key is being able to keep the energy, the passion, and the fire within burning despite that 

Detatching from the outcome is one step, but It’s still brutal doing this for an hour straight

Take a break, go for a walk, touch grass, smile, eat a banana, and come back to it with renewed energy 

Reviewing my 1.5 hour game tape after 86 dials, 21 connects, 11 conversations, 45 minutes of talk time, and only 1 meeting booked at the very beginning 

I can literally see my energy slowly draining away 

With that my ability & desire to confront basic objections decreased too

Today it’s time for some REDEMPTION
🔥💣📞💪💥🙌🫡🦏

Live at 10am ET/3pm GMT, be there. 

#ColdCalling

I am utterly titillated to announce I’m partnering with Aligned 

With a product that solves so many frustrations for both sellers and buyers

A absolute powerhouse of a leadership & GTM team

And a treasure trove of A-tier content to distribute 

( see here for some of the best sales content I've consumed - https://lnkd.in/eUYDWBSF )

It was a no-brainer to get aligned with Aligned 😉 

Give ’em a follow on LinkedIn for funnys and wisdom - Aligned

What if other departments got treated like sales PART 5

Clawbacks, PIPs, and high performing receptionists 

#saleshumor

Double-Standard? This tech CEO has never heard of that

He's brought Sales and Marketing together to finally solve the alignment issue

Ft. Jason Bay (congrats on the promotion) + Sara Plowman, Leslie Douglas, and Jed Mahrle (#OpenToWork)

Credit to @itsevanwilliams on TikTok for the boardroom skit inspiration

#SalesHumor

Looks like a poster for a wacky 90s sitcom about sales

Good time to announce - I'm proud to be working alongside Nick Cegelski, Armand Farrokh, and the 30 Minutes to President's Club team helping with their video production

What do y'all think would make a good name for a video agency? 👀 

The exact moment Sales Feed hit 10k on YouTube 💥🥳🎉 

Tyler Lessard 🎯 and I have our eyes on that 100k silver play button next 👀 

Special shoutout to Jesse Ariss, Daniel Beresh, Tania Blake, Rebecca Whitaker, Rajiv 'RajNATION' Nathan and Chris van Praag⚡️who all played a huge part in growing the channel along with the team at Vidyard

Big up all the other great folks who have collaborated with us along the way

I’m in the fortunate position where I don’t HAVE to cold call or prospect 

My brand and network drive enough business for me to live very comfortably 

But I still do it because:

1. That might change (things outside of my control like algorithms) 

2. I like having more business opportunities to choose from 

3. I believe in practicing what you preach, many sales coaches so far removed from the selling role that they’re out of touch 

4. It makes good content

But something I’ve noticed is because I don’t NEED to do it I’ve been having more success with it 

It literally doesn’t matter if I get chewed out, shot down, or berated

It doesn’t matter if I book a meeting or not 

And as a result I’m having way more fun, better conversations, and not getting burnt out 

I WISH I could’ve had this mindset earlier in my career 

It’s not as easy when you do NEED to do it, but try your best to detatch from the outcome.

The FINAL of #MemeMadness is here and it's up to YOU to decide the winner

Memes are anonymous, so comment your fav - Meme 1, 2, 3, or 4

Finalists are: Laura Erdem, Todd Clouser, Stephanie White, and George Avetisov

Life's too short to make one dial at a time.

A big reason for my success cold calling as an Account Executive was because I used Orum to parallel dial

Parallel dialling is making up to 10 simultaneous calls to increase your dial activity and dramatically multiply the number of conversations you can have in a given period of time

If one of the calls picks up AI recognizes a human voice, drops the other calls, and connects you to the person who picked up so you can go into your cold call opener

What that meant for me as an AE is I could save one hour a day for cold calling and make over 100 calls in that time using Orum instead of 25 manual dials in Outreach 

Resulting four times as many conversations and depending on my ability to book a meetings I could reliably generate new pipeline everyday

With pickup rates as low as they are, I'm not confident it would've been worth my time to do the calls without the dialler (at least in an AE role)

So anyway, so glad to be using Orum again and partnering with their team on my live cold calling show

I'll be going live again this afternoon, pop in and say hi! 

Here are my stats from an hour of calling last week (27-minute talk time)  

#SellYeah

Sellers, cut this utter BS out 

Guilt based follow ups / break-ups

Whether it’s in a cold email, LinkedIn dm, or follow up with an active opportunity

Any variation of this crap:

“Been reaching out for a little while but you haven’t gotten back to me” 

It makes the prospect the villain, it makes them feel guilty, it can be read to suggest they’re an asshole for not responding 

For cold messages, they didn’t ASK to be messaged and do not owe you a response so you’re just gonna get reported as spam ⛔️

For a contact in an opportunity they may be having a hard time saying “No” because they feel bad and messages like these make them feel worse and less likely to get back to you 

Instead of making it harder for them to say no, just make it easier by saying no for them 

For a cold sequence (Credit to 💜 Will Allred):

“Hey reached out because OBSERVATION, thought that could mean PROBLEM. Seems like I’m off base so I’ll leave you to it for now!”

For an active opportunity (Credit to Michael Manzi): 

“Seems like INITIATIVE has lost steam - No hard feelings. Good luck with PRIORITY, I’ll be cheering you on from the sidelines!” 

They’ll correct you if you’re wrong.

Sales is Blind Reunion - All the tea is getting SPILLED 

(Turns out Will's company clearly wasn't using Chili Piper)

Here's a  breakdown of a cold call I made live last week... 

What went badly:
- Didn't hear the connect (thank god Orum has a transcript)
- Fumbled the opener was frantic
- My talk track was spotty and incoherent at times
- A lot of talking upfront

What went well:
- Created intrigue from the jump
- Asked plenty of questions
- Uncovered pain points 
- Kept my cool later in the call letting them speak
- Used a relevant customer story to build intrigue
- Booked the meeting 🥂 

Having a ton of fun being back on the phones on a regular basis

Even though doing it live does bring back the feeling of my Sales Manager listening over my shoulder

Going to be making some cold calls to a new persona tomorrow (CEO & MDs in the UK) on behalf of one of my training clients Workvine to offer their alternative to recruitment agencies

Keep an eye out for the live 😉 

Paint me like one of your french gurus 😘

Sell Better squad is in Brooklyn for #BetterInBrooklyn 

We'll be: 

🍕 Getting HAWAIIAN pizza (duh)

🎙 Running TWO Sell Better live shows 

🎥 Recording an absolute BOATLOAD of content

⭐️ Hitting up the AudiencePlus Goldenhour event 

Big thanks to ZoomInfo for sponsoring! 

Tag along with us for tomorrow's sesh - https://hubs.la/Q02spLQT0 (wait till you see the lineup)

Tips to make it look like you’re working hard in sales:

1. Schedule your deal update messages to your manager to go out at 4:25am

2. Store a list of numbers that always go straight to voicemail, buzz through them every day to bolster your dial numbers 

3. When on internal meetings play a vigorous typing YouTube video in the background so it sounds like you’re absolutely decimating your follow up emails

4. Block your calendar with meetings 9to5 every day, including the weekends. Invite random people from enterprise accounts like Johnson & Johnson, if you’re lucky they might even accept! 

5. Call your own mobile number and use a fake convincing accent to have a 20-minute conversation with yourself, be sure to throw one or two objections out there but overcome them with major finesse, this will bolster your talk time and if your manager reviews the call they’ll be massively impressed

Why be busy when you can look busy? 💡

INBOUND SALES 101 🧲

0:30 Speed to Lead
2:00 Follow Up
3:00 Qualification
4:25 Improving Show Rates
6:40 Discovery
8:00 Avoiding Tire-kickers
8:50 eBook & Webinar Leads
10:00 Tolerating Marketing

Featuring: Vin Matano, Aaron Wallace, Chaniqua (Nikki) Ivey, Blake Hudson, and Julia Carter

Filming, editing, and voiceover by yours truly in collaboration with Chili Piper 

Don't have time to watch this? ⏳
Prefer to read vs watch? 📖
Hate my voiceover? 🥲

The article here covers it all - https://bit.ly/3vpwQTQ 

Best sales discovery lesson I ever learned:

Instead of trying to confirm someone is a fit

Come in with the assumption they’re not a fit and look for evidence that suggests otherwise 

- Do they have problem worth solving?

No problem, no loss, no reason to buy. A problem can be something preventing them from realizing an opportunity but I don’t believe in selling purely on gain.

If the problem is irritating but not having a huge impact on the business other priorities can (and likely will) take precendent. I’ll tell them that I can’t see a reason for them to invest in solving the problem. 

They might tell me otherwise. 

- Is it a problem my solution can solve well? 

If there’s a better solution more geared to solving their problem I’ll just tell them, they’ll find out eventually so I’d rather be the one to do so. 

They might tell me otherwise. 

Stop trying to sell to everyone and filling your pipe with chaff that will never close

Taking this approach dissolves the pushy self serving sales stereotype and protects your pipeline

Spend more time building a good list, spend less time getting rejected and researching each prospect individually 

As my father in law says whenever he helps me with a home renovation “Measure twice, cut once” 

Here’s my workflow for targetted list building:

Use Sales Navigator (or ZoomInfo’s Scoops) to build a list of accounts showing a relevant buying trigger…

Obvious ones include:

- Team growth
- Hiring 
- Posting 
- Funding 
- Brand/product launches 
- Using a certain technology

Less obvious ones include: 

- Engaging with company/leadership’s content
- Company headcount reduction 
- Department headcount reduction 
- Viewed your profile 
- Observations you can make using keyword searches or elsewhere like in the news, on their website, on their profile 

To identify who’s worth targeting look in your CRM to see the changes companies who are buying your software are going through 

Then target companies who are showing similar traits 

E.g. Ad agencies tend to get more clients from company who have had layoffs because they no longer have the internal resources to manage their ads themselves - so they should target accounts that have recently decreased headcount with messaging highlighting this pain point. 

I’ve found the more specific/niche the trigger, the better results I get when it comes to email/calling 

Once I’ve built a list of accounts I’ll then find the leads at those accounts who are best to target

Use ZoomInfo to export those leads to my CRM and sequencer (Hubspot) 

Add them to a unique sequence that references the “trigger” in the emails and call notes 

Execute around 15 steps which are mix of automated emails and LinkedIn DMs 

AND of course cold calls using Orum

I’ll try reference the trigger in my reason for calling so it helps to call through the tasks by sequence so I don’t have to switch my talk track too often

Taplio

Will Aitken's Linkedin Analytics

Will 💜 Aitken

What is Will talking about?

Who is engaging with Will

Will 💜 Aitken's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Want to drive more opportunities from LinkedIn?