💛 Shawn Sease - The Professor of Prospecting

iNeverAnswer.com

Say goodbye to prospects who never answer their phones and won't engage.

Done for you outbound, meetings settings, and SDR as a Service.

Founder

Multiple Companies & Solutions

People before process sales, success, and growth innovator.

From Full Cycle-Cycle Sales rep, Commission Only Sales Rep, Sales Manager, VP of Sales, to Founder & CEO

From Technical Support to Customer Success Manager

Solutions:

Electronic Medical Records
Electronic Medical Billing & Insurance Claims

Electronic Document Storage & Workflow

Paperless Agenda & Workflow

Electronic Country Recorder & Assessor Solutions & Workflows

Title Insurance & Electronic Title Plant

The list goes on...

I have designed, built, and owned a craft brewery.

I am currently spending the last few years of my sales, success, and growth leadership career helping organizations convert prospects to grow customers without wasting time or money.

Via Outcomes over Activities

My expertise: Creating and finding opportunities where others cannot. Motivating, Training, and Enabling others to do exactly the same. 

I believe in taking aim at a goal and then taking the incremental steps to get there.

Positive emotion is found and experienced in the incremental steps, NOT in achieving the goal.

Because once we achieve the goal we have to start all over. Take Aim at a new goal and begin the incremental steps to achieve that goal.

I look forward to talking with you whether we do business together or not.

#TalkSoon

My 30+ Years of Outbound Sales & Executive Revenue Creation (Everything Pre 2021 is summarized here)

We serve as a counterbalance and a voice of reason with data to prove it against the over-specialization of sales roles and their inefficiencies.

We'll help you avoid the modern sales trap of gaining short-term tactical wins at the expense of a long-term strategic defeat. 

Are you struggling to open doors and  "create" interest & curiosity that turn into scheduled meetings?

Feel like reps are stumbling through discovery and not getting the "truth" from prospects?

Unable to escape features & benefits selling that instantly commoditize you instead of effectively positioning yourself as a strategic partner in your prospect's long-term vision, revenue, and growth goals?

If you answered "yes" to any of those three questions, it's safe to say you may have an imperfect understanding of outbound sales and cold calling.

And that's okay...

You're probably just "rushing" and that's doing more damage than good.

Slow it down, because...

Our North Star is that regardless of whether or not we end up doing business together, we end up better off than where we started. 

Our experience? 

30+ Years of Outbound Sales: Creating, advancing, and closing deals. 

Most people do not have the stomach to do Outbound correctly, and most advice is inexperienced, amateur, and short-sighted.

We stick to the basics, fundamentals, and mechanics to create, advance, and close opportunities.

Use my "Book an Appointment" link to schedule an intro call.

If you're not here to learn more about Outbound, let's connect anyway. 

Here's a little bit more about me... 

I've been skydiving (parachute rigger USMC) to the bottom of the ocean via SCUBA. I'm a Master Brewer. I try to play acoustic guitar (Martin 000-16GT). I've written code. I'm never alone - full of faith and spirit.

I'm a single dad of 3 daughters and a grandpa to 1 grandson (May 2023).

Living by the Platinum rule: Treating people how they like to be treated. 

Instead of looking for the right people to be around, we work to be the kind of people others would like to be around.

I was born on 05/27/1971 --- I turned 52 in May 2023.  Over the last few years, I've taken on a fitness routine and healthier lifestyle.

I look forward to chatting and learning more about you, what you're working on, and where you're headed.

With success in mind,

Shawn Sease
530-349-0029 (Mobile/Text - Call or text anytime)

AA-ISP - Certified Inside Sales Pro
DISC Selling Certified Trainer & Coach 
Certified Scrum Master

Head of Enterprise Pilots & Proof of Concepts:  Driving rapid adoption & results for top performers

Humantic AI is a Buyer Intelligence platform for revenue teams. 

Top revenue teams use Humantic's Personality AI to identify early adopters, help their BDRs personalize outreach, and enable their AEs with vital customer insights for every deal.

Humantic.ai completely eliminates that guesswork around knowing who to contact next and how to approach them in any channel:  email, phone, and social messaging. 

Phone: Build trust faster and book more meetings. 

Email: Improve click thru and response rates 250% to 400%. 

Social: Increase connection request accept rates.

Pipeline: Increase velocity with higher quality opps and close more deals

There are hundreds of "Sales AI Tools" that focus on salespeople. Humantic AI is the only one that focuses on buyers to help reps improve engagement.

Humantic AI is used by 100+ customers, including Fortune 500 organizations. It continues to become the AI tool of choice for revenue teams across industries.

Build trust faster | Increase Pipeline Velocity | Close more deals

Thirty-five years in sales and never personalized a thing, and not going to start now.

🤷

When I see my feed filled with "How to Waterfall personalize with {insert Hype Cycle tool Du Jour}..."

I shake my head, "pfft," and keep scrolling.

Why?

The SDR and BDR roles are ridiculously over-specialized with an immeasurable gluttony of so-called "required tools for success."

There was a time when I thought the role was an exciting innovation for orgs crushing their revenue goals.

They had so much demand that it made sense to use the SDR/BDR roles to sort the wheat from the chaff, BANT the demand, and teach green/rookie reps the ropes of selling.

It's all backward now and way over specialized.

Hirings SDRs/BDRs way before they are needed like it's a template for GTM success.

What is "GTM" anyway?

An acronym for "Got Too Much" of someone else's money, so let's measure growth by headcount?

Either way, things like personalization, or "show me you know me," or being empathetic are all part of the endless piles of horseshit that come out of the over specialization of roles.

The volume of people you have conversations with will determine your success, not how much time you can save while wasting space storing what's already stored somewhere else on the Internet.

With success in mind,
Shawn

#TalkSoon

When talking about "How-to" cold outbound, specifically COLD CALLING, there's no shortage of advice.

What's missing from all of the tactical advice, scripts/objection handling techniques, and arguably needed tech stack configurations are the mindset, confidence, and strategic assembly of all of that advice into a process that will work to help an individual rep continuously become the next best version of their sales self.

We've noticed that underneath all the tactical advice around opening calls, objection handling, and setting meetings is the ill-conceived, inexperienced, or worse, delusional strategy of attempting to win all fights in the first round.

I would go so far as to say that the last paragraph is precisely why there is such a vast market for so many tools and, over the previous two years, the rise of "Validated data."

Validated data is an excellent example of short-term tactical wins at the expense of a long-term strategic failure.

What I mean is this model came out of 3rd party outbound orgs' inability for short-term meeting sets to convert to revenue for their clients.

See what I mean? It's a delusion around trying to win every fight in the first round.

Not to mention, didn't a validation company get acquired recently, and the org that acquired it claimed they are all set to dominate the 3rd party outbound/revenue landscape but are now shedding their VP staff?  🤷

My point, obviously, is that outbound and cold calling are long games.

For me, my career, life, and livelihood took a turn for the better when I retired from trying to knock out everyone in the first round...

And do you want to know what the funniest thing about this, or the irony of it all?

It's that I know myself really well. And I should, right? 

I mean, I'm the one who's been here through it all!

It's this:

I'm fickle. I change my mind a lot. I quickly get bored. I thirst for knowledge and constantly seek and learn new things. I'm never satisfied.

☝️All of that has caused serious problems for me.

I've walked away when I should have stayed.

My emotions have gotten the best of me.

Etc., etc., etc.

The good news is that's not the case anymore. Well, I don't have a crystal ball, and life still finds a way now and again to knock me off my path for no reason at all, but I haven't found a solution to that one yet beyond accepting that "That's life," which is great because that's as close to contentment that I've ever been.

You know what, though...

I've never cared much about the "Organizations" I've worked for.

But I've always cared about the people I've worked with in those orgs.

Don't get me wrong. I have a profound disdain for the tyranny of middle management and rubber-necker sales leaders.

Anyhow, if you're a young SDR/BDR, a veteran, or mid/late lifer transitioning to sales...

The best outbound advice?

Don't try to win all your fights in the first round.

#TalkSoon







Here, I'll say it...

Leading with value in your outreach is stupid.

I mean, it's not working right, so...

How often do you have to fall flat on your face before you stop leading with value?

Are you really stuck on stupid, believing that if you refine your script or email with even more value, it will finally hit home?

Quit being stupid and grow up.

With success in mind,
Shawn

#TalkSoon

So what do you do?

Oh, I don't know, maybe try introducing yourself first.

🤷

In the last 12 years, the specialization of roles and the tools to support them have killed great selling and normalized laziness.

Not to mention...

Social selling isn't a thing beyond a bunch of gurus (wolves) regurgitating to the masses (sheep) new, fresh, hot topics of the day that they learned from a lamb...

Where the lamb is the optimizer of shit that should have never existed.

Hear me out...

The latest trend is "Top GTM Minds," who brought us an onslaught of tools born out of a free money economy to expedite and accelerate SPAM tools for the SDR/BDR complex, are now, today, pontificating that "Sales is Broken."

You seriously can't make this shit up.

The only sound advice I've come up with to keep my head on straight and continue to do what always works is to:

Not Believe the Hype Cycle!

Why?

Because we're at the point that without a complete reset in time and going back to what always worked, all you're doing is continuing to attempt to optimize shit that should have never existed in the first place.

🤷

Don't follow me if you know you shouldn't be in sales. Instead, go find a role better suited to your talents.

However...

If you are a "Doer" as opposed to a "How-to'r," and you're an anti-fragile, blunt-force-do-it-your-way and get-it-done kind of salesperson, well, we might get along just fine.

With success in mind,
Shawn

#TalkSoon


It's not my imagination that my calendar is filled with people high-fiving and spot-on'ing "popular" how-to prospect posts who can't book meetings to fill their bank accounts.

🤷

Quick reminder:

80%+ Of solid meetings and revenue come from downstream long-term follow-ups and reschedules...

Not from precision provisioning.

With success in mind,
Shawn

#TalkSoon



My first garage startup. Circa March 1987. That's me on the right and my best friend Scott Grenier on the left.

That's my IBM XT 8088 with two 360k floppies drives, an RGB monitor, running Compaq DOS 2.0.

I was 15!

#TalkSoon

I'm in Northern California for a week. Been here since Wednesday and returning to Arizona this Wednesday.

And by Northern California I mean up in Shasta County, 250 miles North of the Silicon Valley/Bay Area where I was born and raised.

Why am I here? 

I'm doing some work for my oldest client/customer.

I've been doing technical work for them since 2004.

They've been a client for 20 years.

I'm very proud of that.

With success in mind,
Shawn

#TalkSoon

The thought process that compels a question like:

"How many meetings do you guarantee out of the gate?"

Is the exact thought process that caused a necessity to seek 3rd party lead gen agency help.

#TalkSoon

I've noticed that cold callers who go from sub-par/mediocre and not completely in love with the role to outstanding and wouldn't trade it in for anything make this one transition in their process...

Here it is:

They quit worrying about what happens on first time cold call connects.

The funny thing is they don't always realize they've made this transition.

Most reps won't get here because...

Well, their Leadership, thus their cold calling training, is pitiful, which leads to...

Most reps spend all their time calling everyone on their lists like it's the first time they've connected every single time they connect.

The outstanding reps, when appropriately trained, use a process that moves cold connects forward into more detailed and curated lists.

After 3 to 6 months, a few meetings a day begin falling out of those curated lists first thing in the morning.

So, when it's time to call those first attempts to connect lists (ice-cold lists), these pros already have a few meetings in the bag for the day, and that's 40 to 60 meetings a month!

As a result, when it's time to call on the ice-cold lists, the outstanding reps are warmed up, relaxed, confident, and don't care what happens on these cold calls. 🤷

It's not that they are NOT attached to outcomes. It's that they know everyone who answers a first-time cold call; well, it will be a crapshoot how it turns out.

The best practice is to go with the flow with prospects on first-time cold calls:

1. You want me to send info? -Sure!

2. You're busy picking up your kid? -I get it. I got a knack for calling people at the worst time.

3. etc...

It's a pretty simple process.

All you need to do is familiarize yourself with it and then go out and execute.

With success in mind,
Shawn

#TalkSoon

Is multi-threading powerful, or is it just another sales buzzword?

For me, there are a few things to consider when attempting to conceptualize fully what it means to multi-thread.

Here they are:

1. There are no playbooks or templates for who should be included in your multi-threaded targeting. Each deal will require different people to be involved, which means building trust one person at a time and gaining legitimate internal referrals and introductions through that trust.

2. Single-threading with multiple people is more powerful than group multi-threading. Having more one-to-one conversations with people opens the doors to building deeper connections through trust. Specifically, these one-to-one engagements will allow for more emotionally and socially charged discussions, as opposed to practical and business-related discussions.

3. As a result of properly executing #2, when you are in group/team calls, you'll have more robust, practically charged discussions about business strategy and outcomes because of the individual trust you created in the previous single-threaded discussions.

Now, this is all based on a simple framework that there are only 3 conversation styles:

1. Practical 
2. Emotional
3. Social

When you bring the emotional and social styles to your one-on-ones, you'll have helped the entire group have better practical discussions when everyone is together.

These are a few thoughts on what I've come up with as a result of closely examining what's happening across the entire funnel in my own deals and business engagements over the last 30+ years, from intro to series of renewals.

What have you come up with to help your team conceptualize what's happening in deals from opening to renewal?

Do you have any "1-2-3," for example: 1. Practical, 2. Emotional,
3. Social, frameworks that work for your team in every engagement stage, regardless of pipeline stage or role?

And/Or...

What are some of your experiences and success stories around multi-threading in deals?

With success in mind,
Shawn

#TalkSoon

In one of my posts last week, I mentioned that in 35 years, we've never personalized our sales outreach.

I did NOT say, however, that we do not: 

"Persona-lize."

There's a big difference between targeting your messaging at the role and the typical persona of that role versus trying to fake being chummy and caring about people personally.

See the difference:

Persona-lize vs. Personalize?

The real benefit we've found is that the messaging/scripting becomes one-to-many, eliminating the excessive amount of busy work that comes with attempting to "personalize" every message or the wasted money on automation credits.

Not to mention, even if you believe in personalization, some part of you has to realize that fake personalization is mostly received by prospects as disingenuous attempts at trust-building, especially with the clumsy and not so smooth transitions to your sales speak and CTA (call to action), because you're so desperate to keep your "genuine" message under today's purposed perfect # of characters to be an effective message. 🤷

For us, thinking in terms of "Persona-lization" helps keep
our heads straight. We stay focused and succinct.

It's part of our slow play/long game, capture a bluebird along the way, trust-building strategy as we close in on timing.

And just a quick reminder: we are talking "outbound" here---always.

That's all.

With success in mind,
Shawn

#TalkSoon





"Quality over quantity" is code for "Lack of quantity."

What's really underneath why it's not the best idea to lead with value, pains/problems, and product?

I believe it's something like this:

"I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you."

And that last sentence/quote probably explains exactly why "Trust" is so important. 

But...

Trust doesn't happen overnight...

Let alone immediately.

What I mean is...

If some semblance of trust doesn't occur in the first 7 to 10 seconds of any engagement or interaction, you can about feel the "ick" enter the mood immediately.

So, what is a useful framework for avoiding the "ick" early in conversations?

We've found that narrowing it down to 3 conversation styles works well.

The 3 styles are:

1. Practical
2. Emotional
3. Social

The underlying goal is to "match" styles.

In sales, when you have a working knowledge and understanding of the 3 styles, you may begin creating the conditions to cause deeper connections and more trust with people through matching.

Take the recent and popular debates about whether PBOs (Permission-based Based Openers) are effective or not.

When you go below the question of whether PBOs are effective or not, and everyone aligns on the fact that when cold calling, both the caller and the prospect at connect are in an emotional state, well, there isn't a question of whether you as the caller should immediately jump in with a "practical" style conversation, is there?

That's why:

"I know I'm an interruption."

or

"You're not expecting my call."

Are so effective at disarming fear (emotional) in the first 2 to 3 seconds.

They appropriately "Match" the style of conversation afoot at opening, which is emotional.

I'm going to stop here and ask you this...

Do you believe that using the "3-styles of Conversations" framework could be effective...

If so, why, or why not?

With success in mind,
Shawn

#TalkSoon





When discussing "sales" in the LinkedIn feed via posts and comments, I rarely, I mean almost NEVER, feel like I'm having the same conversation as the person I'm engaged with.

I found this out when I brought my discovery skills to the feed.

When I start asking questions, I almost always realize it's not that we're not in the same neighborhood. It's that we're not on the same planet.

I'm going to keep doing what has always worked for me and keep asking questions. 

With success in mind,
Shawn

#TalkSoon

A problem like "An anemic pipeline" is usually caused by the same thinking that now believes "AI for Sales" is the solution.

#TalkSoon


Taplio

💛 Shawn Sease - The Professor of Prospecting's Linkedin Analytics