Power of Voice

In this episode of Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall challenges conventional wisdom about pre-call research in cold calling. Drawing from a recent real-world experience, Chris dives deep into the mathematics and psychology behind sales conversations.
Is extensive research before each call truly beneficial, or could it hinder your team's effectiveness? Chris presents a compelling case that might surprise even seasoned sales professionals. He explores the delicate balance between being informed and being presumptuous and how this impacts your prospects' crucial emotional journey.
Whether you're a sales trainer, leader, or CSO, this episode offers fresh insights that could revolutionize your approach to cold calling and discovery meetings. Chris breaks down the true goals of these interactions and provides a framework for achieving them more efficiently.
Prepare to challenge your assumptions and discover a potentially game-changing perspective on pre-call research and sales strategy.
Here is the math from this episode:
Conversation Statistics for Chris' Team That Day:
Total conversations: 438
Total meetings set: 30
Total dials: 12,522
Dial-to-connect ratio: 28.59 dials per conversation (12,522 / 438)
Average conversation length: 78 seconds
Research Time vs Conversation Time: Let R = research time per dial attempt Let C = average conversation time Let D = dials per conversation
Research time per conversation = R * D Conversation time = C
Equation: R * D : C
Using the numbers provided: 3 minutes * 28.59 : 78 seconds 180 seconds * 28.59 : 78 seconds 5,146.2 seconds:  78 seconds
This simplifies to approximately 66 seconds of research to achieve 1 second of conversation
Chris rounds this to 90 minutes (5,400 seconds) of research to achieve 78 seconds of conversation
Research to Conversation Ratio: Research time : Conversation time = 5,400 : 78 Simplified ratio ≈ 69 : 1
This means for every 69 seconds spent on research, only 1 second is spent in actual conversation.
Efficiency Calculation: If a rep makes 60 dials per day: 60 dials / 28.59 dials per conversation ≈ 2.1 conversations per day
Actual performance: 438 conversations / 22 reps ≈ 19.91 conversations per rep per day

In the second part of our conversation with Richard Rabins, CEO and Co-Founder of Alpha Software, we delve into the delicate balance of using humor effectively in sales. Chris Beall shares insights on guiding prospects through emotional transitions, from fear to trust, using the power of laughter and surprise. However, the discussion also explores the risks of pushing humor too far and the importance of knowing when to rein it in. Richard and Corey examine the idea of teaching humor, drawing parallels between sales and the world of comedy and performance. They emphasize the significance of confidence, vulnerability, and the ability to read your audience to avoid alienating prospects. Join us as we navigate the comedic conundrum of harnessing wit without crossing the line, and discover how to strike the perfect balance for building genuine relationships with prospects.
About our Guest:
Richard Rabins focuses on strategy, accelerating global growth and scaling the organization. Richard also served as CEO of SoftQuad International from 1997 to 2001, when it owned Alpha. In addition to his 30 years with the company, Richard played a key role as co-founder, and served as president and chairman of the Massachusetts Software Council (now the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council), the largest technology trade organization in Massachusetts. Prior to founding Alpha, Richard was a project leader and consultant with Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), and a management consultant with Management Decision Systems, Inc. Richard holds a master's degree in system dynamics from the Sloan School at MIT, and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and master's degree in control engineering from University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has served on the boards of Silent Systems, Legacy Technology and O3B Networks, and is co-founder of Tubifi www.tubifi.com.
Links from this episode:
Richard Rabins on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-rabins/
Company website: https://www.alphasoftware.com/
Corey Frank on LinkedInBranch49Chris Beall on LinkedInConnectAndSell
 
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Below:
 
[00:25:51] Corey Frank: Sure. I think you're getting into a different level of rapport building, Chris, I think it'd be a good reminder to talk about the [00:26:00] swirling blue orb and the, the reason why that works, because I think that ties in a lot of what Richard is saying here with regards to, building that, that rapport, which in essence is.
[00:26:13] Corey Frank: Moving from fear to trust, is it not? 
[00:26:16] Chris Beall: Right, I mean, we're always trying to help somebody along this [00:26:20] this emotional journey to a next emotional state where we can maybe help them see something new that might be of value to them. So it's always just one emotional transition. So fear to trust is one, trust to curiosity is another, curiosity to commitment is another.
[00:26:38] Chris Beall: And emotional [00:26:40] transitions are tricky things. We actually prefer to hold on to our current emotional state, even if we don't like it, because it is a comfort to us To feel as we feel. We really don't want to change anything in our life, much less how we feel. So in sales, we're trying to help somebody [00:27:00] change something in their life.
[00:27:01] Chris Beall: And if we cold call them, that something is, they're afraid of us. And we want to help them change that to being trusting of us, right? And it's actually why the second sentence in the breakthrough script that we teach. The one right after throwing yourself under the bus, which is raising the [00:27:20] tension, and it is surprising, to this little piece of relief, and it has the chuckle in it.
[00:27:24] Chris Beall: By the way, when people laugh, other people laugh. Right? Nobody knows why you're laughing, but you laugh because others are laughing. Laughter is, as they say, contagious in the same way that yawning is, but in a way that sneezing is not. At least, we hope, right? It ain't to sneeze [00:27:40] and have everybody in the room suddenly sneeze.
[00:27:42] Chris Beall: I mean, you might get a pandemic or something like that. But this, this business I know I'm an interruption. I mean, nobody expects to hear that. And, and almost nobody in sales, by the way, is confident enough to throw themselves all the way under the bus and have it [00:28:00] go ba bump, ba bump, ba bump, because buses, by the way, have that many sets of wheels, and then it backs up over you and goes ba bump, ba bump, 
[00:28:07] Richard Rabins: ba 
[00:28:07] Chris Beall: bump, right?
[00:28:08] Chris Beall: Now you're really under the bus. And then how do you switch your voice sincerely to being playful? A playful and curious voice is what allows somebody to have that relief. [00:28:20] from your initial statement, which is you throwing yourself under the bus, which creates tension. You talk often, Corey, about tension being important in sales.
[00:28:30] Chris Beall: Well, the story that starts out with, I just ambushed you, has got tension built into it, but it has more tension if you amplify it verbally. I know I'm an interruption. [00:28:40] And then you change your voice to PlayfulCuriousCat. Can I at 27 seconds tell you why I called? If you really want to see this in action, hear this in action over and over, just go out to James Thornburg's LinkedIn profile and listen to one James Thornburg video after another.
[00:28:58] Chris Beall: He will often end one [00:29:00] that's really brutal. He has a recent one that has somebody at the very end just going off on him, and he has to bleep most of it out. But right before that, he does his standard, what would you say to that at the end, which is so is it okay if I end this with the joke? What do you call five coal collars at the bottom of the ocean?
[00:29:19] Chris Beall: And [00:29:20] we only ever hear his side. Pause. He says, a good start. And then he goes on, right? Well, he says it, and it's really funny, because James Thornburg has great comedic timing. And he's very, very dry. He's the Stephen Wright of sales, of cold calling, right? He is a funny guy who can talk to you also about [00:29:40] slaughtering pigs, and make that seem somewhat amusing, even though that's a serious business.
[00:29:44] Chris Beall: So he raises pigs. It turns out he doesn't, he doesn't go slaughter other people's pigs. He kind of sticks to his own, right? It says he and his pigs have an agreement. This is how it's going to end. I have an animal example, by the way. This one [00:30:00] back in the first days of COVID, literally the very first days, Helen, who was at Microsoft, was on a happy hour.
[00:30:09] Chris Beall: They used to do this. They called them like team happy hours and everybody was introducing their pets and I was somewhere else in the room where I couldn't be seen, but it's a [00:30:20] happy hour. So alcohol is going to be involved and I'm listening and I'm just wondering where she is going to go when they come to the pet thing because Helen doesn't have any pets and what she says, I didn't anticipate.
[00:30:34] Chris Beall: It was funny to me, but I managed to participate. by Pantomime. Pantomime can be pretty funny, [00:30:40] actually, if you are lucky enough to get a chance. She says, well, everybody's been showing their pets. I actually don't have, well, I actually do have an animal. He's 6 '1 goes 2' 15 and at that point I walk up with a bottle of Blanton's and pour her a shot.
[00:30:57] Chris Beall: She says he fetches. And, [00:31:00] and he pours. That's funny. So he fetches and he pours became a trope joke, actually, and has run ever since then. Covid's now, that part is 3 years behind us, right? And it's still pretty funny. Fetches and pours, and that became a trope joke. kind of how I was known right up until the point where she renamed me as [00:31:20] almost a thing.
[00:31:21] Chris Beall: So now I am almost a thing that fetches and pours, which makes no sense whatsoever, but is also somewhat funny. That kind of thing, it is noticing, right? What was I doing? I was noticing that this situation is evolving and I could have just not done anything, but I [00:31:40] prepped. And why did I do that? What am I selling?
[00:31:42] Chris Beall: I'm selling this. a group of people that she's now not going to go to the office with, Helen, their boss. It is cool. You can hang with her. You can bring your problems to her. You, it's a tiny contribution, [00:32:00] but it had that effect, right? By the way, what can you do to develop humor? I don't know if this works for most people, but some people when they go to stand up classes to learn standup comedy.
[00:32:11] Chris Beall: where you're being workshopped over and over and over and over and over, you're workshopping over and over in order to be able to respond to something. What [00:32:20] you're learning to do is to pay attention to what the other person says within the context and respond in a way that reframes so that the dialogue goes forward and it might get to somewhere funny.
[00:32:32] Chris Beall: And that ability to notice, respond with reframing, and take the conversation in a direction that has a [00:32:40] positive resolution. In their case, standing up is funny, that is a good thing to practice, whether you will learn to be funny by doing it, I can't say, but I can certainly say the greatest cold callers I've ever known are people who are stand up comedians.
[00:32:58] Richard Rabins: Just to add to [00:33:00] that, I had the fortune or misfortune of going to business school. And, so I get the newsletters and magazines from the school. And I noticed that they had profiled a student. [00:33:20] who had gone off and started a company and was doing really innovative, good stuff.
[00:33:26] Richard Rabins: And she was talking about her experience. This was at the Sloan School, the MIT Business School. She was talking about her experience and that the best course she [00:33:40] took was apparently they started a course where the professor, is a joint professor at the business school, but also teaches drama.
[00:33:53] Richard Rabins: She teaches theater drama. And so it's [00:34:00] You know, I mean, humor is, it's part of a performance. It's comedy part is a performance. Getting back to your question, which is a really practical, interesting question is, can you teach humor? I suspect you're not going to turn someone who innately doesn't have a [00:34:20] sense of humor into someone who does, but I think you can certainly, sand the edges significantly.
[00:34:27] Richard Rabins: And it's, it's possible you could actually. Make progress in that area.
[00:34:38] Corey Frank: Yeah, I would, I would think you [00:34:40] can with a lot of noticing practice. Like we talked about the synopsis that are broken. There's something that maybe our listeners can look at. There's a rapper by the name of, of, Harry Mack. And he was just, there's a video that you can see it on YouTube and, and TikTok and [00:35:00] Instagram.
[00:35:01] Corey Frank: And he went into the New York Yankees clubhouse and he asked them for seven random words, a raid. OpeningDay, Sandwich. It's just non sequitur type of, type of words all globbed together. And he proceeded [00:35:20] to put together an M & M 50 cent level quality reduced wrap in real time. And it was incredible to the point where You know, it's not maybe our type, type of music, but the artistry and the [00:35:40] craftsmanship that went into developing the ability to see forward.
[00:35:46] Corey Frank: Right? Writing a sonnet in real time. I have to see, okay, A, B, A, B, A, B, right? The iambic, pentameter, right? I have to see ahead two or three stanzas to make sure this is the right number. And I think [00:36:00] that people who are very good at it. Warren Claff, Chris, certainly you're a master at it. Other public speakers that we know with, with this persona, this confidence, they have this ability to almost have this matrix out of time process to see time in reverse.
[00:36:19] Corey Frank: [00:36:20] And, I, I don't know of any other way to do that, except to put yourself out there, like you were talking about, about a good standup workshop and get your butt kicked. I'm sure. As James Thornburg has documented hundreds, if not thousands, of [00:36:40] calls in his years working with ConnectAndSell and BridgePoint, is that the latter performances are much better than the earlier performances.
[00:36:52] Corey Frank: And I would bet, Richard, that you are going into a presentation today, or Chris, you going into a [00:37:00] present today, you have nothing to lose. And so you're more at ease, and you're apt, more apt to notice things that are different or unusual in the world, than if you're a newer sales rep. You're so focused on your deck, the presentation, the body language of your prospect.
[00:37:18] Corey Frank: What are your What are your [00:37:20] thoughts on, on on that? 
[00:37:23] Richard Rabins: I think that's a really interesting point that I keep thinking about, I keep coming back to the fact that you need to understand that the other person is a human being. And, And [00:37:40] anything that breaks the expectation so the expectation is you're going to come in there, give a PowerPoint, very formal.
[00:37:50] Richard Rabins: It's not, it's not like initially a fun experience. It's not unpleasant. It's not a fun experience. But if you can, walk [00:38:00] in. And let's say, depending where you are, you look out the window and you see some mountain, you say, wow I didn't realize you guys were this close. Can you ski or whatever?
[00:38:12] Richard Rabins: You immediately, you, you change the atmosphere of the room. [00:38:20] And so I do think that When you're a young, inexperienced person, you don't think you've got license to behave like a human being. You, you feel like you have to follow in a robotic fashion. And as soon as you can get rid of that sort of [00:38:40] inhibition, and, and just be more confident.
[00:38:42] Richard Rabins: And, and also I think I realize that Even if it's a really important meeting or call, that if it doesn't go well, the world doesn't end. It's not the end of the world. I mean, how many times, Malcolm Gladwell [00:39:00] the author's interesting guy. So, in one of his recent books, he talks about the concept of, you can't take yourself too seriously, that there's a, a young girl.
[00:39:15] Richard Rabins: Somewhere, she's in high school, she's really, really good at chemistry. She loves [00:39:20] chemistry and she's number one in her school in chemistry. And her dream is she wants to go to Caltech or MIT, to go and study chemistry. She applies, she doesn't get in. She thinks the world has just ended. And [00:39:40] but she ends up going to another school, very good school, chemistry, and does brilliantly.
[00:39:45] Richard Rabins: And the reality is all the kids who go to MIT or Caltech, they were always probably number one or number two in their class. maths and physics. They come to MIT and by [00:40:00] definition, 50 percent of them have to be in the bottom half of the class. There's no avoiding it. You can't, so all of a sudden she might've gotten to MIT and there was a 50 percent chance she would be in the bottom half of the class.
[00:40:16] Richard Rabins: That would do a number on her ego and her self [00:40:20] confidence. So what, what William Gladwell describes, she goes to this other school, and she's like the top student in that class, and her career blossoms because it didn't affect her, her self confidence. Firstly, the lesson there is, [00:40:40] you didn't get in, should I literally jump off the next building, or do I say, okay, Plan B, and move on, and On a more serious tone, I think they've improved this at MIT, but MIT used to have the highest suicide rate of any college [00:41:00] for exactly that reason.
[00:41:02] Richard Rabins: You get these 17, 18 year old kids, their whole sense of self is tied up in how brilliant they are. And now all of a sudden there's this wet slap across the face. And in fact, When I was there, there was a building called the Green Building, the [00:41:20] tallest building, and they had to make sure that the top of the building wasn't accessible, because it was a perfect way to jump off the building.
[00:41:31] Chris Beall: Wait a second. MIT engineers are capable of taking a car apart and reassembling it in your dorm room. Certainly they can get to an inaccessible part of [00:41:40] the 
[00:41:40] Richard Rabins: building. That's true. Well, they, they still did in fact have. the high suicide. So there was a lot of successful, but you know, it's, it just, yeah, I think the whole thing is, if you're relaxed, I think Chris alluded to, if you're relaxed, the people around you all relax.[00:42:00] 
[00:42:00] Richard Rabins: And that, that's a good thing. 
[00:42:03] Chris Beall: You gotta have the goods. I mean, this is one of the, one of the things you gotta have, right? You have to be a very serious, hardworking student of whatever it is that you're an expert in. I mean, in sales, the job is pretty simple. You're an expert who is on their [00:42:20] side.
[00:42:20] Chris Beall: That's it. It's hard to establish yourself as being on their side. Because people are naturally wary of somebody who says they're on their side. You can't just come out and say it. Hi, I'm an expert. I'm on your side. Now let me see if I can find a pen here so you can sign this deal, right? It's a, it [00:42:40] doesn't work like that.
[00:42:41] Chris Beall: You're helping somebody come by themselves to the conclusion that you're an expert and you're on their side. Well, being on their side, you don't have to be funny. It turns out. But you're showing a little bit of vulnerability by your willingness to try to be funny. That is, you're actually going out on a limb.
[00:42:58] Chris Beall: If you say something [00:43:00] that might be funny, you're exposing yourself to the criticism of why are you being funny? That's not a funny thing, right? So you're actually going a little ways toward being on their side by being willing to be funny, but you're also going a long ways to being an expert by having the confidence to be [00:43:20] funny, and those two things go together in a kind of mutually reinforcing sort of way.
[00:43:27] Chris Beall: But once you get that going, you better not go too far with either one. 
In our next episode, we wrap up our conversation with Richard Rabins and delve into the fascinating cultural differences in humor and how they can impact sales interactions. Join us as Chris and Corey share their dream retirement gigs and reveal a surprising fact about Richard's true passion that explains why he's such a master at connecting with others.

Corey Frank and Chris Beall share eye-opening insights from their recent marketing conference experience that every CSO and sales manager needs to hear. Chris uncovers a startling truth: nearly all MarTech tools are based on the misguided belief that you can't achieve success by simply calling prospects and having meaningful conversations. He challenges this notion head-on, emphasizing the immense power of genuine dialogue in building trust and gathering valuable information.
Our Market Dominance Guys also explore the critical difference between a mere phone call and a true phone conversation, revealing how these conversations can dramatically amplify your downstream marketing efforts. This episode is packed with actionable insights that will help you leverage the power of conversations to dominate your market and drive sales success. Listen to episode 216: Conversations, the Kryptonite of MarTech?
 
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Below:
 
Corey Frank (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys with Corey Frank and the Sage of Sales, the Hawking of Hawking and the profit of profit. Chris Beal. Welcome to Phoenix, Arizona and the campus Grand Canyon University for an onsite edition of the Market Dominance. Guys,
Chris Beall (00:17):
I'm telling you onsite, anybody, by the way, who has a chance to come to Grand Canyon University and visit this incredible campus and meet these incredible people and come in and actually hobnob with the Branch 49 team. I say, book your tickets now. Avoid that spring training thing because unless you really want to come and get some baseball too, because there's a lot of great baseball this time of year around here. There
Corey Frank (00:42):
It sure is. And what brings Ms. Ucci and Mr. Beal to Phoenix and the greater Phoenix area, Scottsdale, Arizona if you had a very interesting couple of days at a marketing conference. That's where I wanted to have a special edition of the market. Dom guys talk, not just about the conference and some of the learnings, but just kind of an above the line treatise, if you will, manifesto of what your rant for 2024 is about basic MarTech tools. So Chris, what did you learn at this conference where I'm taking deep
Chris Beall (01:19):
Breath? Well, I learned two things. So the conference is great. It was really well organized. It's in Phoenician, so it was beautiful. It's put on by Emerald, I think who puts it on, and they've got a bunch of conferences, so I highly recommend they do great conferences, go to their conferences, and I was invited to this one with Helen by our friend Scott Gordon and Lamb Alliance. They're of salutary data, so they kindly invited us. They were going and they had kind of a discount coupon so to speak, and so well, but marketing conference, do I really want any marketing, right? I mean, I love marketing, but marketing tools and technologies and services have always struck me as there's something about 'em that puts me off a little bit. But I decided, Hey, I want to go, Helen, you want to go? Yeah, let's go.
(02:08):
So we drove up a couple hour drive, and here's my impression twofold. One is actually about ConnectAndSell, which is surprising, and that is almost everybody, by which I mean about 35, 40% of the sales reps who were there pitching these marketing tools when they saw who I was and where I was from, as Helen said, you're actually a little bit of a thing. I said, yeah, well, it's kind of a thing that they would go to ConnectAndSell. I used that in and then they would cast it out in their mind when I was at this company 10 years ago, six years ago, nine years ago, whenever it was, and I love that all I had to do is push a button and talk to somebody and make this sort of a dance. Like, oh, I'd sit back in my chair and it was all smiles and all that kind of stuff.
(02:57):
And some really senior people were like, yeah, yeah, I really know. ConnectAndSell, blah, blah, blah. And one of them said, there's something wrong with you guys. Your technology is so powerful, you should be dominating the entire world, and I'm going dominant, market dominant must not be doing something right. So that was part of it, but that's a minor part. The major part was I went and talked to all the vendors. It was kind of a little bit of a quiet conference. It had some sessions. I didn't do any of the sessions except I went and listened to ZoomInfo and technology advice together, and I like Henry a lot. So it was great to go and sit and have lunch and get to talk to him for a minute afterwards. That was kind of enlightening. They're bringing in what they call second party data to go with first party data, which is the stuff you have third party data, which is the stuff ZoomInfo has.
(03:43):
But what about second party data, which is published data, but it's not the data, it's the fact that people who might be your potential buyers have come to consume it. So from publishers. So that was interesting, but the number one thing I walked away with was this, and I may be getting this wrong, but my impression is every single piece of marketing technology that's out there is predicated on one concept, and that is that you cannot get a conversation by just calling somebody and talking to them that you must go through some, what I call textual time-based gymnastics in order to either cajole, influence, trick, herd, whatever, somebody to come to your website and talk to you. And so I thought, how interesting, and I'm starting to look at this. I'm thinking, how many hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into the development of all this technology. That's based on what I believe is a fundamentally false premise.
(04:48):
As you know, Corey, we connect about 4.5 million conversations, live conversations with decision makers every year at ConnectAndSell. So I'm thinking this is just interesting to have a whole industry built around a notion that you can't talk to anybody because if you could talk to people, then you would use every one of those tools differently. You would use the advertising differently, the sequencers differently, the stuff that tells you who you should talk to differently. You'd actually use it to talk to them. You would send emails after a conversation. So that's kind of what struck me. Then the third thing that struck me was something mathematical. We always talk about the math of sales. We never talk about the math of marketing. And Helen told me something the other day, which she says, everybody says the same thing, and then they show you the same diagram and they believe this thing looks like it came off of stones that came down from the mountain.
(05:47):
It is etched in stone that only two to maybe 3% of your market is in the market now, and therefore you should do X, Y, or Z, which generally involves buying this vendor's technology or their services or whatever in order to try to move that needle in your favor. And I just thought, what an odd mathematical claim that is. It's just an odd mathematical claim. And here's my thoughts about it. Say the number's 2%. So somebody says, Hey, 2% of your market is in the market right now, so let's just go forward. Say in the market means for one quarter they're considering something for one quarter. So 2% in one quarter is 8%, four quarters, which is a year. And now that means that whoever says that believes truly that the replacement cycle for everybody's category of solution in B2B is about 12 and a half years because 12 and a half times eight is Yeah, but
Corey Frank (07:02):
That's true. Versus the great chat holmes who we know from market dominance is three.
Chris Beall (07:08):
It's been three years. I mean, does anybody really buy a serious solution for their business? Unless it's something really, I'll call it strangely sticky, you can't get away from, okay, Salesforce is a great example. Once you start with Salesforce, you're probably doomed. Although I see people try to get off of it all the time, I mean, it's like a rare rabbit in the Briar patch, you're not going to get away from it. Why? Because all the fields change all the time and nobody knows what anything means, but it's supposed to be your single source of truth. So it has the convenient feature that as a single source of truth, it never contains ascertainable truth and therefore you can't get rid of it because there's always a constituency for some flavor of the truth. We can't take that away. It might not die. But in general, solutions in B2B last on average about three years, they don't last for 12 years in the innovation economy. 12 years is 12 forever, right? So I don't know, what are your thoughts about that?
Corey Frank (08:05):
That's fascinating. So who attends these marketing conferences? Are they looking for the proverbial hope? Are they looking for the 40 yard path? Because when you extrapolate the math like that, and when you look at the wide variety of tool sets, that for the most part exists to get a couple of mere basis points. Not whole numbers of increases, it's just people are running out of time, sales reps, sales VPs, CROs, board members, investors. It just seems that we're on the T access here is running at a faster rate than the actual cash burn,
Chris Beall (08:46):
And that was a real theme when you talk to individual people who are attendees. So I'll make a sharp distinction. So this conference was great, had a lot of good vendors there. The vendors of course send their salespeople, so that made it really easy for me to go talk to 'em. By the way, I realized that we are being kind of dumb at connect, and so we should just go to every conference of anybody doing anything. They send their salespeople and I go talk to 'em, and those salespeople will go, wait, you mean I could push a button and talk to somebody? Except what I've really learned is they say, I used your product before. I love that thing. It's like, are you using it now? Well, no. That's one thing is the conference itself is divided into the marketing people and up to chief revenue officers who show up to learn, which is great. They're from the sessions and to check out the vendors and maybe to go to the happy hour. And there was a great dinner last night that was just a super dinner. The folks at postal put it on. By the way, the ceo co founder of postal actually said that postal is an okay name. I said, postal doesn't going postal. And he said, no, no, nobody under the edge of 40 even knows what going postal.
(09:57):
That was great. And then we got invited to dinner. So there's all this great stuff going on, and these are folks who are looking for something that they can kind of plug into their stack in order to really, in order to generate leads or pipeline. There was a lot of taco pipeline, pipeline, pipeline, pipeline, pipeline, pipeline, which is great. Really,
Corey Frank (10:15):
Really interesting.
Chris Beall (10:17):
A lot of taco pipelines, but nobody told me that they could measure a pipeline, not one. Nobody said, yes, we will help you produce a measurable pipeline. It was always, we will help you produce pipeline. It's like, well, but if it's not measurable, is it really a pipeline? It's that tree in the forest, right? It's like is non-measurable? Pipeline, pipeline? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But I thought that was a curiosity also.
Corey Frank (10:45):
Well, if you're measuring this pipeline or you're not measuring this pipeline, you just want more of it, right? Everybody wants more. What did you see at the conferences? You're roaming the halls here. Okay, great, thank you, Mr. Marketing automation tool or MarTech. He helped me get more pipeline. What can you do or what should I be doing to help close, nurture, qualify, move down the funnel here with this pipeline? Is that, oh, no, no, no, that's your problem. Now, that's a different conference altogether. We're only about X, right? Versus Y.
Chris Beall (11:20):
Yeah, you still got the sense, I still got the sense that it's us over here in marketing and them over there in sales, and if only them over in sales loved what us in marketing, were giving them appropriately, then we'd have alignment because we're working very hard to give them good stuff that's going to become pipeline, whatever that means, leads or whatever. And I think there's a great deal of sincerity and there's still a lot of frustration. There was also, by the way, a big murmur everywhere, including a question asked from the stage on one of the sessions that I did go to. Basically it says, Hey, raise your hand if for marketing. These are challenging times. And everybody's hand went up. And the reason that was given was because CFOs and investors are now scrutinizing marketing spend and marketing spend is challenging to justify. So there is a general feel of compression. We're being squeezed. And I don't mean the vendors, I mean the attendees we're being squeezed on budget. And the place where a lot of the squeeze comes across the boundary from sales to marketing is the SDR teams. So SDR teams shrunk
Corey Frank (12:38):
Really.
Chris Beall (12:39):
So down to a quarter or a half or whatever, all that's mostly happened because of the need for efficiency. So efficiency with growth is now the thing because venture capital and private equity and all other investment dollars are now competing, quite frankly, the returns they would get from investing in these, whatever they're investing in, they have to compete with the returns you can get from just higher interest rates. So now holding periods for these companies, if they're private equity held as longer, much longer, and what do you do for the extra two and a half years? You have to hold that company. Well, obviously this quarter is not the only thing that counts. So sales can't be there yet. So nurturing is a thing, but how do you get the budgetary support to nurture if nurturing delivers results in the future and the future is uncertain?
(13:33):
It's a very interesting time where the marketing people are looking for, I would call it less expensive stuff that works because their budgets are squeezed and something that's measurable. And I just thought it was interesting to say to people, Hey, it kind of strikes me if you could push a button and talk to somebody, which for those of you who know how this works, I mean, we enable 4.5 million conversations with decision makers a year. So there's pretty hard evidence that at least once you can push a button and talk to somebody because 4.5 million greater than one
Corey Frank (14:08):
A lot.
Chris Beall (14:09):
If you could do that, what else do you need? And actually, I think Helen went off a little bit on one of the folks about sequencers, which I thought was interesting. Somebody said, well, plus sequencer. Sequencer. She said, why would you use a sequencer? And you could have heard it rippled across the trade show floor.
Corey Frank (14:29):
What?
Chris Beall (14:29):
Somebody threw a stink grenade into the middle. Yeah,
Corey Frank (14:33):
Right? Right.
Chris Beall (14:34):
Why would you need a sequencer when you can just talk to people?
Corey Frank (14:37):
Yeah. Is there a natural aversion to that or is it just Occam's razor where it's too simple? Or they're going about a complex formula, methodology, and technology pathway. When you forget to dance with who you, which is what are my prospects? What are my people in my TAM saying, what are the people in my ICP? What do they want? What pain do I solve? And gosh, if I could just have a conversation, not send them a survey, not send them an email, but actually have a conversation that can open up these veins of trust that that's the key versus carpet bombing them with content, with white papers, with Gartner magic quadrants, and there's no dialogue there. That's monologue,
Chris Beall (15:20):
Right? This is kind of the awkwardness that I noticed in the entire thing. I'd asked this question, what if you could just talk to people? It's like, oh, well, you can't just tell Chris spiel that you can't talk to people. That one doesn't work. You can't go down that road. I'm sorry. No, you can't talk to people. Then it's like, well, but you'd still need, and then they'd tell me that you'd still need, and I tend to agree. I mean, my thing I was telling folks is, look, I think all the digital stuff is fantastic, but why not cheat by starting with the conversation? You can't get enough conversations for it to be worth cheating. And I said, well, isn't go to a SDR or BDR world if you had 40 conversations a day with targets, that's the equivalent of 40 targeted Google ads that caused somebody to go to your website. So that's pretty good right there. What would 40 targeted Google ads to a vice president or whatever you're trying to reach that actually caused them to go to your website, what would that cost? And they generally go like 30, 40 bucks each. Well, that's $1,600 a day without any meetings of value that you're getting from the advertising of just having conversations. Surely you're not paying your BDRs $1,600 a day. There's margin in there.
(16:39):
And the idea that, oh, talking to people could be a form of marketing that is, I think where the edge is. It's almost like, but talking to that's
Corey Frank (16:48):
Interesting
Chris Beall (16:49):
Light or something. If marketing can't include talking to people nowadays,
Corey Frank (16:55):
It's like bottled water. Hey, we're out of water, we're out of bottled water. We're going to die of thirst. Well, what about this little thing called the tap? I tell that my kids all the time. It's like, Hey, dad, the ro, and we're awa. It's Arizona. You got springs all over the place. So sometimes I suppose we're trying to overly complicate something where there's conversations all around, but what do you say to that rebuttal of you can't have enough conversations to make the math work? I think you and I would disagree on that, right? But is that where fundamentally the mindset is? Is that Chris? That's cute. You can talk with a couple people, but I'm talking about sending out mass emails and segmentation, and I do more before 7:00 AM than you do all day with a conversation.
Chris Beall (17:37):
Well, I would say that that level of confidence is not what I was seeing at the conference. It was more like this, which is really, that seems unlikely. And I sometimes have my phone with our current statistics just for the day. I could go look at it right now and probably find how many conversations did we connect yesterday? So we have this thing that's called daily dials, and  if I were to look at daily dials, here we go, daily dials, I can probably find some numbers. And this is one of the things that I tend to do is just look at the numbers every morning when I get up. Actually, I'm kind of lazy, so I lie in bed and I reach over for my phone, and here I am looking at the Daily Dials report, and it said that ConnectAndSell customers had 19,352 conversations yesterday.
(18:35):
Not over some vague period of time, but literally yesterday. And out of those, so say that they only set 1,679 meetings, and one of our customers sets lots of meetings. They set 983 with just one of their groups. Really, really kind of a good brand. So if I bring this up and I go, well see here, there's this group of folks and it's 242 companies, and they had 19,352 targeted conversations. It's like, yeah, that's them, but not everybody can afford that. And I'm thinking, well, wait. So I talked to somebody who does advertising, saying we wanted to send an ad or have an ad associated with all the online activity, the phone, particularly activity of everybody we talked to. So that'd be 19,432 people a day of everybody our customers talk to. Is that doable? Oh, yeah. And how would that work? Well, it cost you $20,000 a year minimum.
(19:32):
You have to sign up, you have to commit. It's like, well, why? Well, I mean, for $20,000, you'd have a lot of conversations. Yeah. Well, it's just like, it's almost like I'm trying to come up with a good analogy. I love your bottled water analogy. It's kind of like if you had the world of medicine divided into two kinds of doctors, those that had access to imaging like X-rays and MRIs and that kind of stuff, and those that just didn't, they just didn't. They're not allowed to see what's inside the body. They just kind of have to go with what might work. Here's something that might work, take this pill and then, oh, maybe you should take this pill. It feels like that. I feel like the guy who's going in and saying, oh, no, no, there's this box. See, you can put this thing in front of a person and see all their bones, or you can actually see what's going on in their soft tissue. You stick 'em in this big tube full of magnets and freak 'em out, make nasty noises, and then you can see what's the soft stuff and talk about something that is so not experienced. But the weird thing about the show, for me, almost everybody at the show itself, salespeople working for these MarTech companies, was excited to talk about their personal great experience using connect and sell to talk to
Corey Frank (20:51):
People. Yeah, I bet that's good. Last question here in this abbreviated episode, I'm curious, Chris, that when you look at folks are good friends on the MarTech side, and you look at two statistical models, same group, first group sent out emails, and you're going to get responses, you're going to get, do not calls, you're going to get, take me off your list. But ultimately I'm trying to gauge, is there gold, a divining rod in this team? And I compare that with the same team, but I call and I talk with people, and let's say that takes nth degree longer, shorter, it doesn't matter. But if I just have two, can I deduce the same conclusions of a market if by email versus buy the phone and buy conversations? What do you see?
Chris Beall (21:45):
I think there's two answers to this. One is, can you get enough information back from say your email campaign or your ad campaign or whatever to tell you what folks' needs actually are? And this a lot of AB testing. So I'd say with email, even as attenuated it is, you're going to get back in terms of the quantity, the response rates are way down. You're still going to get back. Kind of a careful AB test will tell you which messages are resonating. So that's fine. And there's a lot of technology out there that'll tell you who's looking right now, who's looking for solutions. So that's another thing that will tell you that kind of information. And by the way, whoever's looking, I think it's great. It's like, oh, bomb boas, six sense, blah, blah, blah. LinkedIn has got it, but it just takes you right into a red ocean. So if you're seeking competitors because you like competing with deals rather than you like exclusivity, if you prefer competing for deals, then pay attention to intent. Because intent to buy right now means everybody knows the intent is there. If it's worth knowing, all your competitors know it, therefore, you're all now competing for the same customer
Corey Frank (22:56):
At the same time
Chris Beall (22:58):
And you're doing it from whatever advantage or disadvantage you had coming in, but you can't really move the needle. So I think, by the way, there's incredible technology now available through ai. I talked to somebody about it last night, a company called Rev. I was talking to Fred Mongan and we're going to have him next week on market dominance. Guys. Incredible technology because it basically says, ah, intent is nice, but fit at the company level for your solution. Even if you don't know the timing, fit is greater than intent. We're going to talk about that next week. I think it's an awesome concept that does give you the 11 quarters that you're otherwise missing, and it solves a false negative problem that plagues everybody in B2B. They're calling on folks that are like the folks that they think they've worked with in the past, but they actually can't see all the patterns out there.
(23:54):
They don't see all the employment data, all the job histories of every single employee, of every company. These folks take every employee of every company in North America and make a fingerprint of the whole thing like Google does with websites. These guys do it with the employees of companies and everything they write about themselves, right? Yeah, that stuff is powerful. But the difference is if you talk to people, you don't just get the information, you actually get the trust relationships, and so now you're in a superior position because as you need more information, you have folks that you can rely on.
Corey Frank (24:29):
Yes. Bingo. Bingo. Yeah, I agree with that. And there's an atomic weight of having a conversation, as we've talked about many, many times on the false negatives as well as just on the positives. And it just seems that the vehicles of beyond take me off your list or unsubscribe. I'm not getting the richness of the signals on the false negatives on the digital side, but it's very interesting. Chris, we will learn more from Fred Mongan from Rev next week and the market dominance. Guys, any final thoughts as you depart probably your thousandth trade show in the career of trade shows here.
Chris Beall (25:06):
I love walking around those things. My thought is this, if you have marketing technology right now, look at it. Think about what it does, and ask yourself a simple question. What if this technology were used after a conversation rather than to get a conversation? That's the question I would ask, because you've made an investment. The tech is amazing, by the way. I think the MarTech stuff is really stunningly clever because it's trying to solve a really hard problem, which is how do you get people to love you when you can't talk to 'em? But what if you could talk to 'em? Could you get 'em to love you even more? So I don't think the MarTech industry is a waste in any sense. I just think it's interesting when you add the catalyst of a conversation to the beginning rather than have the conversation be the goal.
Corey Frank (25:54):
Yeah, as the great Jerry Hill says, right? The conversations amplify your downstream efforts. And if you start with a phone call first, I think the rate's about 14 x increase in the conversion rates from having a phone call first and then an email versus an email first and then a phone call. So lemme
Chris Beall (26:13):
Jump in and make a subtle distinction here. A phone call generally results in nothing. A phone conversation is a completely different beast.
Corey Frank (26:20):
Good point. Yes. See, even after 250 episodes, I still have the sensei, correct? Correct. My nuanced language matters here. Language matters here at the market matters,
Chris Beall (26:32):
Matters a lot.
Corey Frank (26:34):
Well, for the sensei of sales, this is Corey Frank and for Chris Beal. Until next time on the market, Dominus, guys.

Discovery calls are typically auditory-only affairs, but this episode of Market Dominance Guys reminds us that we are physical beings having a full-person experience. As Chris emphasizes, you don't converse with a brain in a jar, so why disconnect your body from the persuasive power of discovery? From micro-prancing, to miming props, to the hepatic value of gestures and pauses, your physical presence profoundly impacts connection, emphasis, and revelation. Body language not only expresses what pure words cannot, but it heightens the musicality and truth-emergence Chris describes as “letting the silence breathe.” So start envisioning your prospects, get your blood pumping, and bring your whole self into alignment with the call. It’s time to let your full-bodied discovery create breathing space for truth. What non-verbal techniques will you incorporate next call?
This is a continuation of last week's discussion with Henry Wojdyla and Shawn Sease. You can listen to the previous episode here.
EP206: Mastering the Art of Silence How Pauses Can Improve Discovery
Links from this episode:
Shawn Sease on LinkedInHenry Wojdyla on LinkedInCorey Frank on LinkedInChris Beall on LinkedIn
Branch49ConnectAndSell
 
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Below:
 
Corey Frank (00:00):
Chris, I know you and fetching Ms. Fanucci got back from a recent trip to the wine country in the south of France, and I think you told me a few stories about how certain wines need to breathe after they're open differently than others. And Henry, it sounds like what you're trying to teach us here is that there are certain questions that you can just let, is there a French term for that, Chris, that breathing? What's the wine? 
Chris Beall (00:24):
My French sucks, but it is ironic when you think about it, right? I think this actually is a pretty APTT analogy you've brought up. The wine is corked so that it almost doesn't breathe. It actually breathes a little bit. This why real corks are considered to be important in some kinds of wines because there's a little oxidation that needs to go on over a long period of time. There's a little breathing, but then you went a lot of breathing reasonably fast. I have no idea what that is called In French, my French got better after 21 tastings one morning before lunch, and then we climbed a mountain together that it was really quite fluent, I'm sure at that point. But I don't think I knew how to talk about this, but it is really something. I mean, this is true in music also. The silences are where the music has actually heard, so to speak, when you're learning to play. 
Chris Beall (01:13):
Henry is a musical person. He's been involved in this sort of stuff too. When you're learning to play as a little kid, the rest don't mean nothing to you. And when somebody's a virtuoso, the rests are everything. It's the timing of the silence and the precision of the silence that allows the listener to become part of the music. And that's what you're really looking for in discovery is you want the other person to become a producer of the music of these truths that are coming out and you're working together on them as shunts. I love that. We're going to do this together. We're not going to do it. I think that's not so much of a command, like I'm setting up a set of conditions. Either you do this with me or we're not going to do it. It's a statement of fact. Either we're going to do it together or we're not going to do it, as in we're not really going to get it done. 
Chris Beall (02:02):
We're just going to kind of sound like we're getting it done or act like we're getting it done. And getting to the bottom of stuff is quite difficult with folks. It takes pregnant pauses. I mean, pregnant pauses give birth at some point, and sometimes they give birth to stuff that's pretty magnificent to something new and it's the hardest thing we love to fill in. You imagine a podcast, say we ran the podcast like this, Corey, you ask a question. We all just sit here and look at the audience for, I don't know, 30 or 40 seconds. 
Corey Frank (02:34):
Yeah, yeah. Take off the glasses once in a while, right? We've talked about that here at branches is the world of hepatic and NLP, and I know we have to cut you loose here in a minute, Henry, for a seven or eight, nine or figure deal here that you're pursuing. But can you use those verbal disfluencies, the hepatic, the pregnant pauses to take off your glasses and lean forward as if we were together where there's a figurative me reaching out just slightly touching your knee as I take off my glasses and leaning forward a good doctor would like a good therapist would, and tell you what I think. And with the deep baritone with the late-night FM DJ voice that our friend Chris Vos talks about, there's a musicality of that glorious bastards, right? One of my favorite scenes is towards the end when they're trying to impersonate, they're an Italian film crew. 
Corey Frank (03:25):
We all remember it. Christophe Waltz knows that they're not Italian, but he has them introduce themselves name by name, and he says, what's your name? And is his Antonio Margarita or whatever his name is? Well, say it again. Let the music flow. He says, let the music of your name flow. And I just thought that was incredible that there's certain words that you can enunciate and Henry's got a great tone. I could listen to Henry read the phone book Vincent Price, and you have Christopher Lee and there's one that will post to this that I tagged Yuan, a LinkedIn post from a gentleman who I thought had, what an incredible novel way to introduce himself. His name is Andrea Kliman. Chris, I don't know if you saw that. Ronan a good friend, Ronan Ssar, but his intro, the gentleman, and you remember this call Shawn. It was all pushed forward by his tone. 
Corey Frank (04:19):
It was very novel, it was very serendipitous and it wreaked of authenticity because of that and the trust he had me, and I've never heard an intro like this before. We'll link it to this podcast here so people can hear of it. Then I did while you were talking, Henry and Chris, I think my French sucks too, but the appropriate term is eon, I guess to aeration. And so I think we said Eon de latia. So the Wtia method is to ask a question and to just let it breathe and let it aate. Let ruminate. 
Henry Wojdyla (04:56):
You're making it sound far more eloquent than it probably really is since you've mentioned a few names. Someone for me is a more recent discovery. I'm sure you're been aware of him for some time. And Corey, he's in your neck of the woods there in Scottsdale that really I think has some good thinking and training around this is Jeremy Minor. I'm assuming you're familiar with Jeremy. Don't know what your thoughts are there. Not really tremendously get into it, but I've just found some of his thinking around it. Helpful. At least for me. 
Corey Frank (05:20):
He uses hepatic a lot where he'll use the props, right? Henry of take it off his sunglasses and emphasizing, and we have Chris and Shawn Miller. We have a lot of standup desks and I'm Sicilian, so I have to talk with my hands and I have to have a prop in my hands at all times. And so I think maybe the last thought, Chris and Shawn and Henry for you, certainly as you're dealing with high stakes deals is things and props and pacing mechanisms. You do the micro prancing, Chris, which I'm sure keeps you on pace for your phone calls, but maybe we'll put a bow in it and go around the horn between Henry and Chris and Shawn here on your go-to techniques. If I'm a new sales rep and I don't employ just fluencies or tonality or I'm not aware of my tonality or I don't use props or micro, give me your one go-to that I should have in my arsenal as a new sales rep when I'm doing discovery. So Shawn, let's start with you. 
Shawn Sease (06:12):
I got here. I'm afraid if I say something, I'm going to steal Chris's thunder because I've been mentoring under him for so long that I might say something that I learned from him. 
Chris Beall (06:21):
Don't worry, Shawn, I ain't going to run out of thunder anytime soon. 
Shawn Sease (06:24):
Yeah, yeah, go ahead Chris. 
Chris Beall (06:28):
Well, I was on somebody else's podcast yesterday and we're talking about language thinking and speaking. What happens when we speak and we tend to be very abstract about these concepts. We act as though we might be chat GPT, and it's just one word after another coming out. We add the disfluencies, we add the tonality, we start to sing, and we think that we're doing that with our brain and maybe some little part of our voice box or something like that. I truly believe that we think with our whole body and we've never walked into a room none of us have, and there's a brain and a jar and we have a conversation with it, right? The person is a whole person. When I'm micro prancing, I'm a whole person in motion. I realize not everybody in our vast audience will know what micro prancing is. Just so you know. It's a technique I accidentally developed to train for a very difficult marathon, the Mount Lemon Marathon in Tucson in a room in India, that in which I had 10 meters in which to train, and I'm getting ready to run 23 miles uphill, one mile flat, one mile super uphill, one mile, very down. So that's what micro prancing is. For those of you who want to learn more about it, there is no place you can go to learn about micro prancing. It just is what it is. Well, 
Corey Frank (07:47):
Actually, sorry, Chris. There is a place you can go see the old Monty Python Ministry of silly walks. I think that's probably the closest that people will get to your microprancing. But go ahead. 
Chris Beall (07:57):
Yeah, that was Michael Prancing too, which is a special thing. But to me it's like when you're bringing your whole person to be helpful to somebody else, you are a whole person. You're actually a physical person. You're not just a bunch of words streaming out. You're not a recording of something. It's not a trick. You're there to be authentic. You have to also be in your physical self, and it's fun to play with people like that. I do it on calls all the time. I'll do a thing where I do this. It's like we're talking about cold calling us. I hold up the flight school shirts. I see flight school, right? Because it's real. And that's how we think about others too. We think about what we're hearing from other people with their bodies also, and that's why you have to be highly respectful of the late great Stephen Hawkin. 
Chris Beall (08:47):
Can you imagine having that little control of your body and being able to think and express thoughts that big? It's one of the most amazing bridging of a gap that's fundamental that we take for granted. However, he had a wonderful physical struggle, which was actually physically communicating. So without that, the game can't be played at all, so to speak. So anyway, my advice to folks about this is you and the other person are both real people. Zoom didn't make us into anything else. We're still physical bodies and references to that. My story about my first conversation with Helen of substance where I said, use the word blood. There are words that invoke physical reactions in us or evoke them that allow us to get closer to the truth with each other, that break down some barriers that offer opportunities for silence that's productive, and it's smart to learn how to use those words fluently so we can use them fluently when appropriate. You cannot be disfluent on any words that you can't emit fluently. It just doesn't work. It just doesn't. Your body has to be capable of executing the language in a way that works for the other person all the way through if you want to execute the language in a way that works for them even better. 
Corey Frank (10:09):
It's not mere words that matter. It's not just belief. As we've talked about right now, you have the triumvirate of your words, your belief and your body, it sounds like. That's great, Henry, thoughts on that? 
Henry Wojdyla (10:21):
My answer is going to be a little bit different. In fact, in some ways it's not necessarily contradictory, but I think you use the term hepatic. Is that correct, Cory? Just to show how little I know about this. 
Corey Frank (10:30):
Yes, it's part of this. When your aunt grabs your cheek, when people touch your elbow, they touch your knee just naturally at the base of conversation. 
Henry Wojdyla (10:37):
I think when it comes in the context of discovery call, and if I'm really getting into a deep, I almost might go to the other direction, meaning I will often close my eyes, sometimes I'll even rest my head on my hands, whatever. Again, these are telephone-based, so I'm not mostly on a Zoom. I'd probably conduct a little bit differently if I was in that format, but somewhat like I was saying, shut up to allow them to speak. I'm also shutting up in blocking out all of their sensory perceptions. So I'm really truly listening, very simple, not necessarily the most elegant answer, but it's the truth, and I'm finding that it's actually really helping. Nothing else that's going on through my mind. I'm not looking at all the multiple screens that are in front of me, any distractions. It is 1000% focus on that prospect. The words that are coming out of the mouth, the what they're saying, the way they're saying it, what they might not be saying. It allows me to really, really just drill down, distill things, and I kind of get that mental image of the confessional that Chris and you talk about. So that's probably the mental imagery that's going on, but that's how I try to physically manifest it. 
Corey Frank (11:38):
Yeah, I can see that. I'm sure, Shawn, when you close your eyes, you still see and feel and hear the drill instructor from when you were 17 years old. But what other advice would you have for somebody jumping onto a discovery call in this world? What's the one technique you would give to them as we round out this version of the market Dominus, guys, 
Shawn Sease (11:58):
Earlier today, I shared another phrase with you that I believe, I think it's universal truth and it's kind of self-evident that the truth is curative, right? The truth is curative. And I mean, if we're going to actually be able to share secrets with each other and have real confessional-type conversations that it has to be genuine. And then you bring up the concept of how to listen, right? How do you listen? And just one technique that I have found, I picked it up along the way from other psychologists people before me again, is to say things back to people, to say back to somebody what they said to you, right? It requires that you listen. And I think another important add-on to that is to say it back to them. If you can have the acumen and experience and so on, to say it back to them in a way that maybe fortifies or even improves what they said. 
Shawn Sease (12:41):
And from a discovery and sales perspective, if you want to build, truly build trust, say it back to, even if you disagree, if it doesn't fit with where you need them to go, which would be persuasion and convincing and things like that, which I am just not a fan of, I'd rather have a conversation with somebody, say it back to them and they say, you know what? That's interesting. Or say it back to them in a way that fortifies their argument, especially if you disagree. And then when you hand that baton back to 'em, my experience and what I've learned from trying it is that they'll continue to talk or they'll say, that's right, the gvo thing. Right? Negotiation. That's right. Great. Okay. Next, let's move on to the next thing. So that was a lot in there, authenticity, listening. The truth is curative all outside of the scope of very popular things like persuasion and bending people to your will and being crafty and things like that. It's just simply not my way. I prefer to go that other route that is genuine and authentic, and those are some of the tools I use to get there. 
Corey Frank (13:34):
Beautiful, beautiful. I love that. Especially that word you do it effortlessly is certain words that resonates in the language for me. And I have a list of 'em, but the one that you just mentioned, you said fortify. That's a very underutilized word, wouldn't you say? Think Chris and Henry. That's a good word to use earlier. Chris Henry, I think you and I peaked up when Chris used the word longitudinal qualities. Things have longitudinal clients. It's that's a good one. But the last question, lightning quick here, Henry. And I know you've been very gracious with your time, but I'm curious, do you screenplay and script out your discovery calls? Do you have the first X amount of questions? Do you have a goal in mind? You've done this so many times, the hundreds of millions of dollars in worth of properties and assets that you've sold and helped a broker through. But for your discovery calls in this new era over the last few years or so, do you screenplay them or script them out, or how do you structure them to make sure that they're replicable? 
Henry Wojdyla (14:32):
I do have the euphemistic playbook I talk about, which is literal. I've got the copyright here in my desk in front of me. The discovery call is structured and scripted and thought through. I will tell you I'm using it less and less, and it's partly for the reasons of the topics that we're discussing here. Some of it's perhaps just having gotten the reps now so many times that some of it's just getting ingrained. But I'm finding that if I'm truly discovering and truly letting the prospect, more importantly, it becomes less and less reliant upon scripts. There's still a basic framework in place. Obviously, you have to have a certain objective, and we have a little bit of benefit perhaps because we're in a very narrow niche. It's very well defined. We know who we're speaking with. There's not really much in the way of qualification that needs to go on. 
Henry Wojdyla (15:16):
They're definitionally qualified if they're in our tam. So that's a separate topic. So there's certain freight that doesn't need to be carried in our particular discovery context that might be in others. So with all those caveats in place, I'm finding that I am moving further away from a kind of regimented discovery call. If I had to guess, just take the long view here, I'm going to probably cycle back. But when I get back to the more structured approach, it'll be a re-engineered, reconstituted approach that's going to be much more heavily reliant upon tonality and sub-concepts we've been discussing here. 
Corey Frank (15:48):
I get it. I am more of an advocate myself, Chris, and I'll give you the last word as we round up this episode on screenplay Out, every pause and in the Discovery, the Cohen Brothers from Big Lebowski. Every “dude” was screenplay, was scripted, was written in there on purpose. David Fincher from, I think, Fight Club. Every nuance is written in there. And there are certain directors that are just adamant that what they write, they want the actor a pause, an “er” alike to be in there. And I find that helps replicate because we have a larger team, Henry, obviously with your team there as a contributor with your practice. But we're trying to scale it up, and I'm trying to look for the factors that would diminish the opportunity in that discovery call. And so every nuance or word matters, but Chris, give the last word to you on this episode of discovery and tonality in the world of discovery calls. 
Chris Beall (16:50):
Well, I love the point you just made. I mean, we practice as professionals at anything so that we can improvise based on what's happening without the practice. We have no foundation for improvising, without being willing to improvise. We can't adapt to reality. So reality, that's where the truth, the truth is out there somewhere and everybody has a plan, as they say, until X, Y, or Z happens. But you better practice your plan, so to speak, so that your speech can be ballistic, so to speak, right? It's like you can't throw a ball or you can't do anything that's athletic, a little tiny piece at a time. You've got to get to the point where you can do it smoothly. And then having learned that you can do it in reality, where there's going to be things that interrupt the smoothness, you can riff safely 
Corey Frank (17:41):
For sure, or right. When in doubt, just let it aerate. Just let it breathe. 
Henry Wojdyla (17:46):
Let it simmer. Let it simmer. 
Corey Frank (17:48):
That's beautiful. Well, excellent. Well, thank you gentlemen. Thank you, Henry, for jumping on this episode of Market Thomas. Guys and Shawn, thank you for having, it was a pleasure, the professor, professor of Prospecting, stop on by the studio. 
Henry Wojdyla (18:03):
I'm glad we could. So it's good to see everybody, Shawn and Snake to make your acquaintance been a fan of yours on LinkedIn for a while, so it's nice to thank you very much. Yeah, absolutely. 
Corey Frank (18:12):
That's beautiful, 
Chris Beall (18:12):
Guys. That was really cool. I love it 
Corey Frank (18:16):
So far. Chris Beal from Connected Cell. This is Corey Frank. Until next time.
 

What's the secret sauce to nailing discovery calls? Is it your intricate questioning strategy? Your ability to build quick rapport? We're exploring an underappreciated element today - the power of tonality. 
From a Marine drill sergeant's verbal shock and awe to real estate power players commanding eight-figure deals, our esteemed guests get vocal about vocal dynamics. 
Join Chris, Corey, and their guests, Henry Wojdyla and Shawn Sease as they battle assumptions, pregnant pauses, and the occasional restraining order. You'll hear straight from the horse's mouth why tonality eclipses terminology and how losing your cool in discovery can cost you deals. If your team overlooks today's vocal victory tips, you'll condemn them to tone-deaf discovery call defeats. Listen to this episode: Mastering the Art of Silence: How Pauses Can Improve Discovery
Links from this episode:
Shawn Sease on LinkedInHenry Wojdyla on LinkedInCorey Frank on LinkedInChris Beall on LinkedIn
Branch49ConnectAndSell
 
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Below:
 
Corey Frank (01:14):
Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys, with Corey Frank, and of course, always at my virtual side is Chris Beall, the stage of sales, the prophet of profit and the hawking of caulking. But we also have two other extra special guests. We happen to be graced in our in-house home Phoenix GCU-based studios with the professor of prospecting, Shawn Sease himself. Good afternoon, Shawn.
Shawn Sease (01:42):
Good afternoon. Thanks for having me.
Corey Frank (01:43):
And we have one of our eight registered listeners, Chris, of our podcast, the most gracious and esteemed Henry Wojdyla from RealSource. Henry, it's great to have you on the podcast, back on the podcast. I think you're one of our earlier guests, I believe so, Chris. So good to have you, gentlemen. We have a first here at Market Dominance Guys. We actually have four talking heads, three brains amongst four talking heads, so we'll see what we can do here.
(02:12):
What we wanted to talk about is something we were talking about before we jumped on air. And Chris, I want to have you have the opportunity to tee up Henry, because I thought it was a compelling topic about tonality, but not just in cold calls, which we often talk about the surfboard and the surfer. But Henry brought up a very compelling point. Shawn, I'd like to get your take on this too, about the importance of tonality and when and how you use it in discovery calls. Chris, so I'll leave it to you to tee up our good friend Henry here and let's dive into this topic.
Chris Beall (02:42):
Sure. I mean, the conversation we were just having was about how much of the, well, we were talking a little bit about Branch 49 and how much of the waterfront makes sense to cover or the funnel or whatever. The big question is always, where's the bottleneck? We always talk about theory of constraints on this show, and we also know if you ever address the bottleneck, you got to stand back. You have to stand back when you've done something about the constraint and see if it moves and if so, where it moves because it's actually not easy to predict. It could move up or it could move down, so to speak, in the processes. Doesn't move sideways too often.
(03:16):
And Henry was talking about how when we were just chatting out there, not where you're sitting, not where he's sitting or he's sitting or I'm sitting, but where somebody else's or you're sitting, Corey. He was talking about how the tonality and disfluency is also the whole tonality package I call it, has actually become as important or more important to him as he's evolved in the way that he does discovery. And what I thought was so cool about what he hit on is we call it the confessional. And the question is, well, what are you confessing to? And while you're doing that confessing, are you learning? Are you getting self-knowledge, knowledge of your situation as a result that's facilitated by the conversation? And I think that was a point that Henry was making. So at that, Henry, what was the point you were making? Because frankly, I was just eating tacos and listening in.
Henry Wojdyla (04:09):
Well, it was probably the ride-on piece to the opening comment I made about some recent conversations, Chris, you and I have had, and I'll keep it brief to get back to your question. But the fact that the top of funnel has been improved so much by the good thinking here from Market Dominance Guys, the facilitation from ConnectAndSell, it gets back to the wood-turning analogy that you had so wisely laid out probably at least a couple of years ago on this podcast. But the idea that I can get enough reps in that I'm beginning to pattern match and seeing ghosts in the machine, so to speak, as it relates to discovery. And a lot of what I've been discovering about my own discovery process has been effectively getting out of the way. And a lot of getting out of the way is facilitating the prospect to do more and more self-discovery.
(04:54):
I will tell you that I'm not quite, I don't have a fully baked theory on this yet or the framework has not been completely fleshed out. So this is definitely a work in progress and I'd say some of my insights are only really becoming to manifest in the last couple of months, but tonality has been a huge piece of that. So getting back more to the core of what Corey and you are asking me. The tonality piece, not just open-ended questions, but the framing of those questions in a way that elicits, I think hopefully a sign of genuine concern and a search for meaning from the prospect so that they can effectively self-discover by being more open, not necessarily just from a trust perspective, but I think almost more open in their own thinking, what they are willing to put out there. I know I'm speaking in very broad strokes, but nonetheless, it's like I said, it's a work in progress, but I'm realizing just how crucial tonality is in the discovery call.
(05:50):
I was thinking it was primarily in the domain of a cold call. It very much is too. But I've been slowly peeling back the layers of my own self-limiting beliefs on this topic. And in fact, Corey, as I think I mentioned to you a little bit before, I was frankly a bit skeptical when I was an early listener of just the importance of phrasing, tonality, voice. I thought, "Oh, that's just huckster salesmanship type stuff," and I'm a convert. So I've come a long way in that and I'm just realizing that not only is it important, but it's important across a broader range of the sales cycle.
Corey Frank (06:26):
Well, it still may be huckster sales-type stuff, but it works. It's the laws of gravity. I may not believe in gravity, but gravity believes in me. Shawn, from your perspective, especially being a DISC connoisseur, what do you say to what Henry is confessing to us here about tonality and with the four different types of personalities perhaps are some personalities more susceptible, more open to that verbal disfluency, the ahs and the ums and generating that authenticity where it doesn't sound like a TED Talk, it doesn't sound like the 150th time I've done this?
Shawn Sease (07:06):
I think that the research on the personality stuff, especially the DISC, the four different personality types, that data is pretty conclusive that it does matter how you speak to people. But it's probably not, it's one of many, many different data points. But to answer your question directly, to get in the weeds a little bit, the I, the influence type in DISC are the kind of people that will eat up a whole entire discovery call talking about their fishing trip if you forget to get them on task. And in contrast, example to that is if you're talking to somebody calculative like a CFO, an engineer or something like that, you may want to dispense with pleasantries. But on the other hand, I think it's still very effective to just be mindful of the words that we use, like genuine transparency or being transparent, being genuine, being authentic, empathetic, things like this.
(07:57):
If you're not being true to those definitions, I mean, in even a maybe religious way or something like that, if it's not true, then it comes across as disingenuous and that just reeks. It reeks of sales and commerce and things like this. And so yeah, there's no doubt about it, tone, pace, pitch, all very important. And if you're listening pretty well, people will tell you everything and people are just dying to tell you their stories. And that's what I always find weird about people who have trouble with discovery. And I would trace it right back to your inability to not only create a rapport with somebody so that you have a longstanding rapport, but at the very moment that you start a conversation that you can enter a rapport.
(08:36):
And let me give you an example. Frequently, I send Chris weird messages maybe at 8:00 or 9:00 or 10:00 at night or something like this when I have an idea. And Chris will come back and tell me, "Hey, it's a bad time. I'm walking. I'm getting on a plane to go to Europe," or Australia or something like this. So Chris and I have a rapport, but sometimes when I call him up, it's the wrong time and we have an inability to begin a rapport, to have a conversation about what I wanted to talk to you. Timing's not right. And just pay attention to what someone's telling you and they'll tell you everything you need to know.
Corey Frank (09:04):
Do you find, that's an excellent point. It begets the question, Henry and Chris, on to partition a discovery call. We could break this down like our friend Oren Klaff does when he does a pitch. Are there certain aspects, Henry and Chris, when you're conducting the discovery call that you've found or that you discovered require more sensitivity to tonality, verbal disfluencies than other portions of the call? For instance, you're talking about pricing, you're talking about pain, or when you're talking about building the rapport upfront, anything that you've observed or anything that you discovered in that area?
Henry Wojdyla (09:44):
I would say if I had to frame it, if there's a typical structural pattern to my discovery calls, it's probably, I'll call it step two. The first step to some degree is a little bit of a slight recalibration of, okay, why are we here? Why are we assembled today? I will provide a little bit of additional contextual reminder of why we had reached out because it's not uncommon that our discovery calls, I mean, I'm speaking for the most part to fairly senior-level executives. So at the earliest, we are usually two weeks beyond when that discovery call was scheduled. They have full calendars, they're busy. So there's just a little bit of the first phase of a bit of reminder, some context, here's what we do, here's where the Venn diagram overlaps. Hopefully, that process is a little bit of a trust that's being reestablished or built upon even further.
(10:28):
Again, the tonality can be part of that. But I would say as parts of really the discovery is then trying to transition out of that because it's not really a commercial about us when I open, it's just a contextual framework. Then it's about getting into them what they're doing, what's on their, I guess their windscreen? What are they looking at or through that is really directing where they're vectoring as a company, as a firm. In our world where we're dealing with a subset of commercial real estate assets, so there's a lot of things that tie into not only internal factors, but external factors. And I think it's getting a lay of the land. And then they contextualize their piece. Now we've gone from serving up from our side a contextual reason why we're here today. Then we get phase two where they have responded back somewhat contextualizing where they fit in the marketplace, and then we start diving into the here and the now.
(11:21):
And I think that's where, we would call it step three, where I'm beginning to get this, getting back to the piece we're talking about, which is getting them to dial into the moment. Where does their company fit into the framework of the current market, the current dynamics? How are they seeing on a go forward basis? And getting them to start having thoughtful, self-reflective conversation. That's the piece that I was referring to earlier. So that's a very long-winded answer to your question. I would say it's that third step, if you will. And again, like I did mention a moment ago, this is still a work in progress for me, so that my thinking is not as clarified as I'd like it to be on this. But I can just tell you this is again, this is some of the pattern matching that I'm starting to see unfold here over the last few months.
(12:08):
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Corey Frank (12:55):
And Chris, you're a big believer in our friend Chris Voss and a lot of the mirroring techniques that he used. And I could see how mirroring could be incredibly effective in certain aspects of discovery.
Chris Beall (13:07):
Yeah, I mean, I divide these conversations into two big domains. One is the domain of the factual, where you're relatively safe talking about things that are factual. Some might be more sensitive than others. Facts, if somebody were to get in a discovery call with me and two minutes into the call they say, "So Chris, what's connectandsell? What's your current run rate revenue? What are your gross margins? And who on your team are you most concerned about that you think you might have to do something about?" And they do that two minutes in, it's like, I can go on there. Whereas in a second call or somewhere, sometime we really have a reason to talk about those facts, they won't have to be as skilled and just waiting helps. That's what Shawn was talking about. Just sometimes you just got to wait.
(14:00):
A disfluency is simply a form of waiting. You're waiting and letting that moment be filled in with what's in their mind. It's like when I teach really young people to play the piano, I always make this point, which is you only need to provide the structure, the sound, they'll fill in the rest in their head. The music happens over there, not out here, and not in our hands. It happens inside of them. But then there's another whole range of things that we do end up sometimes hitting on, which are really sensitive issues, like political issues internally, or concerns that this person might have about their own job, or maybe they're not going to be at that company anymore. And if they would tell you that, that'd be great. Where I think we get hung up there, and where I think tonality, disfluencies, mirroring, all of these techniques that... I never really think of them much as techniques, but all of these kinds of things you could find yourself doing if you were any good at this stuff.
(14:58):
Where they're just super important is where it's highly likely there are incorrect assumptions being held by you and by the other party. And it's really hard to get underneath incorrect assumptions because in order to correct one, you have to give up something that you believe. You have to or they have to. People don't like to give up anything. We all know that old thing, if I take 50 bucks from you, you'll fight me until the end of time. If I offer you 50 bucks, you'll ignore me and go on with your cat videos. It is a very tricky business to get beyond assumptions.
(15:34):
I had one just the other day that was interesting. I was conducting a discovery call with a very senior person at a huge insurance company. He had a very specific problem that he had been advised we could help with. I jumped to the wrong conclusion about the nature of the potential solution, and then seven minutes later, thank goodness, he said, "No, no, you don't get it. What we want to do is X." Thank goodness he felt okay correcting my assumption, which was incorrect. But that's where had I been a little less sure of myself, I wouldn't have gone as far down that road and we wouldn't have wasted seven minutes. So it's like that TED Talk thing, talking as though you know what you're talking about causes other people to feel like they should either oppose you or shut up.
Corey Frank (16:25):
Right. Well, I think, Shawn, certainly your career, just like you have Mr. Rice on board at ConnectAndSell who's a former Marine, Shawn, the importance of tone, if you're a drill instructor, were you a Hollywood Marine or are you a Parris Island Marine? I never think we uncovered that yet.
Shawn Sease (16:43):
I was outside of the runway in San Diego. California, US Marine Corps, Recruit Depot in San Diego.
Corey Frank (16:51):
Okay. So you talk about the first couple of days establishing tone, Chris, certainly, I don't imagine verbal disfluencies, Henry, worked too well with a drill instructor trying to influence 17, 18-year-olds getting off the bus, putting their feet on the yellow footprints. So how did tone influence you from a perspective of raising the stakes about what you need to know about what you're going to go through for the next 13?
Shawn Sease (17:17):
Yeah, tone down, I can't even, it's frightening. I mean, it's actually frightening for an 18-year-old to be at bootcamp. It's frightening. Let me tell you this. Tonality is everything and it is just shock the fear into you. It's basically a reset. You just forget everything that you learned somewhere else because when you walk out of here, you're going to have a whole new plan for how you go about doing things. All the way from lining up your belt to shaving, to lining up your, just being completely squared away. But I'll tell you a funny story because you imagine having a name, a last name like Sease on the firing line when you're going to learn to fire your rifle. And I was accused of being so goddamn stupid that I'd start firing when they said, "Cease fire." So yeah, right now I think about it right now, I start shrinking because I remember, "I get it, man. I am not going to fire my rifle. I know what cease means. I get it." But it's just relentless.
(18:14):
So I know what cease fire means and I know that my trigger should, I mean, this is 30 years ago. I could still hear it like it was yesterday. Trigger finger off the trigger unless firing, it's in me. It's embedded in me. So yeah, tonality can be even more important in the Marine Corps training folks where you're actually trying to basically shock someone and strip them of everything that they've learned so far so that you could be created in the Marine Corps image, like a God mold kind of thing.
(18:43):
But one thing I wanted to touch on that popped up in my mind when it comes to discovery, and earlier we were talking, I shared with you this phrase that I've been using recently, which is I'm seeing a lot of teams gaining short-term tactical wins, specialization, other tools, things like this. Quick wins, dopamine hits at the expense of long-term strategic failures. So you get these short-term wins by automations, chat, all these, whatever, you'll make it work. If it's ChatGPT, you're going to go do that and go, "Wow, look what I made?" Short-term win, tactical win, long-term strategic failure. And one of the things that I think about when it comes to discovery is that, and again, it's just another real simple phrase is that we either do it together or we don't do it at all. In other words, in discovery for me is that I also have some things that I need to know about you, not like the pains and the problems and how we can help you and things like that.
(19:35):
But how does your company actually buy something? When was the last time you bought something? Who else do I need to get involved with this? It's the two-way street to build a mutual going forward, and it always seems like it ends up being more of a battle, like a sparring match or something like that. Like I am trying to get these answers, questions from you. Can I convince you that we solve a pain or something like that? And we too quickly get away from that concept of we either do this together or, that's me saying that. We either do this together or we don't do it at all. Which means that in the beginning, let's set some expectations. Here's some of the things I'm after. What are you after? Hey, if I give you a call, will you call me back? All these little tiny things that make all the difference in building relationship with someone and then keeping to your word and then coming back and telling people.
(20:22):
Let me share with you something at the end of a cold call where we set a meeting. At the very end of it, takes about five or six seconds, "Hey Corey, any reason why you wouldn't make it to this meeting?" "No it's on my calendar. I'm good to go. We're good to go. Shawn, I appreciate that." "Let's just say this, in the off chance that you don't make it, can you and I agree that we'll work to reschedule it right away? That way you won't have to get a restraining order because I'm going to follow up with you." You go, "Yeah, you bet." But I'm going to use that again. I'm going to use that in my language later on when you don't show up or something does happen because, and I'm going to be true to my word and I'm going to remind you, "Hey, we agreed that we'd reschedule this thing. Let's get it done." And setting this expectation around, let's do this together or not at all.
(21:02):
Or, yeah, I shared with you earlier today, one more thought on my calendar and on my about section in LinkedIn, [inaudible 00:21:07] says, "Hey, let's get together and see what we can, if we like each other well enough to work together, shake something out of the trees. If not, we'll shake hands and go our separate ways." That's my intro call because I want to find out is there something here and let's both work on it together. Those are some of my thoughts. It sets the stage for a long term.
Corey Frank (21:24):
Just as you went into character there and delivered that message about, "Can we agree to work together and find a way to get this back on the calendar if something does get in the way?" I can imagine, Henry, that your high-stakes world of medical real estate properties, these aren't six-figure opportunities. These are seven, eight-figure deals going on here. So credibility, certainty has to win the day. You're dealing with a very competitive product. You mentioned to me a few years ago, I think. I mean, you're dealing with just what's left. It's not even the alpha of a lot of these deals. And so tone implying, maybe uncertainty, tone implying that maybe you're not the best person for this role. You're a commodity, maybe there's some commission breath, that makes a difference in overall how much it makes.
(22:16):
So how do you deal with, how do you balance the fact that you try to get that to be authentic, but you also not necessarily have to be the drill instructor here, as we heard from Shawn, but you do have to be in a position of authority to say, "Listen, your money's safe with me. I'm not going to put your money to sleep. I know what I'm doing. I know these properties. I've already done the vetting." How do you balance that in your, especially in your world?
Henry Wojdyla (22:39):
It's a good question, and I don't know that I have an immediate just pat answer for you. There's no question, tonality is a piece of it. I think asking, I'd say framing the questions correctly is a lot of it. And that framing is a combination in my world of it is tonality. I think it's using certain nomenclature correctly. I think it's also, I will tell you the big thing tonality wise is I would say there's a lot of, there's this phrase, "There's riches in the niches." And we have taken that approach at a high level for the business model. But is it a discovery call? But I think there's a lot of riches in silence and the ability to basically shut up after asking a question and being comfortable with sometimes some very pregnant pauses. Because to your point, Corey, and I know I'm meandering a little bit in answering it, but we're dealing typically with eight figure or more size transactions, the questions that surround those in terms of where does this asset sit in your overall thesis? Where is this from a harvesting and recycling of capital perspective?
(23:45):
These are big questions. And even for people that are busy trafficking in these type of assets in a day in day out basis. If we're really getting into true discovery and they're really being contemplative about what they're providing you in terms of feedback and answers, they're going to need a few seconds themselves to think about that. So I think this is another example of getting out of the way at almost at a tactical level, which is just being quiet. I think that actually also instills some credibility because you're not trying to fill the gaps. You're not uncomfortable with the silence. I think that in and of itself provides maybe a tactical level benefit, but I think the more strategic benefit is you're hopefully actually getting better quality responses from the prospect.
Announcer (24:27):
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(24:52):
Never miss an episode. Go to any of your favorite podcast venues and search for Market Dominance Guys, or go to marketdominanceguys.com and subscribe.
 

Chris and Corey continue their conversation with Ben Sternsmith of Sybill AI . This episode covers how AI is revolutionizing the sales process, making it more precise and empowering for sales professionals.
Discover how AI analyzes tonality and body language, equipping salespeople with unparalleled accuracy in assessing deal progress. They discuss the importance of building trust with clients and how AI can support but never replace the human touch in establishing meaningful connections.
They also explore the resurgence of cold calling as a powerful strategy in the digital age and introduce Dealy. This innovative AI-driven solution enhances CRM systems by analyzing customer interactions and providing valuable insights.
Join us for this insightful episode that explores the synergy between sales and AI, offering practical tips and inspiring ideas for sales professionals.
 
Links from this episode:
Ben Sternsmith on LinkedInCorey Frank on LinkedInChris Beall on LinkedInSybill AIBranch 49ConnectAndSell
About Sybill AI
Sybill AI is an AI company that originated as a Stanford project three years ago. The founders, frustrated with the limitations of remote teaching, developed a behavioral AI engine over Zoom. This innovative tool records calls and analyzes body language to determine engagement levels. Leveraging the power of large language models like GPT-4, Sybill AI offers generative AI for salespeople. It automatically generates call summaries, writes AI-powered follow-up emails, and even appends CRM data.
 
Full episode transcript below:

In this episode of the Market Dominance Guys podcast, Chris, Corey and Helen Fanucci discuss the evolution of the internet, from its early days as a way for messages to move across networks to the democratization of global information through the browser and search engines. They also explore the capabilities of ChatGPT, including its ability to generate email responses and interact with customers using personalized prompts. They highlight the potential of ChatGPT to save time and improve the quality of communication for sales professionals. Join us for this idea-filled episode, "How ChatGPT Can Improve Sales Enablement."
 
Four ideas on how sales professionals can benefit from using ChatGPT for follow-up:
Personalized Follow-Up: ChatGPT can help sales professionals create personalized follow-up messages for each customer based on their preferences, interests, and past interactions with the sales team. ChatGPT can analyze the customer's conversation history and provide personalized responses that feel like a human wrote them.
Lead Nurturing: ChatGPT can help sales professionals nurture leads by sending automated follow-up messages to potential customers at regular intervals. These messages can be customized to meet the specific needs of each customer, making it easier to keep them engaged with the sales process.
Schedule Meetings: ChatGPT can help sales professionals schedule meetings with potential customers by automating the process of finding a mutually convenient time to meet. This can save the sales team a lot of time and effort by eliminating the need to go back and forth with customers trying to find a suitable time.
Provide Instant Customer Support: ChatGPT can be used to provide instant customer support to customers who have questions or concerns about a product or service. Sales professionals can use ChatGPT to respond to these inquiries in real-time, providing customers with the information they need to make a purchasing decision. This can help increase customer satisfaction and improve the chances of closing a sale.
The Evolution of the Internet and Digital Communications
1960s: The concept of hypertext is introduced by Ted Nelson.
1980: Tim Berners-Lee develops the idea of a "mesh" network of hyperlinked documents and begins working on the WorldWideWeb (WWW) project.
1990: The first web page is created by Tim Berners-Lee. It contains information about the WWW project and how to use a web browser.
1991: The first web browser, called WorldWideWeb, is developed by Tim Berners-Lee. It was a text-only browser and was only available on the NeXTSTEP operating system.
1993: The first graphical web browser, called Mosaic, is released by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina. It was a huge success and helped to popularize the web.
1994: The first search engine, called WebCrawler, is launched by Brian Pinkerton. It was the first search engine to index entire web pages rather than just titles and headings.
1995: Netscape Navigator is released by Netscape Communications Corporation. It becomes the most popular web browser and sets the standard for web browsing features.
1996: The first version of Internet Explorer is released by Microsoft, marking the beginning of the "browser wars" between Microsoft and Netscape.
1998: Google is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Their search engine quickly becomes the most popular and sets a new standard for search technology.
2003: Skype is launched, becoming one of the first and most popular VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services.
2004: Mozilla Firefox is released by the Mozilla Foundation as an open-source alternative to Internet Explorer.
2008: Google releases the first version of the Chrome browser, which quickly becomes popular due to its speed and simplicity.
2009: WhatsApp is launched, providing a new way for people to communicate via instant messaging and voice calls over the internet.
2010: Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 9, which is considered a major improvement over previous versions.
2013: Google's Chrome becomes the most popular web browser, surpassing Internet Explorer for the first time.
2021: The current versions of popular web browsers include Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Opera. Popular search engines include Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. VOIP services like Skype, Zoom, and Teams have become critical tools for remote communication in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Worldwide Web continues to evolve and expand, with new technologies and innovations being introduced regularly.
2022: ChatGPT from OpenAI.com takes the world by storm and changes how we write and communicate forever.
 
Full episode transcript below:

As our Market Dominance Guys continue this road trip book signing tour with Helen Fanucci, Chris emphasizes the significance of practicing sales conversations in order to become a high-performance salesperson, with the script being the key to unleashing creativity in sales. Helen tells the story of her experience cold-calling using ConnectAndSell, a script, and how it affected her Fitbit. Additionally, Chris talks about the energy transfer that takes place in a sales conversation, and how BDRs need to provide energy but also listen carefully to the emotional response of the prospect. Helen shares her experience of working with a coach and learning from the best in the world to improve her sales skills, and the importance of being objective about oneself to become a great salesperson. This episode provides valuable insights on how to engage customers effectively to build lasting relationships. As Chris says, "You are a performance athlete with your voice. That's what you are. That's what you have to work with." Join us for this episode, “What Do a Fitbit and Surfboard Have in Common with Cold Calling?”
About Our Guest
Helen Fanucci, Transformational Sales Leader at Microsoft is the author of Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World.
Helen's book is available on Amazon:
LOVE YOUR TEAM A SURVIVAL GUIDE for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World
Helen Fanucci on LinkedIn
Corey and Chris' book is also available on Amazon:
Market Dominance: A Conversation With ChatGPT
Corey Frank on LinkedInChris Beall on LinkedInConnectAndSellBranch49
 
 
Full episode transcript below:

In this episode, Gerhard Gschwandtner compares ChatGPT to a painter's palette with an infinite amount of colors, and salespeople are the artists who must decide how many colors to use and when the painting is finished. The hosts discuss the role of technology in sales and how salespeople can use ChatGPT to harness its intelligence to make more informed decisions. Chris describes a practical example of how he used ChatGPT for list creation for a company called Partner Tap. He was able to ask it about the specific job titles used in senior roles in companies and generate a table of titles for each company. Gerhard suggests that salespeople can tap into their internal ChatGPT to discover great ideas and pursue meaningful work. Chris mentions how they are exploring the use of ChatGPT in developing a new data product and using it to summarize the best conversations that set a meeting with different types of executives. Key points from this portion of the episode include the power of ChatGPT in harnessing technology to make more informed decisions in sales, the importance of pursuing meaningful work, and the potential for ChatGPT to be used in various aspects of sales, from list creation to conversation summaries. Corey reminds us, "You have to be willing to put in that work, do your research and know that it's going to take time. It's not going to happen overnight. It's really about understanding who your customer is and what they care about."
Key points from this episode:
ChatGPT can be used in various aspects of sales, such as list creation and conversation summaries.
Salespeople can use ChatGPT to harness its intelligence and make more informed decisions.
Pursuing meaningful work can lead to greater happiness and success in sales.
The better the "why" behind what you are doing in sales, the easier the "how" will be.
Prompt engineering is a method for developing ChatGPT responses that require careful consideration of the language and wording used in prompts.

In this episode of Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall, and Susan Finch discuss their experience using ChatGPT to write a book based on their podcast, and the benefits of using AI to create content. They delve into the limitless possibilities of machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision, and how they are transforming various industries. Chris and Susan also share their insights on the process and the excitement of seeing the AI learn and improve. Chris and Susan talk about how ChatGPT can generate various versions of a prompt, and the different approaches they took to refine their requests for better results. They also reflect on the human-like interactions they had with ChatGPT, and the Eliza effect that makes people treat the AI as if it were a person. Ultimately, they highlight the efficiency and creativity that AI can bring to content creation, and the potential for using ChatGPT to write more books in the future. Tune in to hear their fascinating discussion on the intersection of AI and writing in this episode, "How ChatGPT is Writing a Book: The AI and Human Collaboration."
 
Full episode transcript below:

Most people look at a potential job from the standpoint of “What am I going to earn?” Austin Finch, Funnel Media Group’s podcast editor and today’s guest on Market Dominance Guys, talks with our host, Chris Beall, about an additional and very important way of looking at any new employment you’re considering. They suggest asking yourself the question, “What am I going to learn?” Austin cautions job hunters that even a high-paying job can be a dead-end job. When you’re looking at a new job — whether it’s in sales or another field —  Austin suggests that “If you can gain experience, and move on to gain more, then there’s no reason to hold yourself back.” Listen to the whole podcast for more words of career wisdom from Chris and Austin in today’s insightful and helpful Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “What Am I Going to Learn?”

Who’s behind the curtain making the Market Dominance Guys the great podcast that it is? It’s Austin Finch, an editor at Funnel Media Group, which produces Market Dominance Guys. In listening to this conversation between Austin and our host, Chris Beall, you would never know that Austin is the youngest guest ever interviewed for this podcast. Currently 17 years old, he has edited Market Dominance Guys for several years and has recently added Helen Fanucci’s “Love Your Team” podcast to his editing responsibilities. In talking with this intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful young man, Chris asks about the challenges of podcast editing, including the pruning and grafting necessary to increase a podcast audience’s understanding and to decrease the distractibility caused by any audio glitches or guests’ faux pas. Austin loves his job and sees his editing work as that of a translator for the hosts’ and guests’ messages, and his goal as “Helping to Get the Message Across,” which just happens to be the title of today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode.