Transcript:
MK: So I’m super stoked that you are our first guest on Office Hours, a series where we’re just teaching lessons, the things that you will do outside of the classroom. Um, while I would say that my guest on today’s show needs no introduction. He’s just too cool to not introduce him. This is Morgan Ingram from Muffins with Morgan Morgan. Welcome to the show.
Morgan: Yeah, absolutely happy to be here.
MK: Okay. I know the folks that are on today’s call know about your brand and know about what you’re up to, but I would love to hear from your perspective, not about what we find about you on LinkedIn, we find out about like your job title, but you’re five to nine.
Morgan: Yeah. So I’m a huge video gamer fun fact. And was it, I guess, middle school halo too. Um, got to play on MLG, which basically is like pro level. So like major league gaming. So I was like really, really into it. I still play video games today. And then also I’m a big book reader. I read fiction. Um, that’s something that I’ve gotten myself back into. I used to read a ton back in high school, middle school, but now I’ve gotten back into that. So that’s what super cool. And then there’s not, man. There’s not a lot you could do. Right. And I guess now all of a sudden I’d like to do, I can’t do so like concert, concerts, music, festivals, traveling. That’s what I do like outside of what I do is in terms of work, but I can’t go to any really concerts music festivals, unless like it’s having like drive in ones now, but I’m not, that’s just not me. That’s not my vibe.
MK: I feel that I feel that. And especially with a little bit more time on our hands, these days, getting back into the reading game, being able to spend some more time thinking creatively about how we’re going to spend your time. It’s like that’s a full-time job in and of itself.
Morgan: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
MK: Nice. So for this first live episode that we have, where you’re talking about how to create a tech stack, that’s going to deliver a personal experience. Um, so I want to first start off by saying there are so many tools out there right now for people in business development roles to do their job and do it effectively. I’d love to hear your thoughts. When you think about the tech stack, what runs through your mind right now about the sales suite of prospecting tools that are available for BDRs?
Morgan: There’s a lot out there. At the same time don’t get caught up because there is a lot. What I normally tell people at the end of the day is to focus on three different tool sets and then evolve from there. So number one is a sales engagement tool. So those are like the SalesLoft, the Outreach’s of the world. You probably have something that allows you to send emails at some type of scale and allows you to manage your tasks in a way that isn’t overwhelming. Like you’re just doing just Salesforce tasks. So you should have some type of sales engagement tool across the board. Again, whatever that is, that’s going to be really important for a BDR. Number two is going to be your data. All right? So like, how are you gonna get your emails? How are you going to get your numbers? You better have some type of data source.
Normally when I recommend people, I don’t know people that obviously you have to get budget for these things, but I do normally recommend two different data sets. So if it’s something that you get from your company, there’s a lot of tools out there that will give you like free credits per month, whether it’s free 50 credits, a hundred credits, there are sources out there. I would lean in on that. And the number three is the most important, which is the CRM. So that could be obviously Salesforce or HubSpot or dynamics. You name it. That’s what you should be focused on.
So if you have those three tools in your toolkit, then you’re going to be successful as a BDR. And you don’t necessarily need all the other tools out there. Once you understood what those tools are, then you can evolve to the other ones that are out there, but don’t get caught up in like, Oh, I got 50 tools. It’s like, can you use the these tools the right way? Because then they don’t really matter.
MK: There are a bunch of BDRs who are listening to this episode who are just out there, snapping your fingers, like, yes, please. The less workflows we have to manage the cleaner our data, the better precision we have of being able to understand more about the efficiency of our team. I love that. The other thing that I love about this is that you’ve thought of data as a tool. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?
Morgan: Yeah. So you have to know how to leverage data in order to reach out to certain people. I use it as a tool because there are some data tools that can create lists for you that can run a certain region that you may be going after. They may be able to run, Oh, this industry we’re doing really well here. Let me pull a list of all these people in this industry. So I use it as a tool because yes, emails and phone calls are important, right. But it’s leveraging that data to build lists at scale, that doesn’t get you into the weeds of like, Oh man, I’m doing this over and over again. So that’s why I mentioned data as a tool because you can use it as a tool, but most people just use it as things to just pull out of.
MK: Nice. Yeah. I think that’s a really important and compelling point where right now we’re what we’re in this phase of like tech bloat. We have so much technology. We’re just gorging ourselves and all the tools that we’re trying to throw with a problem, but really what we want to get at the heart of is intent. It’s all there centralized on the backend and our CRM. So whatever your CRM of choices, you know, that is where you can go in and start using the right data to help you understand better insights into intent, better insights into overall qualification. I’m curious though, do you have any go to reports? You have any like data that you like go to every single day? Tell me more about that.
Morgan: Yeah. So in terms of reports, you know, I don’t know everyone that’s listening out there. I don’t know. You could put a one for a chat on the real quick, if you use Salesforce reports or your dynamic reports or whatever, here’s see people are using this as of today. But what I always think about and what I always focus on is leveraging the data that I already have, right? Finding that new business is important. There still is opportunities in your CRM. So the reports that I look for is the closed lost report. And I went through that last week. Who did we lose to? Right? What happened? Was it a competitor? Was it just due to COVID? Was it timing was a budget? You shouldn’t have that report. So then you’re able to dive into different components. You can reach out to those people, right.
So that’s extremely critical also as well. What I look at is the close won report. I look at which industries are we closing the most and which personas are we having the most conversations with? Right?
Number three is from a BDR perspective is the activity report. So you can look at, okay, who’s who hasn’t touched this account. And the last 60, 90, 120 days, that’s an account you should probably go pick up because someone dropped it because a lot of people aren’t great at the follow through when someone says, Hey, follow up with me in six months, they just dropped the account, but you can nurture that account and keep that relationship. So these are different reports that I personally am looking through to make sure that I can give the best type of conversations with people and talking to,
MK: I think that is so smart. I mean, my life motto is to work smarter, not harder. Um, and so the fact that you’re looking at close lost reports to be able to understand who you are, who’s due for, you know, an outreach. And the fact that you’re looking at the closed won reports for any trends that you might be seeing, whether they be industry related, whether they be points of contact related.
And then you’re also holding yourself accountable to the type of activity that you’re doing by using the activity marker, to understand what’s working and not working in your own book of business. I think it’s, I think that’s the right way to be thinking about it for those of you that are dialed in as well too. Do you have any go-to reports if you do toss it in the chat, we’d love to hear from you about your go-to reports on top of the three that Morgan has just shared.
One thing I want to point out though, as well too, is that you mentioned one of your three tools is engagement in an engagement tool. When you think about your engagement tool, what are you looking for in a piece of technology to help you build better, more personal engagement with the folks you want to do business with?
Morgan: Yeah. So one is I’m looking from for analytics, right? Because I need to A/B test to figure out if it’s going to work or not, because if it doesn’t work, I need to stop doing it. And if it does work, I need to continuously do it. So number one is analytics. Number two is something that’s going to allow me to put multiple messaging in that I can’t even be tests, right. I want to make sure there’s templates or snippets or something in there that again I could be using for the testing piece. And then another thing that I’m looking for is, is it, can it integrate with other technology as well? Right? Cause then I can use video. I could use some platforms, like have outlet inside of them, right? So I want to be focusing on like, how can I use these and leverage them to get the most out of what I’m doing? So these are the things that I think about in terms of my sales engagement tool. I just want to make sure that it’s easy to use and then I can use it to make sure that I’m looking at my analytics and scale scaling appropriately.
MK: I love that. One thing that you’ve just mentioned though, is scale. So you’re spending time, you think working smarter, not harder, um, using your engagement tool to be able to percolate the best learnings you have at that AB testing. You’re thinking about all the other tech that you can integrate it with. Ideally, you’re doing this so that you can save time on the manual work that you’re doing so you can free up other time to do other things. What are those other things?
Morgan: Yes. So it’s more from the act of selling time. So 35% of a rep’s time is active sign time. And what that means is that the time that you are doing what I like to call money-making activities. And so if you are trying to figure out ways to get more money, I can money-making activities on your calendar. Then you’re going to do a lot of admin work that you don’t want to have to do, which is why this comes down to scalability automation. So what those are are things I’ve already mentioned, but following up with people, asking for referrals, making sure that you’re reaching out to people that are in the sales cycle to have pipeline velocity. Like these are things that I want to be focused on, right? Having more conversations on the calendar. So that’s what it frees up the time for it, because now you’re, again, those activities are going to lead to the revenue that you’re looking to obtain.
MK: Nice. And right now, especially given all the tools, all the tech, both that everybody has, people are just setting it and forgetting it. Uh, and they forget how much of that act of selling time is largely dependent on the way that you approach your work and the strategies that you have with your work you outlined, you know, using the data to help use sniff out where you want to do, where you want your strategy to go, to be able to get those and make the most out of those active selling hours. When you start to use that data to help drive that, how do you use that to then actually build a much bitter and relatable experience with the folks you’re trying to get in touch with?
Morgan: Yeah. So I use it to create frameworks and formulas because if I can use the frameworks and formulas that I have, I then can personalize on top of the frameworks and the formulas that I’ve established, because if you’re reinventing the wheel every single time, it’s gonna waste your time and it’s going to be really annoying. So you might as well go ahead and be like, all right, cool. Like this is the framework that I know I need for success. Let me personalize within this. So then I also can be successful. So that’s what I would recommend anyone to do right now. I think that’s when you
Think about, um, using personal as well, we have a very clear distinction between personalization and being personal, um, personalization. You look at the cell fixation, that means a process, you know, trying to develop a process like lean framework of, of doing that at scale. Do you have any tips for those that are dialed in about how you can turn that personalization into something that is truly personal and one to one to the recipient?
Yeah. It’s going to be advice that you guys probably hear all the time, right? Like it’s going to their LinkedIn going to the website, things of that nature. This is what I will tell you is that when you’re looking to do something personalized, think about how can I get their attention in six to 10 seconds. I mean, that’s, once it runs around, once you get to like 10 beyond 10 seconds, like really, if that maybe eight people tune out, right. So what are you going to do in that? Let’s say six to 10 seconds. That’s going to get someone interested to check out the rest of your email, the rest of your video, or listen to the rest of your phone call. So that is something that I would be very, very focused on. If I was a BDR right now is how can I do that within that six to 10 seconds? So that person makes me feel, Oh, okay. Like I want, I want to talk to you again, link getting words out of their LinkedIn about section their job descriptions stuff on their website. It’s, it’s there. It’s just being proactive to go find those things. So then you can be personalized.
MK: Uh, I’m like obsessed with this, like six to seven seconds things because you’re talking like marketer. Now, now you’re talking the same framework that marketers are thinking of where we are still precise with our words, with our tones, with our visuals, that we care a lot about that six does that. I mean, we’re privileged. If we get a full thick seconds, we’re really thinking about two to three seconds with how much content is out there for people to consume. Um, I’m obsessed with that. Starting to think more like a marketer and that your presence is really impactful and how you’re going to approach the conversation is really impactful.
Yeah. Um, speaking of impact, and speaking of outbound marketing, I can think of no other person that’s really crushing the social selling and the personal brand form of selling that you’re doing right now. Got any tips for people who are dialed in, who were trying to adopt more selves, a social selling approach, or any folks who want to fold in their personal brand as a selling agent.
So let’s, let’s take a step back on the brand here. Okay. What are your thoughts on brand?
Morgan: I’m obsessed with brand I’m obsessed with brand? Um, the reason I think that the brand is the right way to be thinking about your business is because when you’re delivering personal experience, you should be thinking about every single moment you were trying to create on behalf of the prospects or your, the folks you want to do business with your brand, your reputation, how other people talk about you when you’re not in the room. That is everything who a marketer. And I feel like sales reps are starting to catch on for that now.
So yeah, I’ve been building my brand for what five, maybe five to seven years now. And so one thing I will say is you’ve mentioned the word is I don’t want people here. If you thinking about a personal brand, I don’t want you to think about it that way. I want you to think about it as reputation, because at the end of the day, that’s something that you have, whether or not you build it, you have a reputation and you have it internally with the people that you work with. And then you also have it externally. So if you’re thinking about social selling or things of that nature, you need to take a step back for you to post content and ask yourself, what am I trying to do here? And what am I looking to accomplish? And if you’re just going out there to post a post, because everyone is telling us to do it, then you are not going to be as consistent as you would like to be, because it really comes down to being consistent because most people aren’t.
So what I would tell you and encourage you to do is take a step back. What exactly am I looking to do social selling for? What am I looking to build my reputation for? And what do I want to be known for? What do I want to stand for? These are questions you’ve gotta ask yourself so that it makes you more equipped to be successful. And then from a social selling perspective, what I would encourage everyone to do is start leveraging LinkedIn video, LinkedIn voice messages, it to start connecting and building relationships with people because that’s going to make you stand out above everyone else. And so this is all about breaking through the noise and finding out avenues and ways for you to do that. So you can be successful
MK: If I can kind of paraphrase. If you will breaking through the noise is all about authenticity. When you are yourself and you have something that you stand for, your personal brand, your personal reputation, it’s something that you believe in wholeheartedly. That’s when you can really capitalize on social selling. Absolutely. I, I love it. Um, with only a few minutes left in this open office hours, I want to open this up to the team. Who’s dialed in with us. I see you there, John and Craig and Ashley Rona, any questions that you have for Morgan and I about detect that you need to have the tools you need to have and how you need to approach the work that you’re doing in business development. Leave it in the comments below Morgan. And I will go through and take a look at those. So I want to recap while everybody are formulating their thoughts and questions for us, Morgan, that right now, it’s not about the tech that you have in place. It’s more about the approach that you have when you are deploying this tech and the definition of tech also includes the data that you have in your toolkit to be able to inform the approach that you’re taking.
Morgan: Yeah. And I also, again, if you taking another step back on top of that is that it’s knowing what’s the reason that I’m getting this tech, is it because it looks cool or is it going to help me move faster in my process? And that’s what I was thinking of. Like, if I’m going to add something, I’m like, all right, like what does this help me do at the end of the day? Now I test out a lot of stuff because that’s just who I am. However I need to know, like, is this going to be impactful for me? Or is it just something else that I just have here for no reason? And you really have to ask yourself those hard questions. So then you’re like, you know what, I don’t really, I don’t really need this. So let me just not use this and move on. Only use the tools that you really want to be using.
MK: That’s awesome advice. And it actually really helps with this question that Nina has posed asking, are there any pieces of sales, tech, or approaches you haven’t found success with that may not actually be worth all the hype?
Morgan: It’s a great question. I haven’t run into that. And the reason that I’m saying that is because if I do have some type of sales tech, and I only could think of a couple right sales, engagement, tools, videos, et cetera, I find that maybe somebody said it works this way, but then I use it in a different way that works better for me. So I think it depends on what you are focusing on as hype, because if you only focus on someone say, Hey, for example, for video, you should only prospect. And that’s the only thing you do then at cool could fall for sure. But you don’t, you can use it in other areas. Right? I can use it for handling objections. I can use it to speed up the sales cycle. I can use it for referrals, right. So I personally have not used some type of technology that I wasn’t able to like, be like, all right, cool. It doesn’t work there, but let me use it here because I’m always testing and adjusting based on what I have, or again, I don’t want it.
MK: I’d almost argue that if you were to overlay the framework of those three tools, that you have, your engagement, your data and your CRM, you’re overlaying is flexibility and agility in the strategy that you want to use to get the most value out of these tools. Not a one size fits all solution.
Morgan:Right? I mean, so, so let’s, let’s think about it this way. So Air Jordans are just for those, you don’t know their shoes. All right. So when, when people buy them, people are like, Oh, I’m going to be Michael Jordan. Oh yeah. Yeah. And you wear them. You can’t, you still can’t dunk. You still can’t shoot. Cause you, you didn’t, you didn’t have a strategy to get better at basketball just because you bought the shoes doesn’t mean that you’re going to be Michael Jordan. And just because you buy the tech doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to use it. You still have to have the skills to leverage it.
But nominal advice, I think that is thought on and super relatable for anybody who thought that they were purchasing something and going to end up docking like. That kind of happened.
MK: Awesome. We had a couple more questions come through one from Ashley asking what your favorite tool is in your toolkit. We can all tag team this question, but you go first. Yeah.
Morgan: So mine is Crystal Knows. And, uh, that does not like a drug site or anything of that nature. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what it is is it allows for you to see people’s disc profile and how you should communicate to them, how you can sell to them, how you can email them. And so it’s a very spot on tool. I’ve done it on myself and it was pretty accurate. So that is honestly my favorite tool because when I go into a yes or no conversation, I’m able to have a really great talk with them. So crystal knows is my favorite.
We are huge fans of Crystal Knows. We are huge fans of understanding the person, not the persona, um, which actually leads me to my favorite tool. That complements what you have just said while we do care about the person over the persona, you still need to use that persona to get into the psyche, to get into a day in the life of the person that you’re doing business with. But I will encourage for those of you folks who aren’t as familiar or as close to your personas, that they look and feel and act like a real person in your life. Get to know those personas and use crystal nose to layer over top. How to get more person know with the personas. You’re trying to do business with love that one, two punch. We had a question come in from Robert who says, as a world has moved almost fully digital. How do you create a personal bond with physical events or maybe channels, um, having been removed from an engagement.
MK: So this is going to be an ongoing obstacle for a lot of people. And you have to take a step back and not think of yourself as the producer, but think of yourself as an audience member. And a lot of times people want to put on events and it’s like, all right, cool. This is how I’m going to set up the event and not thinking about like, all right. So if I was sitting on a virtual event, how do I get people to feel engaged? And that they’re a part of something.
Morgan: So I would say, look at this from the lens of a audience member to make sure that it’s fun, engaging in something that’s exciting. So I’ll give you all the examples. So every webinar that I do and that I host, I start off the webinar with the song, right? I tell people, ask people, where are you guys tuning in from? Right. I come in the webinar with a ton of energy. So now you feel like you’re a part of something and you’re at an event, not just another thing that I signed up for. So that’s the way to create bonds with people. And there’s making sure that you have very unique followup with people so that they will tune into you moving forward. So that would be my advice there.
MK: Great advice all around. I want to thank you so much for showing us that it’s not about dunking. Like Mike, it’s about having a strategy to know how to get yourself to a place of being able to dunk like Mike, by using a text stack or a stack of tools, like your engagement, your data and your CRM, that is only as impactful as the strategy or the approach that you use to get value out of these tools. And the way you get value is about understanding what you want to get out of these tools and understand how these tools or your levers for success. Morgan, I know you have a show that you host every Saturday. What do you want to plug? What do you want to hide? How can we help mobilize the squad for you?
Morgan: Yeah. So if you all want to have some fun and ask some sales related questions, muffins with Morgan, 11:00 AM Eastern standard time, and yeah, it’s just for an hour. I come on LinkedIn live and it’s very, very casual and we have a lot of fun. So if you want to come on by
Excellent, any kind of muffins, you are planning to serve up this Saturday. So someone told me that,
Yeah, someone told me they’re making me pop pumpkin muffins. We’ll see if they’re coming here at some point, but no matter step up, my go-to my blueberry muffins, but Hey look, someone said there, they got blue pumpkin muffins on the way I was like, all right, cool.
MK: Who are you to deny someone’s generosity.
Morgan:Of course.
MK: That’s cool. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your insights. We are so hyped to learn more from you as time goes on. For those of you that dialed in. Thank you so much for joining us live. And for those of you that are watching this on demand, if you have questions for Morgan, join him every Saturday on muffins with Morgan and LinkedIn live at what time is it again? Morgan? 11:00 AM Eastern standard time, the land. All right, squad. Thank you so much for joining us here on office hours. I’m MK the head of marketing here at Alyce, and I’m excited to continue to learn more with you outside of the classroom. Bye. See you guys.
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