Episode 57 of the Make It Happen Mondays podcast featured Chris Orlob of Gong and it was filled with so much value, we decided to try something new and transcribe it as a blog post. If you enjoy this format, please let me know in the comments or by hitting me up on social.
Top Takeaways from this Episode
Phone as a channel isn’t going anywhere.
The validity of the phrase “cold calling is dead” may be debatable in terms of making 100 dials with no information per day versus calling 20-40 targetted accounts and having a first touch by email or social, but phone as a channel is not dead. Whether it’s an actual phone call or Zoom meeting, at some point you will need to jump on the phone with your prospects.
Phone has become a novel channel
Looking at what’s novel as being what fewer people are doing, rather than what’s new, there is no better time to get on the phone with your prospects. When LinkedIn first introduced InMails, it was novel because nobody was using them, now it’s crowded and most people who get an InMail automatically think it’s spam. With less people using the phone, it’s the perfect time to get dialing.
Talk more on your first call
It might sound counter-intuitive, but the data showed, on a first call, the most successful reps talked more than prospects. This is why it’s so important to lead with an attention grabber that has your prospect saying, “Tell me more!”.
Use different tactics in different situations
This is why whenever someone asks me the best books, I rarely recommend sales books. Tactics come and go, but the timeless techniques like The Reason for My Call, work because they’re rooted in human psychology. It’s the same reason cold calling is so hard because we’re going against our survival instinct and avoiding rejection.
Voice is the future
There is a reason companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google, are spending some much time and money investing in voice and audio. One thing we discussed is that when you see the demo of Google calling to make a hair appointment or make a food reservation, there are only a finite number of paths to take, and those people are paid to pick up the phone.
Closing happens throughout the sales cycle
The things you do early in the sales cycle are far more important than at the end of the sales cycle. No matter how much enthusiasm you have, there is no magic line or technique that can help you close a deal if you haven’t laid the proper foundation early on in the buying cycle.
If you prefer to read, rather than to listen, find the full, near verbatim transcript below.
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JOHN BARROWS: Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows with Make it Happen Monday. Hopefully you all had a fantastic weekend. We actually didn’t have a podcast last week or a Make it Happen session to recognize Memorial Day, but did want to pause here for a second and just say thanks to all of those men and women overseas who are kicking ass for us and letting us live this incredible lifestyle of ours.
And, just as a reminder everybody, the JBarrows store, where you see all this Make it Happen gear, 100% of profits and proceeds goes to veterans and the arts. So, if you’re looking to support veterans, and get some cool gear to motivate yourself, please check out the store, and we write that big fat check at the end of the year for all the profits that you guys … so I want to thank everybody for their support on that, and also thank you for your support on the podcast, because we hit 100,000 downloads recently, which blows my mind. I really appreciate all the feedback and insights.
And, with that, I am actually super excited for today’s, not that I’m not excited for other ones, but I’m really excited for this one, first of all, we had to reschedule it once, so we’re back on track, and this is one that I have a lot of questions about, so I wanted to introduce and welcome a friend of mine, Chris Orlob from Gong. Chris, say hi to everybody, give a little background, your little 30 second about where you’re coming from, and what Gong’s all about.
CHRIS ORLOB: Yeah. Super excited to be here. It’s been too long time of a coming I think, but, my name’s Chris, I run product marketing over here at Gong. Short story is, previously I was co-founding a company that was competing with Gong, or probably attempting to compete with Gong. That’s probably the more accurate situation. We ended up joining forces, but before that, I was a regional sales manager over at InsideSales.com in Provo, Utah. I started off as an SDR, worked my way as an account executive, ended up in that last position, and that’s my background. Super excited to talk about what we have on the table here.
JOHN BARROWS: I love it, and by the way, I got to give you guys kudos, first of all, you said that new branding is coming out today.
CHRIS ORLOB: Yeah. New brand. No more Gong the blue, it’s like the vintage stuff that’s hopefully going to be sold on Ebay for thousands of dollars 20 years from now or something like that.
JOHN BARROWS: I’m sure you got cabinets of it, too. Keep it closed. So, your new brand, new website looks awesome, and one of the things that I just want, for everybody out there listening right now, I get asked all the time, “John, what podcast should I listen to? What blog should I read to educate myself.” The number one that I almost always recommend is Gong’s, because you guys put out some incredible content. It’s not just about somebody’s opinion or whatever, but really is backed up with data. So, I wanted to give you huge kudos on that.
CHRIS ORLOB: Thank You.
JOHN BARROWS: We’re going to dive into some of those, but I wanted to start with kind of a bigger picture, and the whole idea about is cold calling dead? I hate that question, but I’m going to put a little bit of a different spin, because I think it’s absolute BS. I think cold calling is still alive and well, if done right, and if it’s part of a package, right? It’s no longer 100 dials a day, and just blindly making cold calls, but the phone is not dead.
But, something shook me a little while ago, and this is why I’m really interested in your perspective on this. I wrote a blog post probably, I want to say a year ago, that said, “I think the phone is going to make a raging comeback,” because I saw a couple of emails written by these artificial intelligence bots that were highly personalized and better than a sales rep could ever write.
So, I’m like, “Well, jeez. In a year or two, none of us are going to trust a single email that in our inbox, because it’s all suspect, right?” With that, I was like, well, phone, that’s the final frontier. That’s the part that robots and technology is not going to be able to take away from us, because of empathy, because of listening to tone and that type of stuff.
Then I saw the Google Home thing, call up and make a hair appointment, and then the hair appointment was like, “Holy shit.” But when it ordered Chinese food from somebody who could barely speak English, and was able to navigate that conversation, and be able to understand what that person was saying, I was like, “Uh-oh.”
So, I guess my question for you is, with your background at InsideSales.com, where now … and starting another company, and I mean, you guys are all in on phone. That’s it, right? I mean, that’s what your focus is, so you’ve bet your entire business, and there’s a huge amount of money going into this space, too. So, there’s obviously something that says phone is still going to be around, but where do you see the future of phone going? Based with the Google and all that other stuff, and AI stuff going on?
CHRIS ORLOB: So, the first part of it is whether cold calling is dead or not, there’s still going to be a phone interaction that’s required to close a deal, like usually over a web conference. But, let’s just narrow the conversation for the sake of having this argument about Google. Is AI going to kill that stuff? And if you think about those Google Home demonstrations, and you think about the person who is on the receiving end of that phone call, they’re literally paid to take that call. They’re not going to hang up on you. And so, AI yes, it’s very impressive that it was able to navigate the various paths that that conversation could have gone down, although I would argue there’s probably only three to five paths, so it’s not that complicated.
Cold calling is a little different because you’re pushing a boulder up a hill, the person on the other line is in constant threat of hanging up on you, because they generally don’t want to be hearing from you. So, when people come to the conclusion, “Well Google Home booked a hair appointment for me, so cold calling is dead.” It’s totally a different scenario.
It’s the same medium, which is a phone call, but worlds different scenarios. One of them, somebody is literally paid, no matter how bad of a conversationalist you are, they’re not hanging up on you. The other one is, you could say the same words just with the wrong tone, or you could change one word from a sentence, and they’ll hang up on you. It’s much more sensitive.
With all of that said, my prediction is AI is not going to replace professional sellers making calls, but, humans are also horrible at predicting the future. In 2001, we all thought nobody’s going to be writing code in 10 years, in 2011, and it’s 2018, still people are writing code.
JOHN BARROWS: Well, yeah. We all thought the world was going to end in 1999 because all of a sudden there was four decimals, instead of two right?
CHRIS ORLOB: Yeah. In 2012, even me in 2012, I was like looking out the window to see if the Mayans were right on December 21st or whatever it was.
JOHN BARROWS: That was my birthday, so I threw a bender. So December 21st was my birthday, on 2012 …
CHRIS ORLOB: 23rd, represent, December.
JOHN BARROWS: There you go. So I’m like, “Hey, if I’m going out, I’m going out strong. So F it. Let’s party.”
I agree with you. I think that context is perfect in the sense that when it’s somewhat of a predictable path, and you’re talking to somebody who is paid to take your call, I think yes, AI and Google, take care of that for me. My assistant, “Hey Google, make me a hair appointment.” “Hey Google, make me a reservation at a restaurant.”
Cold calls differ when it can go a million different tracks. Although you see the intersection to a certain degree because people have tried to script out. When you go and do an outsource cold calling company, they try to script out, “Hey if they say this, then do this. If they say that, then do this.” So I can see where somebody is going to try to do it, whether it’s going to be successful or not is the other story.
The other layer to this though is the generational divide. In the sense that, one of the things I tell kids when I am doing my training is, one of the big reasons I recommend you make phone calls, well there’s two and I’ll get to the second one, but the first one is, Gen-Xers, I’m a Gen-Exer at 42, we’re now the decision makers, and I grew up on the phone. So there are people, and you bring in neuro-linguistic programming, and there’s different types of communicators. If you send all emails, you’re reducing your chances of connecting with a decent part of the population.
Do you think that cold calling, when Millennials take over, really take over decision making, when they hit their 40s and that type of stuff, where do you see phone fitting into that? Millennials didn’t grow up with a phone like this, they grew up with it like this. Do you think that that’s going to have a big impact on the actual usage of phone in the future?
CHRIS ORLOB: Here’s what I would say. First of all, if the phone dies in the most literal sense of the word, meaning it is no longer a communication platform, then obviously cold calling is going to be dead. That’s very uncertain as to whether that could happen.
The second thing I would say is, part of the effectiveness of a communication channel is its novelty, not necessarily its newness, but how infrequently are people bombarded on that channel. Right now, very few people are getting hit with the phone, because either people think cold calling is dead, or most Millennials are, frankly, the real underlying reason is they’re scared to make a cold call. It’s a terrifying thing to do.
JOHN BARROWS: It totally is.
CHRIS ORLOB: So it’s kind of like LinkedIn email. When LinkedIn first became popular, if you got an InMail, it was like, “Oh, goodie, I got a message from somebody. I never get messages.” So you would respond, and it was super effective. Now you’re spammed to Sunday on LinkedIn, you don’t respond. That’s a really long way of me saying, if nobody is making calls, but people still have phones, you have the opportunity of a lifetime to bring novelty back to the phone. Now they’re bombarded in email, and social media, and they’re getting Tweeted at. So when they get a phone call, again, I’m a human, could be horrible at predicting the future, but, the one phone call they get a week, it’s a novelty. They’re going to answer it, and it’s going to be an effective conversation.
JOHN BARROWS: I love that, because I was at a conference a little while ago, it was actually two years ago, same questions, cold calling dead bullshit, whatever, and somebody asks this panel of executives who were sitting up there, “Hey, what’s the newest, coolest app, to get in front of ad executives? What’s the newest thing that gets your attention?” All of them, in unison, said, “Phone.”
CHRIS ORLOB: See, and I think the app thing, it’s just a way for us to avoid our fears of doing something difficult, and scary, and looking for instant gratification. What app can I go download that’s going to suddenly help me book a bunch of meetings? It’s the wrong question to ask. It’s just fear of words.
JOHN BARROWS: I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I just get on the damn phones. That’s what I tell kids, “What’s the absolute worst thing that can happen with cold call?” Unless you’re blatantly disrespectful and doing something super unethical and shady, then you do that and they might call your boss and get you fired. That’s okay, but that’s you being an asshole.
If you’re taking a legitimate approach, and you’re making a phone call, and you might get a little bit more aggressive, or whatever it is, the absolute worst thing they can do is hang up on you. That’s why I don’t understand that fear. I get the fear, but if you have some fun with it, then you can flip it around pretty easy.
CHRIS ORLOB: I think the fear comes from this lizard brain concept. As humans, I won’t get into brain science, but we have this amygdala, and that part of the brain developed in a time when humans lived in very small tribes. The reason we’re scared of getting rejected on the phone, in today’s day and age when we don’t live in tribes, is our brain is built for the day and age when we did live in these small tribes. If we got rejected from a tribe, a million years ago, it literally meant we were going to die, because we were ostracized from the tribe, we were kicked out into the wilderness. Getting rejected was actually a big deal a million years ago.
Now we live in these big, metropolitan cities where our survival is not dependent on being accepted by one specific tribe. Our brain’s evolution has not caught up.Consciously our brain thinks that if we get rejected, it’s going to mean death in one way or another.
Cold calling success is really simple. It’s not easy, but it’s really simple. You just have to go against your brain’s natural wiring. You’re going to be scared. Eventually you’ll do it enough. You won’t be as scared anymore, but initially, what separates successful people from unsuccessful people is, can they take action in the face of fear.
JOHN BARROWS: I love that. Actually that’s a great segue here for us, as far as the data. You look at data, and science, and those type of things, and they tend to debunk a lot of stuff that our perception of is, right? People say cold calling is dead, but I look at the data and I say, “Look, the kids who make cold calls actually have a much higher conversion ratios than the kids that don’t.” People who are on the phones, likewise. Out of all the posts that you’ve done, because I want to dig into a couple of them, but out of the posts you’ve done, has data shown you something? Has there been, for you personally, based on your experiences in SDR and those type of thing, has there been something where data has shown you like, “Whoa, my perception was wrong, because the data says this”? Is there something that stands out that we can learn from that?
CHRIS ORLOB: Yes. We analyze all different types of calls, discovery calls, demo, closing calls, cold calls. There’s actually a lot of counter intuitive insights, but I’ll just talk about once, since it’s kind of thematic and addresses what we’ve already been talking about, which is cold calling. In every type of sales call we’ve analyzed, discovery calls, demos, etc, there’s been a strong correlation between talking less, and success rate, eventually closing the deal or moving it to the next step, except for cold calling.
So what we found in cold calling, and this is correlation, not necessarily causation, I would like to make sure that point is well understood, is that successful cold calls actually involve higher talk to listen ratios on the rep’s part, longer monologues where it’s like the rep was talking for a very long time uninterrupted, and very little talking from the customer’s end.
Again, how you interpret that data is important. Probably many people have different interpretations of that data, which means correlation and causation are different things, but what that means to me is that cold calling is not about discovery. If you open a cold call and say, “John, what are your biggest strategic priorities coming into this year?” You’re probably going to laugh in my face or hang up on me.
Cold calling is about making a highly targeted and resonant pitch to sell the meeting. The best way you can do that is knowing your buyers. Part of that is research, and that’s going to be on the shoulders of the rep or the SDR. Maybe I’m biased, a lot of that comes down to product marketing. Is product marketing helping you understand your buyer personas, their pain points? Are they doing research into the market to arm you to speak resonantly? Or are you going in and guessing?
JOHN BARROWS: I absolutely love that, because I preach that. One of the things I use to train reps on is, the old school GlenGarry Glen Ross. Great movie, but depressing as shit. But in there, he does his, “Always be closing“, but he talks about AIDA, attention, interest, desire, action. I looked that up, 1898 a guy by the name of St. Elmo Lewis came up with these. These are the four mental stages we have to go through before we buy something.
First, something needs to get our attention. Then we have to be interested in it. Then we have to have a desire. So what I say, you have five to fifteen seconds to get someone’s attention. That earns you a couple of minutes where you can create interest. That’s what you’re selling. When you’re making cold calls, you are not selling your solution. You are selling time. You are selling interest. You are selling the next step.
So that makes total sense to me on a cold call because I couldn’t agree more. If some kid calls em up out of know where and says, “So John, tell me about your priorities for the year.” I’m like, “Dude, screw off. Who are you?” But if somebody comes at me and says, “Hey, John, thanks for taking my call. Real quick, the reason for my call today is, we’re showing VPs of sales, like you, in your industry, how to drive these type of results with our solution. I just wanted to see if that was worth having a deeper dive conversation or two.”
CHRIS ORLOB: Yes, good cold calling follows the same rule as really good writing. If you’ve ever studied writing, there is a rule that says, the purpose of every sentence you write, is to compel the reader to read the next sentence. Cold calling should be exactly the same. You should be economical with your words, not frivolous. Every word and every sentence you say should design, be designed, to prolong the conversation, whether it’s getting them talking, or getting them listening to your next sentence, which in turn is designed to get them to linger.
JOHN BARROWS: That’s awesome. I think that’s what a lot of people make the mistake of when cold calling or leaving voicemail messages. They are literally trying to sell their product or service during that call. So they treat it as a quick discovery. Let me ask you fifteen questions before I throw up on you, or let me just tell you literally everything about what we do to see if you’re interested in buying from it.
If you segment that down into, that’s why I love the AIDA, because it’s the same thing with emails. The subject line gets my attention. The first sentence tells me whether or not I’m interested in reading the rest of it. The next part is your value proposition to create my desire to say, “I want that”, and then there’s your call to action. It’s the same thing with calls. Literally the first few words that come out of my mouth make a difference.
CHRIS ORLOB: I was just going to say, selling doesn’t come down to knowing the tactics and strategies. It comes down to knowing which tactics and strategies apply to which situation. AIDA, if you took that as a generalized strategy to apply to all of your sales calls, you’d fail miserably. If you enter a discovery call, and you’re thinking of terms of AIDA, it’s not going to work.
When you apply AIDA to your cold call, and, I won’t be attached to the methodology here, but spin, or solution selling to your discovery, and challenge your sale to your presentation, that’s where people become super successful at selling. They know which tactics apply to which parts of the sale cycle.
JOHN BARROWS: I love it. It’s actually interesting, because going back to the A, attention, you put out a post a little while ago that helped and hurt me, based on data. You’ve heard me, one of my favorite nuggets is when you introduce yourself it matters. So when you call up and say, “Hi, blah blah blah, this is John Barrows from so and so”, that actually automatically puts the buyer in a mindset of, “This is a sales rep, let me figure out how I can get off this call.”
You want to disrupt that a little bit, so we talk about powerful and weak introductions. One of my favorite powerful introductions and I’m psyched it was on your list is, “The reason for my call is”. It gets right to the point. You brought up another one that I rail against, as the most hideous way to introduce yourself. You said it was like the number one way according to your data. I’ve stopped shitting on it as much, but it’s that, “Hey, you are you doing today?” Or the better one, which was, “How have you been?”
CHRIS ORLOB: Here’s a couple things I would say about this. First, I have two, number one, you can’t compare “how have you been” to “the reason for my call”, because they are different openers that can be used in conjunction. They serve different purposes. So one is not better than the other. In fact I would say, based on my own intuition, not data, “the reason for my call” is actually a better opener, because it’s timeless. It’s built on human psychology, humans crave reasons, whereas “how have you been” is going to have a shelf life. Ever since I published that article, I’ve probably gotten 30 cold calls where somebody thought it was clever and cheese to open with, “Hey Chris, how have you been?” The first time I thought it was funny. The second time I was already past it. I need to write a new post already because this one is already done.
So that’s one point I would make is the timeless stuff like stating the reason for the call, is what you really need to master. This other stuff has shelf life. “Did I catch you at a bad time?” At one point it was probably successful, we found out that it’s 40% less successful than our base line. Which goes to show a lot of these techniques have shelf lives, and you need to be on the cutting edge of your profession.
JOHN BARROWS: That’s why I talk about split testing and trying new things all the time because what worked last year is not working anymore. I rail on that shitty breakup email, that was one, two, three, stuck under a rock, or getting chased by a hippo. Three years ago when Salesloft came up with that, it worked like a charm.
CHRIS ORLOB: I thought it was hilarious. Now I’m as annoyed by it as you are.
JOHN BARROWS: The first time you get that you’re like, “No, I’m not stuck under a rock”, but the very next time you get that you’re like, “Oh, shit, this is a technique, right?” So that’s why I think what you guys are doing with the data, and …
Brian Carvill asked, Brian, just go to Gong.io and go to their blog. We’ll post it in the questions here. He said, “Hey, how can I get to that?” It looks like we just posted it there.
That’s why gaining insights out of that data is invaluable right now to keep reps on top of what’s working now. Even subject lines. I tell reps, and here’s a tip for everybody listening, but, people ask me, “John, what’s a good subject line?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” Again, it changes so frequently. So just literally go in Google and type in, “Best subject lines, 2018”, and somebody like Gong on the email side of the house is doing research and reports on high open rates, low open rates, those type of things.
You just have to follow those trends, because there are a lot of fundamentals, and I think a lot of the fundamentals, and I appreciate you bringing this stuff up, is based on the psychology of humans and how we are wired. That’s why when people ask me, “John, what books do you recommend?” I don’t recommend sales books, I recommend psychology books, like Influence by Robert Cialdini, or Selling with NLP, the Unfair Advantage, those type of things. Human psychology is a science that is historic and has lots of data points, whereas sales has minimal data points and changes on a regular basis.
CHRIS ORLOB: Speaking of, you just reminded me of it because you said Influence by Robert Cialdini, stating the reason for your call. They did this research, you’re probably familiar with this if you read the book.
JOHN BARROWS: The copier.
CHRIS ORLOB: They had a bunch of people go up and ask if they could cut in line to make a Xerox copy, and like 43% of the people said, “Sure.” Then they said, “Hey, can I cut in line because I have to make a copy.” The reason that is not valid, it’s like obvious, but because they said the word because, and then stated a reason, there was 94% compliance. I think that’s the right number. That hasn’t changed.
So just like you’re saying, 80% of your studying and self-development should be on this timeless stuff, psychology, behavioural economics, understanding how the human brain makes decisions. Then spend the rest of your time experimenting with new techniques and evolving your approach.
JOHN BARROWS: It’s so important to stay. That’s why I think psychology majors, a lot of times, make the best sales reps, because they understand how human interaction works, as opposed to just using a technique because I was told to use a technique. They understand fundamentally why.
That reason, by the way, translates into one of the next questions I’ll ask. Questioning, I have found that by giving people the reason for my question, they’re way more open to giving me the answer. For instance, a lot of times when you ask the question, the client or the prospect is kind of like, “Alright sales rep, why are you asking?”
CHRIS ORLOB: It triggers defensiveness.
JOHN BARROWS: In the back of their head they’re like, “Why are you asking me that question, and what are you going to do with it?” What I do is, I tell them why I’m asking that question. I’ll say, “Could you help me understand what are the priorities, when your CEO stood up at the beginning of the year and said these are the three things, what were those three things? The reason I ask is because if I can’t impact those, then it’s not worth us having this conversation.”
CHRIS ORLOB: I love that. I wish I had tried that in my career and had that insight that you just had. That’s new to me, and I think it’s amazing. I want to go test it out.
JOHN BARROWS: Try it out. It’s a game changer, because you’ll literally hear the person be like, “Oh, well, okay.”
CHRIS ORLOB: I love it.
JOHN BARROWS: So, as that relates to questioning, one of the things, the most recent one, and then … We’ve got about three minutes left here, but … The closing one. They say closing techniques are dead. Now I train closing techniques, so obviously we could have a debate on this for another whole show, but what was the big takeaway? I think the takeaway here was more important than the title. What did you find with the data about closing and the success of closing as it relates to the closing call versus the discovery call?
CHRIS ORLOB: In hindsight, I probably could have chosen a better title for that article because …
JOHN BARROWS: It got me to open it.
CHRIS ORLOB: Exactly. What we found is that we analyzed all of the calls throughout the sales cycle. I went to my data science team and said, “Hey, we haven’t analyzed closing calls yet. Let’s look at the difference between a successful closing call, one that leads to a closed deal, and one that leads to a lost deal.” They poured over the data, and I poured over the data for weeks, and there was literally not a single difference that we could find, except for one, which I’ll direct the listeners to the article to find out.
The point is, there was no difference between these closing calls that lead to success or not success. There were wild, stark differences between calls that happen earlier in the sales cycle. So long story short, the takeaway is, the things you do early on set the trajectory more so than the things you do late I the game. If you had a shitty discovery call, and a shitty demo, and then you get on a closing call, I don’t care how much conviction you exude through your tonality or whatever the Hell people are saying these days, if you didn’t do the front end of the sales cycle right, no slick line is going to help you close. No amount of belief in your product, no vision, none of that is going to help you.
If you set the stage right early on, and then at the end, you simply exercise decisiveness, which is really what closing is. I don’t hate the word closing, but I don’t think it’s an accurate word. I think the right word is … I can see why this is not adopted, because it’s clunky, it’s exercising decisiveness on behalf of your prospect.
Now that comes into play. I feel like that was a very roundabout way of me trying to explain that.
JOHN BARROWS: You’re spot on. I think the closing … I think the big misperception that people have on closing is that it happens at the end. What you reinforce, which what I train, which makes me feel better about training the techniques, is that closing happens at every single stage of the sales process to get the next step, to close on them getting more information, or whatever it is. So understanding the assumptive close, the trial close, those type of things, but how to apply them early, and ask better questions, and layer, and stuff like that, set up the close.
Now I never agree that closing just happens. I do believe you have to just ask the question. Sometimes it can be as simple as, “So when are you going to sign that contract? When should I expect a signature?” That is as simple as it could be at that point.
CHRIS ORLOB: Decisiveness.
JOHN BARROWS: But early on is making sure you’re doing all those right things, because ultimately, that’s why I disagree with a lot of, I’m not going to name any names, but there are some sales trainers, some sales training warriors out there that still are Wolf of Wall Street, stuff it down your throat. “What you don’t want to make money? Blah, blah blah.” Dude, screw you. If some rep, maybe that’s good for used car salesmen still, but in the world of B to B selling, hardcore closing techniques at the end of the sale are about as old school as it gets, and data shows, are absolute bull shit.
Awesome, Chris. I think we can go all day with this conversation because I have so many questions around the data, but I’m going to recommend to everybody, because a lot of questions that I guarantee you have about cold calling, Clarissa, for instance, she asks, “With today’s busy world is cold calling really effective?” Yes, it is if done right, Clarissa, and if your audience is on the phone. There are some audiences that don’t have a phone or whatever it is. So yes, understand your ICP. Understand your personas, but get better on the phone.
We didn’t even talk about all the other stuff that we said before this, Chris, as far as where voice is going with Alexa, and Google Home, and that type of stuff. All you have to do …
CHRIS ORLOB: We have to have a follow up. We have to have another one of these.
JOHN BARROWS: We will absolutely have a follow up, because all I’m going to say to those skeptics out there is, look at the data that Gong is putting out there, and all you have to do is follow the money. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, literally the biggest companies in the world are putting all of their money into voice. So if you’re not into voice in some way, shape, or form, there’s a strong possibility you are going to miss out on a massive opportunity coming up here in the near future.
So with that, Chris, tell everybody where they can find out more information about Gong, and you, and everything else, and if they’ve got questions that they could ask.
CHRIS ORLOB: I would say just on LinkedIn. Chris Orlob. Chris O-R-L-O-B as in boy. Take a look at the post we put on the LinkedIn. Not just our blog. They’re going to be the same content, but LinkedIn has the benefit of hundreds and hundreds of comments, and they’re always really interesting to read through. Connect with me on LinkedIn, Chris Orlob. If you’re interested in Gong, check out our website, Gong.IO. G-O-N-G.IO.
JOHN BARROWS: The new, beautiful Gong website.
CHRIS ORLOB: Yes.
JOHN BARROWS: Awesome Chris, well thank you so much. We’re definitely going to have you back on here in a month or two. I really appreciate your time. Everybody, keep the questions coming. Keep crushing it out there. Get on the phones, but do it right, and have some fun with it, ladies and gentlemen.
Have a great week and make it happen!
