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Jack Knight

SUMMARY

What are some examples of things that did well in the US market but not as well in the UK, Australia, or APAC?

Some business practises work well in the US market, like focusing on the hotel industry, because there is a bigger market to target. In other markets, these practises may not work as well because of differences in culture and language.

What are some instances of products that have been successful in the US market but haven't done as well in the UK, Australia, or APAC?

The success of some business strategies in the US market, such as focusing on the hospitality sector, is attributable to a larger addressable market, however in other economies, variations in cultural attitudes and languages may make these strategies less successful.

How do businesses use procedures like list development and research to empower their sales representatives?

Businesses can support their sales people by giving them access to a centralised source of leads that have been verified and enhanced by a research team. With this strategy, the representatives may concentrate on what is important, and it could be required to hire people specifically with research talents.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00]

Ricky Pearl: Today on a Couple Of Pointers Podcasts, we are lucky enough to have Jack Knight,

BDR lead at Fourth,

and

co-founder of CallBlitz. Welcome

to the show.

Jack Knight: Appreciate

you having me on.

Ricky Pearl: Right? I'm really excited for a few reasons. One, as you know, we like to talk to people that are operational, like you're doing this on a daily basis. You can be able to tell us what's working, what's not working, and what you're seeing.

Callblitz

Ricky Pearl: But I also just wanna chat about Callblitz. That's some amazing technology.

Jack Knight: Yeah. Trenches, right? And a lot goes on in the trenches, and I think LinkedIn, the way we make LinkedIn look with tips and tricks and all this. translates to the trenches can be very different. So it's check in with you and talk about that a bit. And yeah.

Ricky Pearl: Nobody wants to put on LinkedIn how like the reality is that they're not checking this or that they're still using this lazy approach or that this lazy approach that isn't best practice is still highly effective. Cause you know, if you put that out on LinkedIn, the gurus are gonna go wild.

Jack Knight: A hundred percent. Yeah. I also think, you know, you [00:01:00] people in pockets and very different industries having a lot of success. How that translate to a completely different industry, completely different context. So, I'm all for LinkedIn tips, all for the info sharing big asterisk next to it that it depends.

Reps in different countries

Ricky Pearl: Now something else super interesting about you that most other BDR leaders in the world that I speak to don't have. You've got reps in

different countries.

And I'm, I rarely want to dive into that because we've got reps in different countries and even on the same account, we are just getting wildly different experiences.

Well, let's dive in there. Let's start at this international expansion phase. Tell me some of the big diff, well, firstly, let's start,

Which countries are you managing your reps in?

Ricky Pearl: which countries are you managing your reps in?

Jack Knight: So we've got a US team, I think we've got about seven reps on our US team, we've got three in the UK. One is a manager coach, mostly coach, but a little bit of player on the side. And have one loan rep in Australia and he covers our APAC region. Wildly spread out literally [00:02:00] every time zone is covered.

And can be a lot to

manage at once.

What's your work schedule like?

Ricky Pearl: What's your work schedule like? That sounds inhospitable with

the normal

lifestyles.

Jack Knight: So fortunately leader in the UK is amazing. She does great work and so I'm to, her run that shop without me being super involved. Right. supportive. We're there for coaching, training, that kind of stuff.

really has

that team squared away to where they don't need much handholding at all.

APAC BDR, because he's alone, he doesn't have a manager he's literally alone. Have to be flexible with his time zone, and usually that means staying past 5:00 PM for a one-on-one, super worth it to see him to connect. Personally, I'm waking up at 4:30 AM every morning and that's just, that's what

we're doing out here.

Ricky Pearl: Wow. And is that because you wanna take a cold shower,

do some wim hof breathing,

get to the gym and meditate for four hours? Or is that because of time zone and work?

Jack Knight: I'm too scared

of the wim hof stuff.

but no, I do wake up with a shock [00:03:00] wrist

watch, so at 4:30 I get a

nice little shock. Yeah.

Ricky Pearl: Mate,

honestly, the world of sales is fucking bizarre. Like this is where people, here's my team's shirt, right? I dunno if

you

can see it.

It's all backwards. So it says

BDSM, unsubscribe is my safe word

Jack Knight: my

Ricky Pearl: And BDSM is business development, sales and

marketing.

Jack Knight: Love it Yeah. There's a, an extra edge to people in sales, that's for sure.

Some examples of things that you really found success in the US market that didn't translate so well to either the UK or Australia or APAC

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, for sure. So now tell me the difference between, gimme some examples of things that

you really found success in the US market and it didn't translate so well to either the UK or

Jack Knight: Yeah, great there's a few dynamics here, right? The first thing is the market at large. So in the US, especially in our industry, our market is We're reaching out to hospitality. So hotels, restaurants in the US are everywhere. There's so many leads, so many prospects, so many accounts. Whereas for our APAC rep, there's a [00:04:00] large addressable market, right?

You're talking about the entire hospitality infrastructure of apac, but where do you focus? And that approach is very much more of an enterprise to the tune of, his outbound goal a third of our US reps outbound goal. So the way approach their accounts is just a very different approach. Their relationships with their AEs are very different. So there's difference, right? With the playbook and the industry and one of the more differences to think about though, is cultural differences, right? And especially when it comes to Us we have very different tone than Australia, for example, in Australia, I was talking to my rep, he said it's very casual, like Australians do not like salespeople.

So you know, you're saying cheers. Hey mate. Like all this kind of stuff. And it's very casual. US, we can be a little more buttoned up. APAC though, when you're reaching out to Japanese leads. Very professional, buttoned up, very corporate. [00:05:00] So interesting that dynamic of how you speak to your market.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. It really is. And we've seen that all over. When people come to APAC, you know, one of my classics is the merge field for first name. Occasionally, depending on your motion, you might be doing a bit more of a bulk approach for some things and you might need to use a merge field for first name.

Occasionally you don't have first name cause it's not scrapable of LinkedIn. Sometimes it's like just their initial, that's all you can pull. In Australia, we merge that with mate, so it'll be like, Hey mate. Whereas in the US it would always be like, Hey there or you know, something else.

Where does the UK land?

Ricky Pearl: Anyway, tell me about the UK, right? Because I obviously know Australia really well. We've got reps in the US. We see the same as what you're talking about. Where do, where does the UK land?

Jack Knight: Yeah, the middle right? UK there's a certain especially you know, me coming from America, speaking American out here, there's a polish in the UK that we don't have. But they also don't like salespeople. So how do you balance this like, respectful but human approach?

I think that's where the [00:06:00] UK is in the middle. Whereas, you know, again, is more formal and I think us, we get away with some casualty

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, and it's really important this cuz so much of the advice that we see on LinkedIn comes from the US and it doesn't translate to the whole world. If you prospecting in Spain, for example, on a cold call, and you don't ask someone how their day is or in France and you not, you don't ask them how their day's going, like it could be considered really rude.

That's not how their society works. Whereas in the US if you ask someone how their day's going, you've got an increased likelihood of being hung up

Jack Knight: It's so true. And that's so it's interesting, but it's important that we note those differences.

Now do channels differ? Are you primarily phone based in the US?

What are some examples of things that were successful in the US market but didn't translate well to the UK, Australia or APAC?

The success of certain business practices in the US market, such as targeting hospitality industries, is due to a larger addressable market; whereas differences in cultural approaches and language may hinder the success of these practices in other markets.

Do you think his challenges were relative to say, you know, hiring a rep on your team of seven in the US?

Ricky Pearl: Tell me now let's talk about your Australian rep. You've got a lone wolf now, he's lucky enough to have a lot of infrastructure and support around you. What do you think his challenges were relative to say, you know, hiring a rep on your team of seven in the US

Jack Knight: that is a and it's, it has multiple answers. One answer is what you just said. Doing this [00:08:00] job is

hard enough

when you're going outbound, when you're trying to develop business. Sales is a freaking hard job, but at least you have teammates around you. At least you have people that are embracing the suck with you in the trenches.

My lone wolf rep in he doesn't have that. Now he has great account manager support. He's mapped one to one our Australian rep, and they tear it up together. I mean, he gets mentorship, he gets support, encouragement. But it's different than having a peer that relates to you and understands the day-to-day.So I think he misses out a lot of that and we can't even schedule team meetings in makes sense for him to join. It just doesn't make sense. So big con for sure. And then I think one of the other things that he might miss out on and what we're trying to fix with our one-on-ones, is how do we get into the same program as the rest of the team UK and US in terms of coaching, data, well, you said infrastructure, reporting so that we can start to coach from a [00:09:00] consistent place instead of, I have no idea what you're doing there, no idea how to coach you. I need to be able to bring him into the fold and say, okay, it's gonna look different, but at least I've got you in the fold so that we can start to support you that way.

How often are you doing one-on-ones?

Ricky Pearl: So you've got eight reps directly underneath you, plus another three that fall into the UK, which has a strong manager. How often are you doing one-on-ones?

Jack Knight: US? We do weekly One-on-ones and UK I'm only meeting with the manager over there, so she completely oversees and manages those relationships one-to-one. They do a Friday meeting. I try to jump on that sometimes just to say hi and let them know I'm there for them. But for the most part, with the US, one-on-one with the manager in the UK and then my Australian rep,

What does their weekly or monthly training cadence typically look like?

Ricky Pearl: Now, what does your training program look like beyond ramp? So a rep's been in the game six months now and at that stage, what does their weekly or monthly training cadence typically

Jack Knight: Now that's a really good question because it can depend on the rep and it can also

[00:10:00] depend on the team and what they're doing well, what they're not doing well. in general, for a weekly coaching cadence, and when I have a team that hits that six month maturity mark, what I would like to do is actually set up a two-on-one training with my more tenured reps because they can start to coach each other. And what I do is like the first sessions, I'll show them how to coach each other, what data we're looking for, and then I'll slowly start to fade. Four weeks later, I'm not on those meetings anymore. They're coaching each other, coming to me with the results, and I'm there to validate, yeah, that looks like a good action plan for the week.And now not only do my reps have each other's support in that, now they're coaches. Like actually know how to coach each other. And just naturally because of that, they're gonna start to be able to help each other out. And I'm able to replicate myself.

Ricky Pearl: So this is really exciting. I love this concept. If you don't mind, I just want to tear in a little bit. So you're building up your reps to coach other reps.How do you prevent it from becoming a talk [00:11:00] fest? Like this is one of the challenges. You get team members on a call, they've been grinding on the phones.You get them together and it turns into a good laugh, which is nice for team building.

How do you keep on agenda make sure when they rock up to those calls, it's training?

Ricky Pearl: How do you keep on agenda make sure when they rock up to those calls, it's training?

Jack Knight: Because we're, fully remote, I'm okay with a session turning into a good laugh and I'm okay with them chit-chatting to a point, right? So to answer your they are required to coaching scorecard at the end of each one of these sessions. So they have to fill out what is my weekly focus area, and they're looking at conversion rates of how many people they're reaching out to reply rates, all of this data.

So they're supposed to pick one focus area out of all of that. data And then one thing they're differently, I call it the weekly impact goal. I don't want you to walk away from training with three or four different things you need to work on. That's too much. You're gonna forget it I want you to pick one thing you're gonna do different this next week and then the week after we're gonna check on that.

How did it go? So they are required to fill that out, and when they [00:12:00] show up on our Monday training or Monday team meeting, I have them all quickly share what their weekly impact goal is. So if they don't have one,

You, kind of look silly

Ricky Pearl: Now, do you call it a weekly impact goal or do

you call it wig?

Jack Knight: Done.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. Right, it's a TLA, it's a three letter acronym. You've gotta use it

Jack Knight: Never thought of that.

Ricky Pearl: Mate I love it. I really do love this approach, and I think this is what you get from having consistent BDR leadership. What I'm struggling with in the industry at the moment is how many reps are just reporting to founders or reporting to VPs of sales where they've just thrown in a team of AEs and be like, your job within the sales cycle is calling top of funnel. And the AEs are there to kind of guard them almost the way you'd, you know, coach your cleaner and how you like them to clean your house.

What impact have you seen coaching have on the outcomes for your business?

Ricky Pearl: Like what impact have you seen coaching have on the outcomes for your business?

Jack Knight: If you can show someone their potential, if you can help them fulfill their potential outside of work. work aside results aside, if you can encourage someone, empower them, [00:13:00] get them to start thinking for themselves, that person is a different person in a month, in two months and three months, and that affect compounds.

So if you take time to invest in coaching, you are going to get exponential return on your investament. And I think where we dropped the ball with coaching is we just expect our reps to go figure it out. Like you're saying, a lot of companies are doing this, let me hire an outbound function. But if you don't actually train them, all you have is a team of plugging in phone numbers and hitting call and getting hung up on.

So to your point, we have to invest and we have to coach our reps to to get the most potential.

Ricky Pearl: Are your team using Callblitz?

Jack Knight: It's a little as the creator of it, I'm what we do with Callblitz on our team is we have a weekly team call Blitz. We've a 30 minute session in the morning, 30 minute session in the afternoon, once a week. I, that's the only requirement I give to them. Outside of that, they're welcome use it whenever they want, with whoever they want. So we're [00:14:00] starting to see BDRs call with each other and we're starting to see AEs and BDRs actually jump on together and do some dial sessions.

Ricky Pearl: Oh, I like that. And

Jack Knight: biased and I do not want to cramp our team culture. Like, oh, we gotta go use Blitz. And if they have any negative feedback, oh, we can't go tell Jack our boss too. Like, there is that dynamic.

Ricky Pearl: I love how you've brought it in. Now we've started doing team call blocks and same thing, I had to really try to bring it in the right way cuz it can have such a tremendous cultural impact. And we kind of made it optional, we also kind of didn't but I don't even know when they are, as in like I'm not invited to them.

And I've tried to make sure that they realize that a core block is meant to be team building, team bonding, training, all the good side of it, but there's no stick. It's not about keeping you accountable having someone to watch your quality, things like that. Like we don't need the call blitz for that. I can just see your stats and your call record.

Have you found that collective calling has seen an uplifting performance or morale?

Ricky Pearl: Have you found that those call blitzers in general, not your software, we could talk about that separately, but have you found that [00:15:00] collective calling has seen an uplifting performance?

Jack Knight: Yeah. this question I ask them if they've ever been on an in-person sales floor, and the answer's usually yes, because, you know, COVID was only what, two years ago and it's only been somewhat recent. The industry at large has worked fully remote. So most people have had that experience of being on a live sales floor.

Well, as soon as I bring that up, you start to get this melancholy feeling. You get this like, oh yeah, I do remember that. Yeah, it was fun. Like we had a whiteboard, we had you know, the gong maybe of a bell that you ring. Like it's just fun. It's exciting. But beyond that, it's the natural osmosis that happens when you're with your team rubbing elbows.

Whether you like it or not, you're gonna be overhearing phone calls all day. Of course it's gonna make you better. Of course it's gonna open up conversations where, Hey, why did you open that way? Or, Hey, I've never heard that talk track before. Oh, do you wanna practice it real quick? Like that organic learning, you will never beat the in-person sales floor for cold callers. [00:16:00] And I'm very passionate about that because I had such a good experience entering sales out of college starting on a live sales floor when we went remote we lost that. Right? And we were all forced alone in our dark apartments during Covid, and it sucked. It was awful. And you know, trying to jump on a zoom together works somewhat.

That's why I built Callblitz. It's cold calling for remote sales teams. Whether you use Callblitz you need to be bringing your team together to learn from each other, to do it with each other because it's a cultural impact. It's a collaboration and it's a coaching tool. just having your team together, cold calling. So, you know, I've seen teams who, have had no cold calling culture start to be able to build one even in a remote setting. And I've seen expert cold callers be able to leverage a tool like that to get even better.

Ricky Pearl: It's really remarkable, I think, what can be done with it when it's brought in well. And there's a lot of logistical challenges with doing remote call blocks, it's hard to be distracted whilst trying [00:17:00] to focus. It's hard to listen to five people talking in your ear whilst you waiting for the first second of a connect, right?

So like the technical

enablements that Callblitz

or tools like it bring is so essential to being able to do a remote session with the team and not have it a bloody painful experience or adversely impact the quality of your calling, which is counterproductive.

Jack Knight: Especially when we were early on and our performance wasn't there, we've seen them say like, Hey, love the concept, but this is actually hurting our productivity because we're dealing with load speeds, we're dealing with clicking buttons, reps going back and forth, being distracted.

And so we've been able to, to move the tool in a position now where everything's automated, everything is out of the way. So your job, if you're a cold caller, is to call. And oh, by the way, if you want to listen to your team's calls, one click away to be able to listen to your team's calls.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, I love that. I remember when I first saw the product and I was like, oh, but like this, without this one thing, we [00:18:00] can't use it. And you're like, ah, interesting that you say that. Look at this one button to click. And I was like, wow. Okay. You've clearly had, like input from actual cold callers and cold calling teams to build this tool out because the one thing that you had built solved the one problem that I had.

Jack Knight: And it's really fun getting to build something that you actually need and you actually use. Because I was sitting a remote team on a Zoom trying to cold call, and that's where this idea came like, why don't we do Zoom for cold calling, but better? So it's been fun watching develop over the past year and getting to use it with my team.

Now it's a.

blast

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. Now so let's talk a little bit more say on calling for a rep to become a genuine expert. Are you hiring experienced or unexperienced to begin

Jack Knight: We are in a composition where we're not at the top of the rank we're not at the bottom by any means we're average. Right? So I sell some people into joining our team just through, you know, and sales skills or whatever. But the reality we're looking at the average [00:19:00] range.

So we're going to be able to bring in talent that matches that expectation, right? So college grads, maybe a year or two of BDR experience, we lucked out with our two latest hires. They're both incredible. one's former military experience and sales experience and the other um, he's just like entrepreneur. You know, he's got many things on the side that he's doing successfully. So, um, long story short, we're bringing in the best we can at the comp range we're at. But, I believe in the 10,000 hour rule, especially for cold calling. I think most things you can actually get pretty good at relatively quickly with time consistency. But cold calling, every time you send that outbound call, you have no idea what's waiting on the other side. you're always gonna have cold calling. Anxiety, always. It's just gonna be a thing. It's how you manage it. It's how you deal with it. But yeah, I think it takes a long time to truly master cold calling.

Hop on calls with Kevin Hopp

Jack Knight: One of the only people I know that has [00:20:00] mastered cold calling is Kevin Hopp He's, on LinkedIn. You may know him.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. Hop on with Kevin or something like that.

Jack Knight: Hop on calls with Kevin Hopp.

Ricky Pearl: He's working with Ronan, doing some good work.

Jack Knight: Yep. He's actually, he's, a Callblitz member as well. We call him our, chief Cold Caller.

Ricky Pearl: Cool.

Jack Knight: call block two weeks ago and he's in Callblitz and I'm explaining it to him like Callblitz strategies, stuff like that. Making dials, so he is talking to me while he's dialing and my man is sitting here making a sandwich in his kitchen the whole time, and he gets a call and he starts talking to this prospect.

Didn't miss a beat. Didn't miss a beat. I was like, he's good at cold calling. That is an expert right there.

Ricky Pearl: One of my challenges, even this podcast is difficult for me cuz I need to walk and talk. So I'm like circling around the dining room table, you know, so much so that my wife bought me a treadmill desk cuz she was like, Ricky, I can't have you fucking walking around. I can't stand this, right.

You know. And so even in cold calling, I have to walk, I have to be mobile. Now tell me here's something I've noticed

with cold callers.

They start off with bad [00:21:00] technique, asking things like, how are you doing? Whatever the problem is, they then go through this transformation where they start getting really technical, watching the words that they say.

They then start getting

really confident because they're

having some success and this is becoming a bit more normal for them, and they start relaxing their language again, almost to the point that they were

right at the beginning. Except now

they're successful.

Jack Knight: True. I've never heard it explained that way, but I 110% agree. Example with Kevin, if you brought a new hire in and you asked him to go cold call. They're sitting at their desk frozen, shaking, hyperventilating. What am I gonna say? What am I gonna do? Oh, they picked up, oh crap, I have to talk now.

Oh crap, I just screwed that call up. Okay, next call. Here's Kevin, he's, I don't know how many dials he's made in his life, literally making his sandwich, and when he answered, he was like, what's going on? it was so, casual. I totally agree with that life cycle there.

It's all the tonality

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. It's all the tonality. And a lot of leaders, what's what they're getting wrong. And I found this a lot in Australia where you get this real [00:22:00] attachment to the outcome cuz in enterprise or when you don't have a massive total addressable market.

You feel the pinch a little bit more.

That one person wasn't just one person. No, that's one of a hundred companies that we are targeting. So there's this challenge to detach from the outcome, but once they do and they realize, Hey, I'm just making a sandwich and that I'm trying to, you know, find the 3% that are in the market to buy the 7% that you know, have a problem and would

consider a solution.

I just want to poke at that problem. And the other 30% that know they have a problem but aren't ready to find a solution, I'm just there to pluck them out into our nurture sequence.

And I'm not gonna change where they are. I'm not gonna change where they are. I'm just sitting there going I'm just gonna tell you what you are and you'll kind of, based on your response to me, tell me if you 3%, 7%, or 30%.

Jack Knight: Good. So good. what people missed to your point, sales leaders, they're not focused on tone. If you botch a cold call script, but you're talking to that 3 or 7%, chances are if it's a real need, especially that 3%, they're still gonna be down, right? Because you met them at the right time, at the right [00:23:00] solution. But if you're tone.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, I listened to some calls

and genuinely amazed. I'm like, that was the worst cold call. I don't even know where to begin on coaching this call. It was so bad. But they booked a meeting.

Jack Knight: if, your tone isn't in check, that's where you're gonna start to lose people. Even that 3%. If you're calling 'em, you're anxious you're, whatever, berating or you're angry. they're 3%. You lost 'em at the tone, not what you said. It's how you said it.

Ricky Pearl: And I wonder if with AI maybe

something will build into Callblitz. I wonder

if there's a way to record a call with your mate. Maybe just like how we chatting now Hey Jack, what's going on? And it kind of measures your tonality and then it maps that with a cold call and it shows how, like how much more formal you being or how much hard are you

trying to enunciate words, the language changes.

How do you as a BDR lead get people off their fucking phone?

Ricky Pearl: How do you as a BDR lead get people off their fucking phone?

They'll talk like this and then straight away they're gonna call. Hi Jack. It's Ricky calling here

from Pointer Strategy. How are you [00:24:00] doing? And you're like, oh my God.

Jack Knight: Yep. Listening to one of my wife's calls last week, and he's from Texas, so he's got a good old Texan voice it's charming. Like you actually feel like you know him because he is just his authentic self. And that heard a cold call recording and it got buttoned up all of a sudden.

I'm like, wait no, no, like your voice is a gift. Like you have this charm, use it. Yeah, your point, it's calling that out. It's just being like, relax. you can say, I don't care what you say on this phone call, and I've told my reps this before, I want on this next cold call, I don't care what you say, I want you to be as chill as you've ever been on the phone.

We will burn through prospects just practicing tone. That's it. I don't care. I'm not coaching script, not coaching openers, whatever, value prop. Just like, tone in that call? We're gonna focus on that till you get past this

How important is role playing in your org?

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. How important is role playing in your org?

Jack Knight: It has a, no pun intended, it has a role. I think it's great for new hires, but it's not the only thing we should be doing with our reps. And [00:25:00] that's where a lot of teams fall into trouble. Oh, great. We're training you at a cold call. Let's do a bunch of role play scenarios. I have a whole blog about this, most role play scenarios, unrealistic because most people are too nice to be honest about the feedback at the end. You've got a new hire. You don't wanna shut 'em down and say, Hey, actually that sucked. Here's seven things you need to go work on. That's not an effective way to coach. Or people want to prepare them for the horrible trenches of cold calling.

And so during these role plays, they're like mega intense and people would never say these things in real life. So I think, there's a place for them, but they should be an a tool within the toolbox of cold call amongst the toolbox, you've got role plays, you've got live coaching, which can be done through whatever video platform you want.

ideally something like a Callblitz for, it's built for you. You've got trial by fire. And honestly people run into trouble with trial by fire when that's all they're doing. New rep, go call. Bye. Never talk to you.

it can [00:26:00] be effective when used in tandem with the other coaching strategies.

And then last is the call recording coaching. Same thing. If you do only call recording coaching. Bad idea. But if you put that in tandem with other strategies, you're covering a lot of different learning styles.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. I mean, to be honest, most organizations are just doing none. You know what they're doing is reviewing a few phone calls and criticizing, you know, oh, you could have said this, and you, when the prospect asked this question, you could have answered it more like this. And it's usually around products knowledge or industry knowledge. It's so challenging with the reps that don't have that kind of leadership. One thing I found, no one is a bigger critic of a cold call than the person who made it.

Whatsoever. You just play back a call to someone and say, what did you think of this call? They will give you a list of 10 things, and if you slow them down and say, okay whoa, let's scale this back.

Like just gimme one thing. Just with regards to how you handled this objection. That's all I really care about. Tell me this objection. How do you think you could handle that a bit differently? And they're like, yeah, should have gone like this [00:27:00] as opposed to that. You're like anyway, if it comes up again, give that a try.

But it's really tough to think about that on the cold call. And that's where I feel like role playing gives the repetition that you can practice when somebody says, how did you get my number? They're not sitting there for the first time thinking, ah, what am I gonna say? What am I gonna say? They know this is how our answer it.

It's pretty simple, you know, I'm gonna diffuse, I'm gonna tell them this line, and if they keep pushing, I'm, you know, going to. They won't keep pushing cause I'm giving them the answer type

Jack Knight: Exactly. Yeah, you can actually, you know, the Your Adventure type stuff where maybe it's a movie and you can like dictate what happens in the movie if you pick path A or path B. You can actually do that with cold calling. You can build a cold call flow chart, and I've done this before where you have the opener have what are the common responses to this opener, then you have the, okay, this is the response to the opener.

Okay. How do you respond to that? And you have like this diagram, this flow chart of when they say this, you say this, when [00:28:00] they say this, you say this. Now we never wanna be that rigid, but it's a great framework to understand, especially for new hires. Here are all the possible outcomes of this call. And over time you're gonna learn naturally how to handle when something comes up.

And that flow chart is just gonna be in your brain. So you can actually formulaically lay out cold calls in all of the scenarios.

Ricky Pearl: Have you seen that Netflix

series Kaleidoscope?

Jack Knight: I know on Netflix they have the Choose Your Adventure. Is that what that is?

Ricky Pearl: It's a Choose Your Adventures, but here's what's interesting about it. Episode one and the final episode are always the same, and then in between they show it in different orders.

Why I love that analogy for a cold call is that the outcome is very often predetermined before you get on that call.

Either this person has the pain that is relevant and is in the market for a solution, or they not, and that's before they've picked up the phone. So like you can change the roots to get there, but you can't materially [00:29:00] change the outcome. Now, just like Kaleidoscope, they could have lost people in between.

They had a

few, like really, two really shit episodes

in a row. People maybe wouldn't even get to the

end of the call.

So like you've still got a role to play with that middle chunk, but you can't change the outcome. And very often we don't change the beginning either because our open is like our opener.

Jack Knight: That analogy is money. I'm bringing that back to the team next week. That's gold right

there

Ricky Pearl: Oh mate. There we go. Taking the snippet. That's a fucking LinkedIn post right there. Yes. Sorts it for next week. Next to go. Let's go.

Jack Knight: One

more comment on the, call recording stuff. Did you play rugby growing up?

Ricky Pearl: All right. Played a lot of sports, rugby for a tiny amount of time until I realized that genetically I'm not made

Jack Knight: You serious with these guns? You're not made for it?

Ricky Pearl: I'm what you call I'm like due tall. So like in my community, I'm like, you know, I'm okay. Like I'm a normal, maybe even above

average size height. I go out

on a Friday night, I'm like,

oh no.

Like the

average height's six foot,

you know, I'm just no.

Jack Knight: Yeah.

Ricky Pearl: These are the guns. It's [00:30:00] a good

filter on Zoom that's all.

Jack Knight: Right, Exactly. Well, I ask because I played what you would call American football growing up with football we have practice, we have the game, and then we have game film the next day, every Sunday. So what we're doing with cold calling, when you only provide your team with call recordings, all you're doing is giving them game film to go watch.

That's it. And then you send them out to the game, no practice. You're sending 'em out to the game to get demolished. All they've done is practice game film in their head. All you do is practice role playing, then they're gonna show up to the game. Probably do pretty well. But are we taking things away?

Are we learning? Are we adjusting? Adapting? That's the game film part. Where all three come together and it's beautiful is when you bring your team to practice every day, your role plays, you're working together everyday. And then you have your game day, you're on the field together. And what, virtual sales floor does is it gives you the ability, the coach, to be on the field with your reps.

Imagine you sent your rep out to a [00:31:00] football game, 1 versus 11, they're gonna get demolished. But if they've got their teammates out there with them, they've got the coach out there with them, you're on the field with 'em. Those live feedback loops, those live iterations. And Then after the game, go to your game film.

Look at a call recording, watch that tape, make some adjustments, and we're gonna pick it up Monday and practice and we're gonna go back into role plays and hitting the phones again. So that's the analogy I, use. It's a coaching trifecta and I think a lot of us are overindexed on one. if we're overindexed on any of 'em at all.

Ricky Pearl: It's such a treat talking to great BDR leaders. And, you know, I hope anyone listening to this does two things. One, if you're a rep if you don't have a good BDR leader, you are really stunting

your early career without a doubt. Two, if you want to be a BDR leader you know, to be able to influence other people, you really have to be this professional coach.

Like you have to have the goods. Curious, do you, when you just gave that analogy of American football, the one thing I love about Americans is how, like all of their [00:32:00] national champions are world champion. But anyway so off topic.

Are you calling?

Ricky Pearl: Do you call, like it's, you know, there's this big, and maybe it's an American culture a lead from the front.

But armies would go down pretty quickly if they put all their generals on the front line. Are you calling?

Jack Knight: It's so interesting because that balance is really tough, but it's really important. So I totally agree, right? If all the generals are on the front lines, there's no one behind looking at strategy, looking at the team in general, I'm calling with my team every day, I'm not looking at what's happening four weeks from now.

When this lead pool dries up. What's happening to these two reps? What themes are they noticing across their performance that we can adjust, correct? You have to detach. You have to take a step back, and that should be the default posture for a leader. Take a step back so that while your team is looking down range, you are not looking down range.

You're able to look around, left to right and be able to adjust and adapt. You have to start there. That does not mean you're above doing the dirty work. And one of the best ways to build trust with your [00:33:00] team is get out there, hit the phones, look like a fool, screw up, laugh at yourself, coach yourself, let them coach you.

That's how you're gonna build trust with your team. That's when they're gonna say. Wow, he's not better than us. He's with us. He's one of us. Right? He's got Our backs in a strategic way, detached, but he's willing to dive in with us. So, our weekly coblets, once a week, not a big deal for me to pull up 60 leads and I call him with the team and let let them, you know, gimme feedback.

I let them watch me stumble and screw up cuz I'm not perfect at all. I think it's a fun thing for them to see me out in the wild.

Ricky Pearl: Man, I love that. It's almost made it motivating me to get back on the phones.

Jack Knight: I think if you're gonna over-index though, it's better to difference is though, are you stepping back because you don't want to be there and are you stepping back and not supporting your team? Are you stepping back to support your team? And I think you have to have a very honest check there.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah I think that's a good question for people to ask. Like I'm stepping back because one, I'm not the [00:34:00] BDR team lead, but also because I know as pointer as an agency if it requires me to do that job, I don't have a scalable business. So I need a system that works entirely without me doing that.

I'm trying to fulfill a different role. But

yeah, I really do I appreciate

that and I love that humility. So I think them seeing their leader fail

would really help them

understand that what we are trying to do here is particularly difficult. There's no genuine experts, unless you want to be a

Kevin Hopp, but most

people don't wanna be a

Kevin Hopp.

What they want to do is maybe be an Account Executive or be a VP of Sales or become a Chief Revenue Officer or become an entrepreneur like

Kevin Hopp, but just

not cold calling for a living. Yeah. And seeing that failure within your leaders, I think just brings something so different to cold calling. And I love that. I love that you bring that humility to your team. Where, yeah, I think that would set such an amazing culture where this is a practice.

Jack Knight: Your point, you are mostly calling with your team, [00:35:00] one, you're gonna miss those strategic shifts that need to happen. Two, your team is gonna feel like you don't trust them to do their job. So what I love about what you're saying, Ricky, is your job is to empower other teams to not need you.

Ultimately a good leader will work themselves out of a job. One of my main focuses every day is how do I take what the team relies on me to do, and how do I empower them to go do it so they don't need me anymore? Example, when I first started at Fourth, I was looking at all our cadences, rewriting cadences, monitoring them, managing them, and we got to a point where I tapped on one of our reps, Nick and Nick now owns Cadences for the team.

What? Nick is now becoming an expert in that. New line item for him. He's a leader. He gets to give back to the team, and I get to go focus on other things. So it's a win-win when leaders can set back and empower their team to lead and take over stuff.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. That's amazing.

A lot of things that we thought were important didn't really have a material impact

Ricky Pearl: What I've found strategically is a lot of things that we thought were important didn't really have a material impact. Cadences is a good example. The message in the [00:36:00] email. Super key. Any particular tactic, like an email referencing a call or a call referencing an email like that as a combination makes some material impact.

But otherwise, throw in some calls, throw in some emails, throw in some LinkedIn, throw in more calls. Every cadence kind of worked out the same.

Jack Knight: It's good enough. I listened to, Jocko Willink. I don't know if people know him or not, but he's big into leadership he always says that if I can't explain the difference between your plan, and my plan, or I can't explain why mine is better in a very simple, clear way, we're going with your plan because it's gonna be good enough.

And if good enough, it's minimally viable, then we're gonna run with it because you're more bought in, you're gonna develop, you're gonna learn, and you're gonna hold yourself accountable to your plan more than you are to my plan.

Ricky Pearl: Now tell me I don't wanna get too into it cause I could talk to you for

hours about BDR leadership.

How you enable your reps through research, through the list building process?

Ricky Pearl: One of the biggest challenges I've found is it doesn't matter how good you are on the phone, it doesn't matter how good your messaging is. None of that matters if you're calling the wrong people. Tell me about how you enable your reps through [00:37:00] research, through the list building process. Cuz to me that's in some ways, you could put the best rep on a bad list, they're gonna get no outcomes.

Jack Knight: I don't have the master answer here. This is something we actively struggle with at my company. Now what I try to do for my reps is feed them. I try to always have on our Salesforce dashboards, your total lead list. Here are the different buckets, right? Where they're from, what kind of leads they are.

Looks like, you know, at a high level you have 2000 leads and there's a hundred marketing leads, 200, whatever. I try to feed them leads so that they can go do what they do best, which is call outbound research, all of that. So I don't know if that's the right approach or the wrong approach.

I haven't even considered the pros and cons of that. But my goal is to feed them those leads so that they don't have to worry about where are my next leads coming from? So, I don't know. Yeah, that's a good or bad plan.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. I mean, that's not the point of this podcast. It's interesting to know that you having these same challenges that everyone else [00:38:00] is having. Broadly, it sounds like the strategic approach that you're taking is similar to ours where it's centralized research. We've actually gone to the point now where our reps don't necessarily have access to the data tool like ZoomInfo or whichever one we were using.

We've centralized that, so instead of having six licenses for ZoomInfo, we'll have one and then we'll have but six different tools. And we have a centralized researcher. They put in a request saying, I need a list of a hundred of

these kinds of people.

The research team goes, finds it, enriches it, validates emails, phone numbers, whatever, sends it back to the rep the next day.

Jack Knight: interesting. I, like that approach. I think if, we can mature at that pace, I think that's probably where we'll end up. And it's not to take power away from the reps, it's to empower them to go focus on what matters.

Ricky Pearl: It might be a unique challenge for Pointer. If I have 10 reps, they're working on 10 different companies. They're working on 10 different ideal client profiles. They're working on 10 different industries entirely. Some of them are very simple, where we're just doing

firmographics.

They find,

you know, VPs of Sales are companies that look like [00:39:00] this, and some of them are super complicated. And I found that the, I had to start hiring specifically for research skillset, which was very different to a cold calling skillset or a sales skillset. And we weren't finding a unicorn. So we our best rep maybe

was just bad at research.

You know, like now watch we've got this machine. And it's broken cuz of this one little cog. Our ramp times were significantly longer,

as half of it

was showing people how to find reps,

of find leads. Anyway,

this isn't about us.

Where did they find you?

Ricky Pearl: Mate if somebody wanted to

get hold of you.

They wanted to

learn about Callblitz

or they just wanna chat you about BDR leadership. Where did they find you?

Jack Knight: LinkedIn is where you find anyone these days. No. I, honored to, help out wherever I can. Again, I'm not perfect. I'm certainly gonna screw up a lot more in my career. Young Leaders, so many leadership lessons to learn. In the BDR leader seat and in the founder's seat trying to launch a company. I think I've been able to get here because people have supported me, believed in me, encouraged me, and the least I can do is give that [00:40:00] blessing back to others and help 'em out. it's career advice or any questions, anything I can do to be helpful, hit me up on LinkedIn. I'd love to meet.

Ricky Pearl: Thank you for that. But now let's get a

little bit of tactless here.

What does a person look like right now that if they identify as such, they should

go get on Callblitz,

just download it. It's free, right? Just jump on.

Jack Knight: Free to jump on, I think like nine clicks to get started from creating an account all the way to connecting your dialer and what it looks like is a Zoom. So super familiar. You're basically jumping into a Zoom. connects to your dialer and all of your dialer activity is automated for you.

So you're not having to mute, unmute, share audio, unshare audio. You're doing is dialing. If you or your buddies get into a, connect, one click away from hearing that live conversation. So you can go to callblitz.com. Hit try free now it'll have you minutes later dialing.

in there

Ricky Pearl: So I really, I so strongly

encourage companies

to jump on and do that, even if you just [00:41:00] wanted to do it for fun once a month, do it. It's free. Which Jack, we'll have to talk about. That's pretty crazy. You know, it's free with some limitations, but those limitations aren't to use it. Jump on, give it a try, and you'll see organically,

better morale,

you'll see increased cross-training, you'll see more motivation from the team members. It does bring in elements of accountability because you are accountable to bring your best self to your team. You're accountable to also get some calls in so that they can learn from you and you're accountable to give that feedback to them so that they can improve.

Like it just does such wonders with you know, all you gotta do is

type in callblitz.com. So

I really appreciate having

you on the show. And I'd

love to chat you more particularly about that international expansion, the difference between your reps in the US, Australia, and the UK. But we'll have to save that for another time.

I know it's getting late there on a Friday.

Jack Knight: Love what you're doing. You're helping managers like myself in the US manage these teams that are really hard to manage when they're a globe over. Ricky, thanks for having me on. [00:42:00] Appreciate it, man, I was able to, help a bit.

Ricky Pearl: We'll chat to you soon.

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