Justin Hackston

SUMMARY

What guidance does Justin Hackston offer for someone who wishes to work in tech sales as an SDR?

Justin suggests using tools like rep view to assess a company's success rates for hitting targets, as many SDRs fail in the present economy. He also suggests doing your homework and finding a solid company to work with.

How did Justin learn the abilities he needed to succeed as an SDR in tech sales? What skills did Justin need to develop quickly?

Despite detesting talking on the phone, Justin had to immediately refine his cold calling abilities by learning to engage individuals in conversation rather than the direct manner of communication he was used to in the Army.

What other abilities did Justin need to fast acquire as an SDR in order to succeed, beyond from cold calling?

The best way to maximize productivity and results from technology is to master it, especially when it comes to sales tools.

What essential components make for effective SDR management and leadership?

Providing a positive onboarding experience, teaching standardization, and giving SDRs training and sequences are all components of successful SDR management. The speaker also emphasizes the value of training and how it can affect the success of a company.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00]

Ricky Pearl: Today on A Couple of Pointers Podcast, we are lucky enough to have Justin Hackston from Dooly. Welcome to the show, man.

Justin Hackston: Thanks, Ricky. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Ricky Pearl: Oh man. I've been looking forward to talking to you for a long time. You are, were one of the SDRs that I often turn to for some advice or for some feedback because you were just, on the ground grinding. And I could tell like this guy knows his stuff. He really knows his stuff.

Your current role not an SDR

Ricky Pearl: So tell me your current role though not an SDR.

Justin Hackston: No yeah, just made the transition literally a few weeks ago to the AE role. There's tons to learn. There's tons I learned as an SDR and now I'm in my AE role and it's it's back to learning again. And it's it's a lot different than what I'm used to. So it's exciting.

Why did you get into the SDR role?

Ricky Pearl: Let's talk about that career for a second, right? Firstly, why did you get into the SDR role?

Justin Hackston: To be honest with you I got into the SDR role literally, I did not know what I wanted to do. Spent a few years in British Army, left moved to Canada and went to uni, right? Cuz I [00:01:00] didn't go to uni before joining the army. Went back to university thought I'd figure it out and did a few odd jobs here and there.

And just thought, what else can I do? Okay, sales I'll do sales. And when I looked into it, it looked like a lot of people had, it was a really good career. So I literally did not ever think that I'd be a salesperson. I never thought that I was any good at talking to people, especially being on the phones.

And now I'm doing it every day. And I love it. I love it. It's great.

Ricky Pearl: Amazing.

Do you think any of your military training helped you with sales?

Ricky Pearl: Tell me like do you think any of your military training helped you with sales?

Justin Hackston: I don't know. I think, if people ask me that quite a bit they're like, how does, what did you learn in the army that, helped you, in the civilian world and in sales?

The typical answer might be like, discipline, of course, right? Like you need to have the discipline and the grit, right?

You need to be comfortable doing difficult things and doing those difficult things when nobody's watching, right? A lot of us SDRs are working at home. And, we don't have a manager looking at us like we would if we were in the Army. [00:02:00] So you have to be, you have to be a, you have to be your own manager.

Right? And I think that has helped me is yeah.

What's your your go-to advice?

Ricky Pearl: Now I guess starting off as an SDR, like many do. Most are failing, right? Like the vast majority are failing. What's your advice? Somebody comes to you, Hey, I wanna become an SDR, I'm looking to get into tech sales. I think I'm being an SDR or BDR, or whatever you wanna call it these days.

What's your go-to advice?

Justin Hackston: Yeah. I have a, I have these conversations quite a bit with SDRs, that just connecting and like you said, a lot of people are failing, especially right now in the economy. It's hard to generate pipeline, let's not, let's be real about it, regardless of what, which company you work for.

And I felt that myself, right? And I've been there, I would say, obviously, we know this by now, you need to do your research on the company that you're gonna work for, right? And especially for somebody looking to break into tech, a lot of us are just trying to break, in to just break in to any company.

But what I see is that there's a lot of people with a lot of potential. We all [00:03:00] have potential, right? I believe that you got to land at your, at the, a very good company. Be because I see a lot of people, it's no secret that a lot of people young in their sales career, they start a sales career and then they realize, oh, this isn't for me.

And I've been there. I've felt that, I can't tell you how many times that I said, Hey, if this isn't gonna work, I'm just gonna go back and join the Army, or I'll become a firefighter

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, become a firefighter. It's good training, I think the, if I was an SDR at the moment trying to land a job, I would be, I don't know what I would do, right? Because like companies are hiring des SDRs as if it's part of their short term variable expenses. I could hire them this week, see if they work for next week, and so there's a lot of risk involved. And on top of that, the way people come up with targets for SDRs is, it just blows my mind. It's like a thumbs suck. It's like wishful thinking. Do you send your, like people to like rep view or one of those sites where they can see what percentage of people are on targets?

Justin Hackston: For you that's where I go that for any sort of information I need and that's what I recommend,

Ricky Pearl: [00:04:00] That is amazing. I saw a recently there was someone who had a job offer a very nice job offer. A who was 300,000 US dollars. Was the on target earnings, and I think it was a 50 50 split. So it was 150 base, 300 on targets. They had another offer from another company that was 125 base, 250 on target, and they're like, the 300 one looks better.

But when they actually dug into it, the company at 300 had like 40% of their reps on targets and their top earner was earning 700,000. And the company at two. Had 85% of their apps on targets and their top earner was only 1.2 million. Like you have to get into the details of the company to know where you wanna work.

What skills did you have to develop super quickly for you to be successful in the role?

Ricky Pearl: Tommy coming in from the Army, you came with whatever skills you had, you had discipline, you had grits, but you certainly didn't have a fucking cold call script lockdown. What skills did you have to develop super quickly for you to be successful in the role?

Justin Hackston: Cold calling, that's, that was the number one thing for me.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah.

Justin Hackston: I thinking about it like[00:05:00] I hated being on the phones. I would, if somebody I remember growing up, if the phone rang at my mom's shop, I would like, intentionally try not to, I'd get somebody else to ring it to pick it up.

But even in the Army being on the radio, I hated beating, being on the radio. But the nice thing about the Army is that everything you say is with the least possible amount of words. And there's, you're very direct in your communication style. So learning to be conversational, learning how to chat with people, that was a little bit different for me because, go, being in the Army, we were very direct and I always appreciated that approach cuz we always knew exactly what we needed to do and when.

And there was no fluff, if you will. So I needed to learn how to be on the phones, be comfortable on the phones.

Now when you pick up a phone, you got a call block, you're got call for an hour, is there a still a sense of dread?

Ricky Pearl: Now when you pick up a phone you got a call block, you're got call for an hour, is there a still a sense of dread?

Justin Hackston: Sometimes there is if it's a Monday morning, not a sense of dread, there's that feeling inside uhoh, the phone's ringing, you can hear it dialing. Who's gonna pick up on the other side? Is it gonna be somebody who's gonna be terrible and it [00:06:00] ever really is, right? At least for me it isn't, I call people and we have a conversation.

So what helped me a lot is when I, this is my mindset, is just thinking, okay take it back. When I first became an SDR and I started read, I love to read, right? So I started reading a lot of books on sales and I think one of the first ones was Objection Handling by oh, I can't remember the author right now, but I read some of Grant Cardone stuff too, and I thought, oh, objection handling.

I need to get really good at this if I'm gonna book meetings. But and, and that sort of overwhelmed me and I wanted to always have a rebuttal for anything that somebody said. And it didn't really go well. Now my approach is I'm just jumping on a call, call to have a genuine conversation with the person on the other end. That's it. A genuine conversation

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, I see that cuz our objections aren't something to be overcome. They're just something to be understood.

Justin Hackston: Exactly. Exactly.

Tell me a few more skills that you've developed that you feel like if you weren't able to master, you would've failed

Ricky Pearl: So calling, you think probably the number one skill you had to develop coming in as an SDR. What else? Tell me a few more skills that [00:07:00] you've developed that you feel like if you weren't able to master, you would've failed.

Justin Hackston: Yeah.

I would say is really mastering your, the technology you have, because it's extremely powerful. Whatever it is you're using, sales, sales nav any sort of sales engagement platform or any data provider there is so much that you can do it with it, and it's so powerful.

That has helped me in my role and I have my sales hat, but I also have to have my sales ops hat, and I have to do that for myself. So understanding your technology and learning how to leverage it, and you using it the way you want to use it, and not the way that it makes you use it,

Ricky Pearl: And that, this makes me think so. I know I've spoken to you before. We got a tool called Salesfinity. We were testing it out and I was like, how are you using it? And you gave me an example of how you were using it to maximize your workflow, to increase your velocity, to maximize your outcomes.

And it was so interesting. It's not a way that most people choose to use it, and you just had a real, like a chef, like a, if [00:08:00] you give a chef a recipe for the ingredients and then one day you come and you don't have parmesan cheese, you might say, oh, you know what I can compensate by adding a bit more salt and I can compensate by adding a little bit more this.

And you came up with something still bloody delicious. You understood every elements of your workflow and why it was there. So when you needed to add a different ingredient to it, you could still make something amazing. It was super impressive. I would guess, and I'm not trying to blow smoke up your ass.

I would say that you're probably one of the top Apollo experts in the world. I speak to a lot of people and I don't think there's anyone who knows the intricacies of that platform as well as you do.

Justin Hackston: Yeah yeah. That's why I wanted to learn it. Cuz when I first used Apollo, I hated It. I was like, God,

Ricky Pearl: Fuck it. It is so busy, like it's hard to get to, to grasp of, to begin with.

Justin Hackston: Yeah.

And then I read Justin Michael's book and I was like, I need to learn Apollo. Like the back of my hand. So now if, yeah, I'm pretty good at Apollo.

One of the things that we chatted about let's chat about that conversation that we had, right? And I think this goes back to a lot of people hire [00:09:00] their, BDRs, SDRs, but they don't really understand what that person is really doing in their day to day. So like for me with, I'm a big problem solver.

Validating contact information

Justin Hackston: I love solving problems. I was frustrated with the workflow, right? And I was, I so just saw a lot of problems in terms of of blockages in the way that it works. And I, I never understood why. These sequences that the typical SaaS sequence that we use out there that includes, omnichannel call LinkedIn and email.

Why is it that if 50% of those phone numbers aren't valid, why is the SDR being asked to dial those numbers again? That's a huge time block time waste. And so I thought, how so I literally was thinking this at night. I was like, ah. It was like I couldn't sleep. I was like, yeah.

I'm just gonna split this sequence in two.

I'm gonna have an email and LinkedIn in one, and then I'm gonna have my phone number and another one that way. And then I'm gonna have a first step, which is a validation step to make sure that email doesn't [00:10:00] bounce to make sure the phone number is valid.

And what would that mean? That means every time I dialed I'm guaranteed to have a connect.

Ricky Pearl: It is there's tools or companies like phone ready leads, great service, but you firstly gotta give them the leads. So you've gotta pay, $2 off ZoomInfo for it. Then they're gonna charge you another $7 to validate that this person picks up. And it is a valuable service for some, it's a good tool, good resource and can be far more effective in developing a positive ROI.

Awesome but you went and built this product. For yourself where you could just spend an hour, using a parallel dialer, not necessarily even to have conversations, just validate these numbers and then, all right, good. I've got a person who picks up the phone here. I can actually drop them in my sequence.

You can have the conversation then and there if you want, but you, it was just brilliant and it actually inspired me to say, can i, we segment things at Pointer. We've got specialists for everything. We've got like specialist research, we have specialist sales rep with specialist copywriters.

But I was like, could I take for all of my campaigns, every single phone number that we get, [00:11:00] could I just give it to someone who's their job is just to dial through, just validate that they pick up, yeah, they pick up good. This was a dead number. Take it out. Take it out. And then all of our SDRs just get valid numbers.

All valid numbers of people who pick up whichever one it is. And you came up with this like just for with the tool that costs 50 bucks, like

Justin Hackston: Yeah. I'm doing it myself. Yeah. I have you. That's what I mean. You have to be a problem solver as an SDR, especially, if you're not working at Pointer where you have somebody doing the research for you and you could just sell all day, that's the ideal world. If you're not working there, then you have to be a problem solver.

You have to remove those blockages for yourself.

Ricky Pearl: So let's look at this, right? And I think this is why you've done well as an SDR. So as an SDR you have to come in with discipline, with resilience, or grits, whatever we want to call it. You have to be a creative problem solver. You have to be a bit of a technophile cuz you really need to be able to maximize technology to do your job.

You need to be pretty good at research.

Justin Hackston: Yes.

Ricky Pearl: You need to be pretty good at writing. Like real top end at writing creative outbound. You have to be a great conversationalist. You have [00:12:00] to be a strategic thinker in how you build your lists. Cause if you're just looking for people who have more than 200 employees, you're like, that's not a list.

Like you've, like we are getting to unicorn status here. And all of this is for a junior role for someone who this is their first job out of univers.

Justin Hackston: There's so many hats to wear, isn't there?

Of those skills that you developed as an SDR do you think are foundational that like you would struggle to be an effective AE without those skills?

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. Now you've moved over to AE. Of those skills that you developed as an SDR do you think are foundational that like you would struggle to be an effective AE without those skills?

Justin Hackston: I think right now, like an AE who can generate their own pipeline. Woo. Oh man. For any company. So l just if you have a, have a good understanding of how to generate pipeline. Because there're two different jobs for reasons. For two different reasons. So that's the name of the game right now.

And for most of the folks that I'm chatting with, pipeline generation is where it's at. Everyone needs that right now.

On hiring AE

Ricky Pearl: Top or final mate. If I was hiring an AE and the AE in the job interview came in, said, Hey Ricky, look, I'm a great AE. I understand medic. I understand this. I understand closing techniques, [00:13:00] I understand qualifications. I understand the seven reasons why deals don't proceed. I understand, and I can do all of this. But the one thing I insist on is that from 9 till 10 o'clock every day and from 3 till 4 o'clock every day, I have no meetings. All I do is cold call for new business, and that's the foundation of how I work and how I want to maintain working. Would you be happy with that? I'd fucking hire the person on the spot.

I just be like, this is the AE we want, right? Like any, every AE has to generate their own pipe. That is the role I find the SDR doing. Yes, it's pipeline creation, but it's actually just figuring shit out on how to generate pipeline. This is the kind of company that's working for us.

This is the kind of list that's working for us. This is the kind of messaging so that your whole sales team can be lifted up. Like they're the reconnaissance unit of this of Delta team, right?

Justin Hackston: Yeah. They're the books, they're the boots on the ground. And I think one of the things that being an s having the priv, the privilege of being an SDR at the company and then promoting to an AE [00:14:00] is like you, you have a unique perspective if you've done that because you can, you know what a good company looks like, and you can disqualify them before you even reach out to them.

Ricky Pearl: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Now a another topic, and this might be a little bit hairy, so stop me if we're pushing on any sensitive any sensitive bits.

Justin Hackston: Cool.

Ricky Pearl: Company you work for went through a bit of a tumultuous time where they had to for, let's just use a euphemism.

They had to reorganize themselves. Let's talk for a minute around SDR leadership and SDR management and what you think good SDR management looks like and which, where it's critical and where it's not critical. So can you talk to me about like your experience there and how you were enabled?

Justin Hackston: Yeah.

I think having a good onboarding experience, right? Learning personas, pains and all that good stuff. But then also giving the SDR all the tools that they need to do that they need. Ideally sequences, right? That's. That's a very core component that a, an SDR needs. So you need to have really good [00:15:00] sequences for your SDR, and you need to train them those sequences.

You can't just say, Hey, here are the sequences off you go. You need to walk them through it. So that's a core component. And then also you need to walk them through every step of it, right? So that when that new SDR hits the ground, they can hit the ground running so they know exactly what they need to do, when they need to do it, and how and the important part is how, because if you don't teach them how, then they're gonna have to go and figure out how.

And then they're gonna, they won't hit quota. They'll be frustrated because they don't understand how they're doing it. So I think standardization across a company is very important. Standardization is super important for an SDR. If you have all your sales reps doing different things, then how are you gonna know what's working and what's not?

How are you gonna onboard somebody.

Ricky Pearl: And it's so common, mate. We've got, we work with companies that, they'll have five or six AEs and they're using different technologies to get the job done. They're all doing it completely different. They may all be hitting quota, but it's a very frustrating for a sales leader then who's trying to make a change[00:16:00] and you don't have a homogenous sales culture.

It's very hard to bring in that change and look for those improvements.

Justin Hackston: Yeah.

Ricky Pearl: It's, I'm a firm believer that SDR succeed because of good SDR leadership. Like to just stick someone on their first job on, on Apollo and say Hey, we're trying to sell to these people. Go. 70% fail and that's 70% that actually have leadership.

If you'd not given good sales management, the likelihood of you succeeding is just fucking next to nothing. Eventually you'd be become autonomous, but not for the first six months.

Justin Hackston: And I hear a lot, I hear people say, oh, just tell them the pains and then have them just tell them the pains and have them go and hit the phones and start sending emails. And I'm just like, nah. That is not the way. Like you need to train these people. You need to train. I think a lot of companies underestimate the impact that training can have on their organization.

Ricky Pearl: So tell me now, you were a. A top performing SDR at the peak, right? You'd figured out the technology. You figured out cold calling, you figured out messaging. You came from a good history where they had good [00:17:00] SDR management and leadership who was also like really trying to figure shit out on homogenized stuff.

How many sequences are you actively running?

Ricky Pearl: How many sequences like you selling one product. How many sequences are you actively running?

Justin Hackston: Yeah, for me it, a lot of the sequences were persona-based sequences with of course, pain that the typical persona that you're reaching out to would experience.

Primarily the difference between sequence one for persona A and sequence two for persona B, would it be the same cadence, just different messaging?

Ricky Pearl: And primarily the difference between sequence one for persona A and sequence two for persona B, would it be the same cadence, just different messaging?

Justin Hackston: That's a really good question. I think it should be different, but I think it needs to be figured out. Like you need to test and see what works for different

Ricky Pearl: .All right. So for a single persona, just persona A, how many different sequences do you typically have for that one persona?

Justin Hackston: Ideally you would have your persona based sequences and then your trigger based sequences, right? That what are the different triggers you're looking for? And if you can't find those triggers, then you just add them to, to a persona based sequence. And for me, what I did is I had, for my two persona?

based sequences, that's really [00:18:00] what I was using a lot.

I would have two persona based sequences. What I mean by that is I would have an automated

Ricky Pearl: ca sequence and then also a personalized sequence. I did that. I had personalized sequences for tier one accounts, and then and maybe for them tier twos and then tier threes, I would put them in an automated sequence.

I love that. Per the same persona, right? We're going after CROs, whatever it is. We've got tier ones and or tier twos or whatever in, into sequence A, which is

manual steps. We've got tier two or tier three, depending where you define it, into the

automated steps or less manual maybe

less call intensive, whatever it might be.

You then got trigger sequences, right? a new CRO to the role recently received funding.

How many different trigger based sequences do you currently have?

Ricky Pearl: How many different trigger based sequences do you currently have?

Justin Hackston: So for me right now, it's right now I use about two or three. So hiring for AEs or a post, because a lot of the people that I reach out to post on LinkedIn,

right? So if I see a relevant post that I could use in the messaging, I'll use that. And then [00:19:00] also, if I speak to one of their sales reps I will have a personalized sequence for that.

Ricky Pearl: Oh, so that's a trigger. Spoke to someone in your team.

Justin Hackston: Yeah.

Ricky Pearl: Awesome

trigger. I really like that.

Then do you have sequences for follow ups, for meeting books for no shows? Where else are using sequences or just doing stuff manually?

Ricky Pearl: Then do you have sequences for follow ups, for meeting books for no shows? Like how, where else are using sequences or just doing stuff manually?

Justin Hackston: Yeah. That's what I'd like to do is I'm not there yet, but that's the ideal place I'd like to be is, popping them into a sequence if there's a no-show or a meeting booked But I'm not there yet. But that's the ideal world that I, if I could have the, All the sequences, I ha I could have, it would include those.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. All right. Those are very difficult to do, by the way, because

the one thing about those meeting booked or no shows is it's very dependent on a date of when the meeting was,

and none of the tools really integrate so well. Even if you're using Apollo to book Apollo or Outplays

to book outplay, the date doesn't dynamically updates in the prospect.

So if they reschedule. Then they're still gonna get their meeting booking notifications for the [00:20:00] original date. I've never seen anything that does

it. Well,

Justin Hackston: Yes.

What I do in that case is I just put a task inside my Google calendar for a specific day and time, right? So I have tons of tasks in my Google calendar. To for follow ups before the meeting. I wanna send them an email that sort of thing. And then what I also do in my sequences is I, I have other sequences that are just keep in touch.

So I might have a step to, to send this person an email or message them on LinkedIn or give them a call once a month.

I have a sequence for that. Yeah.

How often do you put people back in a sequence?

Ricky Pearl: And how often do you put people back in a sequence? Like you ran them through the sequence, there were no contacts, you didn't get hold of them, do you then try them again? Six months later or something.

Justin Hackston: I will. Absolutely. No not six. It really depends. I will, I'll put that into my my calendar as well. I'll feel it out. The other thing that I'll look at is what was the engagement with this sequence? If they haven't opened any emails, then why would I go and try and send them more emails in two months?

It's not like all of a sudden they're gonna be the kind of person that opens [00:21:00] emails. So I really have to feel it out.

Ricky Pearl: Interesting. It's a it's, yeah. Like it really sounds like you got your shit together. And I'm, I hope anyone listening to this has plucked out how well, like just how you're using your tools to get the job done, and there's purpose behind everything, right? It's not just, Hey, he has a sequence.

Add people into the sequence, make phone calls. There's an understanding of what's the right approach for this individual to convert them relative to the effort it might take.

Justin Hackston: Yeah.

Have you found that your trigger based sequences converted a much higher rate than your persona based sequences?

Ricky Pearl: And have you quickly, have you found that your trigger based sequences converted a much higher rate than your persona based sequences?

Justin Hackston: Yes. Yes they do. Yeah, and also because they're much more personalized. There's that there, I know there's that relevance over personalization. First of all I don't know why anybody would send an email to somebody that wasn't relevant. I didn't know that was happening. When I found that out, I was like, who's doing that? Stop.

Ricky Pearl: I It's it's a, it's like a matrix, like a Nash equilibrium, a, just a two by two, where things could be personalized and irrelevant. They can be relevant and not personalized, or it can be [00:22:00] personalized and relevant.

Justin Hackston: Yeah. Yep. I'm much more of a fan of personalized relevance. Or relevant personalization. Sorry, I should say. But again it's what you have to do what you gotta do. Like I, I know a lot of people, especially on LinkedIn, they love the personalization. Ah, I saw you saw, you went on a trip to, to Thailand. That sounds wonderful. Let me tell you about how that trip

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. I also noticed you using Salesforce. How's about a tool that's same, but different, like it's never, yeah. It's just never quite there. Now the, yeah. It's gotta be personalized and it's gotta be relevant. That makes so much sense. Last question for you.

Very technical. I know this I've gone like deep into the technicals. You have a product that was you know originally like a product led growth or a sales assisted model where you may have an AE download and use your tool. They hopefully getting some good benefit out of it. So you can speak to that AE.

Hey, do you think the rest of your team might benefit from firmness and you can sell in to the whole sales organization? Have you found, looking [00:23:00] back on the year now as an SDR that Your best approach has been a bottom up approach talking to the SDR or talking to the AE using Salesforce or still top down.

Justin Hackston: Top down.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, I'm just seeing that

Justin Hackston: I wish I could say the, yeah. I get why we go PLG, but also as a salesperson it can be frustrating. I find personally. I think it's good to get inform. It depends on your approach. Like why are you trying to speak to that user? For me instead, I wish I could get more referrals, but a lot of the times an AE can't refer me to the VP -of sales for a decent size company.

And I get it because there's a lot of people who hit me up hoping for a referral, and I'm just like, look, Ben, I can't refer for this product or for what is solution like. So for me, I just I have that meeting, I get, get the information that I need, and then I use that in my outreach to book the meeting. And that works very well.

Ricky Pearl: Fine, research from the research at the bottom. Use that research at the top.

Justin Hackston: Yes. Because if I tell you, oh, you know, Salesforce hygiene, is a struggle for [00:24:00] you, probably it's. That's great. But what if I told you, Hey, I was speaking with one of your reps and they told me that Salesforce hygiene over at your company, made them, made it a lot harder for them to ramp up. Now you're listening, right? Yeah.

Ricky Pearl: Hundred percent. I love that approach and it's so interesting because I think your organization would've been a it could be a case study on if top-down or bottom-up works, right? Because it was really like banks bang in the middle of a product led growth or a sales led model, with the true sales assisted model.

So really I found that super interest. mate. Listen, I think anyone listening to this has would've gotten a lot of value out of it. For the record, we are not endorsed by Apollo. I don't even, we don't use Apollo. We use Outplay. And the reason we switched to outplay was many reasons, but one of the main reasons was for international dialing Apollo's a shocker.

And we wanted SMS. We desperately wanted SMS in our cadences, and it's been a game changer for us. But Apollo's a great tool. We love it. Nothing wrong with it. And great businesses have been built on the [00:25:00] back of it. But it's been a super real pleasure having you on.

If you want to give your product a plug, like if anyone's having a particular problem, when should they reach out?

Ricky Pearl: If somebody wanted to just pick your brain, get hold of you discuss these things like who should reach out to you, first of all, if you want to give your product a plug, like if anyone's having a particular problem, when should they reach out?

Justin Hackston: Yeah. So find me on LinkedIn, Justin Hackston. I'm quite active there. I'm always open for a coffee chat with anybody. Need any help with anything In terms of what I do, I sell Dooly. We help with Salesforce, make it less of a pain in the ass and healthier team, have better Salesforce hygiene. Yeah, hit me up there.

Ricky Pearl: And we all know better Salesforce hygiene means better data intelligence, better decisions, better processes, better bottom line, better revenue.

Justin Hackston: That could be a, that could be a whole different conversation.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, absolutely. A whole different conversation. Most people, most CRMs at RCR just fucking contact data books. They just very expensive follow, Rolodexes with the salesperson just running their pipeline out of the inbox.

But that's our conversation for another time, mate. The spreadsheet would be better than half the half of the ones I see. Honestly, it would be better.

Justin Hackston: Yeah.

Ricky Pearl: You [00:26:00] know, mate, really such a pleasure chatting to you and we'll definitely have you have a conversation about how you're going as an AE soon.

Justin Hackston: Thanks Ricky. Appreciate you having me on.

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