Johnny Lee Reinoso from C-Level Partners joins Gary to discuss professional high end cold calling strategies targeting Fortune 500 companies.

[00:00:17] Johnny-Lee Reinoso: Thank you. Thank you, Gary. I appreciate it. Appreciate the time and I love the show.

I, I because it, we're gonna be covering a topic that I know scares the crap out of a lot of people, even seasoned sales professionals, like to shy away from this one. but before we jump into that, for anybody who's not familiar with you or C-level partners, could you just give a little bit about your story and background?

My, mother's from Portugal, father from Peru, and they met in college here in Connecticut. And, anyways, I've always been this outgoing guy, this guy that just always liked to talk to everybody. Again, be the ham in the room, be the loud one and whatnot. And, I, that pretty much, you know, just wrote my script.

It was, you know, I'm, I'm a sales guy, right? That's what, I thought I was early on in my early, early teenage years. I was, very much into always trying to transact and make money. And, you know, there's different, there's a bio out there of me that talks about, that's in a, a quick book that I wrote in the past that talks about, you know, what I've done.

In terms of like, even from age two, wanting to transact and stuff and sell my bike and I didn't even know what I was doing. My mother has photos of me putting a zero on something and trying to sell that and, because I, I didn't know what other number to write, but I just knew there was a way to make some money.

Because my father's always been in business. Cash businesses, you know, like, you know, retail kind of stuff. And I've always seen that. So anyways, it just kind of carried through to my professional life. At an early age, I got into sales, got into banking in terms of, you know, real estate loans and I was in mortgages and I had a great career doing that.

Relocated with a company down here in sunny South Florida, while doing that. And then obviously the boom, right? So it was the, or the, or the big, the big bang rather, right? The housing market crashed and, you know, folks were losing everything. And I happened to be in that market. As I was looking around, kind of thinking, okay, what am I gonna do next?

Where am I gonna go? You know, I've always thought about this idea of being a management consultant of, the, this whole concept of being in consulting was, was a way to, you know, help businesses grow. I always found that intriguing and selling professional services just by way of networking and knowing folks.

I knew there was some, you know, some, some, some good, earnings to be had in that industry. So found my way into that space. again, you know, no connections in it. I was, you know, fairly new about a year in Florida, and, came across an opportunity to work for a management consulting firm. Got in there and, you know, I was like, look, I wanna be an outside sales guy, right?

I wanna sell to high level executives services and what it is that, that you all, that we all now can do. And long story short, I was told, no, no, no salt and pepper here. Rusty, you know, Rolex and a and a and a scratched up Mont Blanc pen maybe will let you hit the road. Then you can't sit across the table from a CEO and tell him how to do his business, how to run his business, how to improve his business.

If you don't, if you don't actually have that kind of, you know, experience if you will in mileage in your career. I said, okay. like anything in my life, every time I hear no, I turn it around and say, okay, I'm gonna show you, kind of thing. Right? but but it was a blessing because I was asked to, you know, work with the inside team and, and do some outbound calling for the consulting firm.

And I learned quickly, a lot about what consulting is all about. But also I learned that, you know, I was not an inside salesperson. I was an outside salesperson, so I thought. And, and I burned and I crashed. And I failed, like early on, quickly when I was in the game, because I was an outside sales guy.

And, I, that's how I made my money, I how I made my career. I was early in management. It was exciting for me. And, it wasn't until I sat with a business coach, a gentleman that I've worked with in the past who said, look, I don't know what you're doing. You know, being on the phone. Being on the phone.

And also, you know, being out in the field is the same thing. And you have to bring that same level of talent, that same level of, of, of, of persistency and of consistency and of success and of happiness. It's contagious. You have to bring that on the phone as well. And, so I started thinking more about it.

And as I was making these changes, on the phone, boom, it was like night and day. It was tremendous success. so I, I had success doing that, which I'm sure we'll get into more in terms of the idea of cold calling and had tremendous success there. double digit growth, triple digit growth. The company grew year over year, over year, over year from, you know, 18 million to north of a hundred million.

And at that point, after all those years, I said, okay, now's the time. With, with my colleague who was, you know, the number one sales guy there as well. and extremely a key, you know, architect to the design of our methodology today. you know, at sea level partners, we left in, December of 13, January of 14, launched the firm Sea level partners.

We haven't turned back. We've grown. We're global and we're working with a lot of organizations. bringing their product or service to market. So, so what do we do at C-Level Partners is we help companies expand their footprint and get in front of the buyers. Their ideal buyer, their ideal customer. we help them get in front of them by way of.

Cold calling by way of getting these leaders on the phone, articulating the value proposition, articulating the why, getting them interested, and then ultimately translating that into a, you know, 30, 45 minute, hour call, let's say via Zoom like this, where you know they can have their interaction and be able to share, you know, sell their services. The at bat moment, right.

But at the end of the day, it's when done well, one of those things that can really bring in. As you said, gets you in front of the, the right people because you get to target the people you're looking for versus like an ad campaign that brings in whoever with, with cold calling, you're, you're reaching out to the right people.

You from the beginning.

I'm a firm believer in, in, you know, cast a wide net. Don't just do one thing, do a lot of different things to try to generate revenue, to try to, you know, increase your organization and capture the footprint that you're looking for in the new logos and client acquisition process. But this notion that cold calling doesn't work.

It's crazy, right? And it's twofold. It's crazy in one hand. And I love to talk about why it's crazy and I have a lot of proof and reasons why it is, it it works. And the other hand, I love that people keep saying that because that's what allows us to continue to grow and grow and grow and grow. because that's what we do.

So when people stop doing something that works and we continue to improve and refine and, and execute to what they don't wanna do anymore. We win. And companies that work with us end up growing and you know, we're excited to always say that we know president today, our clients all report a minimum of 28 to one return.

Because we get them in front of those ideal buyers. Right. So, you know, with me it all, you know, and you're a hundred percent right, right. This, this idea if, and they're right as well that it doesn't work. It, they're right. It doesn't work. It doesn't work because of what they're doing doesn't work. Right. Like I tried golfing.

I get out there, I grab a, a, you know, a club, and I start swinging and I, it, it doesn't work well. What doesn't work? The club or the play, right? So I say to my business partner when we, we, you know, he tried taking me out. Every, every, every, any chance he gets, he wants to take me out to the golf course and he wants to show me.

And I go just, it, it, it doesn't work. What doesn't work, right? So the club or me, right? Well, I could say the club doesn't work, but that doesn't make sense. Obviously, it's me. So then I find every reason why, well, I'm a, I'm a physical athlete. I'm a soccer player, I'm a tennis player. I'm a this, I'm a, that.

I need to move around, okay? I'm creating all of these excuses, right? Which, you know, I'm gonna tie this back to our, our discussion, creating all of these limited beliefs, these limited beliefs. Because if you try something and you get the wrong outcome. Now all of a sudden, it's actually a real result. So if you have a bad outcome, what you're doing is you're reinforcing what you initially thought, which is it doesn't work.

So if you tell somebody that it works and they believe it doesn't work, and they make a call and it doesn't work. And they make a call and it doesn't work again, and they make their fourth call and they get hung up on and they get embarrassed or they get frustrated. Then they get up and go tell their managers or they go tell their spouses or they tell themselves.

And the mayor, I knew it wasn't gonna work. Yeah, because you never really did it correctly. because you never got the training and development to do it right. because you never executed correctly. So what you just did was you already had a preconceived notion of something. Now your results, because of the action you took.

The action you took was not correct. So because the action you took was not correct and the result was negative, now you reinforced why it doesn't work, and that's it. Nobody could change your mind. because guess what? We all get to keep the limitations that we choose to defend. Right. So whether you wanna talk about it as a business strategy, guess what?

It's a limitation. It's a limitation that your team, your organization, and I say this to a lot of clients that, that, that we work with, that they choose to own and they don't wanna let it go because it's also like dieting. It's very simple when we look at dieting, caloric intake, in and out, but everybody's chasing the what?

Which will, you know, yeah, have a little uptick in your sales, but is it sustainable? I mean, how creative do we have to get in our content? What kind of jokes and mannerisms do we have to use in order to get people, and oh, by the way, have you done the research to see who your audience really is and. Do they really spend the time looking at their emails?

Do they have gatekeepers that protect them from those and they delete all those solicitations that come through? You see, so you got all these things, but everybody wants that quick fix, right? So with dieting, everybody wants the quick pill, the quick diet, the easy, easy, easy. When it comes to sales, it's the same thing.

And organizations are losing a ton of money when they buy into this concept that they just gotta get better at their content, I believe. Do it, like I said, early on. This, this whole thing of all in on social media or all in on LinkedIn or all in on landing pages and email campaigns and drip campaigns and predictive dollars with voicemails.

Folks, you're losing a ton of money out there. because I guarantee if you just had the right methodology in place, you could execute on the phone.

but I'll tell you, I look at the end, you know, if I look at my end of month reports, outbound still, still leads. All the other categories in terms of where, where the people who pay us money come from. You know, we get leads from everywhere, but the people who really want the product, you know, stuff we offer too.

Same thing. We, we do it by outbound prospecting, so

I'm up to probably 15 a day now. It is ridiculous. In fact, I've already sent emails out. I sent something to my IT guy saying, is there something we could add to my LinkedIn? I mean, I wanna be open and I wanna be public in terms of LinkedIn. because I appreciate getting connected to a lot of other professionals.

But it stinks when you constantly get these solicitations or you get somebody that looks legit that wants to connect with you in seconds after you accept their connection, boom. You get hit with an email of. How great they are. And then what's the magic thing at the end? Click on my Calendly to schedule something, buddy.

Pick up the phone. Wait, you wanna sell me something? But then you want me to schedule the day? I want you to sell me something right now. You know? And the notion of sales, right? Selling to me, cold calling is a sale. Even though there's no monetary transaction at the moment in time, it is a sale because you have to be so much.

You have to be driven with so much value. You have to be able to articulate the value proposition at such a high degree in order for that person on the other line to give you their currency of time. See, people don't look at it that way. They go into these things just like an idea of, all right, I make a bunch of cold calls.

Right? I spoke to a guy recently. He said to me on the phone, he goes, look, you know, I did a lot of cold calls early on in my career. I'm looking for a different role. That's great. I appreciate that, but he, for some reason, he equated that, that, that the role of cold calling was beneath him. But then he called himself a salesperson.

I'm a salesperson. I'm a na, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a sales executive. I love selling buddy. You gotta learn how to cold call. Whether it's a cold call or you get in front of a prospect for the first time, and you gotta be able to quickly know how to block and tackle and adapt to those conversations, you gotta be able to win.

So you have to learn how to cold call. You have to learn how to capture your audience. You have to learn how to speak with value, so you could continue to earn the additional five to 10 seconds on the phone with that person, or when you're in person, the additional 10, 20, 30 seconds to keep their attention.

See people lose focus on that and that's why when they think cold calling is just, well, I'll get green people here, I'll get freshly minted grads, I'll get, you know, whatever kind of people on the phones to cold call. Now I'm talking about professional services, right? So software companies, technology companies, expensive widgets, seven figure type services, whether it's consulting services, right?

Obviously you got the big McKenzie's of the world where their name could allow them to walk into any door. But when you're talking about other consulting firms, right, these spinoffs of these larger top four or five firms, even accounting firms, they need the support to get in front of these people, right?

And that's what we do. So you gotta learn when you get these people on the phone, the value that you articulate. In terms of the benefit of getting on the phone in a week or two for 35, 40, 45 minutes on via Zoom, they're gonna gain so much value from that call that it's worth the currency of their time.

So I always tell people, even though we're not selling anything, or we're not getting, you know, a credit card, you know, over the phone or whatever the case is, you're still selling in the sense of this is what we want to talk to you about in a week. Are you willing to give me that 45 minutes of time, which is the currency, and that exchange only happens when you're able to speak authoritatively and listen empathetically, which is the methodology that we've coined here, and what we've trained folks on even Fortune 500 companies with. Which is SALE, right?

Speak Authoritatively. Listen Empathetically. Right now, what does that mean? Is. A lot of things. We'll have to be here for, you know, hours and hours as I train people for a whole week. But I'll break it down. Simple speak authoritatively is all about knowing how to speak with the right level of tonality.

Tonality is so critical. You see. Now imagine the folks who say cold calling doesn't work. And I tell them, buddy, we, we, we cold call and said, over 250 meetings month over month, C-suite leaders in Fortune 500 companies for our clients across the globe. So how, how does it not work? Right? So of, of course it works, right?

And, and our clients, oh, they walk in from a cold call 60, 90 days later, they report back. They just sold a 2.5, a $6.5 million deal. Whether it's a consulting engagement, whether it's a SaaS, whether it's a tech, you know, a technology or whatnot. I mean, so it works, right? It works, right. So boiling back to this is when you speak authoritatively, you have to learn, there's all about the power of persuasion in those conversations, right?

Persuasions could be used as a bad, you know, sometimes people don't like the word persuasion. You know, the whole thing of, you know, I don't wanna mislead. No. Persuasion is not misleading because when we think about what is a sale, you see? People always go back to a sale is transaction, I think the dictionary says is that the, the transaction of goods and titles and the transfer of title or property or goods or whatever.

To me, a sale is, to me, a sale is when I tell my daughter that I want her to make a cup of coffee for me. I would like for her to go make coffee in the morning or maybe go make me some oatmeal in the morning because I just got back from the gym and she's in the kitchen. That's a sale. Now. I could be an authoritative figure in the house and say, I'm daddy, you gotta go make it for me right now.

Right. Yes, I know I could pull that card out. Am I also, my children respect me and they'll probably do it even if I don't say it. But if I increase my tone a little bit in that authoritative, you know, angle, yes, they will get it done. But a sale is when I go to her and I say, Hey sweetie, you look great this morning.

How'd you sleep? I slept great. It's wonderful. Hey, I can't wait to take you to school. We're gonna leave in 20 minutes. Go ahead and make daddy a little oatmeal. Okay? Love you. I'm gonna go run up and shower. That's a sale. Why I've taken a person who was going about their day, who was going about their actions, and I've now, by way of tonality, by way of expression, I have made that person move in the direction that I desire.

That's a sale to me, that's a sale. Getting the hostess to get you a table when they're booked out is a sale. Calling your doctor, getting him to make sure that he's got an opening for you on Friday when they're booked out. Is the sale convincing your spouse to go out for Chinese rather than Italian? Is the sale hiring a new candidate?

Right. That has other options? Is the sale selling software is the sale? You see what I'm trying to say? Because you're having that person take action in the direction that you want, right? One could be time, the other one could be currency cash. As well. So all of that to me is considered a sale. So when you get that conceptually, then you start to understand, okay, well how do you do that over the phone when they don't see you and you can't move your gestures and you can't get them?

It's your tonality. It's knowing how to utilize your tone and the wording that you use. Dr. Robert, I wanna say it's Dr. Robert. Aldini. Cialdini, I think it is. He has a CH

[00:19:28] Johnny-Lee Reinoso: Chaldini. The six principle of us. The six principles of persuasion, I think it is, right? Reciprocity, commitment, social proof, liking, authority, scarcity.

[00:19:42] Johnny-Lee Reinoso: Because we train on that. It's part of our, it's actually part of the methodology. And I was told about this book when I was training somebody on this, they, they said, I didn't know you incorporated the six principles of persuasion in your pitch.

And I said, what are you talking about and how you talk to people? I said, no, what you talking about? They said, you gotta get the book. I got the book I read, I couldn't put it down cover to cover. And I said, this is beautiful. Without knowing we were using this, the concept of reciprocity. When you're cold calling people, the concept of reciprocity, what does that mean?

The concept of making sure that the prospect that you're talking to has a belief or an understanding by way of what you shared with them, that others like themselves, actually that's social proof. I'm sorry, that others like themselves are doing and taking action that you're asking that person to do.

Like if I say to you, hey Gary, I got this great technology that podcast leaders like yourself have been able to implement to improve their overall X, Y, Z. So podcast leaders like yourself, social proof. I got you in reciprocity, the idea of creating the, we wanna give you so much great information. Gary, when we talk next week, you know, we look forward to sharing with you some great things about how we've been able to help podcast leaders like yourself truly optimize and grow your brand to the next level.

Looking at the time here for next week, Tuesday, can we find, say 45 minutes that afternoon? You see there's reciprocity there. I am looking to give you so much great things. 45 minutes of your time. It's being the back. I'm just giving you quick examples here, right?

[00:21:11] Johnny-Lee Reinoso: The commitment, the commitment concept of that when you're talking to somebody on the phone is, is to not, to not just say this day and time is when we're gonna meet, but also to get them to agree to the day and time.

So, so Gary, looking at next week, Tuesday. You know, 45 minutes or so in the afternoon. Say it's two or three o'clock better for you, or would you prefer Thursday? And now you say Thursday. I say, okay, wonderful. Well, I have some flexibility. Thursday, my day could be wide open on Thursday, but I'm gonna. Give you a sense of how busy I am, but how important you are.

You know, I do have some flexibility. yeah, I can move some things around. I have some flexibility. Thursday. What time are you thinking? Thursday. Oh, two o'clock. Yep. I can make that. You know what, I'll make that work. I can move something a little earlier. Make that work. Let's pause on that one for a second.

Right there. You gave me the day and time that works for you. We got commitment. You're committing to that, you're telling me what works. So I'm already getting your commitment. The other part is I'm throwing in there is scarcity. The scarcity of my time is busy, but I'm willing to make it work for you. And I'm I, I'm gonna move something else that I have.

What did I have? Maybe I had go to the gym at two o'clock that day. Course I can move that, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna say, oh, I'm wide open that day. Yep, no problem. Yeah, we could do that. You see what I'm saying? These are the little things right, that we're talking about when we're speaking to somebody on the phone.

It's knowing how to articulate the value proposition while utilizing the six key principles of persuasion in your tone and in the way you're expressing yourself, ultimately, to sell that person, which is to take action. To take action for what you're looking for, which is schedule the meeting.

We see that too, where if you offer some times to somebody or you know, give them another day, that works so much better than book some time on my calendar. And I think we, we talked about this during our first conversation before we had this, even that sending out calendar links is just, just a miserable way to get appointments.

Unless they ask. If they ask for it, that's different. But if you said, hey, you know, pleasure to meet you, Johnny-Lee, here's my calendar. Let you know. Why don't you schedule some time? Doesn't work. We, I've, I, you know, I've had clients tell me kind of the same thing. Oh yeah, just use my calendar link. Just use my calendar link.

Just send it. I said, sure we can. But do you, do you want appointments or do you just wanna send the calendar? Like, you know, so

Right? Who is selling who, who is asking the other person to take the action that you sow desire? Right. And it's, and it's typically the service provider, the vendor, the person selling the product or service. So, so, you know. Do, just do that little extra step if you, if your prospect is interested. The best thing is when.

When, you know, even, you know, if you're at the end of a first meeting, as you said, or a cold call and the person says, yeah, we can find some time. Wonderful. I'm gonna go send you a link. Somebody send that to me. I'm gonna send you a link. Just pick a time that works for you. Oh, what you took the time to tell me how great this next call could be, and how much greatness do you wanna share with me?

And I'm willing to give you that time next week. And then you want me to now wait for your email to click something and then go and do that? Doesn't make any sense. And, or, or the, or the whole thing of, you know, when, when, and we have this happen with clients even. We work so hard to get them in front of that chief operating officer at that large, you know, aerospace organization or whatever it is.

And, and at the end of their meeting, there's mutual understanding that there's a need that that, that they have. And, and the, and the, the consulting firm has the value that they can, you know, help them with. But at the end of the meeting, it's great. You know, I'll call you next week and we could find time that works best for your calendar, for you and your team then.

Why not Just, why not book it right then in there? What are we doing? You know, it's just, it's, I don't know. I don't know if it's just the technology has made people lazy and complacent. If it's, if it's this, this idea that we feel this, this level of fear that if I come across and I ask for the day and time, they're gonna think I'm desperate, I'm pushy.

I don't see it that way. And I always tell people, you can never look at it that way. You gotta look at it as a disservice if you don't. A disservice if you don't. If you don't go and get them to the calendar. And if you don't schedule the time, who might sell them what it is that they're looking for? A competitor.

Let me ask you a question. Who's better off servicing them? You or the competitor? They always say me. Would you want them working with? No. If your family was in this business and they were gonna talk to a competitor, would you allow them? No. What would you do if you introduced your services to your family member?

Would you force them to say, oh, I'll, yeah, I'll make them take the next meeting. Well, why don't you do that with a total stranger that you just met? And, and, and it brings up another great whole thing that we kind of revamped a few years back that we started looking at is you gotta fall in love with your customer.

Yeah, hyperbole. I'm over here sharing some BS with this kind of touchy feely, fall in love. Yes, I'm being real. And this isn't no new age vocalism, fall in love, kumbaya conversation. This is real stuff. Fall in love with your customer. because if you fall in love with your customer, you care about them. Don't fall in love with your product or service.

Fall in love with your customer. Recognize that they have a need and that you need to deliver that need. And if you care about them, you want to help them every step of the way. You don't want them to click on Calendly. You don't want them to just email you back if you're, if they're interested, right? I got a call from a, a, a close friend of mine.

He called me about three times back to back to back, like within an hour. I'm going, what the freak, what's called this guy I call just to tell me this fantastic restaurant in Miami that he went to. because he knows how much I like authentic Italian food. Are you kidding me? Why'd you call me three times to tell me this?

Because he's a good friend of mine. He knows how much I like it. He doesn't even get any equity for it. He doesn't know he's not getting paid back for that, but that's how much he wanted to tell me. That's how we need to act with our, with our services. Fall in love with the customer and we wanna be able to help them along the way and not think about how great you are.

And you know what? If they don't sign up, it's on them. If they don't buy from us, screw them. No, it doesn't work that way. Not in today's world. You won't be able to win. You won't be the top 1% in your company, or you won't be the top 1% of your industry if that's the way the sales team, you know, o operates.

You can tell they're reading from a script. You can hear stuff in the background, Hey, you know, we'll help you build your website. Are you interested in that? You, but they, they have no. No connection. They have no engagement to what they're saying, what they're trying to offer. They, they don't care. They're, they're just, they're just there to, you know, dial stuff and hit whatever number they're supposed to.

They don't, they don't care at all, whether you say yes or not.

But then again, the cost of labor is tremendously low and that's what you're gonna get, unfortunately. Right. I do my best to respect every call that I get, like that as well. But boy, it could be a bit hectic sometimes. You know, you just get it, you're like, who's calling me? And then, you know, normally they try to get really close to your zip code and phone number or whatever, and you start thinking, is this somebody I probably know from back at home?

Or who knows what? And then, then you get, you realize, okay, I've just been duped. And typically they're using a telephony system that, like you say, you know, you could hear the background noises, or it pauses and beeps as it connects, and you know right away, okay. All right. Let me see how fast I could hang up the phone.

Right. But, but yeah, I mean, in, in that, in that area of cold calling, you know, B2C stuff, it's very, you know, look, obviously our methodology and what we've been able to do here at C-level partners can work in any kind of industry agnostic buyer, target, agnostic. It doesn't matter, but you know. We don't, we don't waste, we, we don't waste our time entertaining B2C stuff.

You know, our focus has always been B2B, and, and that's really what has allowed us to win. I mean, just think about it, taking a, no name firms, no name firms, consulting firms, technology firms, software firms that are from startup. Some of them are large billion dollar organizations that we work with as well.

But I'm talking about even like the startups that nobody knows. Taking these organizations and allowing them to have a seat at the table to articulate their. Software, their ERP system, and they're going up against some of the largest conglomerates out there. And oh, by the way, because of their innovation, because of their technology, because of their, you know, ingenuity and that they're backed by a VC firm for 50, 60, 70, a hundred million dollars.

You know what I mean? They're ready to be a contender at that table, right? They just need the opportunity. And many companies are failing at that because they're relying on, you know, before used to be trade shows, right? Obviously COVID made a little bit of a change there. There. I'm assuming that more and more are gonna come back, but it used to be like this, you know, what's your marketing budget?

Well, it's 250,000 for this year. 200,000 trade show. You do it a trade show, gonna put a booth up, whatcha gonna do at a trade show? I mean, oh well, people come by and get information. You know how many buyers of what we do come to these trade shows? Yeah. But. How many of them do you have their undivided attention?

I mean, nowadays these trade shows is all about what kind of, you know, what kind of eye candy and alcohol is all around. Nobody's, nobody's selling anything. They're just talking, what are we doing? 200,000 budget, 300,000 in marketing, 200,000 is gonna go to trade shows, a hundred thousand is gonna go to what, you know, and so it's just this, it, it, it just, it, it's, it's crazy.

But you know what? Again, like I said, it's, it's crazy but great at the same time for us, but it's also very concerning because you know, more and more we're finding it difficult as well when we're talking to people. because people reach out to us, they hear about us, they, you know, we've, we've grown tremendously by, by referral, which has been great.

But people reach out to us, say, I heard you guys do this with a kind of like, yeah, right tone. You know, I talked to somebody who works here and they said, you guys have done this for them, but how? What do you mean? How, you know? And, and we try to make it seem like this is just what we do. And you know, unfortunately this notion of it's too good to be true.

Look, we're not here to say we promise you to get every single person you want, right? But the way the model works is we have a healthy portfolio, a healthy industry to go after. And we're gonna capture greater than 50% of them for meetings on the phone. And then we're gonna continue to work on the other 40 to 50% and those are gonna take a little bit more time and nurturing because, because it's just like being a professional thief.

You gotta study the movement of these executives. You gotta know when to call, how to call early morning, late afternoon on the hour before, five minutes before, but five minutes after if the assistant is gonna be there or not. Is the executive assistants, you know, typically there at eight and leaves at five, call at seven 30, maybe at five 15.

You know, you know all of these, you know the way it works. But again. People think like, okay, we need an inside sales team. We hire people, we put them here, they work eight to five here, dial. Or we wanna get meetings with these people, send emails. Oh, great. You know, it, it doesn't work that way. You have to, you, you have to, you have to dial with intention.

And how strategic are you? Right. Are you ready with your pitch? And the methodology of that, like, we use sale, or, or, or is it just, you know, Hey, I wanna send you an email. You know, many people say, I wanna, I do cold calling. And they call them just to say, I'm gonna send you an email. Right. What are we doing?

Who's better at articulating your value proposition? A well-written email or you. Right. So that's the, that's the, that's the thing about, you know, cold calling. So when people say it doesn't work, I say, well, because you just haven't done it the right way.

[00:34:03] Johnny-Lee Reinoso: It actually is. So at first, that's a great question. So at first we were. Obviously we came from a world where a lot of the meetings were in person opportunities that we were going after for our clients. and then all of a sudden you have this, you know, boom, right? Come through this pandemic. And it changed, it changed the model where we were probably 80% in person, 20%, you know, video conference or conference calls as a whole.

To now a hundred percent calls. and, and then obviously this whole, you know, everybody was displaced, right? So you went from being in your office to being at home, how you get them, right? So the first thing we did was we kind of looked at it and said, okay, most of these organizations that we're going after are sophisticated enough to quickly triage and have their, their employees, their, their, you know, executives work from home.

most of them are gonna have the executive's phone forward right to there. Mobile number because executives aren't like. Maybe lower level type managers that have the telephony system of the company that where the headset's at times that have all these, you know, the executives, when you're looking at C-suite leaders or EVPs, SVPs and higher level VPs, these folks, you know, they tend to be a little bit more nimble because they're, they're busy, they're doing things, they're moving a lot and they have a phone that they deal with.

Typically, it's first, you know, previewed by their assistant and then gets forwarded over to them if their, the assistant is blocking the calls. So what we did was we just doubled down on the, on the, on the investment of data. While also doubling down on the investment of effort. So saying, okay, we need to go out and get more data.

So we need to get more information from about these folks, right? From LinkedIn information all the way through to if we can capture mobile numbers and direct dials and extensions for, for, for these executives. But also, you know, let's not be afraid to just call them at their place of business because it's gonna get forwarded.

So we, we saw a little dip. I think the diff was more caused by us. because then we immediately saw a rebound to that and we were getting people on the phone. We were getting actually a lot more people on the phone, than we were previously to that because people were picking up because they didn't know who was calling because their phone used to ring 40 times a day.

COVID hit it, went down to 15 times a day. because all the solicitors did what? Right. Fight or flight. You know what I mean? They're like, what are we gonna do? Are we gonna fight or flight? A lot of them flew, right. You know, or they failed. So it's, it's this whole thing, right? So, so with us is, you know, we just, we just knew how to capture them on the phone and really have a chance to, to have even a longer talk time.

Our talk time went up by 1.6, one minute and six seconds, which is a lot when you talk about cold calling. Right. because folks were taking the time to talk to us a little bit more, which was fun and exciting for us as well. We were able to capture more. Now, with that also came. Well, were you able to get that many meetings?

because people were dealing with the pandemic and even still today, right? There's this uncertainty, what's coming next, the next variant. Who knows what, right? The world, by the way, leading to shut the TV and the media off media's meant to program people and create fear in the marketplace. They thrive off of that.

so we just gotta be, we gotta be free from that and focus on what our commitment and what our, you know, obligations are to ourselves and to our firm and to our shareholders as a whole. So with that, we spoke to the executives that way. Look, we understand that COVID-19 is here. We understand that we're in very unprecedented times.

This is not about whether or not, we could get engaged with you today or tomorrow. This is more about now's the time during this unprecedented time to really have an opportunity to learn more about how we've been able to work with leaders like yourself and truly impact your industry so that when we come out of this, you know, we come out of this well equipped, but also well positioned with the resources that we need at hand to truly.

Expand and to go to the next level, right? So it went from like, Hey, we wanna talk to you about maybe one day working with you to buddy. Now's the time to have the discussions, now's the time to talk, now's the time to understand who's who and why. And it worked. It worked a lot for our clients. We're very excited to say that it worked very well for us.

So we're, you know, it's you know, like my business partner Scott likes to say all the time, you know, we were, you know, if that was the bottom, oh boy, you know, let's go.

[00:38:20] Johnny-Lee Reinoso: Great question. So, so, one of the things that we have here internally is we have this little saying. We say, listen, we don't, we do not pitch the assistants. We do not pitch the assistant. We do not pitch whoever is not a target. So there's no pitching, meaning what's a pitch? I don't mean the script. I mean, we don't even get into the value proposition because at that point, what I'm doing at that point is I'm I now this is us.

Right? At that point, you are giving that person enough authority to start to understand whether or not you're worth their bosses or their colleagues time. That's not what I'm gonna do because I'm already deeming you not worth being the person to be the one who say whether or not I'm worth their time.

So if that's understood and we have the belief that we're talking peer to peer with these executives, I don't mean be dismissive and be rude and talk down. That's not what I'm saying. You'd be respectful and you're kind and courteous, but you're speaking authoritatively and you're listening empathetically.

So what do I mean by speak authoritatively and listen empathetically to an assistant? Let's just pretend like you know there's an assistant, Pam, and you're the executive, Gary. Okay? So, you know, Pam answers the phone. Hey Pam, Johnny here. Is Gary in, no he's not. Who's this? Right away, right, right away.

They wanna ask the right question. Because they want to own control. And if I answer just who am I? And I don't say anything else, they're in the driver's seat. They're controlling the conversation. They're gonna dictate the narrative. And I don't want that to happen. So right away I say, oh, it's Johnny. No worries.

Is he gonna be in later this afternoon? You see even the tone there, right? Is he gonna be in later this afternoon? He's actually, because the way I did it, I replied, but I answered, I replied, I answered, and I questioned right away with a nice tone. And typically, unless they're super well-trained and Uber ready for these things, right, they typically go well, no, he's, he's, he's tied up until five 30 today.

And then they follow up with another question. What is this regarding? Oh, no, it isn't urgent. In fact, I, okay, no worries. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go ahead and send them an email then, and I'll, I'll try to send him an email or else I'll circle back with him, you know, if he's in tomorrow morning and she might say, yes, he's in tomorrow.

Okay, wonderful. And I just back outta the call. I never say who I'm, who, who I'm calling from, what, why I'm calling. It's speaking authoritatively. I don't have time to sit here and, and, and, you know, carry on a conversation with you, Pam. All right. I'm, I'm about aboard, you know, a 7 57, I gotta go. I need to talk to him about a deal.

We gotta get going. So is he there? So now what did I capture from that discussion though, Gary? That you're there and you're busy till when?

[00:41:25] Johnny-Lee Reinoso: Bingo. Who am I gonna call back at five 15?

[00:41:32] Johnny-Lee Reinoso: See what I'm saying? Yeah. I'm not gonna sit there and say, hi Pam. My name is Johnny with C-Level Partners. How are you today?

Wonderful. Hey, look, we're a professional business development firm. We've been wanting to get ahold of Gary for some time. What's the best way for us to do that? What the freak, who else is gonna do that? Everybody else? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'll let everybody else deal with that. Right. And then I call him up and I get the meeting or I call him up and then at least I know right away he's there till five.

And guess what? What else does she tell me? He's there tomorrow. So now I already know. Call him today at five, five fifteen, five thirty. A few, few, you know, two, three times and call him the next day, early in the morning, seven 30. because executives tend to get in there earlier in the morning. I mean, you know, we gotta know professional thieves.

Why do I say professional thieves is, because you know, growing up I had a family member who, who was a business owner, A lot of cash transactions and net net is. He, he would have cash in his house and, these professional thieves must have known his business and his lifestyle and they literally knew, my godfather would leave the house at a certain time.

My godmother would be home, and then she would leave the house at a certain time to go get my cousin, and then they would come back. She would come back at a certain time. Then my godfather looked back, so in between she leaving to go grab my cousin from school. At the time, obviously we were all younger and he coming back from school.

There was 45 minutes to the tee. They went into the house. They de bolted the safe. They used the restroom without flushing, and they made themselves the sandwich. That's a professional thief. That's a professional thief. Okay. I mean the police was like, this has gotta be an inside job. You sure? Family.

Family. No, that was a professional. Then they ended up getting caught because they used something to that got found somewhere else and they sold something. I think to poncho net. Net is, that's a professional thief. We have to be professionals at business development. Study your study. Understand, and again, this works for when you're going after high level executives.

You know, if you're trying to spray and pray, dial for dollars. Oh, well let's figure it out. It's a different story, but then you're trying to also maybe increase cable and sell another magazine or do something like that if you're trying to sell, you know, high ticket items. That makes sense. Organizations have to invest in a methodology.

I always say, what's the methodology? If you don't have a methodology, how do you expect your team to grow in sales? And it works like we just talked about with assistants, with the executives when you have on the phone and even with colleagues that you're speaking with. In other words, if I'm talking, if I wanna speak with Gary, but I speak with, but for some reason, you know, I, I call and the number gets transferred to a, to a Tom, right?

Hey, Tom, I, I'm sorry, I was getting transferred to Gary. This seems to happen a lot when I get transferred, but for some reason I need to speak with Gary. Is he in? And the person might go, oh, let, let me see, you know what, before you transfer me and I get let go again, what is his mobile number? I wanna make sure I have it here correctly.

And they might give it to me and bingo, let's go. Right? You see it knowing how to, knowing how to take your business seriously though, and thinking outside the box and go to the next level. And this is the one part that people fail because they don't, they don't look beyond what their role and responsibility is.

They think, okay, I gotta cold call and I guess what I gotta do. Right? And, and those folks, unfortunately, you know, they end up paying the price of, of, of greater success. And the organization does as well.

And then I can say, I, I did it, it didn't work. And, you know, go do something else. Versus how, how do I do it? Well, so I have, I guess I have one more question here. I know we're starting to run outta time, but how do, how do you start a conversation with somebody? Let's say you, you get to the executive, I would love some insight on how you actually start that conversation to keep them from hanging up.

In many ways, right? Part of the methodology is the framework of how we speak to somebody. So when we say speak authoritatively, you know, you wanna be able to speak in a way that the person feels comfortable already. So psychologists have already proven that, asking somebody, how are you? It's something that common folks of everyday world crossing in the street, passing each other in a store or at a grocery store, wherever is, is common for strangers.

How are you? Right. But are, and I, I'm not a psychologist and I don't have any exact fine print data, but I can tell you these things because I've seen tremendous uptake when I'm training folks on this. And we measure this increases of 20 to 30% of keeping people on the phone from being a cold call to actually having the ability to articulate.

Why you're calling the value proposition of the call Makes sense. So this one question, Gary picks up the phone. Hello Gary. Actually, I'm gonna give you one trick here. Hello, Gary. Gary, can you hear me?

[00:46:40] Johnny-Lee Reinoso: Appreciate that Gary. Sorry about that. Gary, I don't know if you, if you were able to hear me or not.

How have you been? How have you been? Your brain files that as somebody I know at some point. How have you been? I'm not saying how have you been since the last time we spoke? I'm saying how have you been? How have you been? How have you been? How have you been? Simple, huge increase in keeping that person still on the phone rather than, hi, Gary.

Gary, how are you? Johnny here with it just doesn't work. It also goes with the tone. Now, the reason why I like to pause and ask somebody, hello, Gary. Hey Gary. Can you hear me? Is because I'm getting you to now start to say something to me? Let's break it down to this. This simple term, my voice is commanding you to give me a yes

Okay.

Johnny with C Level Partners. I don't know if you remember. The name or the firm at all? It's, it has been some time since we, since we reached out to you. I know, I, I know I, I, I, I spoke to so and so in your organization, I wanna say about three months ago. When, and, and obviously with that, having the, the data and the information of that, or, or there's might have been, you know, I might have reached out at some point and left a, maybe left one message to see if there's any callback, you know, so I like those data points, right?

If there's, if I have left message, even if it was September. August of this year. Yeah. Gary, I didn't know if maybe you might've remember hearing about us or the work that we do in the industry. I know we left a message for you. earlier, earlier on in the, in the second quarter of this year, we were not able to connect.

but is is C-level partners ring a bell. You see that tone? It's just, it's different. Right? Notice I never said, Hey Gary. How are you Gary? It, it's, my name is Johnny with Sea Level Partners. Is now a good time? There's no now a good time. It's never a good time. My wife calls me, I don't know, six, seven times throughout the day to tell me different things that the kids are doing or what's going on.

She's like, you know, she learned early on after, I don't know how many times. She did it for a few years. Do you have a second? No, I never do, but carry on because I don't, because if I did, I would've called you. Right. Of course. It's not a good time. I mean, it's just who thinks that way? So why would people have this notion that, oh, I wanna be cordial and respectful?

That's why I asked Buddy, he wouldn't pick up the phone if he was damn busy. But what about if he thought I was somebody else? Great. Be above and beyond that somebody else that they don't wanna hang up the phone. You see, it's all about this. This is why when we train people, when we train Fortune 500 companies and other organizations, and we train our own people, we always say, I could teach you all the tricks of the trade gear.

I could teach you all the lipman, different tonality and hopes and this, and how to lean and rasp the voice and increase the voice, whatever it is. I could teach you all of that great inflection and what's needed. But here's the magic thing. If your mind is limited and you think it doesn't work, or you think you're being rude, or you think that you're less than.

No matter what I teach, no matter what you can learn, you will never implement it in a sustainable fashion. That's why we changed our whole training, even where we don't focus on just tone and pitch tone and pitch tone and pitch. We focus on how do we break through these limited beliefs that we've created our in ourselves.

This whole concept that I'm interrupting you, Mr. So important or Mrs. So important. It doesn't work that way folks. Right? That's, that's our approach and that's how we roll when we're talking to a lot of people on the phone and when we train people.

I guess, you know, we're kind of starting to run outta time, so I guess for anybody who is looking into this and says, yeah, I, I, I could, I could really use more appointments with these types of people. That's the type of organization I have. How should they get in touch with you?

But they could dial us directly, right? They could dial us directly, that, you know, we're, we're a local, we're, we're here in South Florida. 561-418-3637. They could dial us directly, but really check us out on, on, on our website, also on LinkedIn. You know, they could, go to my LinkedIn, JohnnyLeeReinoso.com and just, you know, hit me up and, you know, we'll be able to, if they could reference this podcast, obviously we'll be able to, to connect with them even further.

But, you know, we're, we're all about helping organizations. We're always taking great calls to talk to folks and, you know, we, we, we wanna help and. And, and really work with people, even if they're small companies that can't necessarily afford our services, but need some, some guidance. We're all about that because we always fall in love with the needs that our potential clients and clients have.

Because if that's what we do first. We could then service them no matter whether it's us directly or indirectly by referring folks that we know can help them even further.

It was great having you. Thanks for sharing everything and we'll have to have on, have you on again sometime.

[00:52:42] Gary Ruplinger: Okay, take care.

Thanks for listening to the Pipelineology podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's episode and look forward to seeing you on the next one. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.