Art Sobczak has been selling on the phone since he was 14 — starting with tickets to the Omaha police fundraising circus. Forty-plus years later: founder of Business By Phone, author of Smart Calling (three editions), host of The Art of Sales, 1,500+ trainings — including one for my first inside sales team at the US Chamber of Commerce twenty years ago.

We get into what AI actually does for prospecting, why he'll never say "this is a cold call," the Salesperson's Oath, turning gatekeepers into allies, and the four pillars that separate salespeople who execute from those who collect training. If you or your team make outbound calls, this is the masterclass.

What You'll Learn

• Why AI is the greatest assistant — and worst replacement — salespeople have ever had

• Why personalization without relevance is just spam

• The Possible Value Proposition: the opener formula that replaces "this is a cold call"

• Why permission-based openers trigger fight-or-flight in your prospect's brain

• The Salesperson's Oath: first, create no resistance

• The social engineering approach that turns gatekeepers into allies who prep your prospect before you call

• "If the music is still playing, stay on the dance floor" — why rushing to book the meeting kills live conversations

• The four pillars of top performers — and why identity beats discipline (Be-Do-Have, shades of Atomic Habits)

• The backwards math: why 6-8 meetings a month might take 8 dream prospects and a handwritten note, not 14,000 dials

▸ Get My Free MSP Sales Toolbox: https://msp.sale/yt-toolbox

▸ Join My Newsletter for Weekly Sales Strategies: https://rayjgreen.beehiiv.com

---------------------------

Books & Resources Referenced

• Smart Calling: Eliminate the Fear, Failure, and Rejection from Cold Calling (3rd Edition) by Art Sobczak - https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Calling-Eliminate-Failure-Rejection/dp/111967672X

• How to Get a Meeting with Anyone by Stu Heinecke - https://www.amazon.com/s?k=how+to+get+a+meeting+with+anyone+stu+heinecke

• Get the Meeting!: An Illustrative Contact Marketing Playbook by Stu Heinecke - https://www.amazon.com/Get-Meeting-Illustrative-Marketing-Playbook/dp/1948836440

• Atomic Habits by James Clear - https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299

• Art's First 20 Seconds Formula masterclass — smartcalling.com

• The Smart Calling Report newsletter — via smartcalling.com

• The Art of Sales podcast — theartofsales.com

• Dale Dupree Podcast Episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DotK-CSfWOI

• Chris Walker Podcast Episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o5mLPdJp2E

One of the problems I see today is the wussification of sales. There are too many people who are apologizing for showing up to talk about the possible value that they have to offer to prospects.

Why are we apologizing for being there?

That's our sobchak. And wussification is now my favorite word in sales.

Twenty years ago, I got my first sales management job running an inside sales team at the US Chamber of Commerce. And the first sales trainer that I ever hired and flew in at at the request of our top performer, by the way, was Art.

His verdict is that salespeople have gotten soft, that we are apologizing for calling, we're begging for permission. Hiding behind automation. And in this conversation, he breaks down what AI can and can't do for people who are doing prospecting.

Why he only uses the word cold calling as an insult. His salesperson's oath and how to turn gatekeepers into allies. Let's get into it. Well, welcome to the show, Artman.

I'm really looking forward to talking to you today. We have known each other for a really long time.

It's funny, we were just talking about this before we got going, and I think it was like 20 years ago is the first time. It was my first sales management job at the US Chamber of Commerce, managing an inside sales team.

My top guy, Charles Carrington, who may be watching right now, you know, was a big fan of yours, read your newsletter, shared it with the team frequently, and said we got to bring in Art for some. For some training as a new manager. I'm like, all right, cool. Let's do it, man. And we. And we flew you in.

We did a workshop, followed your content and everything since then. But it's really cool to have you on the show like 20, 20 years later with a to a ton more sales insight. So welcome, man. Thanks for joining.

Great. Thank you so much for having me. And I actually do remember that workshop. I've done so many of those, but certain people and certain groups stand out.

I can still remember being in that conference room in Dallas and it was extremely hot.

I do remember that I escaped the Texas heat by moving to Mexico. I don't know that I did a really good job on this.

You mentioned you've done a lot of these Workshops, you've done a lot of trainings, you've been in the business for 40 years, specifically phone sales. So you've got a lot of experience under your belt. I mean, even me to an extent.

Like 20 years in this space, you've seen a lot of tech impact and supposedly kill cold calling.

Like, you've seen a lot of stuff come through between voicemail, automation, automated attendance, caller id, cell phones, like whatever it is, and now it's AI, right? Like AI is going to, going to kill outreach. It's going to replace all of us salespeople. We're going to find something else to do.

And as an AI user, I know some of it's sub. There are some elements of it that are, that are super helpful. And then some of this is just hype and bullshit.

You know, from, from what I'm seeing and your perspective, having gone through different waves of tech and seen, seen the hype, what's the, what impact is AI actually having on prospecting today? Both good and bad?

What are you seeing on the bad side?

Anytime tools come out, you're always going to have people who are looking for the easy button and they're going to use the easy button in place of actually doing the work. Right?

So what we're seeing, and I'm sure if you go into your inbox right now or your voicemail box, you're going to find obviously AI generated messages, bad ones, they really give sales a bad name or contribute to giving sales a bad name. Such as salespeople over the years who have used bad techniques, have given sales a bad name or use technology in the wrong way.

On the plus side, I think AI is one of the greatest things to ever happen to assist salespeople, not to replace the actual conversation element of sales. Now, granted, are there some aspects of sales that will be replaced by AI? Sure, the transactional stuff.

And I mean that's going to happen and maybe good in some sense, but I would say most people still would probably prefer talking to an actual human.

And what's never going to be replaced is at a higher level, especially people being able to do what we're doing right now that's actually have a human connection and a human conversation. So the smartest salespeople have embraced it and they're mastering it.

They're using it to identify prospects, they're using it to collect intelligence on prospects so that they can make their messaging more relevant. Which is what my flagship smart calling is totally based on.

I mean, with a couple keystrokes, we can have Almost everything we need to know on hundreds of prospects and have our entire day pretty much planned out.

Granted, we still need to do some of that research personally before each and every call so that we truly are customizing and tailoring that conversation. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's wonderful.

And I do have to laugh because every time new technology comes out, I think you alluded to it, is that people always say, oh, that's going to, you know, that that's going to kill phone sales. That's going to kill sales. It's going to replace salespeople. And we saw it with emailing and even, even faxing before that.

And geez, I remember when Touchstone phones first came out. I've been around that long.

Oh my, my first phone sales job was. Well, we were talking about this in Omaha, like, so, like there was, you know, I was doing telemarketing in Omaha for a couple years.

Then, you know, when I started at the chamber doing, doing outbound calls, it was pretty much like, hey, here's a phone and a box of D and B cards. You know, like, that was the, that was the extent of the, the, the research that I was going to be able to do. You alluded to this on.

And so a part of your smart calling, and I'll, I'll paraphrase and you can, you can correct me where I'm wrong, but some part of that is you don't, you don't necessarily embrace cold calling to the extent that it's like, don't go in pure cold. There's no reason to go in pure cold. You know that there's, you should do a little bit of research.

And so that's an area where AI can potentially help you make smarter calls, but it can potentially be like a rabbit hole too, right? Like where you spend four hours researching shit you don't need. How do you find the right balance?

Well, I think it has to start with the individual because if somebody is not motivated, somebody's not disciplined, they're going to find anything and everything to do besides what they should be doing, which is anything related to generating revenue, which if they're an inside salesperson or an outside salesperson who's tasked with prospecting that is actually talking to people. So the AI should be systematized for whatever it is that they have decided it's going to do for them. And there's no reason for you to not to.

I mean, there's so many different tools out there and so many different methodologies, and you really don't have to spend a lot of money to do this. And I mean, you can create your own system.

I mean, it's, the lists are endless here as far as what is available for salespeople to, to make their calling more relevant and easier. And you're right, I hate the word cold calling, except when I use it in a derogatory sense.

Because to me, cold calling is defined as calling somebody that you don't know who doesn't know you. There's been no prior contact, they're not expecting the call.

And you're pretty much going in and giving the same pitch that everybody else is getting. And there are people who will defend that and say, well, I really don't need to know anything about them.

I'm just going to go in, I'm going to try to get the meeting.

And I guess I will counter that with the simple argument of you are always going to be more successful if you can appeal to the other person with something that is relevant and personal to them as opposed to a generic pitch. Because let's face it, the human mind hasn't changed in the last how many tens of thousands of years. Right.

People are still mostly interested in what themselves.

So when we appeal to that and what they're interested in and what they want and what they want to avoid and what is relevant to their world right now, of course you're going to better be able to get somebody leaning in as opposed to resisting a cold call.

Well, that's, I think that's one of the challenges that AI has is it's, it's, it's good for personalizing stuff, but it's not good for relevance, you know, so you get a bunch, that's why you get a bunch of these garbage emails that they know where you went to college, they did, did a little bit of research, or it knows something that you said on Facebook three, three weeks ago, but it's not relevant to the thing that they're selling or the conversation that you're happening. And so you remove the relevance. Like personalization without relevance is just, that's, that's the spam. You know, it's like, cool.

That's just creepy, creepy marketing because you know shit about me, but it doesn't actually matter. What would you say on, on the AI piece?

Stick on that just for a second to the audience that says, well, this time it's different and it's just a matter of time. Like this, this one gets smarter over time. So it's really, it's going to replace Salespeople, it can't do it yet.

This is written because it's going to get smarter and smarter and eventually salespeople have to go. Do you, do you think it's a matter of time?

Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt that the advances made in AI just in the past year or in the past few weeks actually have been astounding. And as far as what it can do, it's absolutely amazing. Will it be able to totally replace salespeople?

I don't know if you're ever going to be able to totally replace that, that human interaction and those feelings. It's probably going to get better and better at doing that. It's interesting. I got an AI.

At first I didn't realize it was AI because it sounded incredibly human. And after my, and I had a feeling it was AI so it was saying something about, I even forget what it was.

And it asked me a question and I came back with, you know, a lot of people like pepperoni pizza better than ice cream. And then it came back with the same question.

So I answered that question with, well, I actually prefer the Arizona Diamondbacks over putting together IKEA furniture. And then it's just pause. And it said, it repeated the same question. I kept doing that until it just hung up on me.

You know, is it going to replace salespeople? No, I doubt that. I guess is a different question would be if, if AI is going to replace salespeople, would it replace all people for everything?

I think Elon Musk says, yeah, he says we're all going to have no jobs at some point, and we're just going to have to live on the land and it's going to change society. I, I, I mean, Elon's smarter than me, so who knows?

But I, the, the what I, what I see the more prevalent AI used to your point, like, everybody's hitting the easy button. And by the way, everybody's been trying to hit the easy button and not do good sales forever. And so this is just another way to try to do that.

But I find that the more prevalent it becomes, the more people actually want human connection, right?

Like, the better it gets and the more it fills your inbox and the more it fills your voicemail box or whatever, the more people go, you know, I'd rather just talk to human.

I would not be surprised if that trend continues because the people we see doing really well right now are like on, you know, doing outbound prospecting and selling full cycle are the people who are slowing down lower volume, more and better personalization, smarter calling like it's not the, it's not the highest volume. People who are winning. If the trend continues, I suspect that continues to get more valuable, not less valuable over, over time.

I, I think we've seen that trend over the past five years with more of the preponderance of more automation, where people were trying to just automate more of their outreach, where people were craving more of the personal conversation. And you're right in many cases it's so frustrating.

And we've all been on the phone trees where it's kind of like Asian agent, let me just talk to somebody.

Operator, dammit, please.

And you know what, it's funny Ray, what you just said there about the top performers are the ones who are the best at having a human conversation. Geez, we could have said that and we were saying that 40 years ago.

So that hasn't changed. Like the fundamentals still matter, differentiation still matters. Quality over quantity, like all the cliche, still stands.

Even with more automation and AI.

And again over the years there have been so many tools, but a tool is just a tool. And I always tell people, don't be a tool, use the tool.

And the ones who are the most successful are the ones who use them in the best way to have the best conversation.

A little bit further on this because you we. One thing it's good for is research. Okay, cool. So research is one of those topics as a sales manager.

You know, there's like, it's, you don't want to put hard and fast rules around it, but there's probably some baseline. So when you, when you say you don't want to do cold calling, do you have any guidance for somebody who's.

So say I'm, I'm sitting down, start doing some, some calling on in my area for IT services, right? So I work with a lot of MSPs. They're going to start making their calls.

How much research or how much information do you need before you pick up the phone? Is it entirely contingent on the service you're selling or are there some, some basic premise, premises, premises, whatever the hell it is. Like some.

Is there a basic premise?

Over the years I've seen so many generalizations applied to sales. Like it, you know, it takes eight attempts or eight follow ups to get a yes and this and that and the, the, all these numbers.

And people always ask me how many attempts does it take to reach a decision maker? I say, you know, if I asked the contractor how long it takes to build A house. What would he say? It depends. Right. The same thing is true here.

So it depends on the complexity of the product, how long is the sales cycle, how many stakeholders might be involved, what is it I'm trying to accomplish in, in a first call.

And again, a lot of this can be accomplished pretty quickly by using tools, AI so we don't have to take as much time just going through Google manually as we used to. Like this. Google's a new thing. I remember when it was a new thing and you know, that was actually an excuse for not doing research.

Oh, it takes too much time. Well, that has been blown away if you have a system set up properly. I know you're big and you're huge on systems.

When you have a personal system set up and you go in and you've defined your ICP and you have your list, hey, we can go out there and we can find whatever it is we might be looking for, that could be the relevance point on our call that's going to get somebody to lean in. It could be a trigger event, it could be something, could be a universal problem that maybe everybody in their role faces. Again, a trigger event.

So if I go out and I search for what, what companies in this area have recently had this event happen, I've got a list of those. Right. And we can even go into more detail on that as a salesperson.

So yeah, it truly does depend, but the fact is once you know that you are able to systematize and actually automate that so it doesn't have to take that much time. So and, and, and here's another thing, and I've been using this argument against all those people that have said, well, research takes too much time.

Instead of worrying about the time that you're taking on doing research, how about focusing on the time that you're wasting the rest of the day when you're not calling or doing research. And that's pretty eye opening for most people.

Your specialty is really in, in the messaging.

And, and I'm, I'm just thinking out loud on, on some of the, you know, a lot of these fact, a lot of factors go into the right research, you know, like hey, we're just going to buy a list that everybody buys, you know, and we're going to call the same list that 10 of 10,000 people that every other competitor in the area is going to call. And we're going to say the same thing that everybody else is going to say.

And we're not going to emphasize that the research draw, but what you're talking about is smarter calling. Like it's targeted from the get go.

Like get us get a smarter list based on some type of trigger, some type of incident, or a little bit of intelligence and strategy that goes into it that enables you to do some research and have a better conversation. And so it kind of flows downhill and it starts, you know, I imagine at the very beginning, like picking your, your ICP and everything.

Well, yeah, actually, let me, let me address that for a second here and I'll actually kind of make fun of a lot of what's being taught out there by some LinkedIn gurus. And that is this whole notion of permission based openings. And you know, it's a pattern interrupt and all this. And you're being transparent.

Well, here's the biggest and best pattern interrupt, Ray. It's me knowing something about you that is relevant in your world right now and letting you know that. I know that.

Because now what's going through your mind as a prospect, this is different, okay? It's not a typical salesperson. This is somebody who knows something about me.

And I am now curious as to what this is about, because then I'm going to continue with my, what I call it a possible value proposition, not a value prop. Here's why. Because if I say it's a value prop, who's it a value for? Because I've just said it's a value prop. It's not.

It's only possible until I, until you tell me it's a value to you. So I'm making an assumption that that's going to be a value proposition. A pretty educated assumption.

So then my possible value proposition is going to be tied into what I just said that may be relevant to you. So an example would be, hey, Ray, I noticed that you guys had just onboarded 20 new SDRs in your department.

And so right now you're thinking, okay, yeah, we did. How's this guy know this? What does he know about me? And then, and again, I'm just making this up, I might say.

One thing we've noticed is that a lot of organizations feel that it takes a little bit longer than they'd like to get those reps producing at the level they like them producing and overcoming any call reluctance. Okay, now again, I'm, I'm making this up because I would know more about you before I'd even make that call.

Then my possible value proposition would be, we work with sales teams providing a proven messaging framework that is getting our clients more meetings more quickly and getting Their reps up to speed and producing in half the time that they had formerly. Pattern interrupt was do something about you. Notice I didn't apologize for calling, didn't ask to take any.

I didn't say this is a cold call, by the way, which it will create resistance subconsciously in somebody's mind. I've talked about something that's going on in your world.

Then I talk about a common problem, which, if I've identified you correctly, it's likely something that you may say, okay, yeah, that's something that we've thought about. And then I've mentioned how we have solved that problem. So you've got some social proof in there.

And then the way I end that is not, hey, do you have 15 minutes on your calendar next week? Because at this point, I haven't asked you any questions and I'm also closing for the most valuable thing in your life, and that is your time.

So instead, at the end, what I'll do is simply say, what I'd like to do is ask you a couple questions, see if we have the basis for further conversation, to see if I may be able to provide you with some information. I want to ask a real easy question because the only answer I'm looking for at that point is, okay, sure, what do you want to know?

The opening of the call only has two objectives. Number one, to put you in a positive, receptive state of mind. When a call comes in that isn't expected. What is somebody's mindset?

What is their frame of mind? They're normally in a neutral or possibly a negative frame of mind, thinking, oh, it's probably a cold call.

So I want to reverse that as quickly as possible and put you in a positive receptive state of mind.

And then my only other objective for my prospecting opening is to get you to the questions because I want to interact with you a little bit to see if we have the basis to speak further. And I know there's a lot of SDRs, BDRs. Their entire purpose is to get the meeting.

And my feeling is that if I could have a conversation with somebody and ask a few more questions and warm them up a little bit, I'm going to have a better qualified person who's going to be more interested in having a meeting later, if that indeed is my goal. And if I'm an outside sales rep, my goal isn't just to get the meeting, is to have a conversation.

Can I take that all the way to closure on a first call? Well, I don't know. Depends what somebody sells. Is that going to happen on every call? No, of course not.

But I mean, I can tell you in my business that there were many times where I had a first conversation and we sold a training engagement where in many cases people say, well, you can't close on a first call. Well, you can't if, if you don't think you can. Right. So my feeling there is if the music is still playing, let's stay on.

The dance floor and not necessarily hit the escape route to the 15 minute call right away and try to get off the phone as quickly as possible.

You're saying, hey, if they're engaged and you're having a conversation, whether you call it qualify more or just have more, more discovery, more conversation. When you're saying like better fit as opposed to, all right, Art, we're out. I'm going to talk to my. Let you talk to my ae. Goodbye.

Yeah, and again, I understand that different organizations set up a different way. I know you, you run inside sales for organizations and you have inside sales reps. You have, I don't know if you call them SDRs, BDRs, whatever.

And their goal is likely to set a meeting. Right. In many cases, those people probably are not trained to take the call all the way to the point where, you know, it would be fully qualified.

And like the things that would happen on a normal discovery call in other cases they might be. And it's especially true for an outside sales rep.

There's no reason for an outside sales rep, if they're the one conducting the next meeting, to say, well, the purpose of my call is to set up another meeting. I mean, think about what's the hard. What's one of the hardest things to do when prospecting? Number one, get somebody on the phone.

So let me get this right. I'm going to get somebody on the phone, engage them in a conversation so that I can get them on the phone again.

So if I've already had them on the phone and they're, well, I was on the other side of this. I got a call from a guy and he goes, hey, R. Joe Smith here with, I forget what ABC Financial.

And he had a pretty good opening and he actually got my interest a little bit. Then he said, okay, well what I'd like to do is to set up 15 minutes next week where we can get on another call.

And I said, you know what, we're already talking. Why do you need another call? And he didn't have an answer for that.

I was actually. So the funny part about this one was I was recording a YouTube video and my. All my devices are always on do not disturb.

And for whatever reason, my phone rang like I had it off for, for some reason. So I'm recording a YouTube video and the phone rings. I'm like, what the hell? So I, and I, I answered it just for the hell of it.

I, and I happened to record the call, so I turned it into a YouTube. But it was a cold call. It was a decent cold call. It ended in the exact same way. It was about 10 minutes of a call, not bad.

And we got to the end and he said, okay, now I'm going to, I'm going to set a call to go through and you know, we have a few more questions. And I was like, well, what are the questions? Like, we just run through them now.

Because my time is, I mean, to your point earlier, I usually say, I usually tell people, like, you have a better chance of getting my credit card than my calendar, right? So, you know, if he's, if he and I was semi interested in what he was selling, can we just have that call now?

If it's a 10 or 15 minute call and we couldn't from a, from a sales process standpoint, I was like, man. And it really made me think, from a sales process standpoint, God, don't put so much friction that you cost yourself an actual interested customer.

A conversation like what you're, what you're talking about.

Well, if you think about it, it's just a lot of common sense, isn't it? And it's not like people get caught up in these processes and the procedures and the way they're supposed to be doing things.

And if you put them in different scenari scenarios, they're kind of absurd.

What if, what if a guy went up to a woman at a bar and said, hi, my name's Mike and you know what I'd like to do is see if maybe we could meet here again for 15 minutes next week and then I could get to know you better.

You called it when we were talking earlier as a broader thing, not that specifically, but the wussification of sales. And hopefully. You mind me mentioning it?

Yeah, let me restate that. We talked before, off camera, before we were recording. And I said, one of the problems I see today is the wussification of sales.

And what I mean by that is there are too many people who are apologizing for showing up to talk about the possible value that they have to offer to prospects.

I mean, we are salespeople who have something that is going to make somebody's life or their organization better or help them avoid some type of pain or loss. So why are we apologizing for being.

There when I open up and I'm like, hey, sorry to bother you, or this is a cold call. But I'll be really brief. Does that fall into that camp?

Yeah, absolutely. Because what do. What do people. What do business people hate getting the most regarding the phone? Cold calls. People hate getting cold calls.

And matter of fact, most salespeople hate making them for the reason of, you know, a lot of different reasons. So think about this. Common sense wise, psychologically wise.

If the first things that come out of my mouth to somebody that I don't know, who doesn't know me, and I say this is a cold call, what is going on in their mind, both consciously and subconsciously? Subconsciously, there's probably 10,000 other thoughts going through their mind in a matter of milliseconds.

Most of them are triggering negative emotions, which are the fight or flight, right? Because, oh, my gosh, it's a cold call. Or the negative emotions that go around that.

And consciously, even though they might stay on the phone, they might be thinking, okay, how do I get rid of this cold caller? Or, okay, another cold caller. And very few of them are probably, oh, okay, it's a cold caller.

Maybe he has something of interest for me that is going to really help my life. Most people are not thinking that, okay? So people who defend this are saying, no, you're being transparent, and, you know, you're letting them know.

And so again, my feeling or my argument against that is, why, if I control the frame in the first 10, 15 seconds, why would I risk the chance of creating resistance?

Why wouldn't I instead say something that has a better chance of putting you in that positive, receptive state of mind or at least neutralizing any negative emotion then putting you in the positive state of mind.

And you have something you. You call the salesperson Salesperson's oath. Tell me about that.

So many people are familiar with the Hippocratic oath, right? For doctors, which is first do no harm. So I have adapted that for salespeople. So the salesperson's oath should be first, create no resistance.

When you're planning your opening, look at every word and look at it from a prospect's perspective and say, is there anything there that someone could possibly resist or react negatively to? If so, why have it in there? Because you totally control what you're going to say in your opening. Now, when we get into the questioning.

Of course, what we're saying is going to be dependent upon how they answer, what they ask and so on. So we need to be a little bit more nimble and think quickly on our feet there. But at the beginning, we totally plan out what we're going to say.

So if I have the opportunity, why would I choose to say something that could potentially put many people in a negative frame of mind?

The argument for the permission based is transparency. It's pattern interrupt. It's some of these things that you've mentioned. The counter argument or the alternative to that is about relevance.

And that's that like, that's what comes back to the relevance.

If I, if I've done a little bit of research and I have something that feels personalized and relevant to you that I can open with instead of relying on that, that's better, what would you say?

You know, because there's, there's going to be somebody listening here that says, hey Art, totally agree, but I, I'm just given my list by my, by my employer.

They give me my list in the morning and you know, I've got to make 70 calls by the end of the day and I could do some googling here and there, but how do I find something relevant in that scenario? Or can you like in that kind of role? Is it kind of like, hey, are you. Not necessarily Sol.

But it becomes a numbers game because you don't have the flexibility for relevance. Or what would you say?

Well, again, it depends on the organization, depends on the way it's set up, depends on the management. And I would say, look, let's create more of a scenario here.

So let's say I'm a salesperson in that organization and I come in the first couple days and I look at this and they just say, just make the calls. You know, doesn't matter. Say the same thing. I guess I would question the manager and I would say, hey boss, got a question for you.

You know, getting kicked in the teeth here quite a bit. I'm getting a lot of no's right out of the gate because people know it's a cold call and just not creating a lot of interest.

And I know you say it's a numbers game.

My feeling is, is that if I can go in there and I can customize and tailor this message a little bit, and it wouldn't be that difficult to make it a little bit more personal about them, how our solution potentially could help a specific problem that they're facing, then I feel that I could get Better results. Because at the end of the day, are you counting the number of calls I'm making or the number of end results that you're getting from us to.

Flip it back on the results piece then?

I mean, this is tough love too. And I've said this to salespeople before. They said, well, what if my managers just close mine to it? And they just say, just go make the calls.

It's a Nevers game. And I said, do you choose to work there? Are you sentenced to work there? Do you have a choice where you can work? And then it becomes clear to them.

That, okay, results speak for themselves. Like when I going back to the chamber, when I was there, I, you know, there was a hundred call minimum. I never hit it.

I, you know, I was a 50, 60 call a day person. But I had the highest revenue per call and the highest revenue per sale. And, you know, I still worked there like they, they didn't fire me.

But it does happen. I mean, I do, depending on some environments.

I mean, you were a great example of that. And I'm not a management expert, but I've worked with enough of them to know that many managers are lazy.

And they will, they're, they're lazy and, or they're not equipped to be able to coach and develop salespeople. So the only thing they have to fall back on are the numbers. So they'll say, just give me more numbers.

So I equate that to a baseball manager who never watches a game and reads the box scores the next day and just says to his team, I need you to swing more.

I need you to score more runs. Guys like, can you, can you do that for me? Like, sure, boss, we'll, we'll jump right on that.

Now you mentioned the, that like the biggest challenge that remains a challenge, and it will, is getting people on the phone. And in B2B, you know, the question is always around gatekeepers in terms of smart calling.

If you're, if you're doing some outreach, what's your philosophy or your approach to working with gatekeepers? There's a school of thought that says you don't pitch them. Give as little information as possible.

There's a school if that says you win them over, make them your friend. And there's everything in between. What's Art's approach to this?

How long's the show? We got a couple hours.

As long as you need, man.

Well, you, you probably, you may remember from, from our training 20 years ago that I don't even use the word gatekeeper. I don't use the term screener because there, there are so many terms in sales that are negative and derogatory.

I mean, it's, it's no wonder that sales is looked down upon by so many people. People say, you gotta get past the screener. Never give the gatekeeper any information. The gatekeeper can't buy from you.

Those things have all been repeated so many times that when some things get repeated so many times, some people look at them as just being gospel and the truth, right? Well, they're the furthest thing from the truth. Gatekeepers can't buy from you.

Okay, maybe they cannot make the financial decision to buy from you, but here's one thing they can decide that nobody will buy from you. And they often do, right? So that's when people say they're getting screened out. Why are they getting screened out?

Because they're acting like a salesperson. And I tell the joke quite often in training that screeners or assistants, I call them assistants.

Now, screeners, assistants are much better at getting rid of salespeople than salespeople are at trying to get past them. And they can spot every trick, every potential false, inauthentic schmooze, attempt at deception, withholding information, all of those things.

So think about what an assistant is saying to a boss, either in real time or on a note or an email.

Are they saying, yeah, some salesperson called, he sounded like he was evasive and I got rid of him, or are they saying, hey, Ray called and he mentioned that he's doing something with organizations like ours that are struggling a little bit with their own internal salespeople who don't have their own management experience. And he's got a couple ideas he'd like to run by. He sounds like he'd be worth talking to. That's the type of person that you want on your side, right?

So how do you get that person on your side? Well, through treating them like a human being. And that's why I call them assistants.

They're not only buyer's assistants, they're our assistants as well. And this brings me to one of our entire concepts in smart calling, and it's the term social engineering.

Social engineering was popularized back in the 90s when computer hackers would use it as a way to get information in order to hack into computer systems. And social engineering is just basically talking to people.

Social engineering for us is talking to anyone and everyone other than a decision maker in order to get information that is going to help us make our messaging more relevant and potentially get somebody else on our side if they're in that type of position. And assistants certainly are.

I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've talked to assistants who already had prepared a decision maker for my call, suggesting to them that he talked to me before my call ever came in because I spent some, invested some time gathering information about them, their organization, their sales team, what they're looking for. So that now, and by the way, other people in real time are salespeople's best source of intelligence.

Much better than anything you're going to find online because it's coming from a human in real time who's working at the organization. And anytime you get a human on the line, that's an opportunity to gather some information.

If you call and have just a human conversation with that person, it's an opportunity to get information that is relevant for the next conversation.

And if you're looking for relevance, when you talk to the person that you're looking for, one of the best avenues to get that is going to be the person that works with them every single day.

So if you have that conversation and you get some, a tidbit or a sound bite or something, anything you can, I imagine, make the next conversation immediately more relevant by simply engaging the people that they're working with every day.

Absolutely. And actually you can raise your credibility by even mentioning that conversation with the other person.

So, for example, hey, Ray, in speaking with your assistant, I understand that an area of concern right now is the fact that salespeople aren't placing enough calls because they're experiencing a high amount of early resistance as a result of what they're saying in the first 10 seconds. So now if I said that, that's a lot different than starting out with, hi, Ray, Art subject here.

Hey, first of all, this is a cold call because now I've let you know I've spoken with somebody else. Now immediately your focus is on what I'm saying that is actually true and relevant because it's going on in your world.

Now, one other thing, somebody out there, I can see them out there. There's one out there who's saying, oh, well, won't they be mad that you were talking to their assistant?

You know, in my 40 years of doing this and suggesting this, never, not ever, have I ever heard somebody say, oh yeah, that happened to me.

And what I always suggest if somebody's worried about that is that you just simply come back and say, oh, well, sorry, but I just wanted to make sure that what I have was Going to be relevant for you and not call and just waste your time. Like, I'm sure you probably get a.

Lot of those calls, right? I've, I've never, I've never encountered that either.

You know, in, in 20 years, you know, where somebody says, hey, you did some due diligence and made this conversation more relevant. How dare you speak to the people that I paid to speak to people before, you know, before they, before they talk to me. Do you have any.

When it comes to gatekeepers, not to keep it too tactical, but I am curious when, when it comes to engaging assistance and, and you actually have human conversations when they get into, hey, what is this about? Do you. If you are calling for. For your own company, how much information seems like the appropriate amount of information?

Is it like, hey, you know what? I think this person could be an ally. It's worth giving them full context so that I can have that conversation.

Or by giving them full context or too much context, do I invite the door to now we're not good. And they make a decision, and then I'm. And then I'm. I'm cut out from that conversation. How do you, how do you think about that?

What's important here is that you don't want to do the same thing you don't want to do with a decision maker, and that is going to a pitch about your thing. Okay. You never want to talk about your thing.

What we do want to do is talk about a possible result or a problem or a pain that they might be experiencing and then engage them a little bit so I can start asking them questions. So, for example, if I called up and said, hi, our subject here with business by phone, I'm looking to speak with. With Ray Greene.

And they might say, what's this in reference to? They say, sure. I imagine you probably work pretty closely with them, don't you? So I want to get that question answered.

Well, yeah, matter of fact, I do. Well, what we do is that we work with organizations who have sales teams of SDRs who are experiencing an issue with.

I might mention one of three things. And purpose for my call is to see if any of those might be occurring with you right now.

Matter of fact, you could probably help me with some information so I'm better prepared when I speak with him. And then I would just pause for a second and I would start going into some questions.

So now what I've done is talked about some possible problems, one of which is probably happening in their world. If he or she knows something about the Decision maker. Right. Because they already said they work closely with them.

They probably know what's going on, you know, what's top of mind for them, what are their initiatives and if I touched on that and also what's going through their mind is this is different.

This doesn't sound like the guy who just said, well, it's a sales, you know, it's a, you know, it's a business matter, which then triggers, oh, it's a salesperson, we're going to get rid of them.

When you think about what you say, like what you, you brought to our workshop and our training 20 years ago versus what you were sharing 10 years ago versus what we're talking about today, how much of it is the same and how much of it has changed due to tactical and tool changes and.

Versus the fundamentals, I would say 90% is the same. If I look at my process, the seven step sales process really hasn't changed.

The opening statement formula has been refined, but it still has the key components. What also has changed is that I have so many more examples now that have worked in the field of people using the formula. And like, if you.

Let's do another book. And I would say, let's do another version of Smart Calling. And they'll say, well, what's changed?

And I say, well, what's changed is I've got more examples and I fine tune the process a little bit. And the same thing happened with the third edition.

And actually, although I didn't do a book out of it, I just came out with, I'm gonna give a little plug here.

I just came out with a little masterclass called the first 20 seconds formula that is the most up to date about the first 20 seconds using the Smart Calling process and the psychology and simply plugging and playing into each part of that process. And we give tons of examples of how to do that, all based on what's out there working in the field right now.

But again, answer your question again, the human brain hasn't changed in the last year, how many tens of thousands of years? And it's still humans talking to humans.

It's still people wanting things or wanting to avoid things and us being relevant and talking about what's relevant to them as Opposed to what we want to talk about, which will create objections, which is, by the way, the best way to deal with an objection.

It's funny, whenever I see these things out there, like the, the five ways to overcome an objection and the objection rebuttals and all this stuff, you know, the best way to deal with an objection, prevent it from coming up in the first place.

We. It's a.

On the, on the full sales cycle side of things, you know, where you're running discovery and then you've got a demo or a proposal or something. I always like, rule of thumb, I'm like, all roads lead to discovery.

Like at the end of the day, at the end of the day, virtually every objection that you get at the end of the process is something that could have been addressed proactively, like just with better discovery, better questions, better engagement, you know, so all these things that come up at the end and you want this magic pill, what can I say every time to overcome price resistance or I need to think about it or the timing's not right or whatever the hell it is, and you go like, dude, that's. There's a, There was something that we could have said or done or figured out or learned or asked earlier in the process to help do it.

Because at that point, like you're, It's a, it's much, it's much more difficult psychologically.

100% Preempt the objection from ever coming up by asking better questions, but not just the first question.

Matter of fact, I was just looking at a few of your blog posts and you did one just recently about how so many salespeople will ask the first question and then they'll stop thinking that, oh, I got enough information and maybe start going into a little bit of a pitch at that point, as opposed to. That's just the tip of the iceberg. We need to lower the water level and find out why did they just say what they did?

Because that's going to be the real good stuff that's going to help us prevent objections and then tell them exactly what they're going to need to hear in order to move the process forward.

Yeah, it's all the, it's all the stuff below the surface, you know, like, it's that first question, it's the follow up. Let's pull on that thread. Look a little bit.

And if you're, if you're just genuinely curious, I find, like that is one of the best sales tactics or techniques. Like just be genuinely curious and ask questions from a position of Curiosity, like what, what makes somebody ask, answer that particular way?

Or if they, if they, they set it with that tone or they said like be curious and you'll get better information that leads to better sales. But it's not a, it's a pull exercise more than it is a push exercise. From my experience, you have a bunch of case studies.

You, like you mentioned, you have these examples that you continue to add to the arsenal.

If I'm, if I don't have the context of 40 years and the data that you have and just the, like, all of the addition, like the insight into different organizations and teams, how do I know if what I'm doing is working? Are there like, do I look for certain numbers or am I looking for certain conversion rates?

Or if I make 30 cold calls today and I'm wondering, is this good? Like, should I be doing better? Should I not? How would you coach a salesperson to figure out are there certain target KPIs that you look for?

Are there metrics? Is it, how, how do I know if what I'm doing is, is the right way or not?

Well, go back to the example I used earlier. How long does it take to build a house?

I, I, I, I, there's no way for me to answer that unless I knew a lot about your organization, what you're selling, what at what price point. Yeah, all of those things. If is it worth, well, what's going to make it profitable short term and long term. And again, I, I don't know that.

What I would probably start with is if I was thrown into an organization, first of all is I would look at the past, I'd look at history, what have other people done and what, what is considered successful, why and what are they doing to get those results. And then I would analyze that because it could either be great or it could suck.

And then I figure out, well, what could be changed to get better results. I don't think I'm ever on record anywhere of giving a number on anything without knowing specifically about the specific that I'm answering.

Well, different industries, different offers, different sales cycles, different personality types.

So I get that the breadth of your experience has been in telephone and now there's, you know, we've got LinkedIn, we've got email, we've got text, we've got these other channels. How critical are the other channels to a smart calling strategy right now?

I think very critical because whatever form of communication that we can use to achieve our result, I am by all means in favor of doing it, but not at the expense of talking to a human. To use it in a way to facilitate talking to a human.

I'm not a big believer in mass blast AI generated emails that obviously probably do more harm than good. I believe in customized, tailored personalized email that don't pitch but simply warm up the call.

I love video when done the right way because that incorporates more of a human element to it without, I mean the only thing we're lacking there of course is the real time two way communication. But it adds an element that we didn't have before. And how about this, Here's a novel idea. Personalized notes, handwritten with a stamp.

I know, Mind blowing, huh? You know, people talk about conversion rates. A handwritten Note is almost 100% guaranteed to get open. Happened.

Well, I just did a, I don't know if you, you're on LinkedIn a lot, so you may know Dale Dupree and I, I just did, I had a conversation with him similar, similar to this. And you know, he has, you know, a couple different kind of creative, fun, personalized campaigns.

You know, and so it's like, you know, empty boxes of, of Krispy Kreme with a handwritten note inside and a, and a gift card and you know, but it's, it's not the kind of stuff you can do with a list of a thousand people. It's the kind of stuff that you do with a smaller group that's targeted that you know, some information to your point about relevance.

It's more human touch and a handwritten note like what you're talking about. You know, it's the whole point of sales and marketing is to, is to differentiate yourself.

Like the last thing you want to be is a commodity, you know, so I like, for, for my audience, a lot of people are MSP IT business owners.

The biggest challenge they have is they, is they look and feel the same or at least that's how they're, they, they think that their customers perceive them. Well, how do you differentiate yourself? Your first touch point, your first impression is how you sell and market.

And if you do it high volume, like personalization without relevance or anything else that goes into it, you blend in with the masses and you miss the opportunity to differentiate.

And meanwhile somebody's sitting there writing, you know, 15 handwritten notes a week and they've got the same or more appointments and better, higher quality conversations because you stand out. And I think that gets more important the more people rely on automation and AI to try to get around this. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And I know you're talking about, I've just started seeing him on LinkedIn and actually I think before him, I believe, I don't know if you know, Stu Hynek. Stuart wrote phenomenal books. The first one was called Get a Meeting with Anyone.

And actually let me pull this off of my wall here because this is on my wall. Stu wanted to interview me for his first book, how to Get a Meeting with Anyone. And he sent me this.

I love that. That is awesome.

So Stu by trade was a cartoonist and he had cartoons appear in the Wall Street Journal.

And what he would do in his business, because he also consulted was he would send these big boards out to people and he had a 100% success rate on getting meetings with people based on sending out those boards. But the book is actually phenomenal.

And then he wrote a follow up called get the Meeting where it's where people have actually taken his concepts and there's examples, there's probably, I don't know, 50 to 100 examples of people doing different things, just odd things, kind of like what Dale's suggesting there. And so I would definitely recommend getting those books. And again, the whole premise is personalizing being different.

You're differentiating and you're right, you really can't scale that.

But the thing is, don't most salespeople have the top 10 or 20 dream clients that would really make their week their, their year, their career, maybe if they got them. So why couldn't they invest a little bit in doing something like that?

That for those people you're doing pretty well if you've got six to eight new appointments per month with, with new prospective clients, you know, given the, the lifetime value of customers and things like that, if you have, if you have eight good first time meetings a month, you're probably going to be doing really well. When you put it in that context, you say, how are you going to get six to eight meetings a month?

Well, one way to do it is make 14,000 phone calls or send 30,000 emails or what another is, well, if you need eight, six to eight meetings, maybe you only need to reach out to.

I mean, hell, if you're Stu, you may only need six or eight people on your list if you do it the right way, you know, so, but it's a completely different way to think about it.

But the end goal, if you keep that in mind and then work backwards from what's the best way to get there as opposed to what's the most volume that I can push out, hoping that I Get there. It's just a different way of thinking, I think.

Yeah. And again, really, it all comes back to our common theme here, which is the human personalized touch with something that is relevant.

And I always say I'm not a big believer in gimmicks, and sometimes people can get a little too gimmicky. But you always want to attach some value to anything that you're doing. Don't do something just for the sake of being goofy.

Always make sure that there's a reason there for somebody to want to talk to you.

Now, when we were talking earlier, you mentioned, you know, 10 years ago or so, you, you kind of slowed down and you know, from, from a business standpoint, you've done like your, your businesses have done, done phenomenal over the years. And four or five years ago you said there was kind of like a spark, there was a little bit of a, of a thing.

I forgot the, the exact wording that you, that you said what happened four or five years ago to kickstart thing or reinitiate some of the content and stuff that you're doing now?

Well, you have a long story and I guess kind of a perfect storm here.

I had may have started the podcast maybe shortly thereafter that I had the news. I had a paper newsletter going, which I stopped because I was just kind of exhausted doing it and was enjoying life.

And then Covid hit and I'm sitting around thinking, you know, I got so much more in the tank here and I'm seeing so much what I call garbage being perpetuated out there as far.

As.

Guru speak and misinformation as it relates to sales. And I thought, you know, I've got so much here that I'm sitting on that I can share and so much more that I can share just based on my experience.

And, and, and, and then it, then it hit me also at about the same time that what's really been missing all these years in, in sales training and one thing that kept coming back again and again is that I do training or anybody would do training. And the numbers, I think the numbers here probably are consistent. 10 To 20% of the participants would take it and run with it.

And then maybe 80%, well, maybe you have a Middle percentage, that would kind of improve a little bit. Then you have maybe another 20% that would do nothing with it. Right, right. And I'm thinking, why is that?

Most sales training focuses on one thing, and that is the what to say, the how to say it, the process, the framework, you know, how to do a demo, you know, how to close, how to overcome objections, all that stuff. And again, in many, in, in many cases, some of that stuff is just not good information.

But I thought what really is missing there is the, the human element of the person's identity who's asked to do these things. And very little, if any trading ever focuses on that.

Anything that might touch on that would consist of, oh, don't take it personally or don't, you're, you're going to get rejection. You gotta love rejection, right. Or be positive or motivate yourself. Right.

And it's kind of like telling somebody, well, you know, you should eat healthy, or the people that buy a gym membership January 1st and they quit going January 7th, right. Because they're not the person who's going to do what it takes to get the results that they want.

So then I started really analyzing all of the salespeople that have been super successful over the years that I've worked with. What do they have in common? And I really broke it down into four areas. One is they were extremely. Others focused.

Others focused in the sense of not being subservient, but instead really focusing on what does this other person want or what do they want to avoid? How can I help them get it as opposed to what do I want to sell? Because when we come from a position of what do I want to sell?

That's when we create objections, right? When we talk about product, when we talk about features. The other one is what prevents most salespeople from prospecting, making more calls?

Well, it's fear, namely fear of this thing that people call rejection. Right. So I figured out that the people who truly were successful were the ones where the no's did not affect them.

They reframed the way they looked at what was happening to them, what they were experiencing on their calls. And by the way, rejection only exists as a story in somebody's mind. Rejection itself does not exist.

It's only the meaning we attach to what happens to us. And if we control the story, why in the world would we call it rejection?

The third pillar is you do have to have the messaging, which is commonly taught in most sales training. And it's got to be good messaging.

Messaging.

And it's got to be there and people need to frankly master it because you cannot wing it. You cannot just be authentic and be yourself and just have a conversation.

Because those of us who have actually been there on the phone and had a list of leads thrown at us, then we say, okay, well what am I supposed to say? Right? So that has to be there.

And then the fourth one that really ties it together is part of the identity which is the discipline to actually do the work. There's a novel concept actually doing the work, right? I'm talking about making the calls and making the calls.

Not when we just have the time or find the time. It's making it non negotiable.

Matter of fact, a person in my highest level coaching group has gone from dreading, placing prospecting calls to I quote her saying, it's just something that I can't not do anymore. It's part of who I am because I just prospect now. That's what I do. And it's non negotiable.

It's a ritual and not everybody thinks that way and that is really part of, of our identity.

So I took an entire year and I developed all of those concepts and finally put it into a training program and a course and then that became part of a bigger high end coaching program that's very selective by application, only fairly small group and it's really the only personal access to me where we have three calls per month and they have a ton of resources available to them. And we focus a lot on the identity of the ultimate sales professional and not just on the what to say and how to say it because that is important.

But we also focus on who we're being when we're doing it. And the people have noticed tremendous transformation in who they are.

That's really one of my, one of my missions ongoing here and that's getting salespeople to, to become the person who does what it takes to do the work in order to become successful. Because most, most salespeople have it wrong. One of my mind mentors, his name is Jim Fortin, he talks about be, do have.

We have to be the person who's going to do what it takes in order to have what we want. So we have to, we have to be first as opposed to how people reverse that. And they think they just have to start doing well.

If you just think about I have to start doing like oh, I have to start lifting weights or I have to start running or I have to, you know, eat healthy in order to become healthy, that it's not going to work because we all know maybe most people out there have tried it because eventually you stop because in, in here and in here, you haven't become that person yet.

You mentioned the discipline and, and somebody else I've had on the show, his name's Chris Walker. He's the founder of a program called Encoded and it's about kind of frequency training, like mental training.

And he talks a lot about how discipline, if you rely on discipline alone, like just brute force, you get exactly what you're talking about. You try to go to the gym and you just try to make yourself do it.

But if you don't change your identity that you associate with it, it's never going to stick. The flip side of that is if you change your identity, the amount of discipline and brute force that you need to do it goes down.

You know, like I, I, I go, I work out every day one way or another. I walk, I run something, I'm gonna do something every day. Well, now that's just who I am like that. It's not discipline.

I don't need discipline to do what I'm doing. It's like you're the cold, like the caller that you were talking about. At some point you just go, this is who. It's harder to not do something.

And it is like the discipline is gone. So the identity dwarfs the need for some of the discipline.

I have a question on identity and I'm familiar with the be do have atomic habits talks about identity quite a bit. And others. Is identity something that you discover or is it something that you create?

Can I just change the identity or is it something that I curate and discover through a process?

Well, you do a both. I mean, you discover it and you create it. You could do it simultaneously.

And mostly it involves changing your thinking and then also changing your habits. And thinking is the biggest part. We will never achieve anything until we first see ourselves going there in our mind's eye first.

And there are people who will never see themselves as being a top performing salesperson because they're just not there yet. And granted it doesn't happen overnight and there's all kinds of studies on it takes 21 days.

Well, the first thing is we have to start somewhere, but then you have to continue on doing it. We have a number of exercises and a number of ways of changing thinking and challenging our existing beliefs.

And I mean, so many things in life, Ray, are the stories that we tell ourselves. And most people's identities have been created by the time they were eight years Old.

They just been indoctrinated into believing certain things, whether it be about health, whether it be about money or success or whatever, that can be changed. And a lot of people don't realize it. Not to get too much in the weeds or get too geeky here, but there's the whole concept of neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity, big word for me, which is basically changing our patterns, changing. Let's put it in technical terms. You're talking about it. We're changing the operating system that really runs our subconscious thinking.

And our subconscious thinking really runs most of how we operate every single day. And that involves a little bit of work, actually a lot of work.

If somebody's really ingrained into the stories that they're telling themselves, going back, to use your word, discovery is a big part of it.

Once you start doing these activities and exercises and changing your thinking, people discover that, oh my gosh, I've been choosing the whole time to be at the level I am. I mean, if we look at that wherever people are in life right now, it's all a result of the choices they made up to this point in their life.

And people can argue that and say, oh, well, maybe they've been dealt a bad hand or, you know, maybe it was luck. And I'll counter that with, that's the exact thinking that got them where they are right now.

A product of circumstances or whatever. I, I recently wrote about complaining, you know, like, it's like, it's just I'm, I'm allergic to, I can't stand it.

I have like a reaction when I hear people, you know, complaining about stuff that's not in a productive way. That's not like moving the needle or trying to solve a problem.

And it's like, man, but just that energy, but it's contagious, you know, and then, but then that's what keeps you where you are in the circumstance that you're usually complaining about. It's not the thing that, that changes it.

So, so if you were, if you're a salesperson listening to this right now and you wanted to take a step in the right direction of reshaping, discovering and creating an identity that's going to give me better, long term, sustainable success and probably actually make me enjoy sales, the process of selling. In the meantime, what's your advice to somebody who wants to start moving that direction?

A problem will never be solved by the same type of thinking that created the problem in the first place. Right? So we have to get some additional input where you get that input. I mean, obviously you can look at the stuff that I have.

I've got a lot of free stuff. I've got podcasts, I've got the Smart Calling Report newsletter where I've written about these things.

How to do this, how to change your thinking, how to not ever experience rejection again, how to not be a victim. All those things. If you want to elevate it, of course, we've got options for that. That as well.

And again, I'm not the only person who has things like this. I think I'm one of the few people who have actually applied it to sales specifically for B2B salespeople.

People are not lacking for information today. People are lacking for execution. But how do you get execution? Well, you've got to decide that, damn it. It's time, right?

It's time for me to actually change the thinking about the results that I'm getting and what am I going to need to do in order to change that thinking so that I can do the other things that are going to help me get the results that I want in any area of life. And this applies to anything. You did it. And I know, and I've followed you and love your content. Even before we. We recontacted, I was your list.

And I know you went through the journey of finally you decided you were tired of being overweight and out of shape and you got involved in getting in shape. Like you said, now it's who you are and you don't even think about it. Right. It's kind of like my client who says, I can't not do it.

It's just what I do every day. And I use the example in a newsletter.

I think a couple weeks ago, I started the newsletter out with I did not have a cigarette today and I did not buy cigarettes. I'm not even thinking about having a cigarette today. Why? Because I am not a smoker. It's part of who you are. Right?

And we all identify as certain things. So it's changing. How can you change that identity to someone who's getting those top results that you want and you're capable of in sales?

And you are. But you might have to change your stories or you probably will have to change your stories.

Any one of these topics, this one in particular, you know, we could talk for hours about, like you mentioned the gatekeeper one. You said, how much time do you have? You know, like it's any one of these topics. I know we could.

We could dive deeper into what I will say is there's, you know, so I'm going to put a link to your newsletter into your podcast and stuff in the, in the show notes and to anyone listening, I, I really genuinely recommend signing up. Like the content is, is high quality. It is not run of the mill, you know, LinkedIn guru. It is like you're not afraid. I love this.

You're not afraid to say I have, I have a different opinion. And this is what it is.

You give a ton of value in that stuff and, and the reason I give it a shout out, man, is because no bullshit like, I, like I opened this 20 years ago. My top producer was reading your stuff and, and still today I, I read your stuff and I, there's a, a ton of really valuable content.

So also shout out to Charles if he's, if he's listening for, for making this connection many years ago. One of the best phone sales people on the planet. So.

But yeah man, I'm, I'm glad we're here ending the, the wussification of sales and would love to, to chat more if you're, if you make it back to Capo, would love to. To connect. I'll send people to the, to the sources. Where else can people find you beyond the. The newsletter or podcast?

My flagship site is simply smart calling but. And you can get anywhere from any of the sites. The newsletter is smart calling report. The podcast is the art of sales.

So my parents were blessed or they blessed me with the name Art. So darn it, I was going to milk it for whatever I can. So.

Theartofsales.com well, you've been doing content marketing since before it was like a popular thing between the newsletters and everything else. So everyone dive in. Thanks Art, again for your time and look forward to following up and doing this again sometime.

Ray, thank you so much. And everybody, I would encourage you go into his archives.

This guy, I mean, before you started doing what you're doing now, when you were primarily doing coaching and consulting, the amount of content you were pumping out, I was like, does this guy ever sleep? And you're right about, you know, no bullshit. I mean, you were and still do.

And that's why I was following you because obviously we have choices of who we're going to follow. And I tend to gravitate towards the people that tell it like it is and are basing it on what works and what's real and what's common sense.

And you, my friend, do that as well.

Well, I sincerely appreciate it, especially coming from you, man. So I'll let you run and we'll do this again.