← Outside Sales Talk
Outside Sales Talk
Networking to Make Your Next Big Deal - Outside Sales Talk with Drew Sechrist
01:08:12
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- [00:00]
A
If we can figure out. If I can figure out how to short circuit knowledge for you that's going to make your life better and connections that are going to make your life better, then I'm all about it. I want to do it. And if you put that out in the world, it comes back to you in spades.
- [00:14]
B
This is Outside Sales Talk, the best podcast for outside salespeople. I'm your host, Steve Benson, and we're here to chat with the world's top sales experts so that you can get their best sales tactics to level up your game. Welcome back to Outside Sales Talk. I've got Drew Secrest with me and he's going to teach us about networking to make your next big deal. Drew, welcome to the show.
- [00:41]
A
Steve, thanks for having me.
- [00:44]
B
Absolutely. And just by way of introduction, Drew is the co founder and CEO of Connect the Dots. It's a company that helps map professional relationships in order to find the strongest connections possible. He previously played an important role in the rise of Salesforce, helping them grow from $0 to over a billion in revenue. And he was employee number 36. During that time. He was both the number one sales manager globally and the number one account executive globally. So quite, quite a track record.
- [01:17]
A
It was a fun ride. Super lucky to be given the opportunity.
- [01:23]
B
Absolutely. Such a great company. So let's talk about networking. At times, you know, networking can be so awkward or intimidating and daunting for people. Tell us a bit about how you started out at Salesforce and what gave you the courage to reach out to them and network your way in there.
- [01:46]
A
So the. The irony of my story with Salesforce is that it all started with a cold email. And a cold email I sent the Mark Benioffs back in 1999. And the reason that's ironic is because my new company, Connect the Dots, is all about how making it so that you. You don't have to send cold emails anymore. Making it so that you can see who in your network knows the people you're trying to get to so you. You can actually go in warm. You don't have to do this. But back in 1999, no such technology existed. And so I was. I kind of rewind just a little bit so you understand kind of the backstory. I grew up in the east coast, went to school in North Carolina. After school, ended up working for a couple of companies in North Carolina locally there. And one was a company that was an I A VAR Value added reseller of Salesforce automation products and business intelligence products. There are things like Sales, saleslogix Goldmine, Seagate Crystal Info. These are all old products that have either been consumed by some larger organization or just kind of gone away at this point. But back then, companies like ours on the east coast would resell these products and then go implement them for companies. So like in North Carolina, we had Volvo Trucking as one of our big customers that we would sell them a sales logic implementation with Seagate Crystal Info is their business intelligence tool on top of it. And we'd, you know, integrate the whole thing and then roll it out to their team. So that was our business, that was the business that was in. And I had this, this idea that we should probably move towards the Internet, which is now sounds like a no duh kind of idea, but back in 1999, all these things didn't really use the Internet that terribly much. And I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about this guy named Mark Benioff leaving Oracle, where he had been an executive. And he had taken $2 million in investment from Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, to start this thing called salesforce.com and he was going to rewrite Salesforce automation software from the ground up to be delivered as a web application, literally inside of a web browser. There it is, your entire application in the web browser. And my head almost exploded. I was like, that's the future. That's exactly what should happen. So I, I cold emailed him in 1999 and said, hi, Mark, my name's Drew. I work for this company here on the East Coast. We resell products like yours, all client server products, you know, not. Not web native products like the one that you're building. When it's ready to. When it's ready to go to market, I'd be interested in talking to you about reselling it. And Mark Benioff, to his credit, you know, he's super fast on email. I don't know if he is still this incredibly fast, but back then it was incredibly fast. He wrote back to me almost immediately and said, sorry, we're not gonna have a reseller network. We're gonna just have a direct sales team. And I said, well, I wrote back to him, let's talk about some, let's talk about some other way that I could get involved. And he said, fly up to San Francisco and let's talk. And so I did. I flew up to San Francisco and I met with Mark when the company was probably about a dozen people and in a little office in San Francisco down on like Mission Street, I think, or. Yeah, right around there. And, and he said, I told him my story about why I was interested in reselling this product because I said, look, I'm selling all these other things that are going to be your competitors once you come to market. I'm selling these products and I see all the problems with them. And there's a fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that they're client server software. They need to be installed on everybody's computer and then networked together back to some computer that has the server on it and there would be synchronization servers in the middle. All this stuff is just a really messy architecture and things broke all the time. And I said, this is. You're going to solve this. I see it. You're going to solve this by just having a web browser be the interface for your customers and then you handle all the complexity behind that. And it makes perfect sense to me. And, you know, I guess I said it pretty compellingly because he said, great, I want you to come sell for us. And so he offered me a job on the spot. And, and I got the offer. And it was, it was a quadrupling of my, you know, what I was making back in North Carolina. And then I was moving, you know, it was an offer to move to San Francisco, which is, you know, that's the big leagues when it comes to technology. And I thought, this is, this is a great opportunity. I'd be an idiot to pass this thing up. So that's, that was the origin story. And how did I muster up the courage to network my way in? It was my, at that point, it was like my job to find products, to resell and resell the products. And you know, me personally, I was, I was just, it was clear to me that there was a huge technology change that was going to happen and I wanted to figure out, you know, which was the right horse to bet on in that technology change. And, and I saw Salesforce and I thought, this is it. So I don't know. That's the story. I don't know how much courage it took. It just seemed like a no brainer to me to like lob a cold email into Mark Benioff. What's the downside? What's he going to do? Not reply to me?
- [07:14]
B
Well, and that's, that's exactly the right attitude to have, I think. And you know, I think a lot of, A lot of people that are considered naturals in sales because they, they just have the right attitudes. But I think anyone can learn these attitudes effectively, you know, if they if they wrap their heads around it and practice a bit. What, what are the foundational skills that you think that, that you have or, or that everyone needs to be successful in, in success to be a great networker?
- [07:45]
A
Well, you know, there's a. One of our customers and CEO of a great company here in Silicon Valley, guy named Nick Meta, who's CEO of Gainsight, which is a SaaS company that, you know, many other SaaS companies use their product. He, he was actually on a, on another podcast I was listening to a little while ago where he, somebody asked him, when's the best time to network? And he said, he said, well, I'll tell you when the worst time to network is, and that's when you need a job. That's the worst time. You probably do it anyway, I guess, but it's the worst time. And he said the best time to network is always. Should always be doing it. And I thought that was really great advice actually now, because the way networking, if you're, if you think about networking as like this transactional thing where you go to a Rotary Club meeting and, you know, you're giving business cards to each other and, you know, very intentionally like that, you know, like those networking events, I think are things that a lot of people dread. Like, oh, I don't really want to go do that. It doesn't feel natural. Feels kind of transactional. You know, that doesn't necessarily float everybody's. But some people are really like that. Nothing against this. Eventually, I think this should exist and people should do those things. But the I, what I took from Nick Meadows guidance was when you're living your life, you're networking. You know, we're social animals. We're constantly like, you look at what we do as people. We're constantly interacting with each other. And I think if you're, if you're, you know, if you're kind of. And you should naturally be gregarious, you, you know, should be interested in other people. You should get over your fear of talking to people if you have one, if you want to be successful in networking. Just like, what's the worst that's going to happen? Probably nothing too terribly bad. And then the other thing is just out of a lot of curiosity and other people, you know, really wanting to understand what's, what makes them tick, what they're trying to accomplish in their lives. And you might not be able to help them right now, but you can put it in the back of your mind and then it goes into this, you know, it goes into your Personal, you know, your database of people that you could potentially, you know, tap into or you might be able to help in the future. And, and if you think a proactive approach to helping people, knowing a lot of people, and then you take a proactive approach to helping them when you can, then you're doing a great job. I think you're just, you're living a great life as a human being in that situation. And, and you're a great networker, but you didn't really have to work too hard at it. You're just like, you know, kind of being a good person and living your life. And I, I read at some point, I don't know, in the last 20 years, whenever it came out, whenever it was popular. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I don't know if you've ever read that.
- [10:49]
B
Way back in the day.
- [10:51]
A
It's been, it's been a while. Yeah.
- [10:54]
B
I think that was actually required. Required reading in business school.
- [10:57]
A
I think that's how, I mean, it should be. Like, that's, it should be because business. Business school is all about that. You're trying to build these bonds that people are going to go out and do really interesting things in the world and then be able to tap in. You want to be able to tap into that network going forward. That's one of the biggest things you get out of going to business school. And I remember reading that, and I read the chapter on. I think they call them connectors. Is that, does that remind. Does that sound right to you? Connectors? Yeah.
- [11:28]
B
The people who are. Are go out of their way to connect other people with other people.
- [11:31]
A
Yeah. I read it and I was like, that's me to. That's me to a T. I, I totally do that. If I, you know, if you told me like that you, you want to. If we just. Today on the call, we're talking about yoga and you're like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna go to Bali. I think I'm gonna go to Bali in the next couple of months and do a yoga teacher training. And because I've always wanted to do that, immediately my brain would be like, wait, I just talked to somebody who just did that and, you know, was just at a yoga teacher training in Bali and they raved about it. And so I should probably tell Steve about that and probably connect them so that they can talk so that before Steve books anything that he gets that local input from somebody who's got it. And, you know, I don't do that for a commission. I'm not doing that because I, you know, because I think Steve's going to give me a tip and you know, here, Drew, here's, you know, 50 bucks for, you know, the great insight. I just do it because I hope everybody does that because then it's a better world. You know, if, if we can figure out, if I can figure out how to short circuit knowledge for you that's going to make your life better and connections that are going to make your life better, then I'm all about it. I want to do it. And, and if you put that out in the world, it comes back to you in spades. It's been my experience. So, yeah, that's a, I don't know, it's kind of a meandering way to talk about networking, but maybe there are a few nuggets in there.
- [12:55]
B
No, absolutely. I think there's a lot to learn from that. I mean, you, you create value for others and that builds relationships. And, you know, I think that's one of the big challenges for people with, with networking in general is at one end you've got kind of the transactional like, well, we've, we've exchanged business cards. Now we could email each other and pitch each other after we did a networking event together. At the other end, it's real long term relationships where everybody is better off from having the relationship. And I think, you know, one way to, after you establish an initial connection as a salesperson, you can go about maintaining strong relationship and ships and deepening relationships is time and being useful. And I think that's kind of your strategy.
- [13:43]
A
Yep. Yeah. I mean, in sales and also just in life, you know, like help where you can.
- [13:51]
B
Yeah. And yeah, so often the lessons from sales are applied to, to all of life. Right. Because that's, you know, sales is a part of life. It's being the friction, it's being the lubricant between two organizations that are doing business or two groups of people who are doing business or two groups of. Or just, you know, an individual consumer and someone who needs help buying something. But.
- [14:14]
A
Oh yeah, and you. I've, I heard this plenty and I actually think it's really true. Kind of. You're always selling all the time. Like everybody is. You're always selling your ideas or you're selling yourself personally or you might actually be selling a product or a service. You know, you might actually be literally doing that. But whatever you're doing, you are, you know, you are, you know, enrolling others in the way that you see the world and, and where the world ought to go and, but sales. So.
- [14:42]
B
Yeah, and I think, you know, the, if you're always just thinking about sales and you're only helping people who you think a sale could come from, I think you're also missing the point of, of networking because a lot of it, a lot of times it's just, you know, paying forward favors that aren't. You don't expect to come back to you, but they randomly come back a different way or from something else.
- [15:04]
A
Yeah, I, I think you got to think about it as like 0.1% of this is going to come back in some monetary way, you know, to, you know, like 99.9 of what you're doing is you're, you're just being a useful member of society. And, and then, you know, and that's your network. Your network's like 99.9 of it is like, that's not, it's not about really. They're not going to turn into money for you, you know, as customers. And that's just. Not everybody's going to be in the market for your product. But if you have a great network, yeah, if you have a great network, then you're going to have all these people that you can use to tap to, you know, tap to get to the people who do need it. And if you've been useful, helpful to them, honorable, high integrity, fun to hang out with, you bring value wherever you can, then you're able to tap into that network and all of you win, win, win, win. Right.
- [16:03]
B
That makes a ton of sense and it's a great attitude. I've always kind of felt like as a proxy, like whatever value you create in the world, you get to keep about 10 or 10 comes back to you, you know, like, and in a lot of sales jobs, that's, you know, exactly the number.
- [16:18]
A
Right.
- [16:18]
B
I mean, sometimes it's 5%, sometimes it's 20. Depends on the industry. But, you know, it's, you know, in, in life in general, I think that that's kind of the proxy. It's like if you created a billion dollars in value, you probably have 100 million. If you created, you know, a million dollars in value, you probably have a hundred thousand.
- [16:37]
A
Right?
- [16:38]
B
It's, it's, it's. So it's some ratio around there, and some places it's better, some places it's worse, but it's, it's around there.
- [16:45]
A
But.
- [16:47]
B
You mentioned tapping into your team, your network, around you to kind of almost boost your own networking numbers and boost your own impact talk a Little bit. Talk a little bit about that.
- [17:01]
A
Well, feels like, it feels like maybe I should talk a little bit about what I've been focusing on company wise for the past. It's been about four years now.
- [17:10]
B
Yeah, I'm kind of, kind of putting the ball on the T here.
- [17:14]
A
I appreciate that. You know, as CEO, company who is here to definitely sell something, then it's nice to have it teed up so, so cleanly. So, you know, I, I took that, I'll go back a little bit and tell, tell a story about like what it is we're doing and how we got to this point. I took that job at Salesforce and then I stayed there for 10 years. I was at the company from, from pre revenue to over a billion dollars in revenue when I left a decade later. And I learned a lot. And one of the things that I learned, which is you could almost call it like a cheat code, you know, one what is, how do you do that? How do you grow a company from zero to a billion dollars in a decade?
- [17:53]
B
And very different, very, very hard.
- [17:57]
A
People have done that. Yeah. Very.
- [17:59]
B
What's happened very few times, let's put it that way.
- [18:02]
A
It's not, it's not common for sure. So you need some cheat codes, you know, to be able to make it work. And I think the, you know, my favorite cheat code the whole time there, when I could figure it out, was figuring out a good relationship that exists that you can leverage to just jump straight to third base, you know, rather than, rather than do all the hard work to like get on the first phase and the second base and maybe strike it out a bunch of times. And you know, like, if you can find the right relationship, you just, you kind of wake up on third base. You're right there, there on third base. And the problem is finding those relationships. And if you're a smaller company and your network's not that big, those relationships can be harder to find. As companies get more networked and bigger and you've got more senior executives in there and there are more people that are kind of on your team. Right. Because you think about your team, it's your. If you're in a company that's, you know, a well, if you're in a well run Silicon Valley company, then your team certainly consists of every employee in the company. It's like everyone in the company wants this company to succeed. So like badger maps you guys all this, like you're going to succeed or fail together. Right. So everybody should be bringing everything they can to the Game to make. To make it, you know, to make your team win. And so, you know, your team consists of your employees, but it should also consist of your investors and your advisors, your customers who love you because, you know, you should be doing a really good job. Number one thing you should do is be acquiring customers and making them successful. And when they're successful, they should be your friends. At that point, there should be a. Thank you. We really appreciate you guys putting the effort in to make us successful. They should be part of your team, you know, and then you've got family and friends and you've got your extended network. That's your team. And your team can be pretty big even if you're a small company, your team can be pretty big if you add all those components into it. And the. The thing that I learned at Salesforce was, you know, even when we were pretty small, we had a pretty big, you know, we had a pretty impressive team like Mark Benioff. In the early days, even when there were only like fewer than 50 of us in the company, Mark knew a lot of people that he could get to, you know, and he was like, you know, he knew Larry Ellison and he knew a bunch of other, you know, you know, founders and VCs, and really, like, I don't know, I think he knew the king of Jordan at that point for some reason. Like, he had a really good network and he could. We. If we could figure out who he knew that was useful at the right moment, then Mark would absolutely, you know, make the introduction or get a call put together so that we could, you know, forward our agenda, which was selling salesforce.com at that point. And so that. That was the cheat code we called it, by the way. We called it connect the dots. That meant figuring out who knows who so you can leverage the relationship to get to the. To get the power in the company that you're selling to. And that. That term, I. The term was coined by one of our legendary sales leaders, a guy by the name of Dave Radnitsky, who was one of our sales leaders on the east coast. And he trained the company on his success methodology. You know, how do you be successful in sales? His team was wildly successful. And so he had this acronym. It was S U C C E S S. And each letter stood for one thing that you were supposed to do to follow this formula. And One of the Cs stood for Connect the dots. And that was figure out who knows who in the account. Use that to get the power. Because if you can do that then you wake up on first or you wake up on third base and you're, you're at power immediately. You could be talking to the CFO or the CRO or the CEO of the company, as opposed to struggling to get somebody like a manager in the department that you sell to to open your cold email and reply to it. So, but you had to figure out how to get there. Now, some of that was, you know, going in cold, trying to send a cold email to the right person and do enough research that it would get their attention. But, you know, that hit rate was pretty low. But it happens sometimes. And the irony, you know, the story, my origin story here was that, you know, that's what I do with Mark Benioff and that's how I ended up with the job at Salesforce. So it's not like it ever happens. It does happen. Now, 1999 was a different era than today, 2023, that the volume of cold emails was a lot lower. Also the sophistication of cold emails was a lot lower. The arms race has gone up. And so now you've got these automated sequences and cadences of cold emails that go out. There's generative AI that's making them look pretty good. You know, there's a lot of stuff going on. There's a lot of volume. So if you're a decision maker in 2023, you're getting hammered, just hammered with cold email and cold outreach. And so it's, you know, the number one filter that you now in 2023 that you use to look at your inbox and say, am I even going to read this email or am I just going to delete it? The number one thing is, do I know who this came from? If I don't, if I see like this is some name I don't know, then it's just another cold email and I'm gonna, I have to hit delete. Sorry. Because I just don't have enough. There aren't enough hours in the day for me to read and contemplate every cold email that I get. So the, the stakes have gone up so much in, in, in trying to, you know, do your pipeline generation, get into accounts, get to the people of the decision makers that you want to get to. You really, like, it's very hard if you don't have an existing relationship. The cool thing is you probably have a lot more relationship paths available to you than you realize. You just need to be able to shine a light on this relationship pathways. And so that's what we are actually dedicating our lives to at Connect the Dots, it is helping you build what we call your. Your company's super graphs. That is a graph of all the relationships of the people that we talked about. Your coworkers, your investors, your advisors, your friends, your customers, you name it. Everybody who's on your extended team. Build a graph of all of the relationships and make that visible to you and the rest of your team in a way that's really, really actionable, so that you can see who really knows who, so that you can ask the right person at the right time for the right introduction to the person, like maybe the CFO or the CRO or this CEO of the company that you're trying to get to, and you're asking the right person who actually knows that person really well to make the introduction. And they can do it, and so they do that, and then you end up. The next thing you know, you end up on. In a meeting with the decision maker as opposed to trying to bang your head against the wall until it breaks. To get into that account now makes.
- [25:02]
B
A ton of sense. And frankly, I mean, that's what LinkedIn was doing for me in 2007, 2008, 2009, because it was. People only had their actual friends on there. Right now, I have, I don't know, 25,000 friends on LinkedIn, but there's. I don't know them. So, you know, it's. It's.
- [25:26]
A
And my.
- [25:27]
B
My Facebook's much more accurate than my own, you know, thousand friends on there or something. And those tend to be. But I don't know all those either, I'm sure. But, like.
- [25:34]
A
But that.
- [25:35]
B
That's also not the social. That. That's. That's not the. My professional network either. So it's. It, I guess the ch. I'm super curious, like, how you're approaching this and.
- [25:47]
A
And what the.
- [25:49]
B
What the backbone of. Of your figuring out what. What are the close relationships and.
- [25:53]
A
And.
- [25:54]
B
And what aren't what you are.
- [25:55]
A
What.
- [25:55]
B
What that backbone is.
- [25:57]
A
Yeah, yeah. And you. As we were, you know, getting to know each other for a few minutes before we started this podcast, you had observed, I think really accurately, that, like, back in the early 2000s, LinkedIn was actually, you know, probably better than for showing you, like, who do I know that really? And who do I know that knows this person, really? Because back then, it was. The culture on LinkedIn at that point was really only connect with people that you know, and they were kind of reinforcing that. There was a Lot of messaging on LinkedIn about it. You should only, you should have met with this person in real life if you're going to link in with them. And then over time, that just all kind of eroded and.
- [26:42]
B
And over time it just, it did grow. Like, I mean, someone that I met with in person 15 years ago, I might have, I probably connected with. But now if you asked either one of us, we'd have no, no idea who the other person was. Did we talk about something? Oh, we were, we were at a dinner. We were at John's birthday dinner 15 years ago. How do you, how do you know John again? Oh, like, it's, it's, it's hard.
- [27:03]
A
Right?
- [27:03]
B
It's just, it's, it's. We've all been walking around with our phones linking with people on everything, you know, all these platforms forever. And so it's, it's all kind of.
- [27:10]
A
Meaningless now, you know, you know Dunbar's number.
- [27:15]
B
Yeah. Where you can have like five close friends and a, you know, 15 people you really know, and then 150 or 250 that you actually, actually know even.
- [27:25]
A
Their name and who they are.
- [27:26]
B
And after that, it's just a sea of blankness.
- [27:28]
A
Yes. Yeah, that. And I remember actually going through, breaking through that barrier at Salesforce because I was employee number 36 there. So at the beginning, we all knew each other really well. We're all in one room together. And then gradually we got up to over 100, then 150. I think that was where it starts to break. And, and at that point, I remember when that happened in the company's growth. I'm like, there are people now walking around in this office that I, I've seen now. And I, they appear to work here. Looks like they're, you know, they're colleagues of mine and I would probably never know who they are. You know, it just broke. Up until that point, we all knew each other. You know, if anybody was in the office at, somebody didn't recognize, they'd say, like, hey, you know, I'm Drew, or I'm Sam or whatever, because, you know, you, we're at a size where you could keep it all in your head. And after that, I can't, I can't.
- [28:23]
B
Even keep together everyone that's worked for me at this point. I mean, we've probably had, I don't know, 600 people or 700 people work at Badger over the years. And I, I, I couldn't, you know, I, I know a lot of them and certainly if they were High up in the organization. I knew who they were. But if, you know, I, there, there, you know, there have been a lot of people there, there. I, I know a lot of them, I suppose. I, I, I interviewed almost all of them. But, you know, it's, it's, it's definitely the names and faces are getting blurry at this point.
- [28:48]
A
Yeah.
- [28:49]
B
For, I mean, someone who worked here seven years ago or something, it's like, or 12 years ago, it's like, totally happens.
- [28:54]
A
And, and those are like people that are, you know, you're working together. So it's like a very close relationship. Even if it, you know, even if it's a, a. So, yeah, that, that whole, that whole thing is a real thing on LinkedIn where if you're a salesperson and you are using LinkedIn to try and figure out how to get to a person, then you know the pain of it always, the dance always goes like this. It's like, hey, Steve, I see that you are connected with Adam Johnson. You know, do you know him well enough to make an introduction for me? And then you, you're like, adam Johnson. And you go, look up Adam Johnson. You're like, I don't know. And then you're like, sorry, Drew, I don't really know Adam. It looks like we're at LinkedIn, but I couldn't tell you how. And over time, like, if you had, if you literally have 20, 25,000 contacts on LinkedIn, that's going to happen. High 90 percentage of the time, you're just not going to know who that person is. And it's frustrating for everybody, right, because it's. Takes time out of your day. I'm asking you for a favor, and then you can't do it. And you'd probably like to be able to do me a favor or you'd like me not to even ask. Right. But either way, I think that's where.
- [30:05]
B
It'S landed on LinkedIn is people don't add. We used to do that all the time. Like, there was like an, there was an introducing, there was a way to do it. There was like a button and you could be like, you could ask your friend to introduce you to someone and they could like, you know, agree or disagree or do it or not do it. But like, there was a way to, but now it's like, you almost feel, I would feel weird reaching out to someone unless I was a really close friend of theirs and being like, hey, do you know this person that you could introduce me to? Because, like, everybody's, it's you can't tell if they know them or not from that. You know, if it was on Facebook or something, then maybe. But this is hard.
- [30:39]
A
I think Facebook people have this. I mean, I had the same problem on Facebook, to be honest. It's the same thing. I, I, and I've, I've kind of, like, stopped aggregating Facebook friends. It's just kind of falling out of fashion. Like, my, I don't get that many Facebook requests anymore, but I have, I have a lot. And I don't know. You know, I don't know the majority of people that I'm connected on Facebook with either. So I don't think it's a, I don't think It's a uniquely LinkedIn problem. But what it probably.
- [31:08]
B
My problem on Facebook is 125th my problem on LinkedIn, so.
- [31:13]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you, you, and you're like, you know, you and I are certain types of people, right? We're CEOs of software companies, and we probably. LinkedIn's a more important social network for us than Link, than Facebook at this point in our lives and all. Like, and so we, you know, probably put more time in that and we're proactively, like, building our networks.
- [31:34]
B
Wait, Drew, are you, and are you implying that you don't like selfie on the gram all day? Because that I totally.
- [31:42]
A
For some reason, I, I have, I actually have a checklist of things that I need to check on a daily and weekly basis or I will completely forget about them. And Instagram's one of them. I, I don't know. It's just me, but, like, literally, I have a checklist. Check your Instagram to see if there's any message from a friend there that you need to respond to. But I, yeah, I'm not, I'm not doing a ton of selfies on Instagram. I think I've, I've posted a total of like, 15 photos to Instagram in my entire life. That's it.
- [32:14]
B
I've never used it. Except for my, my, my marketing team used it for me for a little while, and that was, that was pretty funny, but. Because it looked like I was doing a lot on the gram, but I actually, I've really never used it.
- [32:24]
A
You, you might, you might actually turn me into a user now because now I'm curious to see what your profile looks like from your marketing department. So I, I, I, you're gonna get a follow.
- [32:34]
B
I hit a lot of those, and I've got, I've got my personal one and my, and my, my business one now.
- [32:41]
A
So.
- [32:43]
B
But yeah, Steve Benson sf. Steve Benson sf if you want to see. And Steve Benson is it Steve Benson 5, if you want to see cute pictures of my baby. That's, that's where, that's where I keep those.
- [32:53]
A
Steve Benson SF and then what? Steve Benson 5, is that right?
- [32:57]
B
I think, I think that's what they are. Yeah. Steve Benson. It's definitely Steve Benson sf. I'm not totally sure about my personal one, but I think that's what it is.
- [33:05]
A
I'll. I'll. Maybe you'll convert me. Maybe I will become an insta regular.
- [33:12]
B
Now that, I mean it's, it is a. She's a really cute baby. I mean she really is.
- [33:19]
A
And I bet that, I bet the, the setting is amazing in Granada of her wandering around the plazas of Granada. Probably some really magnificent photo ops. Yeah.
- [33:31]
B
You know, since. And, and I just moved here for people that don't know me as well, but that I, I just moved to Granada, Spain, where Badger has its largest office. And, and yeah, one of the reasons was it's such a great place to have a little kid. It's a small town in Spain and you know, they can just kind of run around the plazas and it's a, it's a very sociable place, which is great for kids.
- [33:55]
A
So.
- [33:56]
B
All right, we're having, so we're having a lot of fun so far.
- [33:59]
A
I think you've chosen very wisely. I think that's a amazing place to raise a little girl. So we, where were. We were.
- [34:13]
B
We were talking about the gram. We were talking about.
- [34:17]
A
Oh, I know what it was. I think your company really.
- [34:20]
B
Yeah, we got into social media off of understanding how your company works and what, what it does to allow your, allow you to leverage your team to, you know, to sell more and generate more warm introductions. Really.
- [34:36]
A
Yeah. Let me. I mean, I guess I'd probably to jump to the, like to the punchline here. Like, how do we help you? Like in this sea of relationships out there where you can't really tell who knows who, you know, who really knows who. How do we, how do we help you solve that problem? And so our company Connect the dots, we let you create an account as an individual and keep it for life. Kind of like you would do with a LinkedIn account. You know, you create a LinkedIn account and you keep it for life as you go through different jobs. You can also, as a company, you can create a connect the dots account for the entire company and everybody in the company, all the employees in the company get a Connect the Dots account as part of that. And they can, they can merge their two accounts as an individual. You can connect your personal account with your work account and have a unified view of your entire network. And the really different thing that we do is we let you ingest all of your LinkedIn contacts. So I've just, I don't have 25,000 like you, but I've got a lot. I've got 5,200, I think something like that. We have a Chrome extension that lets you synchronize those into your Connect the Dots account. And, and then what gets really interesting is you can connect your work email account and your personal email account and then the other email accounts you have, you might have alternate ones. And Connect the Dots has built the technology that analyzes the header data on every email that you've ever sent or received in your life. That's the, from the to and the CC field and the date field. And from looking at those email addresses and a bunch of other data that we have, we have scoured the web and ingested, we were able to give you a near perfect and evergreen list of all the people you've ever communicated with in your life and score those relationships with a concept of relationship strength. So just to give you some rough ideas on numbers here for me, like I'm 49 years old. I have a Gmail account that I've had for 20 years that I've connected. I've got a work account that I've been using here at Connect the Dots for four and a half years or something like that. And I have a couple other email accounts that I've connected and my LinkedIn account that I've synchronized in I across that entire set of all those data sources. I have about 28, almost 29,000 contacts, people that I've ever communicated with and all 29,000 of them, I've got their, if it's available. Not everybody like has everything available, but if it's available, I've got their name, their title and their company where they work. Now I've got the work history where they used to work. I've got any email addresses that I, that I have ever communicated with them on, all neatly organized together in one contact record, one person record. So like I might have had a friend who worked at Merrill lynch for a while and then Morgan Stanley and then Oracle and then Amazon and let's say that, you know, it was like Sally Johnson was her name. I'd have one Record for Sally Johnson with all of my email communication history with her across all of those different companies and all of her different email accounts. And each of those 20, in my situation, 28, 29,000 contacts that I have, my relationship is scored for them with three dots indicating how well I knew that person. Person from weak one dots. Weak two dots is familiar. And then three dots is a strong relationship and just based on how much we've communicated over time and how recently we've communicated. So it's a relatively straightforward algorithm and. But what it does is then it takes us 29,000 contacts, which is a gargantuan amount and shows me here are the ones that I've got a, you know, weaker relationship with. Here are the ones I got a familiar relationship with. You're the ones that I know the best. So immediately I can see if I were going to build a list of the people I know best. That's a piece of cake for me. It's already done automatically. That organizes my universe, which is amazing. It's an amazing thing to be able to like. If I want to have a holiday card list, I can go straight to connect the dots and just be like, oh, who should be on this? I can write down the list and see what should be on that list. That's great. I can also, you know, just. Don't forget about.
- [38:52]
B
Don't forget about Grandma. You don't email with Grandma, but you still. She's got to get the Christmas card.
- [38:59]
A
Well, sadly, I don't have a living grandmother anymore, but both of my grandmothers. I did email this, which I'm not sure that everybody emails with their grandmother, mother. But Grandma email is an old technology. So there's a pretty good chance that grandma has been emailing may not be the preferred choice of, you know, communication with. With grandma these days, but in all likelihood, you know, you have emailed with your grandmother at some point.
- [39:26]
B
I don't think I was the way I did. I did get her an email. Grandma Benson, gmail.com, if I. If I recall. But I don't, I don't. I'm not sure she ever used it. I did show her Facebook and she was very impressed with it. That was probably 10 years. So back when she was still with us, she was very interested in Facebook. She loved pictures.
- [39:49]
A
So, yeah, picture. I mean, it turns out, turns out it's not just for grandma. It's like lots of people like pictures and worked out well for Facebook and then later for Instagram.
- [39:58]
B
Right.
- [39:59]
A
So the first step is getting your own House in order, and we do that automatically for you. We get your house in order, and we show you all of these contacts that you know, neatly organized. You can search by name, by title, by company, by geography, where they're located. You can build these lists. It's really amazing. It's like, such a revelation when you see it all. All your contacts neatly organized like that, forever, automatically. But where it really becomes crazy powerful if you're in a selling organization is now you turn it on for your team, and everybody's got this. And you invite your external stakeholders, like your customers and your friends and your investors, advisors. You invite all those folks to join. And now you've got a super graph, and you're sharing visibility to each other's networks, and this grows exponentially. So now instead of, you know, I can. Instead of seeing what, 20, 29,000 people that I can get to directly, now I can see, like. Like, one and a half million people that I can get to with the strong relationship paths. Like, how do I. I can see that. You know, I know one of my colleagues. Well, my colleague knows somebody who has a CMO at a different company. Well, and that CMO at that company knows the CMO at a third company that we're selling to, and they've got a strong relationship. And I can see all the strong paths the whole way there. And so that's a very leverageable relationship path. And then we make it super easy for you to then click a button and ask your colleague for the, you know, to ask her friend who's the CEO of the other company for an introduction to the CMO at the target company. We make it all really, really simple, and it's not wasting anybody's time because you can actually see, oh, all these people know each other well. So it's not a shot in the dark. It is a. It's a sniper shot. Like, you. You know, you're gonna. This is gonna work. I'm gonna ask this person, and they're actually gonna make this request for me. And so there you go.
- [41:59]
B
I mean, I totally get it. I mean, I. I did very similar things with, like, LinkedIn back when everybody only had 300 friends.
- [42:06]
A
Yeah.
- [42:07]
B
Who were their actual friends?
- [42:08]
A
I mean, that was a difference. Yep.
- [42:10]
B
When I started Badger, that was one of the first things I did, was reach out to, you know, my classmates from business school, my friends, like, when I would see that they were connected to someone and someone who was kind of in the right area at one of. One of our. One of the. Like, in the industries and companies that we were targeting and it was, it was very much a by hand process. But you just, you couldn't do it today. I mean, I just checked us on LinkedIn. You, you and I share 72 connections and a few of them are close connections of mine. But you know, good luck guessing, guessing the, the two, right?
- [42:45]
A
Well, I can guess like I can guess. I looked actually connect the dots and I saw that Lars Lecky is in there. And I'm guess and I'm guessing you guys are relatively close. I think you went, both went to GSB together.
- [42:57]
B
That is one of the two.
- [42:59]
A
Yeah. There you go.
- [43:00]
B
I was, I was just at his house a couple months ago.
- [43:03]
A
Yeah, he's got a cool house in San Francisco.
- [43:05]
B
He does. Very, very cool. In fact, the warm, the warming chairs on his roof deck. Fun.
- [43:16]
A
So Lars is actually one of our investors. I, I actually have, I've never been in his house. I have gone by his house with him several times en route to other places. But it's cool. You can tell it's very cool from the outside. So I'm gonna, next time I'm back in San Francisco, which is in a couple weeks, I'm gonna actually ask him, you know, as one of his investments to invite me up to his warming chair on the roof.
- [43:38]
B
I mean it's always a good time to have a warming chair on your roof in San Francisco. In my experience, there's not, there's no season in which you don't want a, a heated. It's like they're, they're like heated bench things. It's really, really. I've never seen, I had never seen anything like it.
- [43:54]
A
It's only part of the reason that I've moved from San Francisco to Miami beach in the past couple of years. Only part of the reason.
- [44:01]
B
It's a good reason. Well, well, so I guess your product worked. I mean that was, that was that. That is, I'm not shilling for you. This is, this is that. That was a live demo right there.
- [44:11]
A
How about that? Yes. No, it's a, it truly is a revelation when you see it. You'll just, all these things light up and you're like, wow, I didn't know that person. Knew that person. And that's incredible. So it just makes your life a lot easier and, and just, it's also kind of like it's really, really fun to be able to connect the dots. Yeah. It is a cheat code.
- [44:33]
B
Very cool.
- [44:34]
A
Very, very cool.
- [44:34]
B
Well, I'll have to ask Lars about, about, about all this stuff next time I chat with him. Well, on networking here, so, so what.
- [44:45]
A
About.
- [44:48]
B
How can people use networking.
- [44:51]
A
In.
- [44:51]
B
The industries they're selling into to understand better market trends and better connect with their prospects and understand them? Do you have any thoughts around that?
- [45:00]
A
Yeah, well, here's where I will actually, I'll give a shout out to LinkedIn because I think LinkedIn is pretty amazing for if you're in an industry and you want to see what's going on and tap into it, I think LinkedIn is incredible. Follow the right people, follow the right companies, you're going to get a bunch of content push to you that's going to be super helpful. You also, you will see people that are out there as thought leaders in the industry that you can tap into, you can build relationships with them. I, you know, I'm, I'm. There's this one specific thing that we are focused on doing really well and is like who knows who. But I, I gotta give a tip of the hat to LinkedIn for like building industry knowledge and like generally increasing the size of your network out there. I think they're really incredible for that. I would also say, you know, earlier when I was talking about the Rotary Club meeting, you know, as an example of networking that people get. People are not always, they don't love, a lot of people don't love the concept of, of that type of event. There are, I think live in person events are great for meeting people and building relationships in our industry. Do you go to Saster?
- [46:14]
B
I, I've been a bunch of times, yeah. Early on I, I haven't been recently just because I've been living in different places but, but yeah, I've been a bunch of times. Great, great, great, great conference.
- [46:28]
A
Yeah, it is a great conference. If you're in the SaaS business like we are, I think it's very useful to go. And I've, I was just, there was one in London maybe a month ago, I was at that one and actually last year the European one was in Barcelona so it would have, would have been pretty convenient for you. But it was in London this year. But I think those, those types of events are good too. Like meeting people in person should not be a thing of the past. You know, I, I think that we, we dealt with COVID We had to figure out how to survive during that period of time. Everybody ended up working on zoom, you know, eight hours a day, 10 hours a day and it's, there's a lot of great stuff that's come from that I think we can all agree that there's some things that are just amazing. Like the fact that you can live in Granada right now and you know, go back to the States when you need to and you can run your company like that is pretty awesome. And I'm in a similar situation. I'm in Belgrade, Serbia right now, you know, and as long as I've got my zoom and air connection, there's a lot that I can do. But if you really want to build relationships, there is like, there's something magical about being together in person. And so I think, you know, just meeting the people that you're selling to and building relationships with them, getting lunches, dinners. You know, I'm not a golfer, but I know the magic of golf. You know, golfing with your, your customers. I, I end up, I'm more of a cyclist and so I'll go on bike rides with, you know, the people that I'm kind of close with that, you know, personally and in the business world. I have a lot of, you know, some of my best meetings will be on bike rides that are like six hour bike rides in Northern California. And you cover a lot of ground with somebody when you have six hours on a bike. So I think I, I love the magic of human presence. I think pick the right trade shows, the right events that, that draw people in your industry go to those things. There's some things that are like very social events, but are also great networking too. And I'm kind of a bit of fan of some, some events like this. There's an event that I just went to for the first time this past, this past New Year's called Renaissance Weekend. It's not a Renaissance fair. There aren't like, you know, people jousting and gestures and stuff like that. This is the Renaissance Weekend. It's, it's more like a, it's. It was in Charleston, South Carolina. It is like an ideas festival. Really interesting people from all over the country and all over the world, everybody has to participate. So yet you are, you are pulled into topic sessions where you have to present and you just meet such amazing people and interesting people and you build friendships really fast because you're doing this over the course of three days during the, during New Year's. That type of thing is incredible. What a great networking event that was. And so those types of things I think are great. And if you're in sales and, and you want to be a connector and you want your, your network to be part of the value that you bring to the world. And I think you got to seek those things out where you are, you know, actually stimulated by the topics and the people that are there. And you get, you get a chance to meet a bunch of people and you know, kind of like speed date about a lot of relationships and then figure out which ones that you, you know, really clicked with and you want to, you know, nurture going forward and then nurture them and then, and then getting older doesn't feel so bad because as you get older, you're like, hey, at least the upside of getting older is I've got all these wonderful relationships that have nurtured over time and they've grown and become wonderful things that have brought me and brought them a lot of joy. So that's how that this is. By the way, I'm turning 50 this in like a month and a half. And so basically this is my personal self help, help consolation, you know, positive self. Talk good about it.
- [50:38]
B
I think a lot of people would agree with you. Right? I mean, the, the, there's been a ton of research that I've read that has indicated that the, the most important thing that drives happiness and satisfaction in life is the close relationships you have. Your family, your close, close friends, your, your network, you know, so networking, it's not just for sales. It's for life's happiness, right?
- [51:01]
A
Yeah, it totally is. I mean, why are we selling stuff? I want to be happy ultimately.
- [51:09]
B
Absolutely.
- [51:10]
A
You know, we, we want to, like, we want to do things that are going to make a great life for us and great life for the people around us and, and you know, we have a vision for it. I, I mean, I can imagine if I were, if I were in the traveling salesperson, you know, role, the. One of the biggest pains that I would have to deal with on a, on a daily basis is like, what do I do today? Where do I best focus my energy? Like how do I route myself? That's what you guys do. You solve that problem. It's like the number one problem that if I'm a traveling salesperson, that's my number one problem. And yeah, I mean, like, you would help me have a great, a much better life if you can solve that problem. I'm not doing that now. I kind of did that in the very, very early days, you know, when we had, we had customers in the southeast right before I went to work for Salesforce kind of had that traveling salesperson problem. So I got a little taste of it. Yeah.
- [52:02]
B
Depending on the industry. It's, it's, it's it can be pretty intense. It can be a, you know, for some, for some people, it's 15 minutes a day. They can figure it out. For other people, it's two hours a day. It just depends on the complexity of the territory. The, you know, how much, how much decision making goes into the optimization of where you should spend your time, who you should spend it with, what the constraints look like. Like, you know, well, can I drop in anywhere, where, whenever I want, or can I only see this. Type this customer on, you know, Tuesdays and Thursdays in the afternoon? And you kind of have to juggle a lot of data points to do it. Well, if. Depending on the complexity. So we, we're certainly not changing the world or anything, but we, we save a lot of people that sell stuff, you know, 30 minutes a day on average.
- [52:49]
A
So I mean, that's changing the world for those people. You are.
- [52:55]
B
Well, I hope so. That's, that is the goal. Change the world, you know, just, just like they, just like they say on TV. Well, the next, next section is sales. And 60, 60 seconds, quick questions, quick answers.
- [53:09]
A
First question.
- [53:10]
B
What's. What do you think the biggest mistake that salespeople make while networking?
- [53:18]
A
Probably being transactional, just, you know, playing the short game instead of the long game. I'd say networking is, you know, like I said, 99.9%. It's, it's long game. Just play a long game and then you'll, you'll know when there's like this 0.1% opportunities pop up and it's like, oh, this is a really great. There's a transaction that should happen here. Great. But I would say, yeah, play the long game, take an interest in people, see how, you know, be proactive in helping them, and then, you know, let the universe provide and it will.
- [53:53]
B
What do you think the, the pros and cons are to face to face networking versus online networking?
- [54:02]
A
Disease transmission. I wouldn't have really thought about that too much until, you know, Covid. But, but online networking, I still kind of don't fully know what it is. I think you and I are online networking right now while we're doing this podcast. Like, I've gotten to know you a lot better than any of you at the beginning of this podcast. So I feel like that's good, you know, like, this is pretty good. And yeah, I feel comfortable enough now that I, I put us at a familiar level. Two dots in the connect the dots world. And so that's, you know, like, that's nice because now I feel like if I were in Granada. If I had a reason to be down there, I would definitely look you up. And if you happen to be passing through Belgrade, I'd hope you look me up too. Yeah, so I don't, you know, I'm. I don't know exactly what online networking is. I don't. I mean, there are these, there are events that happen online. I know that there are happy hours that happen online sometimes, that kind of stuff. I still think I'm old fashioned this way. I think the best stuff is in person. You get to know people better and it feels real. You know, it feels, it feels real. And it's also like people. There's a, there's also just a tedium around being on Zoom. Like, you know, I'm enjoying this conversation with you, but you and I both did on Zoom a bunch, probably today and all, you know, all week are going to be on Zoom a lot. It's a different thing. If you and I were, you know, sitting down with a nice glass of Spanish wine and having some tapas and, you know, we could probably do that for hours and not really look at the clock. And so it's, it's different, you know, it's just a different quality of interaction that you have.
- [55:49]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's. And obviously like everyone, basically everyone listens to this podcast is in field or outside sales and you know, so I'd say in general, you're probably speaking to the, to the, the choir. Yeah, they're already converted. But the.
- [56:08]
A
But.
- [56:08]
B
And I don't even know why that is. I mean, why, why you don't connect with people.
- [56:13]
A
People.
- [56:13]
B
I mean, like, I don't, I don't feel like people really connect with people on social media. I don't feel like they really connect to people. I guess these things can maintain relationships that already exist, but I think it's, it's hard to build a new meaningful relationship online. I know it happens, but it's maybe it's just hard for me. Maybe, maybe if you're, you know, Maybe if you're 16 right now, you're better at it. But there's too much gray in my beard for me to really like build a relationship with someone that I've just met on the Internet. I guess.
- [56:46]
A
Maybe.
- [56:47]
B
Maybe. I guess I think of it as a way, I think it can form a community, but that community or introduce people, but that needs to be taken into reality, I guess, which is, yeah, a lot of the tech companies are trying to take us away from reality. Like, hey, put on these goggles. And pretend. Let's play pretend.
- [57:08]
A
Yeah, I mean I'm, I'm not, I'm definitely not a Luddite in any of this stuff. Like, I'm happy that we're being taken in that direction. I want us to have all these options. I like, I think VR and AR actually look pretty incredible and I'm excited about them. But you know, I, we haven't, we haven't, we haven't gotten to the point yet where real in person, human interaction is not important. I think it's still super, super, super important.
- [57:38]
B
Yeah.
- [57:38]
A
And I'll tell you a thing, like, I've just noticed as we, we as a company, these are people that we even know really, really well. You know, we as a company, we're spread across nine time zones from Belgrade, Serbia all the way up to San Francisco and we, I noticed that there is, there's all, there's. I hate to say it, but I'm gonna say it. There's like a degradation of seeing the other person as a human over time. There's like a half life where if you haven't seen that person for a while and in person, like if we haven't all gotten together in San Francisco or Belgrade or some other place, then over time that person loses some of their humanity and you're like, you can't see them, you don't see them quite as, as a human. You see them more increasingly as an API where it's like I give you input and you give me output and.
- [58:32]
B
I need this thing from you and you do the thing. Yeah, yeah.
- [58:36]
A
And just over time it's just a little, it evolves and devolves and dwells and devolves and a little bit. And then when you see that person again, it's like, ah, just such a breath of fresh air that you're together in person and you're able to re establish the human relationship between the two of you. And you see this person as like this full three dimensional, complicated, you know, interesting, you know, human being that has all these other facets to them, not just the input and output of their API. And so, and that's with people that, you know, I know really, really, really, really well. You know, I'm telling you like my personal experience on this. And so if you're trying to like build new relationships with people you don't even know at all and you got, and you haven't like, you know, you're not nurturing those relationships in person at all, there are going to be some limits to what you can what you can accomplish until Apple's vision goggles have, you know, full olfactory sense integration.
- [59:40]
B
And yeah, I. Even then I'm. I'm. It's just, it's. I don't think that people are going to like, sit down with goggles on across a crazy. Across from an empty table and pretend to like, have dinner with someone else. I don't know. Maybe they will. We'll see. We have the same.
- [59:59]
A
Yeah, I was gonna say. I was just gonna say. I guarantee you they will. Now, is it going to be sad? Is it going to be sad and creepy? Maybe.
- [60:07]
B
Well, it's, it's cool if it's with like someone you're close with, you do see. Like, it. Like we. I. I'll use FaceTime with my baby and my, My, My mom so, you know, the baby can spend time with grandma, but. And I do. I think that is really meaningful. Like, they, they are. They. The baby understands that grandma is up on the tv.
- [60:27]
A
Right.
- [60:27]
B
And that it's something it can work with if the relationship is sufficiently close and that you'd actually do it with. Interesting thing about COVID was we would. We would actually. The first. Well, for the first, like four months or so, we were actually doing networking and like, interacting with a lot of people. Like, I got invited a ton of. A ton of like, you know, zooms, where like 12 people would have. Have. Have a drink and after work and talk to each other and stuff over Zoom. But that really died, like, I don't know, three, four months into it because people decided it sucked, I think. And so maybe I just decided it's like, maybe other people are still doing it. I don't know. I don't think so.
- [61:07]
A
I think.
- [61:08]
B
I think it kind of died because it was like. Yeah, it's not, it's not the same.
- [61:12]
A
Well, I think as soon as Real Life Connection came back as an option, then, you know, people, People fled to that they wanted to. We crave it. We're social animals. We are social animals.
- [61:25]
B
Yeah.
- [61:25]
A
And.
- [61:26]
B
Well, I love what you're doing. I mean, it feels like you're. And this isn't just for business, it's for everything. I mean, I, And I've actually tried to use certain platforms to figure this sort of thing out before. Like, hey, I'm going to London. Who do I know that's in London right now? Things like that. But there's. Unless someone's. Unless other people are constantly updating where they're at and stuff, it's hard. There's not. There's not a way to do it. Right.
- [61:50]
A
Yeah, we got you covered. You're gonna, you're gonna love it. So I'll actually, I will send you an invite now and, and you will be able to do that when you go to London. You'll be able to just type in London, click the enter button, see your entire network that you can tap into.
- [62:05]
B
Awesome. I'm going to London on Friday, so let's do this.
- [62:09]
A
Coming your way right now. Awesome.
- [62:13]
B
Well, cool. So I guess let me try to summarize what we've talked about today. Just because a lot of people listen to this while they're driving in their cars, so they're not taking notes, you know. So first of all, you should always be networking. It's not just something you do when you're, when you're looking for a job. You need to take interest in what other people.
- [62:38]
A
What.
- [62:39]
B
You need to take interest in them and what they're doing and what's important to them and just be curious to understand what makes them tick. And to be successful at networking, you need to take a proactive approach to helping people. You want to think about connecting people with other people. That'll bring value not just to you, but bring, create value for other people through the, through the connections you make. Try to find great relationships with people that you can leverage. And it's, you know, it's these relationships with connectors and people that are really also into this, that a lot, into knowing a lot of people and being connectors that often those are the relationships that you'll really jump ahead with. But really, I mean, anyone you can create value for, and we talked about whether it was 1% or 10% of the value create you keep. But you know, it's, who knows? But it's some, some fraction. So just, you know, if you just be a good person and try to create as much value as you can, it tends to work out your team. The people that you're, they're introducing you to people and you're introducing people to them can be big, even if your company is small, right? Because it could be not just co workers, but investors, family, friends, and really your whole extended network. And you can use your team to successfully meet people that end up becoming deals for your job. You want to figure out who knows who and use that information to get to power. Start the, start the relationship on third base with the company and therefore close more deals. It can be really hard to reach a decision maker today. It's a very noisy world. People get a lot of cold emails. People don't answer their phones. The stakes have gone up from when I started my career in sales. It's really important to build relationships with the right people, real relationships with people. And that's, that's how you can have real introductions made. We talked a lot about Drew's company, Connect the Dots, which allows you to figure out who you're most connected with and who the people who they are most connected with, who the people on your team are most connected with. And scores those relationships so that you can connect into another organization network your way in far more easily. You can see the contact's name, emails, where they've worked in the past, etc. So the, the value of networking and, and, and Drew's tool, Connect the Dots. The value of Connect the Dots is amplified if you can get everyone's team's network on the platform and then you can tap into anyone who is on your team's strong relationships. Another piece of advice from Drew is to seek out interesting in person events and I guess I'd underline in person events to build new relationships and keep providing value and keep things fresh and interesting because in person connection is still super important for building real and long term, not just transactional relationships. Drew, this. You've taught our listeners so many valuable things and your company sounds super cool. Where can listeners read more about your work and how can they reach out to you?
- [66:14]
A
So I just want to say that summary was incredible and be honest. Come on, you use Chat GP to summarize that, right? You had to. No, no, you did that yourself. There's a. There.
- [66:25]
B
It's just notes.
- [66:28]
A
Incredible. Humans. Humans can still beat the machine. That, that was, that was a great summary.
- [66:35]
B
I don't know if chat. I don't know if Chat GPT can do that sort of thing. Maybe they, they.
- [66:39]
A
I don't know.
- [66:40]
B
Who knows? When I've played around with it, it hasn't done things like that.
- [66:43]
A
But.
- [66:45]
B
Maybe I am a Luddite in some degree. Some. Some senses. I distrust their conclusions.
- [66:50]
A
When you, when you have mad summarization skills like that, you don't need Chat GPT. So I, I just stick with what you got. So yeah, the best way to find us is at our website at CTD AI. Like connect the dots CTD AI. And you can reach me directly. I'm DrewTD AI and I'm out there. If you cold email me though, it better be good. You can find people who know me and get a warm introduction to me. So it's a piece of cake, too. There you go.
- [67:26]
B
If only there was a tool to do that, right?
- [67:29]
A
Yeah. If only.
- [67:31]
B
Well, hey, this has been a great episode of the Outside sales talk. And if you work in field sales, you'll love Badger maps, the number one route planner that helps you sell 20% more draft 20% less. You can get a free trial@badgermapping.com today. And if you can think of any other sales reps that would benefit from learning the skills that that Drew dropped on us today, definitely share the love and forward this on to them. Drew, I really appreciate you coming.
- [67:57]
A
That was a lot of fun. Steve, thanks for having me.
- [67:59]
B
Take until.
- [68:00]
A
Take care.
- [68:01]
B
Until next time, everybody.