Paul M. Caffrey (00:02.51)
What can you do to get better results?
Paul M. Caffrey (00:13.71)
Before we get into it, there are still a few places remaining for the Elite AE Accelerator happening on May 23rd in Dublin. So if you're looking to exceed quota this year and work towards getting promoted, check out that event. Don't miss out.
Paul M. Caffrey (00:33.422)
The next team meeting you're sitting in or the next time you are with others that you work with, whether you're an SDR, whether you're a BDR or even an account executive, have a look at all the people who are around the room. Who is sitting left of you? Who is sitting to the right? If you're on a Zoom meeting, whose little window is to the left of yours and who is to the right of yours?
Paul M. Caffrey (00:59.438)
What you'll see is when we jump forward in 10 years time, the person on the left of you is probably gonna have a pretty good career. They're going to do pretty well. They're going to earn decent money and things will be pretty okay. The person to the right, well, they could be working in enterprise sales, making an absolute fortune. They could be the person who goes on to become leader of a sales org or even a leader in a...
company with a very, very high ranked position or even they themselves may become a tech founder.
Paul M. Caffrey (01:38.062)
This is something that I've seen again and again in my own career and also in the careers of others.
One will give you a really solid income and a great life. The other will make you professionally rich and allow you to do whatever you want for yourself and for your family.
Paul M. Caffrey (02:01.71)
What is the one thing that's needed for that scenario where things just go interstellar? It is pipeline.
Paul M. Caffrey (02:11.118)
If you end up in that large enterprise account space, then you will always need a pipeline of great deals to work on. If you end up becoming a people leader in a big sales org, you'll need the deals, but you'll also need the pipeline of people to bring into the organization. And if you become the tech founder, well, yeah, you're going to need deals to work on. You're going to need people in your business. And you're also probably going to need some sort of funding, whether it's VC backed or another way.
Paul M. Caffrey (02:41.518)
And what is the best way to build up these pipelines? It's through having conversations.
Paul M. Caffrey (02:52.59)
Big deals don't happen without conversations. You don't hire people into your business without having conversations with them. And you definitely don't get funding if you don't have conversations with potential backers. And quite a lot in all of those scenarios.
Paul M. Caffrey (03:11.534)
The best part is there is a bit of reluctance for people to have conversations, particularly trying to find opportunities, making those cold outreach attempts, even just picking up the phone. Most salespeople are not really into doing it at the moment.
Paul M. Caffrey (03:28.494)
That is something that you can use to your advantage.
Paul M. Caffrey (03:40.91)
So are you having enough conversations with cold prospects?
Are you getting to a point where you no longer need to count the conversations you're having because you're making every single conversation count? As my good friend Phil M. Jones would say.
Paul M. Caffrey (04:03.95)
When you become a parent and let's say your three year old is drawing these magnificent pictures that maybe started to play with water paintings and you're blown away by the creativity and also how they put all the colors together to make really, really cute pieces of art. The worst thing that you can do is say, well done. That's amazing. That's so good. That picture is incredible. What we've been taught to do is instead of complimenting the outcome, we're supposed to focus on the effort it took to draw that.
the concentration it took, the hard work that was put into actually putting the picture together and the time that they set aside to do the painting. Because we don't want to focus on the outcome, we want to focus on the behavior that we want to drive more and more of.
Paul M. Caffrey (04:52.846)
And instead of simply complimenting the work that went into it and then saying how amazing the picture is, we need to challenge kids. We need to turn around and ask them this question. How can you make that picture better? I really like what you've done there. The rainbow looks fantastic and the little family looks brilliant. But how can you make this picture even more fun, even more creative, even, even better?
But how can you make this picture even better?
Paul M. Caffrey (05:25.614)
When you think about the amount of conversations that you had last week with cold prospects, are you proud of the effort that you put in? Would you look back and go, yeah, I'm very happy with the amount of work that went into it, the amount of preparation that I did and the amount of concentration and fully focused time that went into reaching out to cold prospects to have those conversations.
Paul M. Caffrey (05:52.91)
The reality is probably not. Especially if it was coming towards end of month or end of quarter. Very easy to throw prospecting into the side in that scenario.
Paul M. Caffrey (06:07.662)
But let me ask you this, for the conversations you did have, what could you do to make those results better?
Paul M. Caffrey (06:23.118)
What can you do to have more conversations?
When we talk about cold calling, people don't want to do it. It's not fun. There is the fear, the anxiety, the reluctance that peaks just as you're going to make the call. What am I going to say? What's going to happen? They probably don't want to hear from me. They probably definitely don't want to hear from you. Let's call that out. You're going to be interrupting them. Vendor is that piece of getting rejected. Oh, they're going to make me feel stupid. They're going to give out to me. They're going to tell me to f off whatever it could be.
be, that is always going to be there. However, you know that your solution can help people achieve things that without you, they wouldn't be able to achieve. That you can bring real help, real change, and bring real prosperity to people if they take on your solution, if they happen to be the ideal customer profile.
Paul M. Caffrey (07:24.462)
Well, let me ask you this. Apart from the fact of getting rejected, have you also felt that I'm in a sales floor? I don't want to have the person to the left of me, to the right of me, who's maybe across from me, also hearing me get rejected, also laughing at the fact of the answers that I come up with when I get these challenge and rejections thrown at me. That again brings another level to the game.
That again brings another level to this. We've got a fear and rejection of the person that we're calling and we also have the embarrassment of our peers hearing that.
Paul M. Caffrey (08:05.39)
But let me ask you this, what's worse, caring what others think, be it the person that you're reaching out to or those people around you or missing target, leaving commission on the table, putting that promotion back another year because you are not doing the groundwork of what it takes to actually get the results you crave.
Paul M. Caffrey (08:30.99)
The more conversations you have, the more successful you'll be. The better your asks are in those conversations, the better results you're going to get.
Paul M. Caffrey (08:46.702)
What can you do to have more conversations this week?
Paul M. Caffrey (08:55.31)
How can you get speak into more cold prospects? How can you have more conversations with the deals that are in your pipeline? How can you speak to people who have influence over your career and can help you get to that position that you're working towards?
Paul M. Caffrey (09:14.894)
What can you do to make those conversations better? What can you do to make your ass clearer?
Paul M. Caffrey (09:44.814)
The answer is going to be different for different people in different roles and different positions. But the intentionality of asking that question to yourself makes it much more likely that you will make a change to make this week a little bit better than last week. And ultimately, that's what we want to do. Compound the weeks and weeks and weeks until we get to a point where we are consistently exceeding target. We are consistently being tapped on the shoulder to get promoted. And we are consistently being presented with opportunities that may...
include you being asked or invited to become a co -founder with somebody and start that company. Have a great week.
