Why Humor Is the Most Underrated Sales Tool | Will Aitken

Welcome back to another episode of the Bridge the Gap podcast powered by none other than Revenue Reimagined. And today we have a really special guest with us. Probably the funniest person to ever join in our presence. It's Will Akin, co-founder of SalesFeed, CEO of Willacen.com, and probably the only person I know who's helped more sellers get better by making them laugh first. From going viral with cold call skills to now leading training, strategy, and keynote content for B2B brands around the world, Will has built a go-to-market platform on clarity, humanity, and maybe just a little bit of chaos. Will, so we're going to dig into what works in modern sales, where most reps are going to screw up, and how humor, if you do it right, not wrong, is probably the most underrated go-to-market weapon out there. Will, thanks for joining, man.

Well, that was quite epic. I like that intro. You're right. I just say you said that Dale said the intro is the best thing you did. That was pretty impressive.

Listen, record it, take it with you, use it as your walk-on for any events that you do. I'm good with it. You don't even have to give me the credit. We'll just let you take it.

Heck yeah, I will. Thank you.

Hey, Will, thanks for joining. So one of the things Adam was just talking about is the funniest people in B2B are also the smartest. So let's talk about tone a little bit. Why does humor, punchiness through messaging, sales messaging flow through the best? Like, why does that break the barriers?

I think humor is a universal language. There are obviously some nuances culturally, but I also think humor is often a sign of awareness, and awareness sells sometimes as well. So not everyone can do it, but it's also a sign that being funny—if it's part of your personality—that you're showing up real. And I think showing up real is one of the things that cuts through the noise these days. So less so humor, more so being yourself. It just so happens that I am sometimes funny.

I think one of the things you just said though—not everyone can do it right. Like, we have worked with a client in higher education. One of the sellers was, for lack of better terms, very regimented. Now, if this guy tries to get on a call and crack a joke, it's going to be so obvious that it's fake. And like, you're naturally funny. I'm naturally the loud, boisterous sales guy. Dale's naturally a little more lowkey.

How do you balance that while still stepping out of your comfort zone to meet your buyers where they are? Because not every buyer wants—like, listen, like Dale and I said this when we started RR—like, I might close a deal with my boisterous personality, but when we get in the deal, the buyer might just jive better with someone who's more mellow. How do you find that balance and stay true to yourself?

I think you can—it's not so much changing yourself, but it's just toning down the mirror potentially. Because not—you're right. Sometimes you jump on a call and you know someone's not going to jive with the sarcastic jokes and the playful banter. At which point, I'm not going to just completely change who I am because that's just acting. It's almost like a form of lying. But I'm just not going to go as heavy on it. I'm going to tone it down a little bit, that's all. Because you're right, there are definitely opportunities where I've probably lost them because I've been a bit too much of that playful.

Too.

Yeah. But I also think that's good, especially when you—

It's a little bit different when you work for yourself, right? Because when you show up as yourself and you work for yourself and you're the one who's going to be helping deliver on the services, et cetera, well then if someone's not driving with you, that's probably a good thing. You've established that there isn't a fit. When you're selling software or selling a product for another company, I think at that point you have to be a little bit more careful with how you show up. But still, be true to yourself because otherwise you're just going to get tired, burnt out, where a lot of that comes from performative action.

Dale and I have had a couple people that don't get our banter and they just look at us like, "Are you guys for real?"

Yeah. I think I'm going to go over the other guys. Who's the other guy?

Well, when did you realize people would take you more seriously if you led with humor or even like respond to you? Like, when was that flip point for you?

I'm not sure there was necessarily a flip point. I think, you know, when it's working, because you get a room full of Zoom people—a Zoom meeting full of people laughing—you know, you're in a good kind of spot regardless of deal. Now, I don't think relationships alone close deals, but they certainly help because they get you faster to truth, transparency, and people just being forthcoming. Information is going to be helpful to you to establish fit quicker and build trust quicker. So when it's worked, you can tell. It's almost and it also makes it a lot more fun. I think where it became really clear was when I was doing more and more content and using that in both my sales process and trying to attract customers as well.

Did you have sales leaders that were like, no, you shouldn't be doing that. I can't, like, that's not the way we do it?

No, if I'm honest, since I was—I think it was encouraged—anything seen as a competitive differentiator. So I don't think I've ever had anyone slap my hand. And I've definitely had a few meetings where I've been like, I've had the self-awareness and coaching from others to be like, maybe that one wasn't the time to use that joke or do that. I'm also aware that sometimes being funny—as I said, it's a push-pull, right? So it's a balancing act. You're going to push away as many people as you attract essentially.

Yeah.

There are definitely cases where, whether it be in a sales process, I have blown up a deal trying to be too cheeky. And there are times where the stuff I put out online is probably lost me as many opportunities as it got me. But the ones that got me were really good fits. And the ones that it lost me probably would have never bought from me anyway.

So I want to go off script for a second. I think what you just said is really important. Like, it might have cost you opportunities but won you opportunities, but there's this balance of remaining true to yourself, right? Like, you probably—and I'm probably similar—I'm never going to be the guy that's going to come in all buttoned up and perfectly prim and proper and never crack a joke and never curse. And like, I know my audience, and you know, like, one of our partners does not like the cursing as much as Dale and I, and like, I know when I need to tone it down. But like, I tell customers, like, the only way that I am the typical CRO is I curse like a sailor, and if that makes you uncomfortable, generally speaking, I can tone it down. But if cursing as a whole makes you uncomfortable, I'm the wrong person. If the funniness makes you uncomfortable, we're the wrong people. So I love that balance that you call out of, you know, mirroring, so to speak, but at the same time remaining true to who you are, because if you don't do that, it is lying.

Yeah. I think people get this idea of mirroring when it's been taught that you're meant to act like the other person, right? I think it's more so just matching the other person but staying. So like, the pace, the language, the mood, it's more those things. And you can still change all those things without changing who you are as a human being.

There's a reason I have a collared shirt hanging in this room. Certain clients I have to have it. Other clients you don't, you mirror.

There you go. I don't have—

And then you're like, why are you wearing a collared shirt? You look so weird.

Yeah. This is more like what it was when I put the cool Adam J.

It's very, very rare that I put one on. On the flip side, it's very rare that Dale is not in one. And if you get Dale in person, it's very rare that he does not have a sport coat on.

Oh, good to know. Good to know.

All right, let's shift gears a little. Let's talk about cold outreach, right? So all the rage, all the topic, and we now have filters and spam and noise and AI and AI SDRs and, you know, just load it into Clay and send out a hundred thousand emails. What in your opinion is working in outbound right now that most people are too lazy, too scared, or just don't want to try?

So although a lot of the problems are being caused by things like mass automation, I think there's still a place for those to help you speed things up. I just think most people misuse them. Most people see that and go, oh yeah, we'll use that for everything. I think—

That's the thing that works really well for myself and some of the reps I've coached is just the things that automation still struggles to do well, which is oftentimes like video, in person, actually showing up, making calls yourself. Obviously, all those things are really where I see the difference between the folks who are struggling or average and the great folks—the people who are willing to lean into the things that other people want, basically. But I think video is probably the biggest untapped opportunity right now.

Every rep I tell to use video, they're like, "I'm uncomfortable." Well, get effing comfortable. Stand out from the damn noise.

Yeah, I think it works because it's work. It's one of the things I've been saying lately.

I like that. It works because it's work. I'm writing that down.

Yeah. It works because it's work. I don't know if I thought of that or it was a comment or something like that.

I'm going to give you the credit for it.

I'll take it. I'll take it. Yeah, 100%. Write that down. Give me one of those images of a beach. "It works cuz it's work." We're late in 2025.

That will be the post this week. I'm in.

But I think with cold calling and videos especially and showing up in person and getting FaceTime with folks, it again turns back to what we were just talking about—leaning on the things that make you you. It's really hard to do that with emails and DMs, frankly. So the more involved the channel is, the more you actually separate yourself against all the rest of the chaff.

I love that. Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting because as we go deep in AI, I just find people taking the same lazy tactics that they've taken from using Salesloft or Outreach or whatever, and they're like, "Now it's just like, oh, look at this post that someone put up, and let's try to replicate that." And then all of a sudden, Jake, our other business partner, put up that—Replet actually deleted someone's production database. And you know, so stuff's going to happen like that that you have no control over. And so it's just laziness.

I think that's it. And buyers can tell as well. Have you put zero effort into the stuff you send them or reach out to them with? What makes you think I put any effort into reading it?

Dude, we just fired an outbound agency that for a client—literally their messaging was the equivalent of, "Hi Adam, because you're the CEO at Revenue Reimagined, I saw that you struggle from this. Oh, and PS, I see that you live in West Palm Beach."

Like, what is this, 2021? Get it together.

Garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage.

Yeah, so that's the thing. A lot of that stuff—you can be a little bit more forward with the product-forward stuff when you actually put in the work as well. Like, if you send someone a video and they know it's you because you're outside walking—it's not one of those AI avatar things with the mouth that moves a little bit weird. No offense to those tools, I'm sure there's a place for them. I think it's probably not what people try to use it for. But you can get away with being more forward because you're actually putting effort in. They know it's for them because frankly, how could you possibly record 40 30-second videos where you call someone out and be a smiley human being, you know? That's really the question that people have: "Is this for me?" So when you do things that can only be for them—and it doesn't mean personalizing or saying, "Hey, West Palm Beach, wow, nice"—it's more like just putting effort in. And then people give you effort in hearing what you have to say.

But to your point, there's different kinds of personalization, right? Like, I absolutely think there's a place for AI to go scrape 10K reports and scrape LinkedIn posts and listen to podcasts and all of that stuff. That has its place. That's very different than what you're talking about where even if it's 30 seconds, I took the time to show you that I'm a real human being standing outside. "Hey Will, it's Adam. I just wanted to really quickly thank you for accepting my connection request. Blah, blah, blah." Done. That is much more real than, "Hey Will, I see that you have these really cool mousepads that I happen to have one of on my desk," or something that everyone else can write.

There you go. I mean, not everyone could write that because I've only sold 50 of them. But you know, I think the AI and automation stuff is cool. It does have its place. I actually, when I send videos to people, it's a step in a sequence for a list that I've built using AI because I want to make sure the right people are on there. And I still want to have the highest chance of that message actually resonating with them. So I'm still going to use all the 10K scraping and the job ad keyword searches and all that. But doing the extra work with it after you've done that—like video, like actually making calls, right? That's where you're going to stand out. It's really the last mile. You think about it, that last mile is super important to ensure that you're standing out from everybody else. It's the one or two percent that's that last mile that's going to do the work.

And if you don't do that last mile, then what the hell are you being paid for?

Yep. 100%.

Well said.

I'm curious where gap prospecting came from. Is that something like where you're hanging with Keenan and you're like, "Let's do gap prospecting"?

It wasn't quite hanging with him. It took me a year to convince him to do it. But a few years ago when I first got into SaaS sales, I read GAP Selling during my interview process, and it did change a lot of the ways I thought about things. I just thought it was a very well-written book that was a page turner, which I can't say about a lot of the sales books I've read. And I was going to write this thing anyway. Frankly, don't tell Keenan this—but I guess it's on a podcast, but he won't listen to it. He's too busy. But he wasn't my first pick. I was like, "Jen, come on. Jen, just write with me. It'll be great." Jen doesn't read, so she didn't feel like it was true to herself. All right, you're my fool. You're my rebound. Do you want to do this thing? And then he said, "No." He was like, "You want me to let someone else put their name on a book that I wrote?" And he also had questions. He was also questioning the effectiveness of cold outbound as well. But he did some of his own research. And then eventually I gap sold him on the idea, I guess. And he said he was open to it. And then I committed to probably a year of work with him.

Yeah, wish me luck.

Yeah.

How'd that progress?

It's interesting. I mean, Dale's been writing a book for the past decade. So—

Yeah, I think when there's two people, it's a little bit different, right? You know how you feel about stuff. I think it actually makes it a lot better. Even when we disagree, it means that we come to a conclusion that is actually often better than either one of us on its own.

Yeah, because you live in a silo. You're in this little echo chamber if you're trying to write down your own perspective, right? I think we can all use some more perspective in our lives. Which is why I'm also like, be careful with using ChatGPT too much because that thing strips perspective and then starts validating the loving crap out of you for it, just eventually.

Yeah, they're like, "Yes, you're great. This idea is amazing." And then you start a new chat, send it the same thing. It's like, "This is kind of crap. All right, if you thought about this, I rate this." And then you're like, "Don't validate me," and it does a 180. Yeah, you're right, that's crap.

Yeah, even with the "don't validate me," it amazes me that all of these—whether it's GPT, whether it's ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude—none of them can understand a couple of prompts, in my opinion. Number one, don't always validate me. And no matter how many times you tell it not to use those damn M dashes—I could put it in all caps 17 times—I'm still getting the M dashes.

I like to taunt it a little bit when it does that. I'm like, "What the hell? Read that back. How many M dashes?" It's like, "No M dashes." I'm like, "Read it again. Really? Really pay attention." It's like talking to one of my kids or being a teacher when I was in school. "Do you want to try again? You sure?" You know. But yeah, point being, perspective is good. And that's why I'm glad I got Keenan involved in it and not just launching it myself.

# Transcript

My own thing. It would have been crap frankly by comparison.

**Last question on outreach before we shift gears. So a lot of outbound agencies or outbound sellers or BDRs will tell you the goal of outbound, the goal of cold email is to get a reply, any reply. How do you measure what is actually a good message versus "Oh, I got a reply?"**

Yeah, it's almost like the meme of sales ops going, "This sequence is amazing. It's got a 20% reply rate," and all the replies are like, "I'm out of office" and "unsubscribe."

I got a 92% open rate because all the spam checkers opened your email.

All right, so here's my take on that. Objections and replies, even negative ones, are good when they are the truth, right? Is that they're not interested and that's the truth because they've determined that they actually don't have the problem that you help solve. Awesome. That's still a positive response. That's still a positive result, should I say, right? Because you're essentially categorizing "not a fit." That's okay. Put them on the back burner. You've got more people to go after, right? Ideally.

But the issue is, I think a lot of those aren't always the truth. They're just ways to get rid of you and hope that you don't message again. Same thing on the phone. Same thing when someone tells you, "Oh no, we have something in place." Everyone's got something in place. Is it working? Did you hear what I said? Or did you just have that little response ready for me the moment you picked up the phone and heard this might be a sale?

Now, would you be cheeky enough to say that to someone? Like, "Dale, of course, everyone has something in place." No, I would always say, yeah, I'd be like, "Yeah, I actually would have guessed that you would have been doing something to send out invoices with your buddy Adam right now. I'd hope that you're sending invoices at least, right? Like, if you weren't, I'd be really worried and probably wouldn't be a good fit for me because how are you going to pay for the software?"

A lot of people... is it that you feel like this is already doing it well enough that you feel like that's not an issue? Or is it more so that I've kind of given you a really rough time here and it doesn't matter what this is about? You just don't fancy having this conversation? Like, just to basically give this a couple more options and get to the real truth, right? If it's the latter, that's okay as well. Like, okay, cool.

Is there a better time for me to call back? What would you prefer for me to reach out to you where you can give this some time and thought?

Love it. Love it. So true.

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The truth is the goal. Not a meeting. Not a positive response. Just the truth.

You're up next, Mr. Jay.

No, I'm not, sir.

Absolutely not.

I'm happy to take your second.

That's good. It's good. I see you're switching things up. That's good.

He's always trying to throw me under the bus.

Did Adam, is there a dock in the background being changed right now? Like, he said "truth." We're talking about how to lie. There is a dock, of course, for show prep. But I did not change it. Hand to God. I have not touched the dock since we started. Dale just... I don't know. Maybe he needs his glasses changed or something.

Yeah. Hold on. Hold on. Okay, now I can see. Let's see. Okay.

That's actually way better. Yeah. Take the glasses off, man. It makes Adam better looking, I'll tell you.

Right.

I have a face for radio, Will. Yeah, that's why... that's why intro killer.

What's the biggest mind shift that your clients go through when they, you know, forget that you're this world class trainer that you're executing on? What's that biggest mind shift that your clients go through when they're like, "I think I know everything that I have," and then they bring you in to kind of do their training, and then at the end of it, they're like, "I didn't know what the hell was going on?" How do you get them to do that mind shift?

It's funny because so often people come to me and go, "Yeah, we need help with cold calling. We need our reps to get cold calling." I'm like, "Oh, you know, I think it's part of the thing. If you're doing a sequence or any kind of multi-channel outreach, I'd be curious to see your emails." They're like, "Yeah, you can see them, but they're great. They're great. They're all..."

They're amazing.

They're the best emails ever.

A+, A-star, you know, the top of the class kind of emails. I read them, and these are the worst emails I've ever seen in my entire life.

I hope you don't mind me being direct. But like, I feel like there's... it's not anyone's fault, but like it's also probably maybe trying to keep scope down as well sometimes.

But we hear that. You... I would say it's often, almost always, more than what they thought they needed is the biggest mind shift. And you only get that by asking questions, taking a look. And then you can't just be like, "Yo, your emails suck." You have to be like, "Well, I was taking a look at them, and I had this thought here," like, for example, and then show them, and go, "Do you see how that would work?" And then, like, just even showing... often times it doesn't come from me, like asking questions live on the call. It's often times me looking afterwards.

Yeah.

And then that's great news for them and for me frankly, because it does mean a little bit higher scope sometimes, and it does mean that they get better results from the entire outbound idea instead of just one part of it that they thought they had the issue with.

It's very difficult. We have a similar challenge where it's like, "Why am I going to pay you X dollars for Y?" And it's like, "Our sales process is okay." And like, then you get in, and you're like, "Why do you have that stage there? And where's your exit criteria?" It's like the same thing that we get into. And then we'll go in and we'll do an audit, because we've learned we can't do a scope without an audit. We can't do our complete thing without an audit, because your scope will just increase because when they find you're good, then they're just adding a bunch of stuff to your plate. You're like, "Hold it. Scope creep. Do a bunch of stuff for free basically, and then you end up taking the work, and then doing a half-ass job of it. You don't like doing half-ass jobs of stuff. You want to do work you're proud of."

Yeah. Another common one is like, "Oh, we just need help with outbound." But then I find, like, they're like, "Well, a lot of the outbound leads we book aren't qualified." And then I'm like, "Okay, why aren't they qualified? Let me listen to a call." And then I'm like, "Oh crap. What the hell is this call?" Right. And then it's like there's always something else. It's never the one thing that someone comes to you with. And often times the other impact...

Yeah.

...have a clue how to ask a question of an outbound lead. They're like doing the classic qualification or just treating them like they've got all the interest in the world just because they agreed to a call from a cold call.

I'm convinced most of the problems people think they have are symptoms of really the root of the problem. The root of the problem is much deeper. And once you fix the symptom part, you're like, "Okay, you're thinking your problem is leads, but your problem is really workflows in HubSpot or something's getting overwritten," like it's so different in everything.

I mean, what about the Dale? We had the customer, and Will, this will resonate with you. They were ready to fire the entire sales team. "Sales team can't close anything. Every call they get on, they can't close." Listen to a dozen calls. Go back. It's not a sales issue. It's a freaking ICP issue. We're talking to the wrong people. That is a fundamental go-to-market issue that needs to be looked at at a much higher level versus "let's fire six sales reps because they can't close deals." How about you put qualified people in front of them?

Talk wrong as well. Like, I go in sometimes and they're like, "Oh, outbound just doesn't work at this company. We've got too big of a customer." I'm like, "How many?" Like, I just did an ICP map, and it looks like you could probably sell to, you know, 20,000 customers fit your criteria. Like, "What do you mean you don't have enough customers?" And I look at the emails, and I'm like, "Okay, what kind of enabling have you even given them?" They're like, "Well, we had this VP from X company who..."

"Won't name and they came in, tried outbound. They hired six outbound sellers. No one did anything." I'm like, "Can I see some of this stuff, please?" I'm like, "Okay, right. Yeah, no shit that didn't work because it's straight from the 2019 playbook. All right. But the willingness to just sign off because they tried something once is another thing I see a lot as well. Tried badly for one. Like imagine me going out and being like, "All right, I'm going to be a pro league baseball player." That swing and miss and swing and miss and swing and miss. You're out. I'm like, "Well, baseball's a crap sport."

>> Crap.

>> Couldn't be me.

>> Couldn't be me because I tried three swings up there. See that guy didn't hit the ball. So baseball's the problem, not me. Come on.

>> I love it. I love that. Will, is there anything that you've been asked to do as part of Scope Group at a sales level that you've just turned back and said, "Nope, ain't going to do that." That's caused some friction?

>> Um, one of them—I could think of two examples. Number one, I did a playbook for someone and they were like, "Can we make it pretty?"

>> You can hire a designer to make it pretty.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what I end up doing. Went on Fiverr and bought a design. I'm like, "There you go, guys. Well done."

>> I was saying that, not you.

>> Fifty bucks. But I hope you're happy now. The sales reps will never read this thing ever again because now it can't change because it's in a PDF. The whole idea of a playbook is that you add and change it as time goes on. Come on. Another one was—most scope creep issues, I like to try and get those out of the way before I agree to do work. That way, very clearly, if you do enough work up front, I think you can avoid a lot of those issues. But everyone was like, "Oh, well, we want to do..." There was an issue where they wanted to do two separate two-day workshops, one in London, one in New York for the AMIA team and a pack team.

>> And I was like, "Okay, two days." They're like, "We want to do your one day rate." And I was like, "I'm staying for two days. That's two days away from my kids. That's two extra days that I'm not in my office doing all the other work I have to do. I'm going to have to charge more for that." And they were pushing back and they're like, "Oh, let's just do one full day." I'm like, "You ever tried to keep 20 people's attention for a full day? I think the two day is the right thing. You're just going to have to pay more for it. Come on. Let's be realistic. When was the last time you went to a full day workshop and were happy at the end of it and not thinking about all the work that you just ignored for a day?"

>> There's a balance here. The thing is the balance can just cost you some more money and that's okay. Like would you rather it be done well or just done quickly at a lower price?

>> I love that mindset. We talk about that all the time. We're not trading time for money. You're trading outcomes for money, right? Do you want it done right or do you want it done fast? And fast could be right, but you want it done right more than anything else.

>> It's a classic slider thing. I saw someone made a 3D printed one of like fast, good, cheap.

>> Yep. That was it. Yeah. And you can't have two without losing one, right? But the point there was just like I was just like, I'm not going to do it. That's all right. And sometimes pushing back in that way shows a level of respect because a lot of other people they were talking to wouldn't have pushed back and they're just like, "Yeah, I'll do it."

>> But I think that's also the benefit of just being in a spot where you just don't need any business.

>> Yeah.

>> Like don't need the business. Sure, I'd like to do a $50,000 deal there, right? But I'm going to be all right.

>> You know, it's always good to flip it on its head, too. Like, would you do this work? If you had two days worth of work, would you do it for a one day rate?

>> Like, the answer would always be no.

>> So it's like, okay, I don't know why you're trying to nail me. You guys are the one that had the problem, not me.

>> Yeah, it's like I'm having some work done. I'm about to sell this house. It's going to be weird to walk away from this room after being in here for so long. But there's a drywall guy, right? I'm getting him to patch some things and go, "Oh, if I said to you, 'I want you to get it done in a day for less,' he'd be like, 'Do you know that like drywall takes time to dry?' I'm like, 'No, no, no. I need you to get less in one day. One day's work, not two days.' And he's like, 'Yeah, but I'm not going to be able to sand it and then put another coat on it.' I'm gonna be like..."

>> Great analogy.

>> Be like, "No, I'll do one coat for you if you want for less, but I'm not going to do it one day because it just won't look good."

>> Well, let me ask you. So you sit at this intersection of content, tech, sales, psychology. I think you do a little bit of all of it and you blend it all relatively well. What's a shift that's coming in your mind that most go-to-market leaders don't see yet and are going to be totally blindsided by?

>> I just think there's the ball's going to drop at some point. There's just too many solutions on the market. It's nothing that the GTM teams can control, personally I don't think. But I'm surprised every day that things even exist sometimes.

>> Yeah, I'm with you there. Is AI going to kill the creativity or is it going to make it 10, 20x more important?

>> My thoughts on AI, I'm a big user of AI, but I just don't think it's there yet. But I also see people building stuff and I'm like, "Damn, this is better than a lot of products in that space that you made this for," right? I think that has created a huge influx of solutions that's almost like highlighting how bad of a problem it is that there are so many solutions out there that just do like this one random thing that you didn't think would be a problem when you could actually go make this. I think the challenge is that a lot of people out there just aren't very aware. Like we talk about this every day, like tech, building stuff, all this crazy stuff, but like a vet's office who needs a vet appointment management system to run all their patients through—they're not sat there going, "I'm not going to buy vet CMS or whatever it's called. I'm going to build it."

>> Yeah, I'm going to build it.

>> They're not doing that, right? But yeah, at some point that ball's got to drop. Whether it's more emails and the solutions come cheaper and cheaper and cheaper until...

>> Until what? Yeah.

>> So I just think B2B tech is an anomaly in itself because everyone's trying to get out in front of it. But you're right, like the blue collar worker, even like a managed services—so we have a couple managed services clients and they were behind in the tech game, right? They were behind in the GTM tech game, I should say. They didn't have any of the shiny objects. And so actually...

>> Those companies still exist. Sorry.

>> Yeah, I know.

>> But the fun thing is because you could immediately have results. You're like, "Yeah, I'm very confident we can do some big things with your business here."

>> But yeah, so they actually jump like technology. So like they're going from like more manual stuff all the way to AI. Like they're just skipping like a whole generation of tech debt that they don't need to have anymore. So it's very interesting actually. I think I actually believe that B2B tech is going to hurt themselves with the way they're doing things because of all this building and everything. Look, I've done a bunch of stuff. We were like, some of our clients are asking for some things. It gets to a point but it's not production-ready, potentially. It's like it will break at some point. You're replacing someone's, you know, production database. Like there's things that happen that you're going to struggle with, even on the building side. Like building is only going to get you so far.

>> You still need, once again, that last mile to get the work completed.

>> Yeah.

>> I think the things that I'd really like to see replaced are like the social medias out there. The issue with that is like the limitation is...

Servers, huge, huge databases. And that's not every man, every person can.

I just wish LinkedIn would be a better place and not this fire garbage content place it's become.

Yeah, I think that the root cause of that is the fact that the LinkedIn team doesn't have a clue.

They're the most out of touch team I think in the entire world based on what's going on.

I'd like to call that a hot take, but I don't think that's a hot take. I think everyone outside of LinkedIn, if we were to all get on a call regardless of where you are on the influencer creator sphere, would say the exact same thing. Who the hell are you building for?

Yeah, who? If you're going to go build a procurement software, right? Let's say you want to build a vendor management software. What the hell would you be doing if you'd never ever had a conversation with a procurement person? You'd have one payroll consultant who's going to tell you, "This is a problem that always happens to me and I'd love a way to fix that," right? But they're like, "Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, we know procurement people better than they know themselves. We got this. Don't worry. Let's bring in a salesperson to consult with us for a little bit. Let's try and build this for sales people." And then procurement is going to be like, "What? No, they need to see how many vendors I have and when the contract terms are up." And the salesperson is going to be like, "Yeah, yeah. Let's try and increase the spend in the vendor." It's not going to work, is it?

Okay, well, let's set you up for some rapid fire answers. Less than ten words. Let's try one word. We've never played that game before.

A couple of these may have a couple words, but what's a GTM opinion you're scared to say out loud? One word.

Under ten. I'm not scared to say anything out loud, Dale. You know me. I've got no shame. Marketing sucks so bad, so often.

I love it. I don't disagree with you. Will, who's someone in sales that doesn't get enough credit? What's the one title that doesn't get enough credit?

Probably a solutions engineer. If you need one, I think a lot of people don't. They're just lazy.

Okay, so going back to the LinkedIn thing, what's one piece of sales advice that should be deleted from LinkedIn forever?

Give me a sec. Let me just go on LinkedIn and get some inspiration real quick. I haven't looked at it. I haven't subjected myself to the pain today. Just the entire idea that you can't give a demo on the first call, you give pricing on the first call. Why is it the first call that matters? It's more so like don't do that until you understand them. I would say is the criteria. Not necessarily on which call. I think that the call mindset is wrong. Sorry, make sure this isn't coming across right, Carl. Because some people think I'm just saying "call," you know, "call."

Yeah, but the call. It's got to be on the first call, the first meeting or the second. I think that entire idea is just stupid because most of the time it's not as linear as that. Like, "Oh, I'm going to do an intro call. I'm going to do a demo call and that's when I'm going to share the pricing." It's like, mate, that just assumes all buyers are going to be the exact same and you're going to be able to show up exactly the same way. A lot of the time these days, I don't get all the information I want, but I'm still going to share enough that they feel like they're not just being brushed off. They didn't get anything from it as well. Sure, you can say, "Oh, well, when I ask questions, it helps them see the problem differently." Yeah, that's true to a certain extent, but also like they showed up for something. Give them something to walk away with. And then often times what I've been doing is getting text basis straight away, texting them some questions I didn't get the answers to, which then makes them go, "Can we jump on another call between this and the next one?" And then all of a sudden we're doing a lot more. But I think this idea that you have to get it all done in one call and you shouldn't do this by that stage—it's not as black and white as that.

Adam loves this question. I've got to ask every time we finish. No, hold on. One more first. Will, you could ban one go-to-market buzzword forever. What word is gone from the English dictionary?

LinkedIn.

It's not a go-to-market buzzword.

I can end my career, man. I need that. I hate it, but I need it. It's like an abusive relationship. Let me just think for a second. Just any blank lead. Just anything blank lead. I don't know any. Just shut up. It's the same thing. Just a new word. Come on. Please make it stop. You make me want to vomit. Yeah, you can't just call anything lead qualified. Like, shut up, Will. Shut up. Shut your mouth, Will. Come on. This should just stop. Come on.

All right. Ask your question, sir.

Dream vacation destination?

You'd think that like we pick the number one episode and send someone on a trip or something.

All right, let me just think. Let me just check some prices. Probably like there's no reason why you shouldn't just go to whatever place I say, but probably like Galapagos or no, actually somewhere in South America, somewhere mountainous.

I'd love to probably do Kilimanjaro.

Yeah, do Kilimanjaro. Africa is my number one. I would love to do that actually. That's probably a good one. Let me have a little bit deeper of a think, but I think South America. I haven't been there. It's the one continent I haven't been to.

I just love Prague. Prague flights are really cheap right now. If you're looking at flights, not that I was looking, but you could get to Prague for like three hundred bucks right now.

Are you trying to lead my answer? You trying to lead the witness, Adam?

Yeah. Czech Republic. I travel.

That's where we can afford to send you, and that's awesome because that's where you're going. We can send you and your two kids for flights to Prague.

We can send you to the Middle East. You might not come back.

Bachelor trips. Bachelor in Prague, I'll tell you. So fast, cheap, and good. There you go.

Will Akin, thank you for joining the show, my friend. Thank you for sharing all this knowledge. Go check out Will. I believe it's willen.com, right? Super easy.

For the time being, yeah. Little tease there.

All right, sir. Thank you for joining. We appreciate it.

I appreciate you too, as well. Always a pleasure.