Win The Trust First, Not The Right To Spam | Leslie Venetz

But when it comes to how to actually earn the right, like if we think about it in sales copy, one of the frameworks that I teach, it's like an oldie but a goodie called FABS: features, advantages, and benefits.

Just because you're most comfortable with something doesn't mean it's the right place. Doesn't mean that it's working.

Being honest with yourself that you do not know who your ICP is because saying that you sell to all finance and IT executives for any company over 100 million in these seven industries, that's bullshit.

Welcome back to another episode of the Bridge the Gap podcast, powered by Revenue Reimagined, where I apparently am going to pay for all of my misdeeds on this episode. Today we have Leslie Vennett with us, the founder of the sales go-to-market agency, bestselling author of Profit Generating Pipeline. Dale, do you have one of these? Are you special enough? Keynote speaker and one of the most recognized voices in outbound sales. Today she's been named Sales Innovator of the Year, featured as one of the 100 Most Powerful Women of Sales, and her "Earn the Right" framework is shaping how teams train, coach, and engage buyers. We're going to talk about rewriting the outbound playbook, how to earn buyer attention, how to train teams for long-term success, and how to build trust in a noisy market. Leslie, a longtime friend of the show and a longtime friend outside of the show. Thanks for joining us after all of Dale's technical difficulties.

I mean, geez, making me work for it, Jen. No, I'm so happy to be back. I just love collaborating with both of you. So I know we will drop some knowledge, but we will also probably do some light bullying and then some laughter.

Oh, it'll be very heavy. I don't know if the bullying will be light, but there will be some bullying.

Leslie, thanks for joining. Congratulations on the book. Amazing job. So outbound isn't broken. Adam just says it's misused. So you've built your brand around outbound. What do most people still get wrong about doing it?

The list is so long. The bar is kind of in hell right now for good outbound. Where do I even start? So a couple of things. One, I think that a lot of outbound is extraordinarily lazy and it's selfish. And so it's: here's my name, here's what my company does, here's my product and my features. And it is so selfish and so self-centered that if I was going to say like across all outbound I've ever seen, if there was one universal truth, it's that we are a very self-centered profession and that is something that like most teams in all industries at all levels of maturity tend to get wrong.

And unfortunately, I'd love to hear what you are seeing as well. Unfortunately, AI has this amazing potential for us to like build really tight lists and do faster research and more easily make our outreach very buyer-centric. And instead, what I'm seeing 99% of the time is that companies are using it to try to replace having strategy or they're just chasing the shiny object silver bullet of AI to move faster, but they are moving fast in the wrong direction and just entrenching or validating this buyer hatred of sales as a profession.

It's to me—you hit on it with lazy, right? I think that we are seeing a culture—even before AI, certainly drives a lot of this, but I truly blame, and we won't name them, the sales engagement platforms that we all know. You know, that have made it so easy to email a thousand people at a time with really shitty messaging that is some version of: "Hi Leslie, because you're the CEO of X, you must suffer from Y. I'm Adam from Z and I could help solve your problem." And it sucks. And that is probably 90% of the messaging that we're seeing.

One of the things I tell sellers a lot is you have to earn the right to even say your company name, right? Like you have to earn the right to say I'm from Revenue Reimagined, I'm from Attention or Gong or whoever it happens to be. But what does "earn the right" mean in practice? Like how do you really earn the right?

Yeah, well, it's trust. I think it's based in how am I building trust, but it's also respect, Adam. Like respecting the buyer's attention and their time and their consideration. And so I use it as a bit of a litmus test. Like before I show up to a discovery call, what have I done to prepare for this meeting to earn the right to 45 minutes of this prospect's time? Before I start, you know, before I hit launch on a sequence: what have I done? What have I said in this email copy to earn the right to even ask for this prospect's attention? And if I have not prepared in a way that adds value to them, then I simply have not earned the right. I'm not building trust. I'm usually eroding trust if I have not passed that very basic litmus test.

But how do people do that, right? Like I think that's the thing. There's this CTA that everyone uses that I despise, which is something to the effect of "Leslie, would it make sense to hop on a 15-minute call?" And I will tell people all the time, and forgive my language, you haven't earned the right to ask me for 15 minutes of my time, much less 30, much less 45. I think people feel that they can use AI to do research and arguably good research, right? Like if you know how to use it, you can get some really good research. But does knowing that I spoke on a podcast this week about the proper way to do outbound earn the right for you to ask for 15 minutes of my time? Or do you have to go deeper? What does that look like?

Yeah, you have to go deeper. Two thoughts came up. One is that's not personalization. Like saying that I saw that you're the founder at X company, "Congrats on your Series A. I saw that you spoke at a podcast." That's literally not personalization. When you have pulled a random fact and now you're just reading a CV back to somebody or reading the news back to somebody, that does not count. And it's always a totally irrelevant fact. And then the very next sentence is "So anyways, about me and my widget that I'm trying to explain here."

Yeah.

So like first and foremost, let's be straight. That's not personalization. That's bullshit. It's disingenuous. I think it's disrespectful. That's the opposite of earning the right because you're actually wasting people's time or maybe going so far as trying to manipulate and trick them by saying things like, "Oh, I really respect what you're doing in the sales space," you know, like all hate it. Don't do that.

But when it comes to how to actually earn the right, like if we think about it in sales copy, one of the frameworks that I teach, it's like an oldie but a goodie called FABS: features, advantages, and benefits.

So you know, I audit like you guys probably a thousand plus emails a year, and I see about 80% of those emails stopping at features. They're just saying what a company is and what a product is. Maybe another 10% go to advantages, but they're always the same advantages, right? "I save you time. I save you money. I make you money. I reduce risk." It's the same. It's so generic the prospect is not able to see themselves in those advantages because they don't know how they relate to their needs, their jobs to be done. It's also the same thing that all of your competitors are saying. Not just your competitors, like every other person sending an email and vying for that person's attention.

Say it again.

Just like any other tech, any other company, any other—

Dale's trying to be here.

Dale's internet.

I'm so trying to be here.

I love this because I'm never going to let it down. Let it live down. What he said is: "Just like any other tech or any other company who's trying to be here."

And we appreciate your contribution, Dale. Thank you.

Brutal. But the real trick is to not stop at features and not even to stop at advantages, but go all the way to benefits, which is this opportunity to then tell the prospect why it matters to them. And so it earns the right and it builds trust by showing that you understand the problems and the opportunities that are most important to them. It earns the right and that trust and respect by showing that you have a point of view about what's going on in their world. And then when you write benefits-focused messaging, instead of talking about your product, you talk about the solutions that are most important to them. So it completely shifts the messaging from being very product-centric, which is like 90% of what I see—that's why I say the bar is in hell—to being problem-centric, which makes it relevant to the person reading it.

Yeah. I too see it. Too many people—you hit the nail on the head. It's product, product. "I could do this. I could solve this. My product does that." And it's always the same generic ROI claim. And it is in my opinion ruining outbound for everyone.

So you talk a lot about training versus tactics. And you say that, and quote, "Most companies don't have a strategy problem. They have a training problem." Tell me what you mean by that because a lot of people are going to say, "Well, no, your problem is your outbound strategy sucks."

Right? Outbound strategy. It may or may not be a quote. Wait, hold on. We all—it may or may not be a quote from the book.

>> It sounds like something I would say in the book, if certainly not the book. It sounds like a rant that I have like repeatedly banged the drum on.

>> We don't make up quotes here. You did really say it. I don't have the source at the moment, but I can promise you said it.

>> Ted GPT for sure said that. I said it.

>> There you go. Exactly.

>> Okay. But here's the basis of my argument: most of these gurus out there, and even a lot of people in sales leadership, are teaching tricks and tactics. And that's how you get into stuff like, "Hey, I know this is a cold call, but do you want to roll the dice and see why I call?" I would hang up on anyone who ever said that, to be very clear. Or, "May I have 12 seconds of your time?" You just took 12 seconds asking if you could have 12 seconds.

>> And if you think about it in the context of "earn the right"—earn the right by saying something relevant. Don't earn the right by saying something that no normal human would ever put together as a string of words. And it's how you fall into traps like "quick question." I love the example of quick question because it's not a bad subject line at face value. It is a bad subject line because everybody started using it, and then it became something easily identifiable as a sales mental spam trigger. When you chase those types of tricks or tactics instead of rooting in buyer psychology and behavioral science and letting that inform your training, and then later your strategy, you're doing sales as a profession, but certainly you and your team are doing yourself an injustice. That's the starting line.

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>> Dale, comments.

>> Awesome. Yes. No, I was going to ask a question, but it may be a little delayed.

>> Oh my god.

>> But I will ask my question and see if you can get a response. You're vocal about sales needing to be more human. What does that really look like today? Like, when you say more human in a sales outreach process, what does that mean to you?

>> Oh, I love that question. Two things. For me personally, it means a little bit more unhinged.

>> Tell me more.

>> And let me bench that in the fact that I am a solopreneur by choice. I only want to attract clients that want to work with me specifically as a human. I am very funny, but I'm a little bit quirky and a little bit unhinged. So for me, my messaging needs to reflect my personality. That is not the same advice that I would give an organization I was building sales copy for. But a perfect example: I have that other company, Revenue Revalry, that I host the events for, and I will often use it to test ideas that I want to test with clients. For the April event, we sent out a bunch of emails that were inspired by TikTok trends.

>> You love your TikTok.

>> I love TikTok. Writing the emails brought me so much joy. The subject lines brought me so much joy. Everything about it was amazing. They were very hit and miss with the recipients. People were either like, "This is unprofessional, and I'd never go to your event. You're the worst." And I'm like, "Do you, man?" Or people were like, "Then we're not a fit." And that's the thing—you don't need to announce you're leaving. Or people were like, "This is the best thing I've ever seen ever." So for me, because I have much different goals than my clients (because my clients are at 30 million plus), for me it's like being human means just a bit more unhinged, a bit more authentic. For my clients, the advice that I would give is actually doing some blending of what might historically be considered demand gen with lead gen so that your reps have more of an opportunity to nurture, to send deposits, things that might usually be a lead magnet or in a newsletter. Your reps are going to events not to sit in a booth and be like, "Hello, I am salesperson. Did you want a free mouse pad because I'm going to make you talk to me first?" But instead go with a strategic plan to talk to their 10 hottest prospects in person. Not to sell them, not to force them into a demo, but to have a face-to-face conversation with them.

>> I can write a cold call script, a cold email, whatever it is, but the fact of the matter is I write different, I sound different, I act different than Dale. And if Dale takes my exact copy and puts it in an email and sends it to someone and they respond and then they get on the phone with Dale, they're going to know for sure that Dale did not write that email. I am much more laid-back and relaxed and t-shirt, and Dale is buttoned up with his jacket and "Dear Mr. J." You know, we just talk differently. How do you balance that with the need to scale, but also the need to personalize and, like you said, be yourself?

>> Okay. So here's a framework that I use as a sales leader, and it's "coach versus tell," but I think it applies to your question. When I am onboarding a new employee, when they're selling a new product, or we're penetrating a new market, whatever it is, I am in tell mode: crystal clear expectations. They are working from templates that are best-practice templates with no wiggle room. They are reading scripts at the beginning. I have them started on what I know works the greatest number of times because it is what our buyers are most receptive to. And then once they get a comfort level with what works and why it works, and they get some familiarity and some confidence, then I switch to coach, which is also when I'm like, "I do not want you to use this script. It was there to empower you and to inform you, and now you need to make it your own. Now you know that it works and you know why it works and how buyers respond to it. Now make it your own." And then the coach is very much like, "Hey, let's talk through this. Why is it working? Why is it not working? What do you want to test? Why do you think that would work?"

So when I think about scaling, I—this is going to sound really rude, but I just don't give that many about you, the SDR's personality, as a buyer who has never met you before getting an email that I didn't ask for. That doesn't mean I want a robot reaching out to me. It doesn't mean that as a sales leader I want a bunch of robots working for me. But I think this narrative is a bit pressed that there needs to be this tremendous amount of personality in every single email that goes out because, again, it is not about you the seller. It is about the buyer. I just think we get too tied up in figuring out how to make ourselves feel good and not thinking about how our message can be most easily received and digested by the buyer. But also, if you want to infuse your personality in your outreach, then pick up the phone. That should happen on a cold call, not in a sales email.

>> I'm gonna get in trouble for that one.

>> No, I don't think you are. I totally agree. I'm aligned, and I love the "no [ __ ] given" statement. To me, that is the best part of the whole thing because it is about having the interaction versus just the action. People are just feature-functionality dumping, having conversations, pushing things around. Versus, I just had this conversation with a client. You're sending a message that sounds like everybody else. What is it that you are truly driving value for that individual or that company that you can have a conversation about? Like narrow the focus. People are like, "Build more, send more, do more," and I'm like, "No, let's narrow it down," especially for startup companies or companies that are not at scale. Niche down, niche down, and be specific. Like, why do they want your product above all others? I love that you have to connect. It has to be on the phone. I think that makes tons of sense. You mean cold calling is not dead, Leslie?

>> So dead. Um, wait, but I think there's something that's adjacent to this that would also be good to talk about, and it's taking a multi-channel approach because I—

# Cleaned Transcript

You'll often hear reps or even their sales leaders push back saying, "Oh, my team's just more comfortable on LinkedIn." And I'm like, that's cool. If they are more comfortable and also that means they are getting significantly better results on LinkedIn, then we can build LinkedIn-heavy sequences that we predominantly push them to. Usually it's like they're more comfortable, but that doesn't even mean they're getting better results. So I'm like, I don't really care. It's easy.

It's another example of just this very selfish way of approaching sales because it is not about where I am most comfortable. It's about making sure that you are taking a multi-channel approach. For my clients, we do three channels minimum or bust. And I call it in the book—I call it "channel of choice" because you are giving your prospects an opportunity to engage with you on the channel where they are most comfortable having commercial conversations. I just like that whole mindset pivot about stopping the incessant centering of ourselves in our processes.

Yeah, I think you are 100% correct. Number one, just because you're most comfortable with something doesn't mean it's the right place. Doesn't mean that it's working. And personally, I could tell you anywhere where I've truly had success in life started with where I wasn't comfortable. Like, let's just be real—which is everywhere. You have to be willing to step outside of the comfort zone.

So I agree with you 100%.

I think Adam's comfortable. There's so much. My box is bigger than that.

Is Dale here? Who's talking? Who was that?

I don't know. Allow me to drive the show here, Dale. This is going to be a fun one to edit.

And this ties into what we've been speaking about, but Leslie, you're super vocal about sales needing to be more human, right? You have to build trust faster, you have to have storytelling versus scripts, but realistically, how does an org who doesn't know their head from their ass when it comes to outbound, how do they implement this today? So other than being 30 million plus and hiring Leslie, how can an org look after this episode and be like, "I need to change my outbound approach and this is what I'm going to do right now to do that?"

I have this answer. It's buy the book. No, I'm just kidding.

Buy the book.

And leave a five-star review.

Before I answer that question, I have to first ask you—have you seen all of the new data coming out about learning styles? For anybody that is watching this, I'm sure that you are familiar with the concept of learning styles where we learn better by hearing or by doing, etc. And the thinking for many years was that we should shift the way we teach to match a specific person's learning style. And now there is a whole new decade of deep study, deep peer-reviewed research on huge sets of the population that say that is actually not how you learn best. That's how you learn worst because if you are learning within your preferred, easy learning style, you are not working hard to learn. So you're significantly less likely to retain the information.

That is why everything I do is benchmarked in behavioral psychology and buyer psychology because I want to go off the ways that the brain actually responds to stuff, not off my gut and not off tips and tricks. That's my nerdy tangent.

The answer to your question: How do people actually do this? How do they get started? Okay, so when I'm working with clients, I take them through a nine-step process, but step one is where they need to start. And it is easier than folks think, but it does take a minute of stepping back. You've got to slow down to speed up type of energy.

And that is being honest with yourself that you do not know who your ICP is. Because saying that you sell to all finance and IT executives for any company over 100 million in these seven industries—that's marketing. That is a marketing definition of your sales addressable market, not really your sales obtainable market.

So the first challenge that I would issue for folks to get started is to be honest with yourself that you don't actually know what your ICP is. And part of the issue is because in sales we do not have an ICP. We have many different ideal customer segments, and they are ideal for unique reasons—reasons that they want to buy and solve a problem, not our reasons that we want to sell to them.

Step one is figure out who your best ICP segments are. And the easiest way to do that is to start by building at least five filters into your territory. So go to your CRM and start with five filters. Now you're not speaking to finance executives in CPG. You are only trying to figure out how to say something relevant to CFOs of companies not even in CPG, not even in FNB, but in the pet food sector, who have a headquarters in the US, who have over a thousand employees, who have revenue between three and six billion, and who are being impacted by a new packaging regulation from the FDA, right?

And that's maybe only going to be 57 people that fit all of those filters, but for those 57 people, you can send the same messaging out. You don't have to worry about asking them about their vacation in Cabo in 2017 and how it was to swim with dolphins. You can say something relevant to them, and it opens up some access to personalization at scale without going to spam.

So that's where I would advise people start.

There is the tip of the day. That's your tactical advice to get started with that. We are up against not only Dale's internet, but we are up against time. As Dale drops off, we will finish what the show is. He's texting me that his computer died.

What's a sales belief that you've let go of?

Jesus, Adam.

Yeah, we start with the hard ones here. I think a sales belief that I let go of a long time ago, but it still deeply informs the way I show up is that my time—because I'm a sales professional and society told me I should be ashamed of my profession—my time is less valuable or less important than the people's time that I'm asking for.

I love that. I think that's something that a lot of salespeople struggle with. It's why I actually coach people not to start with Leslie. Thank you so much for joining this meeting. My time is just as valuable. Leslie, it's great to get to spend some time with you.

Yeah, love it. The number one outbound tactic you are tired of seeing?

Man, that list is so long. I really think that it is in the realm of disingenuous personalization, but more specifically the type that's like, "I saw your LinkedIn post. It was so meaningful to me. I love the work you're doing." Where they show up and it's so manipulative, and they pretend like they actually want to help or are actually interested, and it's all just a tactic to trick somebody into meeting with you. Like, it hurts my heart to see salespeople still try to manipulate their buyers into meeting with them as the first interaction.

All the time. I had someone—it doesn't matter who—but after our car crash last year, three or four messages of like, "I'm so sorry. I hope Zachary's okay. Blah blah blah." Then came the sales pitch. And I found like it turned me off so bad. Like, I would rather you just give me the sales pitch and say, "By the way, saw you were in an accident. Hope everyone's okay." Like, don't start with all the crap and then go to the sales pitch because you don't care.

Literally, I would respond better to like, "Hey, sorry you almost died. Anyway, would you be interested?" than like, "I really care about you."

I'm good with it.

Other than your own, what is a book, podcast, or resource you recommend to reps right now?

Challenger Customer is my favorite sales book, which is interesting because it wasn't especially written for sales professionals. It is so much better than Challenger Sale because it asks questions. It was one of the first books that I ever read that really asked questions like, "Hey, why would a buyer give a damn about this?"

Yeah, I'm with you 100%.

Hardest lesson you've learned from building your brand?

Oh gosh, I honestly think it was to trust myself. That's come up in so many iterations because I remember I was just actually talking to Chris, my husband, about this. I remember being just plagued with doubt to the point...

That drove me to tears a couple of times very early in going full-time as a founder because so many people were like, "Solopreneur? Is that even real? Like, you need to scale. You need to do this. You need a SaaS company." And everybody had these really strong opinions about why this choice that I was so, so, so sure in was the wrong choice, why I was getting it wrong. And I felt like so sure, but enough people told me I was wrong that I started questioning myself.

And I've seen that come up in the way I create content and the way I show up in the world. And at every point that I make a choice that goes against my intuition and what I really know is true to me, it goes very, very badly.

Yeah.

It's a lesson that I keep learning, but to really trust myself.

I love it. Last one. You're not allowed to be in sales. You're not allowed to be in sales training. You're not allowed to do anything of the sort. What would you be doing right now? What does life look like for Leslie?

I would be reading, reading and writing and eating. I would be maybe like a Rick Steves. That's my dream job. Or like Anthony Bourdain but without the Coke problem. That is my dream job.

Leslie, thank you for joining the show. Y'all go check out this book. You can get it on Amazon. Read it. Leave a five-star review. I am slightly upset this isn't signed or anything. I'm telling everyone else.

Two months.

I'm going to bring it and we're going to get a signature. Thanks for joining.

Pens, special gold pens to stay on brand. So I will be ready to write something very nice in your book in November in Tampa.

We will see you then. Cheers.