[00:00:00] Luigi Prestinenzi: By the Sales IQ network, this is the Sales IQ Podcast. I'm your host, Luigi Prestinenzi, and each week we'll be going on a journey that will inspire you, motivate you and help you be the best sales professional you can be. Our focus will be on mindset, tactics and the strategies that will enable you to create more pipeline and win more deals.

Imagine waking up every single day, you start the day you open your laptop. You're looking at CRM and there's an abundance of net new qualified leads in your CRM. Ready for you to call you, pick up the phone, you call them and they're hot. They're your target customers? They're the raw buyer persona. And they have a defined need for what you sell and you can progress your opportunity.

That's kind of like the dream, right? That is a dream for salesperson. You're getting an abundance of leads coming into your pipeline and you're working on them. You're progressing them and you're advancing them and bang, you get paid your commission check every single month. That's the dream, right? But he's at the reality, it's actually far from it.

And the reality is there are a lot of salespeople. There are a lot of us out there that don't have enough opportunities in their pipeline. We don't have enough pipeline coverage. And as a result, many are struggling to hit that. Because the realities inbound as great as it is, is never going to keep your funnel full.

And that's why this month on the sales IQ podcast, we're really focused on prospecting. We're really focusing on the things that you can control to build your pipeline, the activities, the incremental steps that you need to make. To ensure you've got enough pipeline coming and you're creating enough.

Cause when you think about it, we need to think about the funneling, the three stages you've got to create. You've got to have net new coming in. If you can develop some inbound campaigns, do it. If you have the ability to create a brand on LinkedIn or do whatever you can do to generate inbound inquiries.

I absolutely encourage you to do it, but just remember that even if you get that channel switched on, you're still going to need a level of outbound because out of all the inbound, there's going to be a portion of those inbounds that are just not the right fit for you. They're not the right target customer or ICP.

They're not the right buyer. They're not all going to be ready to buy now. So they're going to, they're going to require some time. So to balance it up, you need to be proactively engaging with the target, with your target ICP, with your buyer personas and creating conversations and bringing them into your funnel, and then you need to progress.

So the second stage of the funnel, you need to progress opportunities. You need to work on those opportunities so that you can really build consensus, you know, build that business case for change, collaborate with the prospect and then progress to a point of advancement, which is ultimately. They Connie has three stages of the funnel that are critical for every sales professional to be working on.

But one of the hardest parts when it comes to selling is the prospecting part. And let's be honest, it's not the funnest part of the process. Nobody likes reaching out to someone and not getting, not, not hearing back from them being. Sending a connection request and they never respond to you. It doesn't make us feel great, but we've got to lean into it.

We've got to be empowered by it. And we're going to say, right, this is the process I need to go through in order to be successful. But there are things that I can control to make this process easier for me. And this is why this week, and this month fundamentally, I'll talk about prospecting every single month, but we've got a real focus on it here on the sales IQ podcast.

This month is we're talking to different thought leaders about the tactics that you can employ that are going to deliver you. And improve result when it comes to prospecting and Kevin Hoppe, who is a sales coach, he's an expert in this place. He works with sellers. He works with companies in implementing these types of tactics.

We're going to talk about a particular tactic or a couple of tactics. That's going to really help you be the best you can be when it comes to prospecting. Now. No that during the episode you'll hear me. I have, I have a different view to the way he starts calls for example, but that doesn't necessarily mean I don't agree with it.

And what I want you to consider. There are many ways in which we can prospect, there are many different tactics out there. One tactic is not better than the other. Remember the best tactic is the tactic and the strategy that. That you own. And often the best tactics are ones where they merge different tactics together.

And that's exactly how I've built my career. I've looked at what different salespeople are doing of taken components of what they do, and I make it my own. And then I put my own authenticity. And this is what I want you to think about as you continue to hear different thoughts. Don't limit your ability to build an incredible strategy or tactical process because you've relied on just one, merge them, own them.

But in order to do that, you've got to test them and you've got to embrace the fact that sometimes it won't work, sometimes you'll go, oh man, I've just made this call. I tried that tactic and I absolutely. And that's A-OK.

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[00:06:15] Luigi Prestinenzi: So enjoy this episode. It's a really good episode and it's going to build, because next week we have an episode, which we're going to talk about a different prospecting tactic that doesn't even involve the phone or email. So this is a completely different tactic, but it's important because we need to be considering: are multiple channels for us to reach our prospects and differentiate in a crowded marketplace.

So get a pen out, enjoy this episode. This is going to be a cracking episode to help you be the very best salesperson you can be.

So Kevin, welcome to the Sales IQ Podcast.

[00:06:51] Kevin Hopp: Thanks for having me. I really do appreciate it. Longtime listener, first time caller here. So happy to get into it.

[00:06:56] Luigi Prestinenzi: And I know, you know what, you're the first guest from the U S that has spoken to me about Furphy's Beers and it's great to hear that from a place just out of Melbourne, it's made such an impact in your world, man. It's, you know, it's so funny how.

We can be at opposite ends of the world, but yet, so close through connected for people. So yeah, I really value, you know, the content that you're putting out, man, and, and really want to thank you for coming on our podcast.

[00:07:20] Kevin Hopp: Totally thanks for having me. And yeah, we were just talking about that before we started the recording that, you know, my cousin lives in Melbourne lives over in Torquay, you know, the beach town right outside of it, and I've been there.

And when I visited, you know, the biggest, the biggest shock to me, it was. You know, that part of Australia is just like southern California. And I live in San Diego and I felt right at home. So we're, we're not so not, we don't live in very different climates doing very similar climates.

[00:07:48] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah, it gets pretty cold during the mid-year but mate I wanted to, obviously this month on the Sales IQ podcast, it's all about prospecting. And I know each one of the tasks that so many salespeople know. But for some reason, so many salespeople put it off, right? And they turn their attention onto progressing deals or trying to close out deals.

And that aren't spending enough time on that top of funnel activity, which we know is critical in creating a healthy pipeline. So we'd love to learn before we jump into that topic. Yeah, break down some tactics that sellers can execute immediately to give them some short-term results. Tell us a bit about how you start in the world of sales.

[00:08:25] Kevin Hopp: For sure. For sure. So I got my career started in startup. So my first job out of college, I was the first hire at a seed stage startup. So I was the sales guy, the support guy, the product manager. I went to the trade shows. I wrote the blog, I did everything. And that was a really cool experience for me. But it also, you know, when that eventually came to an end, I thought about, well, what can you do that, that will, that you are naturally the best at that will make you the most money.

It turns out I'm pretty financially motivated. So if that was sales, right? So, so my next job after that was a BDR role at a, at a VC backed company here in San Diego. And I was a BDR for only about six, seven months. High performer got promoted to account executive role. And from there I've been in a variety of different closing roles, but last few years, I've been in sales consulting.

So I help companies very specifically that are venture backed software companies that want to learn process strategy and really a scalable system for going outbound. So my big thing is leveraging technology in a way that not only works for the reps, but works for the company, works for everybody. Right.

So if you use technology. Not, it turns these things that we're talking about, we're about to talk about, which is the worst part is sales, cold calling and cold email and getting hung up on and all that stuff. If you use technology and process in, in tandem together, it doesn't have to suck so much, you know, so that's what I do.

[00:09:57] Luigi Prestinenzi: Okay. Awesome. And obviously you came, you know, straight into from, from university. What were some of your biggest learnings early in the, in, in, starting in the role that allowed you to understand why. Prospecting was such an important part of, of building a successful sales career?

[00:10:13] Kevin Hopp: Well, I think the first time or the second job that I had, where I was in an account executive, I realized that I had the same problem as the first job where I was at a county executive.

And then it turns out the next job I had the same problem that I had the first two times, which is Kevin. You've got some good deals going. This is great, but every, every single pipeline review, the answer was more and you need more deals. Like I think this deal might close in two quarters. I think this deal is an enterprise deal that won't close this fiscal year.

I think you're going to get this one this month, but we need more pipeline. So I consistently saw that. That was my biggest challenge. And that led me to be super curious and just go to the market and figure out, do all my own research on like, okay. Is there a tool I can find that can help me send more personalized emails?

Is there a tool I could find to help me have more live conversations? Is there a platform I can use where I can find more buyers? Right. And then I started getting into LinkedIn and cold calling and, and understand the, the world of sales enablement basically. And it was just all to solve my own.

[00:11:24] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. And why do you think, cause I know that, you know, I think for many of us and I've been doing this for quite a few years now I started in that it wasn't called sales development. We were called telemarketers. Right? We were on the phone, we had a list and we just had to kind of book appointments or phone was their only way to engage with prospects.

We've come so far with technology. But yet, so many salespeople today are still reluctant to really get out there and prospect in a way that delivers consistent quality opportunity pipeline. Right. We know that pipeline health is such an important part of, of being successful in sales. Why do you think that it's 2022?

And even though we have all the technology we have, we can get people's cell numbers and mobile numbers and email addresses at the touch of a button. Without doing all the painstaking research to build your lists. Why is prospecting still a challenge for most organizations to get their team focused on every single day?

[00:12:29] Kevin Hopp: I think it's a, it's a bit of human nature, right? So, so human nature the dopamine systems in the brain love the rewards and we, we, we hate, we kind of hate cognitive challenges and the cognitive challenge is overcoming the idea that. You know, I spent all day yesterday and the day before talking with in, in pipeline deals with champions that like our software that are, you know, they came to us and they were saying, you know, it's between you and competitor X.

And I'm spending all day writing up the competitive guidelines around why we're different. And then I took them to lunch. And then it's all of this like reinforcing positive behavior and then outbound, it's this constant hamster wheel of. Oh, God, you know, I'm talking to people who don't know who I am and our egos are designed to protect that.

Right? So at the end of the day, it comes down to a self-confidence and a, you know, an ego preservation move. That's my take on it. Right? Sales reps are protecting their ego because if I don't cold call today, if I don't send those cold emails that don't get responded to, then I don't have to feel that feeling of let down.

Right. It's the same reason why I was terrible at. I was a terrible open, right. I had a lot of chick friends, you know, now I'm married by the way. But, but when I, when it was, you know, some of the, some of the boys, when you go out or just the openers, they could walk up to any girl at the bar and they were totally cool with, yeah.

She could say no, she could turn around and walk away. And I would always be like, ah, I don't know. It's that same concept. Ego and self-preservation, that drives us to naturally not want to prospect.

[00:14:09] Luigi Prestinenzi: Oh, I appreciate that feedback because I think we can address, like from a sales perspective, all the tactics.

I think the, one of the good thing about living in the world that we live in today. Do you can kind of get access to every single sales tactic available to help you prospect better. Right. But I don't think it's the tactic that sellers a lacking it's the internal belief system that really drives them to work on this everyday.

And I find it. If we don't address the psychology behind, why we not doing it or what's stopping sellers from doing it, we can keep shoving the tactics, the email sequencing tactics, the, you know, the messaging frameworks, the LinkedIn templates and all that stuff. Yeah. Like we can edit, but it's not fixing the problem, which is.

Salespeople because it is, it is a task that is hard to do. Like, let's be honest, nobody enjoys getting rejected and that's, what's going to happen. As you prospect people, aren't going to open your emails. People are going to hang up on you. I've done Dawn. Like it's just part of the process. And I can understand why people don't want to have that feeling of rejection or failure.

Yep, but we've got to address it. Yeah. Because otherwise we're just going to continue on this hamster wheel of we're going to go round and round in circles. It's going to be a consistent problem. And unfortunately, The gap, the salespeople missing target is getting bigger and bigger every single year.

[00:15:41] Kevin Hopp: For sure. For sure. So I think I, you know, my, my, my view of how to address that problem is to lower the effort, lower the barrier between a salesperson and prospecting. Right. So if you look at the problem, the problem is I'm not having enough net new conversations with people in my target market. That's problem.

Number one, problem. Number two is. I don't have their contact information. Right. That's, that's always a problem. How many lead databases are out there today? There's like a hundred of them and I don't endorse really any of them over the other because it's like, look, they all have, you know, 70% accuracy.

Some of the time, sometimes it's 50% accurate, sometimes 90% accurate, but it's like, you know and if you don't have their contact information, you feel like that's problem. Number one, that's too big for you to overcome, to even get the conversations. And if you do have the contact information, then. Well, I can only press so many numbers with my fingers on the phone in a given day.

So now it's that effort around. Okay. I have the kind of information, but do I want to put out the effort to actually pound the numbers to even get to the moment where you might get rejected? Right. So I, I'm a huge fan of lowering all that effort. So we'll come in with a system and a process and put it all into place where it's like, okay, we get that, get our leads here.

They come into this system. You press go on this thing and you look over here. And the first thing you say out of your mouth, every single time, it's Hey, this is Kevin with Hopp Consulting, how you doing today? And all of a sudden it becomes a system where the effort between success and the starting line becomes much smaller.

So you're chasing the success every day, instead of avoiding the failure of. Does that make sense? Like, so you're con so you put a positive spin on it and the reps are excited to get in every day to be like, I know I'm going to have good conversations today. I know I'm going to get a meeting. It's just a matter of time as opposed to the opposite, which is, oh God, like I'm going to get hung up on the day.

Like, someone's going to tell me they're not interested.

[00:17:38] Luigi Prestinenzi: How did you make that shift? Because obviously you went from, you mentioned earlier that you had a couple of roles where the same problem was occurring until you made that shift. To really think about net new pipeline creation. What did you do from a mindset perspective to go from that, you know, negative focus to reframe it to that positive focus so that your belief system changed when it came to prospecting?

[00:18:04] Kevin Hopp: I think I think I figured out how to, how to prospect in a way that, that I, that, that jelled with my. Natural state of being right. So not every sales person. And I've met a lot of sales people in my own podcast called the sales career podcast. I talked to salespeople for a living basically is what I do.

Not every sales person has the gift of the gab. It's the talker. It's the schmoozer is the, you know, the guy who would dominate at a happy hour. That's that, that happens to be me. That that is my personality asked my wife. I make friends everywhere we go. And she gets so annoyed. Cause she's an introvert and just not like that.

Yeah. But every sales person probably has a tendency, right? And I've coached clients where I'm trying to talk to this rep about how to do cold calling. And he's like, look, this is interesting, but the way I'm writing emails is actually showing success and they get more satisfaction out of taking that quiet time to write the emails and they get very analytical about AB testing and using different ways to do the emails and getting way kind of nerdy in that, in that channel.

That's just as much sales as me doing my, get to the gab. I just happened to know that it gets to the gab gels with Kevin hop. Yeah. So you need to find what method of prospecting and what, like channel basically prospecting. You can actually go and work in that you like naturally have a propensity for.

And if you don't have a propensity for any of them, maybe you shouldn't be in sales because if you don't want to reach out to people and yeah. Look, there's customer service jobs, and there's account management jobs everywhere. Right. It's important. It's just the other side of the house. Yeah. In an account management.

And you never have to pick up the phone. I mean, not never, but you basically never pick up the phone and someone says, who are you? Why are you calling me? Don't call me back. You avoid all that. Right. So that's really definitely, you know, scary. And you don't like people writing back through email unsubscribe.

Yeah, then sales isn't for you. So it's just finding what works best with your personality is really important.

[00:20:01] Luigi Prestinenzi: Okay. And this is great advice. I mean, I think I like that advice because it's saying, Hey, it's not a one size fits all approach. We all have our own personality. We've got to, we've actually got to leverage the strengths of their personality.

But what if like, and again, cause I'm, I'm a big fan of a multi-channel approach, right? I need to use all the channels that I have. To engage with my prospect is my view on the world. When it comes to prospecting is really simple. If I do the research prior on my ideal customer profile, I'm clear on the buyer persona, I'll have a bit of an understanding of the problems that they might face and the outcomes that we can possibly help them achieve.

Then I'm okay with reaching out to that person to get their attention and get some time to then share some insight and then say, This is what we're seeing. Are you experiencing any, maybe it makes sense for us to continue to chat, right? So I try to leverage all the channels and phone. I lead by phone just because that's all our voice has done it.

I can see why people leave with email. But what if, and we know we, the data says leading with email, sometimes doesn't deliver the optimal result because sometimes email just doesn't cut through and you need to use the phone to, so if you're the one prospect of us listening to this going mate, I resonate with given, he's saying.

But I'm not getting enough opportunities from, from email. I'm getting some, but not enough. How do I then go? Right. I'm not comfortable picking up the phone. It's not something that I really am pushing myself outside the comfort zone. What are the, some of the steps that I can put in place to help me get outside my comfort zone and start making phone.

[00:21:43] Kevin Hopp: You know, shameless plug, follow me, right? Follow Kevin Hoff on LinkedIn. I talk about cold calling all the time. I'm going to launch a live cold calling show here in a few weeks where you can just watch someone do it live and like you're gonna learn a lot. I'm launching a course online on how to do cold calling.

Like I it's funny, you asked me this Luigi, I am super passionate about this because I do believe that cold calling. The old way, which is kind of what you mentioned in the beginning, which is I was a telemarketer. I had a list and I was trying to book a meeting that is dead like that form of cold.

[00:22:16] Luigi Prestinenzi: Absolutely. And I agree with you, right? Because we have enough data and insight and we can gather enough information about somebody to go. This is not really a cocoa because. I've got can personalize this. I can make it relevant to you. And my value proposition should be aligned because of these attributes that, you know, I can see about Hugh.

But I think where a lot of sellers get stuck, right? Because I say this, I coach a lot of salespeople and this as well is the actual open line. Like how do you see. How do you, I don't want to even call it a cold call, right? Because again, with all the things that we just discussed, it's not a cold call anymore, man.

We're, we're leading with enough information that we can build, you know, bridge the gap of, and then reduce that relationship tension. So what are some of that? What are some of the open lines that you use that have allowed you to. You know, results from, from, from the phone?

[00:23:08] Kevin Hopp: Sure, sure. So I think one of the things that I am, I push constantly with all the clients that I coach in my consulting business.

I talk about this a lot in the course is avoiding what I call the number one problem with cold calling. And it's what turns cold callers away faster. It makes more customer service agents than anything. And that is what I call. False negative. A false negative is someone that does not really know who you are.

They don't know why you're calling and they don't. They did not have a valuable two-way conversation with you at all, but they tell you they're not interested. And to take them off your list and to go away that false negative does a few things. Right? Number one. You probably shouldn't call them back at least for a while.

So, ah, crap. Now, now I can't call this guy for another 90 days until he forgets about this number two ego hit. Oh yeah. He said he's not interested. I'm important. I value. I mean something, but this guy just told me to go F off and to eat my own shoe. Yeah, avoiding the false negative is all about using a permission-based opener and active listening.

You need to have both. You really do. And I see, I see, I see so many sales reps, miss cause they'll use a permission based opener, but they won't actively listen. Now, what does active listening mean? Can you tell the difference? I mean, question for anyone? Can you tell the difference between someone who's sitting there quietly in an office talking on a phone and someone who's talking to you on their speaker phone, in their car, because I can, and I bet you can Luigi. And I bet all these millennials and gen Z folks that are entry-level cold callers has spent enough time on the phone to understand the difference and they can hear it. Call that out, call that out immediately. I call it out every single time that I hear that. And the, in the first five seconds of the call, Hey, this is Kevin with Hopp Consulting Group.

How are you doing today? Oh, oh, oh, who's yours. Oh, John sounds like I caught you on the road. I could hear that you're in your car is now a good time to talk and John will be like, oh no, no, I I'm. I'm a little busy right now. Yeah, no worries. John. I'll call you back later. So now if I had just gone forward by permission-based approach, he might've said.

You know, the natural curiosity of every single prospect is who are you? Why are you calling? Who are you? Why are you calling? Everybody wants to know, so that they're going to push their agenda, which is to find out those two things. Now the dirty little secret is if you get to that point and they don't have time to talk, you're going to get a false.

This is Kevin with Hopp Consulting Group. I was calling to have an introductory conversation. I don't know who Hopp Consulting Group is. I didn't ask for this call. I'm busy. Therefore, I'm going to say the words I'm not interested, but it has nothing to do with being interested. It has nothing to do. It has everything to do with a false negative impression of this.

Person's willingness to interact with your company, buy from you, whatever. And that's where sales reps mess up the most is this false negative. And they go, oh yeah, Kevin, I've talked to that guy. He's not interested you, is he really?

[00:26:13] Luigi Prestinenzi: And this is really cool. I think this is a great kind of you know, a great discussion thread to be thinking about, you know, because you absolutely right.

We need to hear the surrounding of the prospect to go, or, you know, potentially this is just not the right time to be talking to this guy because he's in the middle of doing something. Right. But on the flip side, shouldn't we always anticipate that it's never a good time for our prospects given they're there, most of the time we'll be doing something because we're unsolicited, like it's an unsolicited cold.

[00:26:42] Kevin Hopp: Yes and no. Right? So, so I, I, if, if we're talking about an omni-channel sales world, right, if every time I call this prospect, I hear that he's in his car or every time I call his prospects, you know, my favorite is what, what is this?

I'm in a meeting. Yeah, like, wait, you're in an important meeting and you picked up a cold call. Like what's wrong with you? Anyway. It's like, everyone does it. It's this weird, you know, it's the same. It's the same cultural phenomenon behind why 13 year old girls love to post on Instagram? What do they post?

They post ask me anything. Ask me questions. It's the same piece of the brain. Same part of the brain is the reason why executives pick up a cold call during an important meeting. It's because there is that natural curiosity of, oh my God, this could be someone asking something of me where I could talk about myself and they want to like that curiosity is really there.

So. To your point. Is there ever going to be a perfect time? I don't know. Right. But what's really important is that upfront contract and the activist is the upfront contract. Sounds like this, Luigi. I know I'm an interruption. Do you have 30 seconds? I could tell you exactly why. And if they agree to that, that at least we're going to get the pitch out right now asking for the 30 seconds.

Sometimes they will say back to you, I have a, I have exactly 30 seconds. And at that point I trained my colleagues to say, you know what? I was hoping to have a conversation after the 30 seconds, I'm going to call back another time and see if we can have a conversation. And if you just dropped that line, you're calling out either their bullshit or.

They're going to say, oh yeah. I mean, I got to go. He said, all right, bye. Get you again, because if you're using software, which I advocate for you'll, you'll get them again automatically the next day, you know?

[00:28:38] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. I looked at it, I think. Absolutely. I'm, I'm, I'm working through this myself. I'm working through kind of the, from a psychology perspective, what's going through the buyer's mind.

And I can see how that strategy would work, because what you're trying to do is, is essentially. Get a prospect to give you a bit of time so that they can hear what you have to say. And then they'll validate the what's in it for me by saying, actually this is something that could benefit me. I want to continue to hear a little bit more from you so I can see where this could take a prospect down the path.

[00:29:10] Kevin Hopp: For sure. And I think one of the other keys to this is the way that I teach prospecting. Hugely focused on the pitch as a means of closing. Yeah. Okay. And that's important. There's a lot of cool called method methodologies that preach that at the perfect cold call is the pitch, the close, like the pitch I'm going to, I'm going to pitch you something so incredibly amazing that you're going to say in within 15 to 20 seconds.

Yeah, absolutely. I'll take it. Yeah. Like that's, that's a lot of cool called methodology out there. So to use that approach, I teach very different. I teach conversations are. Yeah. Now, what does that mean? I want you to have a back and forth dialogue, right? A back and forth dialogue with this person. And our biggest goal on this call is not just a book of meeting.

Yeah. Booking a meeting is like the best outcome, but it's not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to learn things that we do not. Now, if you learned something you did not know, even if you don't pick a meeting you one, that's a win. That's a good thing. I call it a good know. When I, when I programmed the dialers, I have a disposition called good.

No, the good, no is okay. I learned something new today. I had a meaningful conversation with them. I can take this information, put it back into my CRM, put them in a nurture campaign, doing all sorts of stuff, which is good. A lot of organizations will just have this binary not interested in. It's like, geez, like there's a lot more dynamics to this because it's a human interaction.

Right. And by teaching that it's all about conversations. My BDRs are good at being conversational lists. Meaning. It's the pitch is two things. It's context and question context and question context, Luigi. I work with others, you know, CEOs of sales, acceleration firms to help them, you know get more money in less time.

Now, what is your strategy look like right now? When it comes to getting more money in less time, contact. Question. Yeah. I work with people like you to solve this business challenge with this thing. Now here's a question that you can't say yes or no to you're going to say, well, we don't do it that way. Or we use this or we use that, which then takes us into a whole conversation of back and forth.

And once you get someone talking, it's human nature that they want to keep answering questions. Right?

[00:31:25] Luigi Prestinenzi: Absolutely, I think this is great. I actually liked the way that you framed it up. Just in that framework is something that's consistent with the way that we teach our. Teach people within our community, how to prospect, right?

You need to lead with some form of value hypothesis. Then that'll open up to a question. We can't often say we can't actually progress a conversation if they're not sharing anything because they need to share something. There needs to be some dialogue and there's gotta be an open two way conversation happening.

Otherwise it's just us talking at somebody else and potentially not even, it's not even aligned to what they're looking for. So I think, I think there's actually been some pretty good tactics in what you've shared today and I'll make sure we're going to make sure for our listeners. We'll put in the show notes, your podcast, the Sales Career podcasts, we'll put where they can get access to it and also your LinkedIn profile.

And is there anywhere else that our listeners can find or engage with you?

[00:32:19] Kevin Hopp: Kevin I'm on Twitter at Kev Hopp. Aside from that my website hoppconsultinggroup.com, that's coming around. And then I have my personal page, which is right here, solo.to/hopp. So you can find, find links to me doing live cold, calling me on other podcasts and stuff.

I do advisory consulting for BDR teams, kind of very specifically, if that's an area you want to want to talk about I do call coaching and then I have that course coming out at some point. So, but LinkedIn is a great spot to start. Okay.

[00:32:47] Luigi Prestinenzi: Awesome. Well, we're going to, you know, we we'll, we'll share all that and just before we let you go, man, what's one piece of advice that, if you could start your career again, you would have given yourself when it came to when it came to prospecting?

[00:32:59] Kevin Hopp: Practice, Practice. So the, the hardest thing to do is to think, okay, I've got the script that was given to me from someone else that I'm just going to call people and start talking about it, practice with your significant other, when you go.

Practice with the first person you meet at the bar practice with your, you know, your girlfriends. You know, like I used to have people come over to our house on the weekend either. I knew my girlfriend knew and then I would talk to them. Boyfriend or girlfriend, whatever it is. And I try to explain to them what I do at work.

And I found out when I was an SDR, I'm like, crap. I'm like terrible at explaining this. I say a different thing. Every time I talk about it. Practice, talk about what you do a lot, because once you get that talk, track down, you internalize how to talk about the business problems and valuable solutions you provide.

Then that anxiety around having the live conversations starts to melt away.

[00:33:49] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. That's awesome advice. And you know, as we say, confidence comes from being competent and you can only become competent by space repetition and doing things over and over again. So, Kevin, I just want to say thank you for jumping on the podcast with us.

You've shared some incredible insight. There's an incredible framework that I know our listeners will get benefit from and execute in their role immediately. So I want to say, thanks. Thanks for the contribution you make to our community mate. And yeah, we look forward to possibly having you on as a guest another day on the Sales IQ Podcast.

[00:34:19] Kevin Hopp: Awesome. Thanks Luigi. Appreciate it.

[00:34:22] Credits: This show has been recorded remotely. Produced by Sales IQ Global, audio editing and music production by Stefan Malliate, show notes by Victoria Mathieson and graphic design by Julie Marshall. Don't forget to leave a rating and review on your podcast player. And if you want to find more about the programs that we offer at Sales IQ, head to www.salesiqglobal.com.

This episode was digitally transcribed.