The One and Only DemandJen
In episode nine we sit down with the one and only Jen Allen-Knuth to talk about selling with frameworks, personalizing outreach, leveraging data, and more!
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All right, guys.
Let's huddle up.
Hello everyone.
This episode, we're really, really excited to introduce
the one, the only, Jen Allen Knuth.
- Yay!
- Yay!
I'm so excited to be here.
I'm especially excited to be here
because two women podcast hosts,
like we need more of this.
I've been loving watching you both.
So thanks so much for having me.
We're so excited for you to be on.
You know, we loved your slogan at first,
like, "Daman Jen."
And we're like, "We have to get her on
because she's awesome."
- I mean, that's genius.
How did you come up with that?
- I can take zero credit for this.
When I quit Challenger, I had a boss
and I told him I was leaving.
He was like, "All right, listen.
If you're gonna go out on your own,
if you do not name your business, demand Jen with a J,
like you have a wasted opportunity in front of you."
I was like, "This is the best goodbye gift ever.
Thank you."
So I wish I came up with it.
I did it.
- I wish he came up with our podcast title.
(laughs)
- I'll help tap him.
- Do it again.
- We can always rebrand the Lyle of the year.
- Yeah, you're right.
- All right.
Jen, we'd love to take it back, however far we need to,
of what brought you here today?
What was your first job?
Like, what is your story?
- Yeah, I think like most of us,
my first job was probably babysitting of some sort,
but my first like actual job.
- That's so true.
- Yeah, right.
- That's right.
- Unpaid babysitting.
My first actual job was in a restaurant.
I was a hostess.
I was actually fired for my first job.
It was the only time I ever got fired.
I know.
I was, this is gonna stop.
I'm really cheesy.
I don't even know why I brought this up,
but I was in the homecoming court.
And so I called the restaurant and I was like,
"You know, I'm so sorry.
I might get homecoming clean, so I can't come in tonight."
They're like, "Yeah, we don't care at all about that.
You're fired if you don't come in."
I was like, "Oh, okay."
So that was my first taste of like,
- Did you win homecoming?
- Yeah, I did.
I went to school with like seven people.
- Oh my God, that's so worth it.
- That's so worth it.
But so I started there and then I was in restaurant
until like through college.
And then when I got to college,
I thought I wanted to be a sports journalist.
I don't know why.
I'm not particularly like a confrontational person.
And I think you really have to like get up
and you know, when someone loses
and stick a microphone on their face.
That is not at all who I am.
I don't know what I was thinking.
And so I ended up getting into the major of recreation
and event management and coming out of that,
but I thought I was going to do
is more event management stuff.
So I was interning at this company
where we did like final four and bowl game travel
for alumni organizations.
It's kind of cool.
Like I love the scenario planning aspect of it.
Hate at the fact that you're always standing
in like a bus parking lot with a clipboard
and something cool is going on over here
and you're over here doing the boring stuff.
So very long way of saying,
when I got to my first job,
it was actually because I had a college roommate
working at this company corporate executive board.
She was like, "You got to come here.
"Everybody's smart. It's fun. It's cool."
I had no idea what they did.
I just knew I wanted to get out of central Pennsylvania
where I was living at the time
'cause I went to Penn State.
And so I interviewed and I interviewed
with the most remarkable saleswoman ever.
And I left at interview being just like,
"I still don't really know what this company does,
"but I know I want to be like her."
And so that's how I kind of landed in sales.
- I love that.
I really hope people say that about us.
Like when they interview with us,
they're like, "I don't know what they do,
"but I want to be like them."
- Right, that's the most.
What was her position?
Ms. Keria?
- She was an account manager.
So she was responsible.
At the time, she was selling like an annual research
best practices subscription to Fortune 100 CMOs.
And so she just had such a force of presence.
And I could tell just like the minute I walked in there,
I'm like, "This woman is going to hold me accountable.
"She is not going to let me cut corners."
There was just something about the way
that she communicated, the way that she held herself.
Like, I don't know, I just was totally wild by her.
- Do you still talk to her?
- I haven't talked to her in years.
I still talk about her a lot
because I really credit her for like making sales
feel like a career that I could do,
but I haven't talked to her in years.
- You never forget your first honestly.
(laughs)
Maybe if somehow this reaches her page,
she'll take a look.
- There you go.
- We didn't even ask, like,
"Did you end up getting the job?"
- I did, I did get the same job.
- I'm like, "No."
I'm like, "No, I haven't."
(laughs)
- Could you imagine?
I'm curious, like, you know,
so many people look at your content.
Your very cap, is the word captivating?
Yeah, I think it's captivating.
You're very captivating.
Like, I remember I saw you speaking,
I think it was the last go-to-market show
and you had such a good presentation
and was talking about like, where is Waldo?
So I'm curious, like, how do you spark ideas?
Because you're just like always producing
really good content.
- I, first of all, thank you for saying that.
I find that, like, a lot of people,
my best content ideas come when I'm either in the shower
or when I'm taking a walk.
So I'm not gonna shower seven times a day,
but I can take more walks.
So I've been really intentional lately,
I think, in particular, of just giving myself the freedom
to go out there and just like kind of let my mind wander,
where I come up with really shit content,
is when I sit and look at this computer screen all day long
and scroll LinkedIn and just end up finding myself
talking about the same thing everybody else is.
So I think a big part of it is just,
I think with anything creative,
you've gotta kind of let your mind wander a little bit.
But the second part and more, I guess, helpful part
to that would be, I just find that in sales,
there's so many lessons we learn
every single time we have a conversation.
So if I go back to when I first started creating content,
I didn't know what the hell I was doing,
all I would do at the end of the day
or the beginning of the day is say,
okay, what happened yesterday in a sales conversation
that I think is explorable?
So what was an assumption someone had
or what was an assumption I had,
what was something I tried that didn't work?
And then I just started putting that kind of stuff out there.
And I think one of the reasons that it worked
was because I wasn't putting stuff out there
and saying, you know, because this worked
in yesterday's call, this is something everybody must do.
And you're doing it wrong.
If you don't do it this way,
and what I've observed over time is just there's a lot
of content in LinkedIn particularly that is written like that.
Like you're a moron if you don't do it this way,
you're getting it wrong.
And it's just, I always felt like there was like a finger
pointing at me with a lot of that content.
And so what I knew is I just didn't wanna make people feel
that way.
I wanted to recognize that there's a lot of gray in sales.
And this might be one way to solve a problem,
but it doesn't mean it's the only way.
If you're not doing it this way,
it doesn't mean that you're a moron.
It just means that maybe you have different lived experiences
up to this point.
So those are a few of the things that are really important
to me in my content is I never wanna put someone down
to pull myself up.
I always wanna make it seem like,
hey, there's this thing I've learned,
let's learn about it together.
And you know, it's ultimately your choice
if you wanna do something with it or not.
- That's so interesting.
'Cause I feel like there's such pressure
behind content these days.
Like what time are you posting?
How short are your posts?
Like are they easy to read?
Are they relatable?
Are they too?
Like it's just, then it makes people not wanna even go there
anymore, forget to sound like themselves or like humans.
It happens to me all the time.
I find myself on chat, GBTV like, no sound more like me,
please.
I don't understand what you're saying.
- I think also what you touched on too is like when people
are saying like, oh, if you're not doing this,
you're wrong, these types of things.
And then it has people on the other end thinking like,
oh my God, I gotta change up my strategy
or have to do it this way now.
Or even though this way has been working for me for so long,
this person says I need to do it this way.
And then it has you even more overthinking
and down a rabbit hole and so on and so forth.
So I think that's like a really great point
that like anyone who's listening, if we have viewers,
no, just kidding.
But like really something to take away,
like to stick to what you know.
And just because Joe Schmo on the internet is saying like,
hey, you should be doing it this way.
It doesn't mean you have to change your whole strategy.
- I feel like that's in life too.
- Yeah, for sure.
- Not just content, right?
- Yeah.
- That's the thing.
I think, you know, people who,
if you think about people who we really like spending time with,
it's people who make us feel smart,
people who make us feel funny.
I think one of the things that has taken off in content now
is to try to make ourselves look like the smartest person.
Like I see one more person come up with a go-to-market name,
like a new go-to-market name for a new motion.
I'm going to jump into my bed.
But it's like, you don't have to be the smartest person
in the room.
I think in many ways in content,
it's more about being relatable.
Am I someone that, you know, when I read your content,
can I see that this person has had similar challenges
and problems that I have?
If I believe that,
I'm going to be more likely to listen
to what they have to say.
It's not like I only listen to the people
who make themselves sound like they're the smartest person
in the room.
Honestly, like a lot of that content is really off-putting
to me.
And I just, I mean, Victoria, you brought it up.
Like when you're in sales,
the hardest part about being in sales is there are 5 million
opinions about how to do any one job in sales.
And so, right, it's very easy to get lost in the spiral of like,
I'm going to try this and then this and then this and then this
and then you never end up figuring out what works
because you're too busy trying too many things.
You never can get the reps to make it work.
I also think it's like the people who are authentic
and they're posting like,
you can tell that their personality is shining through
or, you know, it sounds like they're brand,
like your brand demand Jen, right?
Like it's really you and authentic
and you're bringing like your taste to your content.
And I think that's why a lot of people probably relate
to this things that you do post.
But I will say like, I didn't do that in the beginning.
So I don't want to make it sound like I just, you know,
it was like effortless.
I, in the beginning when I was posting,
I was so afraid of trolls and people being like,
you're wrong on a public platform that I've hosted really
safe stuff.
It was all, if you go back like to 2020,
it's all just like bar charts and pie graphs and things like that
because I'm like, you can't argue with data.
No one's going to come from me on this data.
And no one did, but in the same token, no one really,
I don't think a lot of people like remembered my content.
It didn't really stand out.
And so I give Josh Bron a lot of credit.
He, because we post about sort of similar topics,
he reached out to me and was like, I've own you.
You post smart stuff, but I got to ask like,
why do you never have an opinion about any of it?
And I was just like, oh, that's harsh,
but I needed to hear it, right?
Cause he's like, you have all this sales experience.
You post this, this graph and I'm waiting for you
to have like a story to tell or a point to make
and you just never do it.
And so that conversation really, I think,
gave me a lot more confidence just saying,
look, people are going to argue with you,
whether you're right or wrong,
because it's the freaking internet.
Like that's what you get when you post things on the internet.
So spend a lot less time worrying about that shit
and worry about like, do I have things
that could be helpful to someone?
Do you get trolls like on the list?
- I was just about to ask that if she still gets trolls.
- It's funny.
- So my sister, she posts a lot of content too.
And she found a page on Reddit.
And I wonder if you've seen it,
it's like LinkedIn lunatics or something like that.
I'm like, what is this TikTok?
Like this is supposed to be professional.
- Yeah, no, people troll Delilah.
- That's insane, but okay, anyways, you get those?
- Yeah.
And it's never anybody who's like doing better than you.
And that's what I've come to realize.
Like I have this one person that,
I don't remember anything about them,
but they wrote on a video,
they said, you should never speak in public again.
I was like, okay, that's my entire business.
That's cool.
- They're so jealous.
- It's a thing that's like, whether or not they're jealous,
it's like, I do believe deeply that hurt people.
- Hurt other people.
- Yeah.
- I'm just like, I'm not gonna get in a fight
with someone in a public forum.
It's just not my style.
I have made the mistake once of engaging back and forth
with a, you know, shit poster.
And I got nothing out of it.
And I wasted a ton of my time
and then I wasn't satisfied at the end
'cause those people never come around.
So if anything, if I do believe it's well-intentioned,
like I'll take it to a DM and I'll just be like,
hey, here's how I'm interpreting what you said.
I might be just like reading it the wrong way.
And I've resolved a ton of stuff that way.
But I think that requires someone,
like I love healthy skepticism.
I love when someone pushes back on an idea.
I think that's the whole point of LinkedIn.
It's not to agree with each other,
but there's a respectful way to do it.
And then there's a way to do it
to be like the right person in the room.
And that's what I don't have much time for.
- We love emotional communication.
- Yeah, but I honestly think that if you're getting trolled,
then you're doing something right
'cause you're getting big.
I'm saying like people get trolled
'cause I'm like a nobody I'm LinkedIn.
Like my friends would never comment mean things, you know?
But if you're getting strangers to comment,
you're on the right path.
- Yeah, your stuff is heading somewhere.
- Yeah.
- It should be like, I mean, you can go online
and you can post like, you need to ask great questions
and sales, you need to deliver value.
And it's like, okay, you're going through the motions,
but you're not really saying anything
that's meaningfully adding to the conversation.
And so I think you're right.
Like I'm not someone, I will never be a person
who posts just to get like a rise out of someone.
I think there's a lot of that now too
and you can see it from a mile away and I hate it.
But I do think like it is okay
if someone violently disagrees with your idea.
It's just an idea as long as you position it that way.
People always wanna just talk
just to like hear the sound of their own voices.
And sometimes I think that's kind of how it is with content
and like people posting on LinkedIn.
It's like, they're not providing value.
They just want like their name to be seen or something like that.
- Totally agree.
It's like you can tell someone's intention when they write.
It's why I love writing so much.
It tells you how someone thinks what they believe,
what's important to them.
So I'm with you.
What's like the biggest opportunity that,
I mean, maybe you can't say
but that you've gotten from your content?
My entire business, like every opportunity I've had,
since I left, my last company has come directly
from my writing on LinkedIn
or someone seeing me present somewhere else.
And I think that's why like I'm not someone
that's like everybody should be on LinkedIn.
But if your goal is to do anything similar to what I do
and speak and train and all this stuff,
it's like it is the easiest channel
because it gives someone the ability as a bystander
to see what you stand for and to see how you engage.
And it's like basically a commercial
that's free for me, this costs me nothing.
It's free for them.
They don't have to like, you know,
go through a gate or do any of that shit
that nobody wants to do.
So I think the biggest one that I had this year was GE reached out
and apparently there had been a sales leader
in one of their divisions who had been sharing my content.
I never knew he did it.
Then when they were looking for their sales kickoff speaker,
the guy said, "Hey, I'd really like to have Jen.
"Here's an example of a video."
He shared a LinkedIn post
and then I got it in one call.
Like that was so easy today.
- That's so exciting.
Congratulations. - Yeah.
Thank you.
It was really proud of that.
I think being someone else is like SKO speakers,
like, you know, you made it.
- Okay.
- And everybody's like waiting for this one, like speech.
- Aw, yeah.
Like I remember we went to the outreach conference
last year in Seattle and Mel Robbins was a speaker.
So like, yeah.
- We were in front row with our popcorn ready.
- Oh, we're obsessed with her.
So it's like, if you get the chance to speak
at someone's SKO, that's sick.
That's really fun.
So something that you talk about is like risk aversion
and losing prospects because of their gut feeling.
'Cause we have a lot of SDRs who watch the pod.
- Yeah.
So if I think back to how I was taught to sell,
you go in and you show someone
that there is a better way to solve the problem.
So no matter what you're selling,
you're always selling a better way or a different way.
And so I would go in when I was selling Challenger,
which is a sales methodology,
which keeps no one's lights on.
Let's be honest.
There's the plenty of companies who have methodologies
and plenty of companies that don't.
Like, is it better to have one?
Sure.
But can I get by without having one?
Also sure.
And so what would happen is I would go in
and I would talk to these CROs and be like,
"Listen, here's all the great reasons
"why you should buy this methodology
"and you should have a methodology
"and it should be Challenger.
"And here's all these case studies
"and here's all these wins."
And they'd sit there and they'd nod their head
and they'd be like, "You're right, that is really cool.
"And this is much better than what we're doing today."
And then two weeks later, they'd come back
and be like, "But we're still just gonna have Debbie,
"like train people.
"She's been here a hundred years
"and like, sure, training's fine.
"Maybe not the best, but it's good enough."
Because we've got all these other things over here
that are really important that we need to spend our time on.
And so when I started looking at why I was losing deals,
it was almost always because of that.
It was rarely because someone was like,
"No, I hate this methodology
"or no, I think what we're doing is better."
I was getting head nods that what you offer is better,
but we're gonna stick with good enough
because what I didn't appreciate is as a sales leader,
anytime you buy anything,
we'll use sales methodology, but this is true for anything,
you put a massive target on your back,
particularly right now,
because you've gotta raise your hand
in an environment where most CEOs and CFOs
are like telling their teams to spend less due less.
And you gotta say, like,
I actually kinda wanna spend some money
that we didn't plan for.
That is a risky proposition for someone.
It is also a highly, highly effortful experience for someone
because now I've gotta go and get everybody on the bus
and that is all work on top of a job
that is probably already difficult.
And so when I talk about the gut feeling,
this is a really gut feeling reaction
a lot of my prospects were having,
which is I could do all this,
but if I buy a sales methodology,
it means I've gotta get marketing on board,
our leadership team on board, product on board,
then I gotta pull all of our salespeople off the line
and is the problem even that big to warrant doing all that stuff?
So that conversation was happening in my customers' minds
and I'm over here being like,
we have a 15 times ROI
and they're like, no, everything's so relatable by the way.
So I'm just like loving this and getting back.
Yeah, and so what I realized after losing enough
of those deals, unfortunately, I was working for Challenger
so I was learning from that methodology
is that oftentimes people choose to do nothing different,
not because you're not good enough.
It's just because to do anything at all
is really risky and scary.
And so that's where I was gonna say,
you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
So I think you can, but you've gotta get that dog
to want to use the analysis.
You've gotta get that dog to learn a new trick.
And so often we are forcing a new trick down someone's throat
without really ever changing their hearts and minds around,
do I even think I need to change it all?
And so that's where like all the cost of inaction
kind of content came out, which is once I stop saying,
let me just forget about what I'm selling
and look at the problem of what my solution solves for
and start there.
Like, can I show that this problem is costing you
way more risk, cost time money than anything
I'm about to ask you to do?
And so it just totally shifted what I talked about
with customers and the better I got at that,
the more access I got, the higher up I got
because I wasn't a sales rep just like pitching
a shiny widget.
I was someone who was coming in and holding up a mirror
to their business to say like,
look, we've always done it this way for a reason
'cause it used to work, but now this thing over here,
this is our enemy, that made it not work anymore.
Let's first agree on that before we start talking about
like solutions to fix the problem.
- As SDR leaders, that's kind of how we phrase
all of our outreach to our SDRs,
like you wanna lead with the pain
and talk more about them less about us.
So find any pain points that you can in their experience
and how much it's actually costing them at the end of the day.
So instead of saying like, you need our new shiny product
and it costs X amount of money,
it's like you're losing this amount of money
because of your experience or what you currently are doing
and this will actually save you money.
So very similar to your philosophy.
And we also saw you do give advice to SDR.
So is that kind of along the lines
of what you tell them as well?
- The hardest job in the whole sales arena
is the SDR job, full stop.
Like I will, that is one thing I will fight to the mailover.
Like if I can get a prospect interested enough
to take a call, like the job of closing them,
there's still all these hurdles,
but the job of closing them is easier.
I think it's, I've always thought it's wild
that we give the least experienced person in the business,
the hardest job to get someone to want to spend time with us.
- Agreed.
- But it does set someone up for a great career in sales
'cause if you can do that, skill well,
I do believe that like that's what makes you
a good sales person.
So what I talk about with SDRs a lot is like,
you need to think a lot less about what you do,
like what your company does
and why it's great and start thinking a lot more
about what your customer does, why they think and believe,
that approach is good enough.
What information can I introduce to get them
to have the moment to realize like,
"Shit, why have we always done it this way?"
It's like a very tricky psychological thing to do,
which I love spending time with SDRs on
'cause if I come in and I'm like,
I use this analogy a lot.
I walked into a party and I saw someone who was dressed
like an idiot and they thought it looked good.
If I walked up to that person and I was like,
you look like you're really struggling to get dressed
this morning and it probably is resulting
in you having no dates and no friends.
Like it would be not cruelest.
(laughs)
Most evil thing on earth to do.
So I could be right, maybe I'm right about it,
but I'm still wrong because of my delivery
is just like massively off-putting.
Oh, that's such a good analogy, right?
But we do this shit all the time and cold,
looks like you're struggling to, what?
Like you don't know me, you just have to know
that I'm struggling to do my job.
Well, that's when we say like,
you don't wanna call anyone's baby ugly.
Yeah. So we're trying to like tip toe around it, but.
Exactly, so it's like just forget about that.
Don't attack the behavior,
attack the beliefs and assumptions
that dictate that behavior.
Because for all of us, we hold truths to be true.
That's the stupidest thing I'll say today.
We hold these things to be true.
It's okay, I ask you who writes your content.
(laughs)
We hold these things to be true,
but it's because somewhere along the way
we heard someone we admire say this is the right way to do it
or we did it at our last company
or I don't know, we just assume this is the right way.
I can find why someone thinks and believes
that this approach is good enough
and I can introduce new information there.
Now all of a sudden it's their aha moment
and they're the one to be like,
"Oh, I've got this great big idea."
And now all I've done is just make that possible.
Again, just like the conversation
we were talking about with content,
I wanna be a rep who is smarter about the customer's business.
I think that's a stupid bar to hold for anybody,
especially SDRs, but I should be able to come in
with a point of view to get someone second
guessing the way they've always done it.
That I think is a very fair standard to hold us to.
- That's so true.
And it's like coming in from like a consultative approach
and not more so of like,
"Hey, this sucks about your business.
"Let me tell you why we're a great type thing."
- Yes.
- Now me and Delilah are like,
"We need to change our emails."
(laughs)
- No, I'm just thinking because of this,
me and Victoria are full believers
in being super personalized.
Sequences are great because they keep us efficient.
But in terms of the content purpose of a sequence,
we really like to pull back a little bit
because we want them to be able to personalize it,
really dig into their experience like you were saying.
So we're more now about framework
versus specific verbiage that you have to say.
Is there a specific framework you might not have mentioned
that you put in your emails or you recommend SDRs to go by?
- Yes, I'm glad you asked.
And again, this is not the right framework
or the only framework, it's just a framework I prefer.
I love starting with an observation about them.
Reason being is you all know, right?
Like the preview text is where someone decides,
"Do I open or do I not?"
And so when I write an email,
I want them to see right off the bat.
I don't want it to be like,
"I was reading your annual report.
"I just want to get to the damn point.
"Like what is the thing I saw them trying to do
"that shows an email to one person?"
And the second line would be,
and because of what I saw you trying to do,
it looks like maybe this could be a potential issue
to get there.
So if I'm going from A to B,
here's this like roadblock right here.
Then the next line is social proof,
but not in the sense of like,
and we worked with so-and-so and they worked with us
and then everything was magic and roses
and they have a thousand percent ROI,
but rather social proof in the sense of like,
I have worked and had conversations with other leaders
in a similar domain to you,
who were weighing the pros and cons of,
"Do I go left or do I go right?"
So I think that is something we diminish a lot of salespeople.
We don't have to show like why when someone bought from us,
everything was magic,
'cause people are skeptical of that anyway.
What I do want to show is I've had conversations
with other people and I have a window
into pros and cons and advantages and disadvantages
that you might not be seeing yet.
And that's valuable.
And then lastly would be I'm a big fan of like,
in either way or PS close,
so either way as a softener,
like either way loved seeing this
and compliment them on something
that you genuinely think is cool about their business,
it just removes like the desperate last of like,
can you, are you free on Tuesday for five seconds?
So I can explain our value prop.
- To where the PS was like,
where I would put a really highly personalized thing
that I don't think has anything to do
with the body of the email.
Like everybody knows I'm a dog lover.
I'd be like, you know,
so I've got two rescues, I've got for myself.
Like just something that shows that I'm a human being,
but I would never spend more than five minutes
looking for something like that
because I don't think that's what books us the meaning.
- I love the pros and cons because you're right.
It's not like coming in and saying like,
hey, like we did 20 X and ROI, yada, da, whatever,
but it's more so like, hey, like I work with leaders
like yourself, I can give you a list of pros and cons
as to like why you should change the way
you're doing your business essentially.
- Yeah.
And the way I'll script it is just like, you know,
if you open to hearing how Acme and Beta thought through
whether or not they did X
and X would be whatever they're trying to do.
And so it's just like, I'm not saying
I have all the answers in the world.
I'm not saying I know better than you.
I'm not even talking about my solution.
I'm just saying like we have to recognize
the hardest part for a buyer is actually deciding
to do anything.
And so the more we can help be helpful to them there
instead of just once you've decided to do something,
here's the best thing you could possibly decide to buy.
Like that is this much of the buying journey
versus figuring out what to do is that much for anyone.
Not watching this, I'm using my hands.
- On a podcast, just do good though.
- Have you always shortened your emails
or has lavender really?
'Cause for Delilah and myself, like we now think differently
on how we write emails and like what our formats are.
So I'm curious if like when I was a challenger,
we were probably like, I was on Outlook, Teams and LinkedIn
just straight up LinkedIn.
Like that was my tech stack.
There was no other tech stack.
And I remember being on LinkedIn,
seeing Will, All Red's content.
And if you look at my background,
all the time I spent at companies
was really research driven companies.
Like Challenger was a research driven methodology.
CEB was a research driven best practice organization.
So I'm a big fan of anytime where you can take data
to remove the like opinion bake off in an organization.
I love that.
And so when I saw Will posting about it,
I was like, okay, but I already write great emails,
but I was covering for the SDR leader at the time
because they were out on personal leave.
So I was like, I'll just, you know, I'll bring Will in
and we'll have the team look at Lavender.
And he was in the session.
I think he was like, why don't we pull up one of your emails?
And so I took an email that I loved
that I thought was like the best email ever.
Pulled it up.
It got like a 70 something.
And I was like, well damn it.
It is the most humbling experience.
Like if I feel so dumb when I use Lavender sometimes,
I'm like humbling me please.
Yeah, but it's good, right?
I love that.
Amazing.
I have faith in the outcome
'cause it's like, how am I gonna argue
with a billion data points?
Like I haven't said a billion cold emails.
So I remember in that moment,
he was like, your big thing is length.
And my attitude at the time is yeah,
but I'm putting in all these hyper relevant things.
He's like, that's great,
but you've got like five emails in one email.
And so that was the reason why I just was such
an advocate for them because I was like, gosh,
she's so right.
And now I look at that, like I'm like you,
I look at the stuff and unsure tonality is one
that I absolutely love.
I don't think it's just for cold emails.
I think it's for conversations.
And so it absolutely changed the way
that I thought about communication, honestly, as a whole.
Yeah, sometimes like even before I post on LinkedIn,
I'll run it through Lavender.
And I would say like the number one selling point
for us internally was going to our leadership
and saying like, hey, like this is leveraging data
to be able to fine tune your emails
or not just going based off our guts anymore.
So, you know, I think it's definitely changed
like the email game, but also the content game too.
It just simplifies everything like so well.
Like every message I'm trying to convey.
And that brings you back to the emails that you said
for the SDR is like, I feel like
and we're victims to this too in our content for SDRs,
we're trying to like prove ourselves with that line.
Whereas like we work with X, Y and Z
and we drove this much success.
Like we want to get their attention somehow
and we think the way to do it
is to either sound smart or, you know,
draw attention and Lavender in general
and that line that you used of how I just,
I've spoken with these leaders
and would you like to know what they're thinking?
Just simplifies it more, makes it more relatable,
makes it more humanized and more warm, I feel like.
- Oh my God, Delilah, you already sparked like new ideas
from me at the bottom.
Like, hey, we spoke with XYZ over at Delta.
Are you curious to, you know, hear what they're thinking?
- Oh yeah.
- So, Jen, we have a segment that we like to do
with people who come on the pod, rapid fire questions.
So we'll ask a few, if you could make a law
that everyone had to follow, what would it be?
- Easy, this is the easiest question you will ask me today.
- Oh, I love that.
- Adopt, don't, shop.
- Hell, we're free. - But we're the three
who are only be rescuing from rescue organizations
that is my like love language.
Do you follow Miss Peaches?
- Of course I follow Miss Peaches.
(laughs)
- I love her.
- Wait, what kind of dogs do you have?
So I have four rescues.
I've got a husky.
I'll be sitting here and then his head will come up
over my shoulder and he's got like this dumb face
that I just love so much and it totally breaks
the ice in sales calls.
So I've got him, I've got two older, kind of terrier muts
and then we've got a pit lab mix puppy.
So the puppy. - Puppy?
- Yeah.
- Oh.
- But she's full blown like psychotic puppy,
but we love her, she's crazy.
- I love pit bulls so much, but people have such a stigma
on them.
Like my older sibling adopted a pit bull.
Her name's Malca and she's black and white stripes.
So she looks like a little cow.
She's really cute.
- Oh, cute.
- Pretty really the best. - I love them.
- All right, next question.
What is your favorite quote or mantra that you live by?
- Okay, I have to read this because I have the worst
memory in a mold so I can get away with that.
Okay, so it's a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote
and says to be yourself in a world that is constantly
trying to make you something else
is the greatest accomplishment.
I love that because I think practically.
- I'm gonna cry.
- Don't cry.
I think particularly in sales, like we are,
I at least found myself a lot in the beginning
trying to be like what I thought a great sales person was
when I got on, started doing content.
I was trying to be what I thought a great content.
And I think it's just so easy and understandable
to fall into those traps.
But if we look at the people who really stand out to us,
like I'm a huge Todd Clouser fan.
We worked together at Lavender,
but I knew him long before.
- Todd's the coach. - Todd used to be.
(laughing)
What made Todd so awesome is that he is so different.
Like there is no one out there like Todd
and it's why every time he posts something
or every time I see him talking on a webinar,
like I'll go because Todd's not trying to be
like every other marketer out there.
And so I think it's just, it's really easy to fall
into that trap of feeling like to be successful.
I have to look like sound like someone else.
Right. - But I'd wear with my own career
when I really started seeing like a fast pace move up.
It was when I just started being more like myself
and stopped trying to be, you know,
like some sales author or sales expert
that I never was gonna be.
I love that so much because like sometimes, you know,
Delilah and I talk about it.
It's like, are we too much?
Too fiery, too this, too that.
Yada-da, whatever.
And then I'm just like, fuck it.
I'm just gonna be authentic.
Like I'm just gonna be me.
And like I'm gonna get my job done.
And if people don't like me or my person, like whatever.
So I think that's a really great.
- And even being authentic has become something
that people like act to be, you know what I mean?
It's like in a wild world where like now we have people
faking authenticity.
It's like, no, just genuinely be yourself.
Don't be this like portrayal of authentic
that you think will get more likes and engagement.
Like what you said, just fuck it, really fuck it.
Because your crew will come to you.
But like, if you try to--
- What else?
- They're not coming.
- They're not coming.
- She had to come in.
- Amir?
- No Amir, keep it in.
- This is what we post on LinkedIn.
You wanna talk about authenticity?
- Yeah, okay.
- What's your favorite way to unwind and relax?
- Oh, walk around.
We live in the suburbs of Chicago
and there's like a three mile walk we do around a lake.
I don't know what it is about being near a body of water.
I just think it's calming and nice.
So that's been my big thing.
Old lady walks now.
- I do my river walk every day.
It's the best thing in the world.
- Oh, you get it.
You know what?
I do my central park walk.
- I mean, that's cool.
- Oh, you just won up to both of us.
- Yeah, we're like my nasty canals.
- You're not buying that.
I've done your river walk.
It's gorge.
- Sometimes it's like brown.
Like, is that real water?
But we love her.
We pretend, we pretend.
- What are you currently obsessed with other than your dogs?
- What am I obsessed with?
Oh my gosh.
I was probably gonna say a dog thing.
So that's why I'm really thinking.
- Okay, you could say a dog thing.
- Okay, so what I will say is one of the things
that I am really proud of is as I have grown on LinkedIn,
one of my end goals has always been
to do something good with it.
Right?
So if I'm just like, shilling courses
and like getting paid for everything,
I think that's like such a disappointing way
to use a good following.
And so now what I love is I'm working with one of the rescues
that we got our last two dogs from
to try to promote a lot of their dogs
that are looking for homes.
And I am obsessed with that
because I think there are so many people
who have this belief that if you want a good dog,
you have to get, you know, a dog from a breeder.
Like there just aren't great dogs and shelters.
And so I am obsessed truly
with changing people's perception there.
And I think there's just so much,
there's so many good people doing a lot of hard work.
Like if I can do a little bit
and just, you know, create awareness, awesome.
The people who are really working their butts off
are the ones in the shelters
and they need all the help they can get.
I love that.
So I'm like really spiritual and stuff.
And so there's, you know, like God puts you on this earth
with like gifts and you're supposed to share your gifts
with others and you know, you have these purposes
and your soul is a purpose.
So, you know, maybe not only is yours to create great content
but to really help like others and help dogs or cats
or what animals are ever at shelters
find their next home.
- Hi, Sierra. - Found that.
- It feels to me today.
(laughing)
But so Victoria already knows this
but my boyfriend is dying to rescue.
He's just like you.
Like, will not buy, which I agree.
He sends me dogs every single day on Instagram
because he knows that I'm gonna be the one taking care of it.
So I have to approve.
But one of these days,
rescued this mic pop up here.
- You better text me when you get one
because I am-- - I was just thinking like,
oh my God, I'm gonna need to text her with all the advice
'cause I've never had a dog on my own.
- Oh, it's a gift.
It's awesome.
Okay, so we'll end on this one.
What's the best piece of advice that you've ever received?
Oh, easy.
I am a big fan of tough love management.
Not in the sense of like,
love you, jerk, and make someone be mean
but someone who will hold you accountable
to be your very best.
- Totally.
- And so my old VP of sales, Kevin,
I've talked about the story before back in 2020
when COVID happened, we were selling in-person training.
Like nobody was pulling people together for anything
and so we had to do a major pivot in our business.
Like leads fell off a cliff.
I was going into my one-on-one with him just being like,
this isn't fair.
Like, our numbers didn't get any relief
but then we don't have any leads.
Like nothing's coming in
and I was just bitching and bitching and bitching
and he stopped me and he's like,
look, you're not wrong, you should have more leads.
Like it is marketing's job to give you leads
but the reality is you're not getting them.
So you can either sit here and waste your time
bitching and moaning to me about something
that we can't change or you can go out there
and figure out what are you gonna do
to be able to hit your number at the end of the year
and find a different way.
And I was like, in the moment,
I'm like, that's not what I wanted to hear at all.
I wanted you to be like, yeah, I'll call marketing
and be like, you guys better do your jobs.
But he was right.
Like I cannot, when I'm a sales person who gets paid
on my ability to close deals,
I can't just outsource half of my job to someone else.
And so that is really where demand gen is an idea
kind of came from because I realized
if I'm just waiting for marketing to create my demand
and then I fulfill it,
like I'm probably gonna miss my number every single year
but if I figure out what can I do to create this desire
for people to wanna have conversations,
that is putting myself more in control of my own destiny
and that's why I got into like a lot of the LinkedIn
and podcasting and all that kind of stuff.
So easy to have to have with just like
onto the face I needed for my manager.
- We need to clip this and post this on every platform.
We could think about it like the whole time
I'm going like this.
I'm the most accurate like.
- Love, tough love.
- Hate man, the best way we could have ended it
because it's so true in any business.
We all have our battles that we go through
but there's nothing you can do.
You gotta go out and get it yourself
and I think a lot of people can resonate with that.
- Totally.
Like no one's gonna do your job for you.
Like make shit happen, like get shit done.
- Yeah.
- Love that, right.
Jen, it has been an absolute pleasure to do this.
We've had so much fun, so excited that you came on
onto the podcast and gave us your words of wisdom.
- I am so excited, thank you for such a good conversation
and just keep it up.
I love seeing both of you shine.
The clips you do are awesome.
The guests you have are awesome,
so it's a real treat to be on today.
- Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.
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