Transcription
****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

[intro music]
Shark 0:16
Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective.

Kenneth Kinney 0:19
I am Kenneth "Shark" Kinney, keynote speaker, strategist, and your Chief Shark Officer.

Kenneth Kinney 0:24
What would happen if you did your homework and learn about other people and customize your sales pitch to them and use data to do so? Sounds Elementary, right? I mean, there's a lot of digital information out there where we can learn about people. We preach personalization all the time. But why don't more people leverage data to get to know the people better? Before we get sold to without any context or relevance when you sell? Are you being sales intelligent?

Kenneth Kinney 0:50
Sam Richter is an internationally recognized expert on digital information, considered the father of modern day sales intelligence, an author and an NSA Hall of Fame speaker.

Kenneth Kinney 1:00
And on this episode, we'll discuss leveraging data intelligence for better sales, asking relevant questions about what other people care about, Dale Carnegie, Boolean logic and how to apply it, the R problem in CRM, the additional work that needs to be done in sales, getting past gatekeepers, thermoplastics digest better use of Google tools, empathy, sharks at the Mall of America, the illustrious gopher shark, Sam's three by five, and a lot, lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 1:26
So let's tune into the father of modern day sales intelligence with a well let's just say I'm known as the Daddy shark on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

Kenneth Kinney 1:41
Sam, welcome to the sharks perspective. Tell us a little bit about your origin story, your background and career today.

Sam Richter 1:47
Yeah, well, I started out in advertising and marketing, like I suppose probably most of the listeners, and I was a creative was started out as a writer, and then became a creative director. And that's kind of where I, my, my first, I guess, insight into selling was because our viewers listeners know, when you're in creative, now you have to sell now you've got to go sell your ideas. And oftentimes, those are very difficult things to sell. Because, because they're, again, their ideas, their their, their conceptions. And so that was really my my first foray into selling. And what I learned was, is if I did my homework, now, this was way before the internet. But I learned if I did my homework on other people, on the people I was meeting with, then I could really customize for lack of better term, my presentation based on what they care about. Well, fast forward, I was in public relations. the.com Boom, was in a bunch of digital work and became a head of a library of all things, a Business Library, where I really refined kind of the research, but it was all still based on that concept that jeez, if I could know more about other people, I could build relationships. And you know, at the same time, I was trying to memorize Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, because I still think it's the best business book this book ever. Right. And, and everything Carnegie talks about from the 1920s. Was was really, I guess, and people have called me the modern day, Dale Carnegie, in the sense of it's all understanding other people and asking relevant questions based on what they care about. And so that really is the journey started out in as a writer never thought I have anything to do with sales was kind of forced into it learned that I could be really successful if I knew about other people got introduced to the internet, internet internet research and was learning that, hey, a lot of the questions I need to know are a lot of the information I need to have about what other people care about. If I could master mathematical algorithms in searching, I could figure it out before I walk in the room.

Kenneth Kinney 3:59
Well, so let's talk a little bit about what sales intelligence is. Because I know that's a big part of what you speak about on a lot of keynote stages. And how should we think about using this?

Sam Richter 4:10
Yeah, well, there you know, the the overarching concept is digital intelligence. And again, that there's all this information out there, how do we effectively find it? And so the effectively finding it part is the Boolean searches in different different techniques within databases. And then it's how do you apply it that becomes relationship intelligence, or reputational intelligence or sales, intelligence and sales? Intelligence is really there's two components of it. There's the the how, how do you find it? What are the techniques? And that could be complex Boolean logic that can be knowing which databases to go to. And then obviously, how, now that I've got this information, how do I apply it? How do I leverage information in a meeting without people thinking I'm some kind of A weird stalker? How do I leverage information to stay in touch with people in ways that they care about? Because statistically, it might take anywhere between five and 12. Touches connections, before someone even responds. So how do you stay in touch with people without always saying, you know, ready to buy, ready to buy ready to buy? How do you provide value? How do you gain information prior to a meeting, where you're going to be presenting a proposal prior to negotiations? So sales? Intelligence, again, it's kind of divided in those two parts. The first part is how do you find it? Which is, you know, same in recruiting, same in marketing? And then how what do you do with it will be different depending on what the end goal is of the user? Whether it's

Kenneth Kinney 5:49
salespeople or marketing, what are you seeing that they're doing that maybe is wrong, or somehow wasting their time with how they gather intelligence on people, because there's so many intelligence tools out there, like LinkedIn navigator, the Zoom infos of the world, there's so many different great third party data companies like I used to work for axiom, which has really strong data. Absolutely. But that can also become a crutch for a lot of people. So I'm kind of curious how you see people using it incorrectly?

Sam Richter 6:15
Well, I think that it first off, most people don't use it, you know, they go to somebody's website, and they'll, you know, Oh, I did my homework. Well, you know, you're looking at their marketing brochure. Exactly. So that's first off is most people don't use it. And in fact, I would say that, that salespeople pre internet, so the 1970s 1980s probably knew their customers better than most salespeople know their customers today. Now, does that mean salespeople are lazy today, in the 1970s, your prospect allowed you to take him out for a two hour lunch. So you got to learn the person, you got to learn about what they cared about, you got to ask really good questions they got to learn about you. Well, so in today's world, nobody's giving you a very few people give you two hours out of their day to take them out to lunch. So we're left with what we can find on Google, we're left with what we can find doing a search on their website. So I think that the biggest missed opportunity is in I'll kind of blame this on CRM, not not not CRM, the technology, but the implementation of how people use CRM. CRM stands for customer relationship management. And a lot of companies have done a great job on the customer side. So they can tell you how many times somebody goes to the website, how many times they interact with social media, how many times they order, what's their average order size? How often do they call customer support, companies have done a lot of good, good on the the management side, meaning that, okay, we're going to set up a process that when a customer comes in, we onboard a customer, we click a button, we do a pull down menu, and that automates a lot of the other tasks involved with onboarding that customer. But most folks do a poor job on the are the relationship side. So we're not capturing? So that's a long winded answer to your question. Typically, in sales and in anything in business, what's get what gets measured, is what gets done. And so a lot of CRM systems have been implemented and, and they're focused on the customer touch. So the sales manager will say, Hey, if you want to hit your bonus, you need to make 300 calls. Well, if you're gonna that's how you're gonna get your bonus, what are you gonna do? You're gonna make 300 calls? Versus what if you made 50 calls to people who actually needed your product right now needed your solution right now. That's called a sales trigger. Here's an example. Let's say you sell commercial HVAC equipment, I could give you a list. I've got a list building tool, I can get you a list of every business owner of a commercial building in Denver, and you know, you might get 30,000 names, but 30,000 names in the top of your sales funnel. Make 300 calls a day, you get your bonus, because you're making all the calls. And mathematically, somebody in there is going to need to buy from you. Somebody needs a new commercial HVAC unit, because they break. So mathematically, you're going to make some sales. But what if I could say, you know, let's use a sales trigger. Let's find out which companies have announced that they're going to be expanding their facility. They're doing new construction, they're adding a warehouse, which companies are moving to Denver, two months from now. I'm going to call on those folks. Because I know with 100% certainty, they need a new commercial H back unit. Now, I'm also going to maybe they're a publicly traded company. And I've read their CEOs letter in their annual report where the CEO has said the biggest initiative we have for the upcoming year is green technology, green energy sustainability. That's where we're putting stake in the ground. Now when I call that Operations Manager, oh, by the way, how do you find the right person to call? So whether it's the operations manager that the facilities director, when I call that individual, instead of saying, Hi, my name is Sam, I sell commercial HVAC equipment. Hi, my name is Sam. And I noticed that you're going to be expanding in Denver next month adding 30,000 square foot facility, I can only imagine that you're going to need some pretty sophisticated H vac equipment. Now the reason I'm calling is I read your CEOs letter in the annual report where she talked about that. The number one initiative you have going forward to sustainability green energy, and I had to pick up the phone and call you because my company represents the number one green H HVAC unit out there. And now's the perfect time before you spec out what that warehouse is going to look like. Because it'll save you a lot of money. If we can spec that out on the front end, versus building the warehouse and then trying to retrofit an H back unit. Now I made that up off the top of my head, Kenneth, but you see where I'm going with that 100% versus Hi, my name is Sam, I call I sell commercial HVAC equipment. You know what,

Kenneth Kinney 11:10
it's every pitch I get on LinkedIn where somebody isn't invested more than two seconds in. I mean, I got one just yesterday that said something about, they wanted to know what I was doing at a sharks perspective, podcast. And is there somebody else there? I mean, it was like, they were treating it like it was some big massive fortune 500, which I would love for it to be however, it's not it's, you know, I was talking about me and my podcasts and my speaking business, and they hadn't even invested just the basic time. Oh, I know, to do that at all. And I'm curious what you hear from the people that hire you, especially to give these presentations that you do all over the world? But what do you hear from them? That is their complaint about their people who need to prospect better? Because those are often the same people that to your example, are saying you got to make 300 calls to get that bonus? Why do you think people aren't investing the time to do it? It's obviously not strictly for a bonus, you know, made up reason. But why are they not investing the time to make better sales on less calls with more info, versus just an abundance of ignorant sales pitches without any intel at all.

Sam Richter 12:17
Because what I discussed, take work takes work, and it takes mental energy. And, you know, with anything you're going to have in my audience, there'll be 20% of the people that are, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, it's amazing. And they're gonna see results. Now there's gonna be 20% of the people that just don't care, they just want to call for. And then what you're really trying to impact is that 60% in the middle. And so what we try to do is, is share some easy to implement, if you just do this, you'll see a dramatic difference. Because it's not that it's just people like all of us, we all fall back into the way we do things. We all fall back into, you know, hey, here's how I was taught to sell, smile and dial baby. And, you know, I can get I get what I need. Looking at their website, for example, I do a lot of work in the financial services industry. And I do a lot of work with incredibly successful financial advisors, multimillionaires. And they'll even say to me, Sam, I don't need I don't need to know anything about my prospect. I just, I call them we meet for coffee, and I'll find out about them. At that time, Hey, it works for them. And so when someone comes in who's our is someone who's very successful, listens to me saying, there might be a better way, oh, they're not going to agree with that. So that's the other part is, is a lot of people are kind of set in their ways on how they do things. And this is just kind of a new, it's not a new way of selling, it's just additional for them additional work that they need to put into their sales process. Now, when I, you know, oftentimes is you know, as a professional speaker, it's like, they'll ask me to speak for 45 minutes, and I can do that, and I get a an ovation. And then I leave the stage and the event planners, like that was amazing. And in my mind, I'm thinking, Okay, I feel really bad. Not that I gave a bad speech. But there was like two hours of other stuff that I could share that you didn't give me the time to do that would have made a huge impact. One of those when I have a longer speech, I create a little calculator. It sounds kind of geeky, but it's pretty cool. Or I can mathematically prove that if you implement sales intelligence, it will make very small impacts in your you close rates or your average order size, whatever it might be. That as a huge difference. I think the the least amount I've ever been able to increase somebody's revenue was 30%. And I can mathematically prove it But somebody still has to implement it.

Kenneth Kinney 15:02
So how do you leverage this kind of data that will allow you to get past gatekeepers? That's, that's a problem for a lot of people doing any kind of selling.

Sam Richter 15:11
Sure. It's all about relevance. So let's say I was calling your gatekeeper. You know, Hi, my name is Sam, I'd like to talk to Kenneth, is he available? Right? I'm not getting through. Hi, my name is Sam, I know that Kenneth is a member of the National Speakers Association. I'm also a member of the National Speakers Association. So I'm just I'd like to touch base with him, try to find something in common. That could be that, you know, so at a high level, people do business with people who they like who they trust, who are like them, who have shared values. So maybe you're a member of Rotary? Well, I've been a member of Rotary, maybe you donate to this nonprofit, maybe you're an alumnus of this school. Maybe you've worked in this industry, maybe you've worked at a company that's currently one of my best clients. So I'm trying to find something in common. Now people buy from stories. And so maybe I've read something on your website, I saw something on an article, you were featured in about a big industry challenge, you're facing it, maybe I've helped a company solve that exact challenge. So if you can, you know, Hi, I'm looking to cockin No, I'm calling it I read Kenneth, his article in thermoplastics. digest this morning, I had to pick up the phone and call because he made a comment that I just saw agree with, I needed to talk to him. So it could be something like that. But try to find something about the other person. Because inherently and this comes from Carnegie. People are massively passionate about one thing. And it's themselves. They don't care about you, they don't care about your product, they don't care about their solution, but they're massively passionate about themselves. So if we want to get past the gatekeeper, we need to make sure that the first words out of our mouth are about something we know, the person who's keeping that gate, we know that the other person behind the gate cares about

Kenneth Kinney 17:04
the greed. I laugh all the time when people prospect me because I have hundreds of pages of shark trivia on my website. I have hundreds of pages of marketing stuff out there. But it's with me in particular, I have a lot of pictures of me swimming and diving with sharks. I talk about it all the time. I talked about it on stages all the time. Sure. And if somebody wants to get to me, it's not very hard to know what one of my external passions is, it's probably to reference something about sharks. And it's weird, I get it. But it's, that's who I am. I'm constantly amazed at how many people don't even take the time. And they just, they do no intelligence whatsoever. And when anybody ever has something, at least they've made a reference, not just saying something, hey, sharks are cool, I don't want that. But engaging in a real conversation about something that I'm passionate about. I'm amazed when they do it, and they stand out. And that becomes their differentiator is just showing leveraging some intelligence to show the way that they care. So let's use that as an example. Yeah. If I reached that, I don't write great articles for thermodynamic plants. I

Sam Richter 18:18
know that, right. But if I were to reach out to you in maybe it's a LinkedIn connection, or an email, or even a voicemail can't if I had to pick up the phone and talk to you, I just watched your YouTube video on that, that swimming with the sharks thing you did. And, and I was amazed at the two minute and 22 second mark of where you did this, right now, I just made that up off the top of my head, what's the chance you return that email? You accept that LinkedIn connection?

Kenneth Kinney 18:48
Probably 100%, exactly. 0% in other ways,

Sam Richter 18:51
or I use a script that has many of the other experts, you know, hi, Kenneth. Let's would be a good script people, I see that you are a professional speaker. And I have worked with more than 400 professional speakers in my career. And I was hoping to get a moment of your time to see if I could share with you some of the value I've provided others that might benefit you. It's like, okay, that script or a version of it might have worked for the first week that someone created it. But then once everybody starts using it, it gets it's just annoying. Don't do that. You can follow some of the concepts in a script, make it personal, make it custom make it based on what we know, the other person cares about.

Kenneth Kinney 19:40
Yeah, I mean, we wouldn't even have to come up with one I could just go through, you know, 90% of the LinkedIn messages I get that I'm sure you get as well. How do you think about reaching the decision makers and accompanies with committees? Because you know, any decent sized company with 100 plus people or employees, they'll likely have a committee You're not just a single decision maker. But when you're going about trying to help influence make that buying decision, what kind of intelligence should they gather to help move the conversation forward, not only with the person that you're trying to influence, but past them and where they move it for down the line?

Sam Richter 20:15
Well, it's really what stage in the sales process are you? So if you're at the beginning stage, you know, there's a number of ways to do that. But I like to take the bottom up and or the top down approach. So top down is I'm reaching out to the CEO, knowing that the CEO is the ultimate signer of the check, but the CEO might say, hey, I need you to talk to my director of marketing about this. In what that tells us is the director of marketing is the gatekeeper or the influencer? in meeting the Director of Marketing can't always say yes, but they can certainly say no. And so you need to figure out now, and then now, certainly, if I call the director of marketing, and I say, you know, your boss told me to call you, I've got an end, right. I'll also do the bottom up approach. Now, the bottom up approach is the end user. So you know, in, in my world, for example, that might be I might find, let's say, I want to get into the widget Association. That's where I would love to speak. Well, I can certainly contact the executive director and the meeting planner at the widget corporate or widget Association. And I'm going to do that I'm going to send them my, my, my one shader Yos. Yeah. If you can guess what, me and 400 other speakers, all right. But I got to do that. The bottom up approach is finding who has attended it, who is a member of that association. Maybe it's a sponsor, even better, who's attended one of my presentations in the past, maybe bought my book. And the bottom up approach is calling those folks and saying, Hey, Kenneth, I see that you're a member of the widget Association. You know, so this is called asking for introductions, a lot of people know how to ask for referrals. Hi, do you know any other places where I could speak? Yeah, my cousin's got a church, you know, right, right. Hey, Kenneth, I see that you're a member of the widget Association. Do you think my message would work really well with that organization? Sam, you would be amazing there. Hey, do you How well do you know the executive director, Julie, Julie and I golf together? Guess what? I already know that. Because I read the I read the industry newsletter where you were standing next to Julie with your trophy from the golf tournament. Okay. Hey, do you think you could share your experience attending my program with Julie? Oh, Sam, I'd be happy to do that. So that's kind of the bottom up approach. And that's the top down bottom up. Hopefully they meet now. Another thing that's really important, let's get back to the committee question. There are different stages in the sales process. The first stage is you have to get in the maybe pile well, what's the maybe pile? The maybe piles, you're one of three. So a lot of people think that their LinkedIn posts and their tweets and your Facebook posts and and all those things are for sales. No, those are from marketing. Those are the things that get you in the maybe pile your prospecting efforts, get you in the maybe pile using our example with Julie at the at the widget Association. Now I'm in the maybe pile because Kenneth, one of her biggest sponsors, recommended that she hire Sam. Okay, great. Now I'm in the maybe pile. There are two other Hall of Fame speakers in that maybe pile. So for him, Julie's mind, all three of us can do the job. For all Hall of Fame speakers, all three of us are going to do it at the price that she wants to pay, because she has a budget. Who do people decide to do business with people do business with people who they trust? So Julie's gonna have a committee? How do I get information into the hands of the committee now in the speaker world, it's a little bit more difficult, we often don't have the chance to talk to members of the committee. But in if I'm selling a million dollar each back unit, and I've got three people from the facilities and I've done the maybe pile I'm going to go meet with them. I'm going to learn a little bit about those individuals as well. What kind of connection might I have? Where have they worked in the past? Where have they been quoted in a newsletter? I might, even if it's a really big deal, see where they've donated money? What's their political affiliation, because political affiliation sometimes knowing what not to say, can be more important is knowing what to say? Sometimes knowing what where they went to college? Oh, I happen to be meeting with them. Oh, they went to Duke. What am I going to say if I've got a meeting with them and I find out they went to Duke no clue what to do? Yeah. Hey, are you excited for tomorrow's game? You know, they're riding the lip. People do business with people that they like the big things your market any efforts or referrals, those are the big things that got you in the maybe pile. But the next big thing that gets you the job is the accumulation of little things that create that final big thing.

Kenneth Kinney 25:12
So we've talked a lot about what data we know that's there. Do you think that people have access to more information today than ever? Or is it less than, say 510 years ago? Because when you start thinking about where some of the data privacy pendulum swings is one direction, but the amount of information that's out there seems to keep growing exponentially?

Sam Richter 25:36
That's a great question. And I think that the data privacy is really again, let's go back to that CRM is really focused more on the sea side, customer side. So it's what websites are they looking at? What did they say into Alexa? What billboards did they drive by? I mean, it gets mind boggling is, you know, the amount of of data that's connected on on the sea side? On the relationship side? The are, there's probably now more than ever, if you know how to find it and where to find it. So, you know, we talked earlier about this, this concept of sales triggers. That was the that was the story on, you know, how to find warehouses in Denver, that are going to be expanding three months from now? Well, there's lots of different types of sales triggers. Anytime a new executive is hired, that's a sales trigger. Well, I've created an algorithm, I can go in and find anybody at a company who has been hired or promoted in the past one to four months. Why do I care? Because anytime you've been hired or promoted in the past one to four months, I know that you're open to new creative ideas, you don't have a legacy vendor. And oh, by the way, you want to impress the person who just hired you or promoted you. So if I come in with a creative solution, you're open to that conversation. So that would be a sales trigger, mergers or acquisitions, new hires, retirements, new contracts, funding is a huge one. Listen, if I can go in and find a company that just received $50 million in funding, what did I just learn? Well, A, they're gonna have to spend that money and spend it quickly, because that venture capitalist wants to see a return on that investment. If I'm in the recruiting industry, we're in, okay, and if you've got a lot of expertise, I could call on every company in town in Minneapolis, where I live, mathematically, a lot of people are going to need jobs, you know, need to hire right now. But if I call someone who just received $50 million in funding, not only do they have to hire, they probably got to hire 70 People next week. There's it's impossible for them to do it by themselves. And that's, so that's the kind of information that's out there. With the with the you know, looking at someone's LinkedIn profile, but newsletter articles, social media posts, videos, all of that kind of information is out there, we can gather that information, and then leverage that effectively.

Kenneth Kinney 28:05
What do you think that data intelligence will not replace in sales?

Sam Richter 28:10
Oh, I think empathy is because again, there's there are salespeople, not many, by the way, because most people stumble into sales. I mean, it was one of the things I say in my like, last week, I was I was meeting with a actually those folks, I'm going to try to think of a different example, but was meeting with a group of folks in the food service business, right. So these are folks that sell kitchen appliances to large restaurants. And I'll say, you know, show of hands, how many of you view in the first grade, when your first grade teacher said, What would you like to be when you grow up? You know, most of you said football players, Supreme Court Justice president, how many of you jumped out of your seat and said, I'd love to sell commercial ovens to Italian restaurants? And if you do that, no, and everybody laughs right. Most salespeople just kind of stumble into their job in now there are some that really love getting that bonus, they're in it for the money. That's it that most that I come across. Most people they stumble into it, because somewhere along their career path, someone said, you know, you're really good with people. You're really good with people. I think the the good salesperson has a mindset, that they're not trying to convince somebody to do something. Rather, their mindset is it's a very noble profession. What do I mean by that? Because Kenneth, if I've done my homework, I figured out what's important to you, what do you care about? And then what I'm all I'm trying to do is determine if, if my company solution and if my experience can help you achieve your goals a little faster, more efficiently, more profitably than you might be able to do on your own. I know this sounds a little bit hokey, but that That's kind of it's the mindset that you need to have. And, and I think that that, you know, getting back to your question that that mindset, will cannot be replaced with data. It's a, it's something in your soul that differentiates the the great salespeople, for those that are trying to just get a bonus.

Kenneth Kinney 30:21
Yeah, no, I agree with it. And it's not just as it applies to sales. And men think about the mindset of just leveraging data for what I do. Even on the show. I read your cold call book, I don't know that I remember that it was 12th edition. But before I, you know, interview anybody on the show, almost always, and I've made plenty of mistakes, I'm sure. But I tried to invest a lot of time into getting to know a little bit about Sam so that it isn't either a formulaic, boring interview, or something that's, you know, not structured at all. And, you know, don't have a clue who you are until we get to talk. But the fact is, my mindset is where I need to invest that time in at least showing you that I've paid care and respect to you as a guest. And I just don't think enough people do that, especially with the people that they prospect to in whatever form of relationships it is. So I'm going to lead back then into sort of data and algorithms, what are some of the websites that we can use? Sure, to help find more information, better information on people today?

Sam Richter 31:20
And before I answer that, I just want to add one thing to what you just said. Because it's kind of remember the maybe pile we were talking about, here's the last little thing in the maybe pile. And you were just touching on this, and it reminded me, and that is, when you know something about another person? You might not choose to use it. You might because it would be a little weird, right? Oh, hey, I was looking at your Facebook page, and I see that you collect turtles, that would be weird, okay. But when you know something about another person, you can use that information, ask better questions. But the most important thing is you become more confident. So I'll ask you, we're excited. And people buy from that excitement and that confidence, when you've looked up Seth Godin, and the brilliance that he has when you looked up Guy Kawasaki story about being the chief evangelist officer, right? I bet you were in, besides their names, besides their success. Oh, yeah. super jazzed to talk to them. And I can guarantee you that passion came through on the interview is the same thing in sales. So okay, getting back to your question. What are some sites? Well, obviously, Google. And let me give you a couple tips on Google, type in a company name prior to any meeting, put the name within quotes. Why? Because if I put something within quotes, Google is going to treat those words within quotes. entity, okay, put it in quotes, type in the name. I'm looking at information on General Mills, okay, I've got a meeting at General Mills, I'll put General Mills into Google within quotes, I'm gonna get 80 billion search results, I'm gonna get their website, which of course, I'm going to look at. All right. But now, over on underneath the Google results, there's going to be a button called news, click on it, pull up news articles of what's going on at General Mills, I chose General Mills on purpose, because they're a fortune 50 company, I think and there'll be 80,000 news articles, I've got five minutes before the meeting. On the Results tab, there's going to be a button called Tools. Click on the Tools button, you'll see a drop down menu appear that allows you to sort your articles by date. Big company sort by, I've done it by sort by past hour, the number of times where I've been on a virtual call a phone call or an in person meeting, where I congratulate the other person on an award their company's one or a new account. They've landed, and they're like, What are you talking about? And I'll say, didn't you get the news? What news? You know? Well, you just 15 minutes ago, 12 minutes ago? Do you think I make a good impression there? So that's one site.

Kenneth Kinney 33:56
And that in particular, I love that example. Because what people forget is Google sorts that based on relevance to Google, not to the person at General Mills.

Sam Richter 34:06
That's correct. That's correct. And so you know, you obviously understand the algorithms not only to the not to the person at General Mills, but but they're certainly there. Their algorithm is based on my previous searches. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. So it's so Okay. Which leads me to another website. So I was oftentimes frustrated because of Google News, because I'll take myself as an example, I've been interviewed a lot. But when I search my name, Sam Richter, in quotes, plus speaker Google News. There's like five articles on me. I'm like, where's the other 1000? local newspapers, trade journals, industry journals, newsletters, podcasts, right? So I created my own news search engine, and it's called you got the news youg, O T, th, E, ne Ws, you got the news.com. Now in this one, you don't have to use quotation marks because I automate all that. You You type in General Mills, look at the results. And what I do is I sort all of the results by news type. So there's general news, which would be trade journals, local newspapers, industry journals, I will go to write the press releases. Why? Because if somebody's putting out a press release, it's probably pretty important to them. And then you'll find social media posts, videos, podcast interviews. That's what I'm looking for. So I'll usually start with Google News. And then I'll go to you got the news. So those for sure, obviously, I'm going to look at somebody's LinkedIn profile. Now, a little tip on LinkedIn, if I'm looking for Joe Smith, at General Mills, well, or Joe Smith, in Minneapolis, you used to actually be able to go into LinkedIn and type in Joe Smith put it in quotes, Minneapolis, LinkedIn doesn't allow that as of last week. And so you now have to put in a company name. So that's just kind of a little tip for folks put in a company name. Now where you can search in LinkedIn by by location, I can just type in Joe Smith, put in quotes, underneath the search bar on LinkedIn, you'll now see some bubbles, one of those bubbles, buttons, I guess, click on it, it'll say location, click on the location button. And then you can manually put in Minneapolis, but you can no longer search for Joe Smith, Minneapolis, you have to kind of do the two step process, why they're doing that, I don't know kind of annoying, but you can still do Joe Smith, General Mills, you can put General Joe Smith in quotes, General Mills in quotes. So that's a little LinkedIn tip. So I would say, you know, you got the news, Google News, look at somebody's LinkedIn profile. when I'm, when I'm just doing an outreach to that individual. That's all you kind of need to do. Now, if it's a LinkedIn connection, request an email request, I might go to their LinkedIn profile, also see if they've posted anything, if they've commented on anything. Think I'm gonna get a response when I say, Hey, Joe, I loved that comment. You made about No, whatever it was about, about selling to big companies. I agree. 1,000%. In fact, I'm wondering if you've ever read Joe Conrad's book selling to big companies. I made that up off the top of my head. But comment, don't just say I'd like to connect with you put something in there of why you want to connect. People love getting praise on on what's something they've done. Comment down a LinkedIn post comment on a comment that they've made.

Kenneth Kinney 37:32
Yeah, like the relevancy factor. We said hot off the press, or it was what I was thinking of. I hate when somebody does a praise for something that looks canned. Every once in a while somebody will tell me they'll reference a great episode 100 episodes ago? Yeah. While it probably was a great episode, because I like to think that they're all great episodes, I could tell from the rest of the language that they had, probably formulaically just put this into their CRM and automated the entire comment, you know, it, it had nothing to do with anything. And it just didn't need to be the most recent post or the most recent podcast episode. It doesn't take that big an investment show that you care. But what

Sam Richter 38:15
if they did the why? So, you know, kind of there was an episode you did from two years ago. I just loved it. And here's why I loved it. Absolutely. You know, here's what, then it makes sense. But if it's like, wow, that was a lovely interview you had with Seth Godin.

Kenneth Kinney 38:32
Yeah, it was show 200. It was 100. Plus, yeah.

Sam Richter 38:36
But tell me why it was good. How it how did it impact me? And that's why I'm reaching out to you. I want to have this similar impact on you. You know, it kind of sounds a little

Kenneth Kinney 38:46
that's fair, completely fair. So Sam, what's it to do that everybody should start doing today?

Sam Richter 38:53
Well, I would say one of the things I talk about in my program is the three by five. So because let me back up. One of the issues of what I teach is it can be really fun. And you start going down a rabbit hole, and you're like, holy cow, look at the oh, I can't believe I found this cheese. Look at the value of their house. You know, oh my goodness, look at their kids, you know, you go down this rabbit hole. And so the first thing is you got to timeboxing is you got to say it what do I mean by that? Create an Excel spreadsheet? What are the things you want to find? Find it, write it down, move on, don't go down the rabbit hole. That's the three by five, spend three minutes trying to find five pieces of information or five minutes trying to find three pieces of information. That's it. Now the reality is you do it right, it might only take 30 seconds. So that's the first thing is really practice that three by five. The other thing we haven't talked about, but but I would recommend that everybody do is now there's a fellow speaker friend of ours, Dr. Tony, Alessandra, Dr. Tony We Alessandra wrote an amazing book called the platinum rule. And the platinum rule is all about, well, what's the golden rule, the golden rule is do unto others as you'd like to have it done unto yourself. And my interpretation of that is that keeps us a pretty moral world. But it's not very good for sales, just because I want it doesn't necessarily mean that you want it. So the platinum rule, as Dr. Tony teaches, is, do unto others as they would like it done unto themselves, figure out what the other person wants, help them get it. So on my calendar, every Wednesday, from seven to 730, I timebox. It, it says Platinum Rule research, where I'll go out and I'll try to find a piece of information that's very relevant to one of my prospects. Now, if it's a big prospect, I'll focus it on their company, hey, congratulations on this way to go on that. It just gives me an excuse to reach out. If it's, if it's I know sometimes like this week, I'm like, Hey, I'm going after all of my manufacturing contacts, I'll go find, and I'll use like a website and other one I built called you got research, while YuGiOh t research.com. You got research.com, where I make it really easy to find credible objective third party research reports, all free, I'll find a research report for that industry, my email might be out might be something like those. So let's say I'm a speaker, coach. And I want to reach you, Kenneth, instead of Hi, my name is Sam, I'm a speaker, coach, I might say, hey, Kenneth, I stumbled across this recent report from meetings digest, that talks about the six things where hybrid is going in 2023. I, of course, immediately thought of you would love to jump on a call and see if and discuss this and see how it's impacting your organization. Now, I made that up off the top my head, I'm sure I could do a better job. But again, I'm trying to find something that's a value to you. That may not have anything to do with me.

Kenneth Kinney 41:59
Great point. So Sam, you're in Minneapolis where it's way too cold in the winter, but they do have sharks. Yeah. at the Mall of America. So I asked this of all my guests. Yeah, because I'm a shark fanatic. What is your favorite kind of shark and why?

Sam Richter 42:14
Oh, it's gotta be the great white. Because they dominate right there. They're, they, they're, they're fearless. And they're feared. Now saying all that, statistically, they kind of know their place. They're not good. They don't attack people. You know, correct me if I'm wrong on this. You're the shark expert. But they're kind of good dudes, you know, they, they take care of what needs to get taken care of. They take care of their your, their little family unit or whatever. They're they're not the they're not the horrible sharks, they're made out to be

Kenneth Kinney 42:51
No, they are not what Jaws made them out to be. They are to be respected. Of course, that's a good way to say thank you absolutely respected, but they are not the attack machine. rabid dogs that people think they are up in swimming with them. I'm not a fan of swimming with great whites like I used to be just because the waters usually murky and it's already degrees where they swim. However, you can interact with sharks much more differently than the common misconception that's given so

Sam Richter 43:21
so I would say are the tiger shark because my kids go to the university or my kids. One daughter went my son still at the University of Missouri. They're tigers. So Tiger sharks, like I went to the University of Minnesota, if you could come up with a gopher shark, that'd be my shark.

Kenneth Kinney 43:35
I swim with Tiger Sharks in Florida quite a lot, actually. So we'll save a special time in the show. Are you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to be asked today? Okay, fire fire away. All right, number one, Google or LinkedIn, Google. Why so?

Sam Richter 43:55
Because if I need, if I have to choose between the two, LinkedIn is very focused on people, people information. There's so much other information out there that are beyond Google and or excuse me beyond LinkedIn. And by the way, I can use Google to search LinkedIn if I absolutely needed to

Kenneth Kinney 44:13
number to two fantastic people who apparently have created some really evergreen content, but had a bigger impact on you in your career. Dale Carnegie or George Boole? Ooh, it's tough when you started thinking of those Boolean operators that we that helped us for a good two decades,

Sam Richter 44:36
George Boole because I could not do what I do without George Boole from the 19th century. By the way. There have been so many other people that have written great books are great speakers that have taken Carnegie's concepts. So if you're asking me if neither one existed, I don't know. That'd be a tough one. But I'll say George Boole for me, and I'll rely on other people to translate Carnegie and I'll I'll absorber or Yeah, I guess absorb what they would share. Yep.

Kenneth Kinney 45:08
Fantastic Alright, number three, you wrote, take the cold out of cold calling. So would you rather do a cold call with limited amount of sales Intel? Or send an email or a LinkedIn pitch with an abundance of sales Intel?

Sam Richter 45:27
Oh for sure the email. You know, I mean the thought of calling somebody and not knowing something about the other person puts fear in me. Now calling is more effective. But calling with no information is not only not effective, it would be embarrassing.

Kenneth Kinney 45:48
Fair, this kind of goes with the topic du jour as well. Number four, better use of data intelligence for sales and marketing b2b or b2c. b2b. Why so?

Sam Richter 46:01
Well, again, it's more complex sale. So typically, in a b2c, the consumer kind of knows what they want. So for lack of a better term, their Google searching you, I need to go to, you know, went to Target today because I needed more English muffins, I don't need this salesperson at Target to know much about me. Now if I'm a if now if I'm a an owner of a store, and I'm going to create the world's greatest English muffins, well, then I want whoever selling me the ingredients and the oven to know what my goals are.

Kenneth Kinney 46:33
Good point. But if you go to Trader Joe's, they probably could tell you a story about the muffin itself.

Sam Richter 46:39
That's very true. Who made it?

Kenneth Kinney 46:42
Yeah, if the person had target would never know. All right, number five.

Sam Richter 46:45
Can I add one thing on to that though? Yeah. On the consumer side, so I just want to because I know you've got some amazingly intelligent people that listen and watch what you do. And so I'm gonna give somebody a job here. This is the business to consumer thing that's needed. I would pay Amazon extra. So I already have Amazon Prime, I would pay somebody extra to be my Amazon shopper. So that's a place where I think there's a consumer opportunity is because we all have access to so much information. Especially when we're shopping. I would love it if someone says if I got an email saying Sam, in it, maybe maybe algorithms can do this, but I don't think so. I think it's a human. Sam. I know your wife's birthday is coming up in three weeks here are choose one of these four things that are of high quality and she will love them. That would save me hours. So that's where I think whether it's an algorithm or human being there is an opportunity on the b2c side.

Kenneth Kinney 47:46
Agreed, and Bezos would be more than willing to learn even that much more about you if you were to open the kimono even further. So number

Sam Richter 47:54
one, but you probably do so give them a call.

Kenneth Kinney 47:58
Number five and the most important question that you're going to be asked today is biscuits or cornbread.

Sam Richter 48:08
Cornbread with little hot jalapenos in there with melted honey butter.

Kenneth Kinney 48:13
That's a good that's a hell of a choice. Can't go wrong with that. Yeah, I think I'll go cornbread on that. Okay, okay. Well, Sam, where can people find out more about you get a copy of the book. So you keynote a great presentation. You're a CSP and and CPA Hall of Famer within sa Where do people find out more about you?

Sam Richter 48:32
Yeah, the two websites are for my speaking world. It's Sam richter.com. Or, or frankly, because I talk about online information. There are other sandwiches in the world, I think I've effectively eliminated them. So you can just go into Google and type in my name. And I'm pretty easy to find. In terms of tools that I've developed. I have a program called the Intel engine, kind of what's behind me here. And so weird spelling, so it's i n t e l ngin.com Intel engine.com. And I build these custom search applications for pretty much every industry you can think of that automates a lot of what I teach. So for salespeople, sales teams, Intel engine, people who want training, keynotes, Sam richter.com

Kenneth Kinney 49:17
Sam, thank you so very much for being with us today on A Shark's Perspective.

Sam Richter 49:21
Thank you very much. It's really been an honor. And when I see you next, and we're by the ocean, I will gladly watch you swim with the sharks.

Kenneth Kinney 49:32
Invitation accepted. Alright, buddy.

Kenneth Kinney 49:39
So there was my conversation with Sam Richter, an internationally recognized expert on digital information, considered the father of modern day sales intelligence, and author and an NSA Hall of Fame speaker. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with him.

Kenneth Kinney 49:54
First, most people don't use data well to truly get to know people especially when they're trying to sell them something They may look at a website or your LinkedIn profile and basically look over what is a marketing brochure. But we've got many more tools and a ridiculous amount of data sources Google Google News, you got the news.com, LinkedIn, third party sites, etc. What do you do with that data? That's the biggest issue. He believes that the biggest missed opportunity, for example, with CRMs is the are in the relationship. The C and M tells us about the interactions with our brands, but the are the relationship is critically important. Do you truly know your customers well? Or do you just know their customer ID.

Kenneth Kinney 50:32
Second, love this quote, when talking about what data will not do in sales, Sam said, data intelligence will not replace empathy in sales. He further elaborated that a good salesperson has a mindset. They're not trying to convince someone only, but they want to help you solve your problem help you achieve your goals. That mindset cannot be replaced with data. And this applies everywhere with anyone, whether they're marketing sales, or anyone trying to sell anything, that mindset is critical.

Kenneth Kinney 51:01
Third, this is the most important thing, it takes work, people get so lazy with bad habits, I've been guilty of this too. But if you do the work, if you invest in getting to know the people that you're selling to beyond just a surface level, he dive deeper, then you have a much better chance of building relationship and not just selling to them once but again and again. It doesn't mean that you have to be able to write a book about their story. But just remember all the dumb and bad pitches you get every day how bad those irritate you how little those people invest in getting to know you, and just do a lot better than that. It's about relevance finding that content can get you past those gatekeepers holding you back. As Dale Carnegie famously once pointed out, people care about themselves. Find something that people care about in themselves and bridge that for context, make it relevant to them find that reason that they'll care.

Kenneth Kinney 51:50
Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Kenneth Kinney 51:54
Thank you again for the privilege of your time and I am so thankful to everyone who listens.

Kenneth Kinney 51:58
Please consider writing a review and letting me know your thoughts in the show.

Kenneth Kinney 52:01
All right, friends, be curious. Be fearless. dive deeper. And please join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.
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