October 29, 2025 • 39 mins
Tired of hearing that cold calling is dead? Patrick William Joyce, CEO of Outboundless, joins Small Business Pivots to debunk the biggest myths in outbound sales and explain why human-to-human calling is still one of the most effective ways to grow a business in 2025.
From his early career as a math teacher in Boston to running a high-performance outbound SDR agency, Patrick shares how he built resilience through rejection, what most businesses get wrong about outbound sales, and why personalization in AI emails doesn’t equal connection.
We dig into:
- Why cold calling still works in the age of AI and automation
- The “95/5 rule” of rejection vs. success in outbound sales
- How early-stage businesses can use outbound to test their market and build pipeline
- Why the sales development role is one of the most important — yet overlooked — in business
- Patrick’s new book, The Illuminati Sales Manifesto, and the truth about personalization myths
If you’re a business owner, entrepreneur, or sales leader who needs qualified conversations that actually convert, this episode is packed with insights to help you break through the noise and generate results.
Patrick Joyce: CEO of Outboundless
Website: https://www.outboundless.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pwilliamjoyce/
Purchase Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FH7JC5QQ
#SmallBusinessPivots #MichaelDMorrison #BOSS #OklahomaCity #BusinessPodcast #SmallBusiness #Entrepreneurship #ColdCalling #OutboundSales #B2BSales #LeadGeneration #BusinessGrowth #Outboundless #PatrickJoyce #SalesStrategy
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivots
where we have another specialguest from around the world.
And if you've listened orwatched to the show, you know
that no one can introducethemselves or their business
like the business owner.
So, my friend, I let you havethe honors of introducing
yourself, your business, andjust a little bit about you.
SPEAKER_01 (00:20):
Yeah, Michael, thank you so much.
Um, glad to be here.
Uh, my name's Patrick WilliamJoyce, uh, CEO of an outbound
SDR cold calling agency calledOutboundless.
Um, I've been in B2B Tech forthe last 10 years, 100% focused
on pure outbound sales roles.
So the top of the sales funnel.
(00:42):
Um, I made the decision early onto stick um in that area of the
business because when I got myfirst job entry level, I figured
nobody I had one of the hardestjobs in the building and nobody
wanted to do it.
Um, so if I could justspecialize there, I'd probably
never be out of work.
And that turned out to be uh apretty good bet.
SPEAKER_00 (01:01):
Awesome, awesome.
And you've recently published uhco-authored a book that we'll
talk about here, and we're gonnadebunk some myths in the
outbound arena.
But first, let's introduce theshow and we'll be right back.
Welcome to Small BusinessPivots, a podcast produced for
small business owners.
(01:21):
I'm your host, Michael Morrison,founder and CEO of Boss, where
we make business ownershipsimplified for success.
Our business is helping yoursgrow.
Boss offers business loans withbusiness coaching support.
Apply in minutes and getapproved and funded in as little
(01:42):
as 24 to 48 hours at businessownership simplified.com.
All right, welcome back to SmallBusiness Pivots.
My friend, we have businessowners that are listening to the
show.
And before we get into sales, Iknow that a lot of business
owners got into entrepreneurshipfor one reason or another.
(02:03):
Can you kind of catch us up towhere you, you know, maybe up
your upbringing, maybe somethings that uh triggered you to
get into entrepreneurship sothat others can kind of relate
to your story?
SPEAKER_01 (02:15):
Yeah, absolutely.
I would love to.
So I had a very roundabout uhcareer path where I wasn't sure
exactly what I wanted to do.
Um, I had taken some time offwhile I was in college as an
undergrad.
I took about a two-year breakwhere I worked with my brother
full time.
My brother's uh was a truckdriver at the time uh in the
(02:37):
Teamsters Union up in Boston,uh, which was a really great
experience um for a lot ofdifferent reasons.
Uh uh, I'll touch on some ofthem.
Um but my my older brother issomebody that I look up to, and
he started his own business andI helped him get off the off the
ground after we had workedtogether for a few years.
(02:58):
Um, I ended up going back toschool, finishing my math
degree, um, and got a jobteaching high school math um
right out of school.
I taught for four years,realized I really didn't like
that job all that much.
Um, I met my wife there.
She was a great teacher.
I wasn't excellent at it um fora few different reasons.
I liked hanging out with thekids and connecting with them
(03:20):
and talking to them and youknow, explaining the concepts
and whatnot, but there's that'sprobably 20% of the job.
The other 80% of the job isclassroom management, which I
wasn't very good at, you know.
It was a little wild.
Um, I taught in a pretty roughdistrict, like a low-income
district just outside of Boston.
Um, you know, a lot of troubledyouth and whatnot.
(03:42):
Uh, so anyway, I wanted to getout of there, um, helped my
brother build his business.
Um, he started his own company.
I actually started out in SEO umand just like website marketing,
um, helped him, you know, rankon Google.
This was back in uh I want tosay uh 20 2007, maybe 2010-ish
(04:06):
era, um, which Google was a lotdifferent back then.
There was um some tricks thatyou could do.
I ran an ad campaign, uh, blewup his business, and you know,
he I think that's that's kind ofwhat planted the seed for me
wanting to start my own thing.
And then I got into uh the techsales world.
(04:26):
So I was a teacher for fouryears.
Um my wife and I met, she's fromAnchorage, Alaska, I'm from
Boston, um, couldn't be furtherapart.
So we kind of met in the middlein Seattle.
We moved to Seattle together.
Um, and I wasn't sure what Iwanted to do after I was done
teaching.
Um, I thought I wanted to use mymath degree, so I ended up
(04:47):
getting a job as uh a marketinganalyst at a group health
brokerage, um, selling, youknow, uh health insurance
packages to big companies, um,you know, like uh restaurant
chains and whatnot.
And I thought I was gonna godown the path of becoming an
actuary.
Actuaries do statistics forinsurance companies.
(05:10):
So I thought, yeah, I've got youknow a mathematical mind, I
could put my analytical skillsto good use.
Um, but I figured out prettyquickly that I had a very big
personality for an actuary.
And uh the in in the marketinganalyst seat that I was in, I
was building proposals for theproducers, the brokers, the
(05:32):
sales, the closers in insuranceare called producers.
Um I was building theirproposals and then watching them
go and deliver it, and they weremaking a ton of money, and I was
not.
And I thought, well, I don'tknow, how do I get your job?
So I asked around.
I asked a bunch of them, like,what do I do?
How do I how do I get your job?
And they said, Well, you gottalearn how to cold call.
(05:53):
That's just step one to get intosales.
So I said, Okay, cool.
And I went and uh startedselling life insurance from my
bedroom.
I got my insurance license inthe state of Washington, um,
signed up for with a family uhuh company called Family First
Life, and they trained me, theygave me a lead list, and they
(06:15):
said, just go hit the phones, goset up appointments, um, go to
the person's house, get them tosign a contract, you get paid.
Very, very tough gig, commissiononly.
Um, the leads that I was gettingwere completely just stepped on.
They were like, you know,four-year-old mortgage
protection leads.
So a mortgage protection lead iswhen somebody buys a house, they
(06:37):
get a letter in the mail from aninsurance company uh that says,
if you were to die, would yourspouse be able to cover your
mortgage?
If not, you should sign up forlife insurance.
Yeah.
Somebody fills out that form andthey mail it back in, and then
that's the lead, which soundsgreat, except the leads that I
was getting were up to fouryears old.
(06:58):
So it was every insurance agentin Seattle had called four
years, had called them many,many times.
Yeah, uh, and you know, tried tosell them life insurance.
So that's that's where I learnedhow to cold call.
That's where I cut my teeth.
Um, and you've I mean, you'vegot five seconds.
You say the word insurance, andthe person just hangs up.
Um, but I was able to set a fewappointments and go to you know,
(07:20):
go drive out to on location, andI was, you know, driving Uber to
supplement my income and startedto figure out like, okay, maybe
working my way up from thebottom in insurance is gonna
take too long.
See, I had already had a career,I had a math degree, and I
already had a career as ateacher, and I was starting over
ground zero in a new city.
Um, so I thought, well, I'm I'mpicking up all these uh tech
(07:42):
company executives in the middleof the day, and they're driving
from building, driving them frombuilding the building in my car,
you know, driving Uber.
And I thought maybe I could geta job at one of these tech
companies in a sales role.
Um, there's a lot of money intech.
Uh, so I applied for a fewdifferent jobs, and because I
had cold calling experience,like the first interview that I
went to, they pretty much justhired me on the spot because I
(08:02):
knew how to cold call already.
And I was like the my peers thatyou know, the people that were
getting hired in theseentry-level roles were kids
right out of college.
So I was 10 years older thaneverybody.
Um, you know, had already had acareer, already knew how to cold
call.
Um, so I hit the ground runningin Seattle.
Uh, worked at a very coolcompany called Zip Whip.
Um text message company.
(08:24):
Um, got acquired by Twilio a fewyears back for like, I don't
know, 800 million dollars orsomething like that.
Um, so very successful company.
I joined when they had justgotten their D round, Series D
funding.
Um, so they were blown up.
Really cool office right acrossthe street from T-Mobile Park in
Seattle.
Um, they had a kombucha keg ontap.
(08:46):
Uh they had scooters in thebuilding, they had company
lunch, like burritos everyFriday.
Very, very cool job, very laidback, very fun environment um
compared to being a high schoolteacher in Boston or working on
the back of a garbage truck withmy brother, which I had done,
you know, while I was in school.
So I was like, this is thecoolest thing ever.
(09:08):
I was hitting the phones, I wasbooking a bunch of meetings,
getting, you know, a base salaryplus commission on everything
that I set up for the accountexecutives.
I was like, man, I'm I I neverturned back.
I was like, this is the coolestthing ever.
Um, and that's where I figuredout, like, hey, nobody wants to
do this job, I can do it reallywell if I can just specialize
(09:28):
here.
Like, I think it's it's gonnaturn out okay.
Um, so that's sort of how I gotinto the tech industry.
And then I'll I'll pause thereand see if you have any
questions.
But then, you know, there wasanother there's another 10 years
after that that I could gothrough as well.
SPEAKER_00 (09:44):
Yeah, no, that is a fantastic story that people can
relate to because my son was inthe health insurance industry,
which is similar to the life,and you talk about getting your
nose bloodied.
I mean, these people, so whenyou were saying like four years
old leads, I was like, oh mygosh, my son would would come
(10:07):
home or share the stories oflike these people call you
everything in the book.
You know, it's like I wish theywould just hang up instead of
talking to me.
If they're not interested, justhang up.
You don't need to tell me what apiece of crap I am for calling
you the hundredth hundredthtime, take me off their list,
all that stuff.
So I think we have a lot oflisteners' ears, is what I'm
(10:29):
trying to say.
A lot of people can relate tothose cold calls because we hear
that cold calls don't workanymore, and that's the kind of
stuff you get.
But you have a book that youcame out with.
Let's touch on that real quickbecause we can debunk some
myths, right?
On outbound calls and andthings.
So, what out of this book, canyou uh introduce the book to us,
(10:52):
how you came up with it, andthen maybe pull one of the the
myths that you'd really like toaddress out of that book?
SPEAKER_01 (10:58):
Yeah, absolutely.
I'd love to.
So the book is called theIlluminati Sales Manifesto,
which is a little bittongue-in-cheek.
Uh, the the way that I'll giveyou the origin story.
So Justin Michael is a um friendof mine.
I actually hired him as a coachum while I was doing enterprise
sales.
Um, he we ended up workingtogether.
(11:20):
Uh, we did a bunch of consultingwork together.
We were kind of running aroundas freelancers, like you know,
helping each other do projectsand whatnot.
Um, and we had met up uh down inSanta Barbara, California, got
together in a room, and he said,Pat, what's wrong with the B2B
tech industry right now?
And I just started going off.
And he sat down at the computerand just started typing out
(11:43):
everything I was saying.
So we turned it into this longdocument and then edited it down
and like added to it and kind ofturned it into um what you see
today.
That was the I just released thebook that was five years ago.
Um, that we so we've beensitting on this document for a
long time and finally we'relike, man, we should just
release this.
Um, so the the idea was likeyou've I I kind of got uh chewed
(12:07):
up and spit out by a number ofdifferent companies.
Um, I worked for some reallygreat companies and I had some
other like sort of roughexperiences.
Um and and the the premise isthat the sales development role,
the top of the sales funnel, theperson that's doing the cold
calling has one of the mostimportant jobs in any business
to go find new customers whereyou didn't know you had them.
(12:28):
They're not inbound leads, theseare like people that don't know
you, they're perfect strangers,they weren't planning on buying
anything from you, and then theybecome customers.
Like, how do you go and findthose people?
It's one of the most importantfunctions in any business, but
it's treated as this entry-levelkind of stepping stone role,
which I think is a flawedconcept.
(12:50):
Like, um, that the the personthat's doing that job should be
held in high regard.
Um, when the opposite is true.
The person that's closing thedeals gets all the respect, gets
all the resources, you know,gets better pay.
Um, you know, they their theircareer path is very different.
They get um, yeah, they they getthe most money.
Um so I I did a lot of thinkingabout why is that and started
(13:16):
writing it down.
And I I think some of theproblem is this.
Um, the the entire model ofhaving a prospecting team, this
entry-level sales developmentposition, um, it came from a guy
named Aaron Ross, um, who wrotea book called Predictable
Revenue.
It was released in 2011.
Uh, predictable revenue is theBible of Silicon Valley.
(13:38):
Now, where he came up with theconcepts that were in that book
is he had scaled Salesforce.comfrom like 1 million to 100
million in revenue as a salesleader there.
And the problem that Salesforcewas having in the early days,
you know, cloud-based CRM,nobody had it, everybody needed
it.
Um, their account executiveteam, their closing team, they
(14:00):
would have a bunch of deals inthe pipeline, and then they
would spend all their timeclosing those deals, and then
the pipeline would dry up, andthen they'd have no pipeline,
the revenue would dip down, andthen the sales team would go and
spend all their time prospectingand put all these deals in the
pipeline, and then the pendulumwould swing back, and then they
would spend all their timeclosing those deals so that
(14:21):
there was this up and down kindof revenue motion that was
happening.
And Aaron's an engineer um fromStanford, and he looked at the
problem and said, Okay, well,what if we just have a dedicated
prospecting team um and adedicated closing team so that
we can kind of even out and beable to predict the revenue that
we're getting um every month,every quarter, every year.
(14:44):
Um, which is a genius way to doit.
But now the interesting partabout that is that Salesforce
was dominant in the market.
Like they had no problem, theyhad like perfect product market
fit.
Like cloud-based CRM was a newconcept.
Before that, you had a bunch ofuh sales reps that had
spreadsheets with all theircustomer info on it.
(15:06):
And if the sales rep left andwent to a competitor, they took
their spreadsheet with them.
So the company loses all thatcustomer data.
So it wasn't hard to call abusiness owner and be like, hey,
don't you want to copy thatspreadsheet that that your sales
reps have?
Um, so you know, the the theproduct market fit was
(15:28):
established, the reasons whypeople buy were established, so
they were able to train the SDRsand the SDR, you know, the sales
development reps, theentry-level reps that were just
setting up the appointments forthe closing team.
Um, and they they you know put amotion in place that was very,
very doable.
Now, what happened is that thatbook blew up, sold like
(15:49):
whatever, you know, 200,000copies or however many it sold.
Everybody in Silicon Valley thatwanted to start a tech company
read the book and said, Okay, soI need a prospecting team and I
need a closing team.
And had, you know, goes out andhires these entry-level reps
that don't know anything aboutthe industry, that don't know
anything about the product, theproduct market fit is not
(16:10):
established, the ideal customerprofile is not established, the
founder's not sure exactly whothey're selling to or why,
because they're just trying toget off the ground.
So this model is kind ofmisallocated to um new
companies, right?
Like every every tech startup inthe valley goes and hires SDRs,
and then when it doesn't workout, they fire them.
(16:30):
So the SDR turns into thisscapegoat kind of role.
Um, and that's sort of like thethe premises or the things that
I was trying to point at um uhuh when when we wrote this book.
SPEAKER_00 (16:45):
That's interesting, interesting that you say that
because going back to my son'sstory of getting his nose
bloodied a lot in the healthinsurance, making cold calls,
he's now at one of the topcellular companies, and he is
number two in sales in theregion.
So going from bottom of thebarrel to feeling like I'm not a
(17:06):
good salesperson to going to adesired company, like you said,
a product market fit.
That's two different things thatpeople don't even think about.
So that book is not evenapplicable to a lot of
businesses because you may nothave something that's as you
know popular as Salesforce, likeyou were mentioning.
So let's get into the cold calloutbound process, if you don't
(17:30):
mind, because I'd say there's awe can debunk that myth right
now, because right now it's Q3of 2025, and everybody's all
about digital sales, they'reabout AI, cold calls, cold
email, all that stuff doesn'twork because you got to get on
board.
But I kind of disagree.
So can you kind of go becauseyou also own a company that does
(17:51):
outbound, outboundless.com.
And so can you kind of help usunderstand like why it still
works and and then maybe how togo about it that might be
different from others and maybewhy it's not working for others
and why it is for you?
SPEAKER_01 (18:06):
Yeah.
Um, with the advent of AI um andemail infrastructure getting
easier and easier to acquire,um, there's a lot of agencies
that are like mine that havescaled up their business on the
premise that you could have acouple of guys, two or three
(18:26):
people, um sending tens ofthousands of uh emails that are
enhanced via AI so that you caninject these personalization
points into the email.
Now, the problem with that isthat there's a bunch of agencies
that are all doing this and setall sending tens of thousands of
emails per month, andeverybody's inbox is flooded.
(18:49):
There's there's a lot of ebbsand flows in the in the B2B tech
industry, um uh like trends ofhow people are doing things.
Um, the the personalizationpoint that's one of the myths
that I talk about in the bookthat personalization is a myth.
Um, the you know, five, sixyears ago when we wrote this.
SPEAKER_00 (19:07):
You're listening to small business pivots.
This podcast is produced by mycompany, Boss.
Our business is helping yoursgrow.
Boss offers business loans withbusiness coaching support.
Apply in minutes and getapproved and funded in as little
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(19:29):
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Now let's get back to ourspecial guest.
SPEAKER_01 (19:37):
The the personalization point, that's
one of the myths that I talkabout in the book, that
personalization is a myth.
Um, the you know, five, sixyears ago when we wrote this, um
the the the premise was if youpersonalize your email to the
person, you are going to get ahigher response rate.
You know, like if I went andlooked up uh Michael, what your
(19:58):
favorite sports team was, and Iuse that in the subject line,
like that's gonna somehow getyou to buy my software more
often.
Um when the reality is that thatis not true.
Like, you need to understand umyour business, the the workflow
that you are trying to impact,like how your business operates,
like what your current state is,what your worldview is.
(20:19):
You need to understand thosethings really well.
And like the little tidbitsabout personal interests um
aren't aren't as impactful uh asthey once were.
Now, these AI enhanced emailagencies are still like working
off of that premise, and they'relike pulling these, you know,
they're looking at the person'sLinkedIn profile and pulling a
tidbit from it, and you know, umtrying to use um the person's
(20:41):
geography, like what statethey're in and what city they're
in, and and you know, uh use theAI to scale up some level of
personal personalization thatlooks like it's human, like the
whole thing is trying to get acomputer to appear as though it
was a human that was actuallyreaching out, um, which there's
some merit to it.
Like, if I get an email fromsomebody and I think, oh, the a
(21:04):
person spent time on this andthought about it and wrote it
down, like I might be more aptto at least just reply to them,
even if it's not going to be mything.
I might just give them thecourtesy of saying, Yeah, no,
thanks.
Here's here's why we're notgonna do that.
Reach back out next quarter orwhatever.
Um, but the problem is that it'sbecome so prevalent that as soon
as you see it in your inbox,like you just know that it
(21:25):
wasn't real.
And the reason why cold callingstill works is because it's a
human voice on the other end ofthe line.
There's been billions of dollarsinvested in millions of lines of
code written trying to solve theproblem of an AI being able to
talk to you, and it just hasn'tbeen done yet.
We're just not there yet.
Maybe in 10 years it'll bedifferent, uh, but we're just
not there.
(21:46):
Like when you your phone ringsand you answer it, and it's a
robot on the other end of theline, not only can you tell
immediately, you automaticallyjust want to hang up the phone.
Like, I don't want to talk tothis person.
It's the same reaction when youget an email that was written by
AI that's like trying to pullthese personal tidbits that they
found on my LinkedIn profile.
You can kind of tell that itlike fit into a template, and
(22:09):
sometimes it doesn't even lookright.
Um, but when the phone rings andit's somebody that has a good
phone presence and there's anactual human on the other end of
the line, I mean, yeah, we wefound that uh people are
generally pleased to be talkingto a real person.
Now, not everybody is, you know,it's still cold calling is a
tough gig, it's still yeah, 95%failure and you're having a good
(22:33):
day, you know.
If you get a five percentsuccess rate, like you're you're
doing great.
You're you're one of the best inthe business.
So it's still you know, prettytough going, but the five
percent of those people that youcan talk to, um, you know, that
you can actually have aconversation with, like that's
that's what's driving newbusiness people.
Now, you can use the technologyto enhance our ability to make
(22:55):
the calls faster, acquire thedata quicker, find the mobile
data, you know, segment ourlists really cleverly.
Um, you know, we work a lot ofthe work that we do for our
clients is splitting up um ourtheir lead list by industry, and
and we have a point of view inthat particular industry.
Like, for example, constructionfirms.
Hey, we work with constructionfirms.
(23:16):
Um, these are some of theproblems that we were seeing
with the other clients that wework with.
Here's how we solve them.
Was hoping we could go over somesimilar ideas with you.
Now I've personalized it to theworkflow, I've personalized it
to their worldview.
Like, I understand what thestatus quo is.
I'm showing them that Iunderstand that stuff.
Then I can go to the nextindustry.
Let's say it's IT servicescompanies.
(23:37):
Like, hey, we worked with otherIT services companies, we've
seen they have an issue withcash flow.
Um, you know, we've been able tocome in and give them fractional
accounting help.
You know, there's one of theclients that's adding.
So that that kind of approach wehave found works so much better
than trying to personalize basedon personal interests with AI.
SPEAKER_00 (23:58):
I will have to agree with you because the same things
have happened to me just in thelast week.
So, for instance, I live inOklahoma City, and if you follow
the NBA at all, we won the worldchampionship in the NBA, and
someone just reached out to me,and the first words out of their
mouth were, Hey Michael, I'm anOklahoma City Thunder fan, just
(24:19):
like you.
I went click, I'm like sales,right?
Because you're using that thatuh what would you call it?
Just kind of that knowing aboutthe person.
And I was like, automatic sales,like, no, if you're gonna kind
of cheat the system, like ifyou're I can't trust you
already.
And so, and then another one isyou know, you're talking about
(24:40):
those AI tools.
A lot of us can tell because ifthere's like three seconds, two
to three seconds of dead air,I'm like, oh, recording's
coming, click.
So, how does I've got someclients that they're like, I
want to make some outboundcalls.
How does one cut through allthat clutter?
I mean, you don't have to giveindustry secrets away, you know,
(25:02):
for your company of how you doit, but just what are some
things that would be helpful forthose that maybe not in a
position to hire your company,maybe not in that industry, or
maybe don't have the resources,but they want to grow and
they're considering outboundcalls.
SPEAKER_01 (25:17):
Yeah, you mentioned the two or three second delay.
What one of the things we foundis um it does put somebody's
guard up if there's a slightdelay on the phone, but as soon
as a human voice connects, it itlowers their guard a little bit.
They'll at least hear you out.
Um, and we open the calls likethere's a lot of debate on how
to open a cold call, whether touse the permission-based opener,
(25:37):
they call it or not.
Um, but we we use it prettyeffectively.
It's like, hey, this is Patrickfrom Outboundless.
Look, I I know I'm calling youout of the blue here, but do you
have 30 seconds so I can tellyou why I called?
Almost everybody is gonna say,Yeah, sure, go ahead.
Okay, Michael.
Yeah, we work with otherbusiness coaches.
Um, one of the things that we'venoticed is and they could go
(25:59):
from there.
Yeah, like that's that's how youopen the cold call.
Now, there's like a beginning, amiddle, and an end.
Uh the beginning and the end areusually pretty much the same,
right?
Like the beginning of the callis you get your your script
down.
Um I hesitate to call it ascript, I think of it in terms
of like a call framework becauseI don't want it to be wrote
(26:22):
memorized.
But the first few sentences thatyou say are going to be pretty
similar across the board.
Um, the middle part of the callis where it gets murky, it's
never gonna be the same twice.
You're gonna actually have tohave a conversation with the
person that's on the other endof the line.
And then the end of the calleither ends with, no, this isn't
for me, or yeah, sure, let'sspend some more time, you know,
(26:42):
20 minutes next week and youbook the meeting.
Um, so that that middle part ofthe call is actually like it's
the easiest part to do, but it'sthe hardest to prepare for.
And I say it's the easiest partto do because you're just having
a conversation with anotherhuman being.
Um, if you go into it with toomuch of an agenda in mind, where
you know you're the sales repand you're thinking, man, I
(27:04):
really get to close this deal, Ireally gotta sell this guy.
You you don't have to sell thewhole thing on the opening call.
All you have to do is get theperson 51% sure that you might
be able to help them withsomething that they are
currently trying to do.
Um, and your job is to decidewhether or not that's even
(27:24):
possible.
Um, so it's it's a filteringexercise.
Um, what you're trying to do isyou're trying to filter through
the leaves that you have infront of you and and decide
whether or not like there's evenpotential for you to help the
person and then communicatethat.
And if there is potential, thenmost likely they will talk to
you again.
You can book the meeting.
Um, you might find out like onceyou get to that meeting that
(27:46):
there were other constraints inplace that it's not going to be
the case.
But I mean, this is this is whatsales is.
You take a bunch of people on alist at the beginning, you put
them into your funnel.
At the top of the funnel, you'retrying to figure out which one
of these people might be acustomer, and then at the other
end, you get a small amount ofthat large list that you started
with uh that that might end upas a customer.
(28:07):
And you do that over and overagain.
You get more and more clever atit.
Um, you get really tight withwho your ideal customer is and
why you should why they shouldbe your customer.
Um, really trying to understandthat stuff, spending a lot of
time mapping that out and beingreally deliberate about it,
being really intentional aboutit, you know.
Um, segmenting by industry,segmenting by employee size,
(28:29):
segmenting by um revenue bands,you know, the companies that
make more than a million in ayear make sense for you to talk
to at the stage that you're at.
Um, yeah.
So I mean th those are some ofthe things that I think about
when I'm I'm thinking aboutstarting kicking off an outbound
motion um with one of myclients.
SPEAKER_00 (28:45):
So you mentioned uh 95% rejection, five percent
would be a great day.
So what would you say on averagea business owner should should
spend on outbound calls, youknow, because they have a
business to run also.
So what would you say theaverage is?
Like if I made using thatpercentage as the goal line, I
(29:09):
make a hundred calls hoping toget five out of those five.
What have you seen on outboundcalls like they actually convert
to out of those just on average?
Is there an percentage?
SPEAKER_01 (29:22):
Yeah, yeah.
So um what we've seen across theboard, no matter what way you
slice up the data, if you lookat it in aggregate in in any
time frame, whether it's overthe course of a year or a month
or a week, the average connectrate is about five percent.
So if I make a hundred calls,I'm gonna talk to five people.
Um, if I book a meeting with allfive of those people and I turn
(29:43):
them into customers, like youare the greatest salesperson on
planet.
SPEAKER_00 (29:47):
You're crushing it.
SPEAKER_01 (29:48):
Uh so I would double that.
I would want to talk to 10people and hope that I get one
or two of them that might turninto uh potential customers.
Now, with the software that'savailable now, you Could do that
in a couple hours.
It the hard part is getting thedata sorted out.
You got to figure out um whatyour lead list is gonna look
like, what your company list isgonna look like, where you're
(30:09):
gonna get the data from, um,which is why I would suggest
hiring an agency uh like to dothis for you because this is all
we do, this is what wespecialize in.
Um, but I mean, if you want todo it on your own, if you're
bootstrapped and you know you'rejust you just want to go and
make some calls, like you gottajust set the expectation to um
if I can get one customer, onepotential customer a day, then
(30:33):
I'm absolutely killing it.
And I would say set two 45minute blocks for yourself and
be religious about it.
Do one in the morning, one inthe afternoon, and just call for
45 minutes, 90 minutes a day.
If you can spare an hour and ahalf to go find new customers,
you're gonna learn a lot.
Once you have that manyconversations, if you're having
20 conversations a day andyou're learning why people are
(30:54):
saying no, um, the it's likecompound interest.
Every conversation you have addsto your ability to have the next
conversation, right?
Like this is what we're hearingback from the market.
You might actually learn thatyou might need to pivot your
business, you might need to uhchange your tack because
everybody that you talk to, likeyou're just getting absolutely
brick walled.
(31:15):
Um, I I think finding that stuffout is super important.
SPEAKER_00 (31:19):
Yeah, and for those that are fearful of picking up
the phone and getting rejected,I always use the quote of
discomfort means we're growing.
So, in other words, you justgotta start doing it.
And then once you start doingit, you know, it just now it's a
game.
Like, how can I learn from thelast one so the next one doesn't
(31:40):
call me that name or hang up onme or anything like that?
And so this has been all verybeneficial information.
Is there any data out there thatyou know of that says cold
calling?
You can there's a greaterpercentage of converting sales
versus filling out the forms ordigital leads.
(32:01):
Is there any data out there thatyou know of that kind of shows
the success rates of eachmarketing platform?
SPEAKER_01 (32:10):
Um, anecdotally, I have a really good feel for it.
I don't know of any particulardata on outbound versus inbound.
You know, somebody's handraising and they're coming to
you, they've already identifiedthat they're having a problem
and they're they've alreadyidentified that you were a
potential solution for it.
Like these are people that goand fill out the form on your
website and you talk to them.
It is a lot easier to closethose deals than it is the
(32:32):
stranger that you called thatwasn't planning on spending any
money on you, that might nothave even known that there was a
problem, um, that is just beingsort of having their eyes open
to the idea that there might bea different way of doing it.
Um however, like those like inany market, um, if you look at
the the especially in B2B tech,if you look at the technology
(32:54):
adoption curve, there's itfollows a bell curve, right?
Like the beginning of it, likethe the first few people that
you get as customers, like whenyou're trying to grow a small
business, those are the earlyadopters, those are the people
that are right on the bleedingedge of the tech that are
looking for new ways to dothings.
Um, the middle part of the curveis kind of um once you're
(33:14):
already established, once itthey're they're the trend
followers, like once it becomeskind of a trend that people are
gonna um you know use this typeof solution, like we've seen it
many, many times in tech.
Things become trendy, everybodystarts using them, they don't
even know why they're usingthem, they're just buying the
tech because that's whateverybody does.
Um, and then the end of thecurve is is uh uh sort of the
laggards, they're called in inthe technology adoption curve,
(33:38):
where like they just want to doit the way that they've always
been doing it, and they'llpretty much they're not gonna
change until um it becomes uhruntime critical for them where
they're just moving too slow andthe rest of the the world around
them is moving really fast andthey have to change.
Um, I was like that buying acell phone when I was younger.
I so I I'm gonna age myselfhere.
I graduated high school in 2003,and I think I I don't think I
(34:02):
had gotten a cell phone yet.
I was I was the last person outof my friend group to get a cell
phone because I said I thisthing is ridiculous, and now I
can't put the thing down.
I'm on my iPhone.
Um, so anyway, that when youwhen you think about it like
that, when you think about thetechnology adoption curve, if
you're a new business, you havea new venture, you have a new
way of doing things, you aretrying to sort out the people
(34:24):
that you're talking to.
You're trying to find thoseearly adopters, you're trying to
find the people that are on thebleeding edge of the technology.
And you can figure out if youlook at it that way, you can
figure out pretty quickly ifyou're talking to one of those
people or not, if they're gonnabe an early adopter, a fast
follower, or a laggard.
SPEAKER_00 (34:41):
On outboundless, you've mentioned it a few times.
What uh what's your ideal clientfor that business?
Who should reach out to you?
Who would it be beneficial for?
SPEAKER_01 (34:52):
Um, our ideal customer is early stage tech
companies.
So seed stage, series A funding,series B funding, um, wants to
grow, wants to most importantly,wants to find out um what the
market is saying.
Like we can have 20 liveconversations a day on your
behalf uh and find out if yourassumptions are true about your
(35:16):
ideal customer profile.
Um I'd say sort of uh anotherreally good client for us would
be somebody that has their idealcustomer profile sorted out,
they know exactly who it is,they just want a cost-effective
way to go and and grow into themarket segment that they already
have established.
So you've got maybe one or twosales reps that you've hired.
(35:39):
Um, things are going reallywell.
You just you have a long list ofhere's all of our potential
customers.
You just need somebody to go andcall them for you.
Like we can go and set up thoseappointments in a way that is
gonna be more cost effectivethan you trying to hire somebody
internally, man, spend the timeto manage them, outfit them with
the tech that they need, um, youknow, hire an ops person or try
(36:00):
to do it yourself, or you know,sorting out the CRM data and the
you know, finding all thecontact info and building the
system in place.
We've already got it, it'sturnkey.
You know, we had a client sign acontract on a Friday, Wednesday
they had two meetings booked.
Um, so I mean we we move reallyquickly.
You can turn it on, turn it offas needed.
(36:22):
Um, you know, we do we dotypically three months dents.
One, you know, every quarter youcan reevaluate if it's if it's
working for you or not.
Um, yeah, that's that's exactlywho we're looking for.
SPEAKER_00 (36:32):
So your leads are qualified more than the someone
that filled out a form fouryears ago, is what you're
saying.
SPEAKER_01 (36:39):
Yes.
unknown (36:40):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (36:41):
All right.
Well, I know you've uh got a lotof listeners here probably
wanting to follow you, learnmore.
What's the best place to dothat?
SPEAKER_01 (36:50):
Uh go to LinkedIn, Patrick William Joyce on
LinkedIn.
You can follow me there.
Um, there's a link to mysubstack there where I do a lot
of writing.
Um, you can find the book, TheIlluminati Sales Manifesto on
Amazon.
Uh the Kindle version is 99cents if you want to check it
out.
Um, if you find me on LinkedInand you have a cold call script
you want me to review, send itto my DMs.
(37:10):
Send me a connection request,mention the podcast, um, and
send me your call script andI'll review it for you.
SPEAKER_00 (37:16):
Fantastic.
Well, I I work connecting and uhI encourage our listeners to
follow or connect with you.
You've got quite a following, uh500 likes, engagements, you
know, or more on each post.
So you've got a lot ofbeneficial information that
people could learn more.
And then on your website, uhoutboundless.com, how would they
(37:39):
connect with you there?
SPEAKER_01 (37:41):
Yeah, there's a leading there's a link to book a
meeting with me directly there.
Okay.
Um just go to the website, youfill out the form, it'll put you
directly on my calendar.
SPEAKER_00 (37:51):
Fantastic.
Well, I know from time to timethere may not have been a
subject or a topic that I askedabout, but I know being on guest
on other podcasts, I'm like, Iwish we really would have talked
on this.
Is there anything that you feellike you'd really like to share
with our listeners that wedidn't discuss already?
SPEAKER_01 (38:10):
Yeah, I I would I would end it with this.
I I would say that um the mostimportant to think about, most
important thing to think aboutas a small business owner is um
to be relentless aboutunderstanding your customer and
giving them a good experience.
I think that that that is theone thing that um shines through
(38:31):
in any business that does well.
Um and and have integrity aboutit.
Like integrity is really, reallyimportant.
Um, think if you if you approachevery action that you take with
every um every customer, withevery potential customer, and
think about it in terms of howcan I best serve this person,
um, that will take you really,really far.
SPEAKER_00 (38:52):
That's golden advice.
Well, Patrick, you've been ablessing to many today.
I appreciate you sharing yourinsights and your time with us
today.
SPEAKER_01 (39:00):
Absolutely.
Thanks for having me.
I had a great time.
SPEAKER_00 (39:02):
My pleasure.
Thank you for listening to SmallBusiness Pivots.
This podcast is created andproduced by my company, Boss.
Our business is growing yours.
Boss offers flexible businessloans with business coaching
support.
Apply in minutes and getapproved and funded in as little
as 24 to 48 hours at businessownership simplified.com.
(39:26):
If you're enjoying this podcast,don't forget to hit the
subscribe button and share it aswell.
If you need help growing yourbusiness, email me at Michael at
michaeldmorson.com.
We'll see you next time on SmallBusiness Pivots.
All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivots
where we have another specialguest from around the world.
And if you've listened orwatched to the show, you know
that no one can introducethemselves or their business
like the business owner.
So, my friend, I let you havethe honors of introducing
yourself, your business, andjust a little bit about you.
SPEAKER_01 (00:20):
Yeah, Michael, thank you so much.
Um, glad to be here.
Uh, my name's Patrick WilliamJoyce, uh, CEO of an outbound
SDR cold calling agency calledOutboundless.
Um, I've been in B2B Tech forthe last 10 years, 100% focused
on pure outbound sales roles.
So the top of the sales funnel.
(00:42):
Um, I made the decision early onto stick um in that area of the
business because when I got myfirst job entry level, I figured
nobody I had one of the hardestjobs in the building and nobody
wanted to do it.
Um, so if I could justspecialize there, I'd probably
never be out of work.
And that turned out to be uh apretty good bet.
SPEAKER_00 (01:01):
Awesome, awesome.
And you've recently published uhco-authored a book that we'll
talk about here, and we're gonnadebunk some myths in the
outbound arena.
But first, let's introduce theshow and we'll be right back.
Welcome to Small BusinessPivots, a podcast produced for
small business owners.
(01:21):
I'm your host, Michael Morrison,founder and CEO of Boss, where
we make business ownershipsimplified for success.
Our business is helping yoursgrow.
Boss offers business loans withbusiness coaching support.
Apply in minutes and getapproved and funded in as little
(01:42):
as 24 to 48 hours at businessownership simplified.com.
All right, welcome back to SmallBusiness Pivots.
My friend, we have businessowners that are listening to the
show.
And before we get into sales, Iknow that a lot of business
owners got into entrepreneurshipfor one reason or another.
(02:03):
Can you kind of catch us up towhere you, you know, maybe up
your upbringing, maybe somethings that uh triggered you to
get into entrepreneurship sothat others can kind of relate
to your story?
SPEAKER_01 (02:15):
Yeah, absolutely.
I would love to.
So I had a very roundabout uhcareer path where I wasn't sure
exactly what I wanted to do.
Um, I had taken some time offwhile I was in college as an
undergrad.
I took about a two-year breakwhere I worked with my brother
full time.
My brother's uh was a truckdriver at the time uh in the
(02:37):
Teamsters Union up in Boston,uh, which was a really great
experience um for a lot ofdifferent reasons.
Uh uh, I'll touch on some ofthem.
Um but my my older brother issomebody that I look up to, and
he started his own business andI helped him get off the off the
ground after we had workedtogether for a few years.
(02:58):
Um, I ended up going back toschool, finishing my math
degree, um, and got a jobteaching high school math um
right out of school.
I taught for four years,realized I really didn't like
that job all that much.
Um, I met my wife there.
She was a great teacher.
I wasn't excellent at it um fora few different reasons.
I liked hanging out with thekids and connecting with them
(03:20):
and talking to them and youknow, explaining the concepts
and whatnot, but there's that'sprobably 20% of the job.
The other 80% of the job isclassroom management, which I
wasn't very good at, you know.
It was a little wild.
Um, I taught in a pretty roughdistrict, like a low-income
district just outside of Boston.
Um, you know, a lot of troubledyouth and whatnot.
(03:42):
Uh, so anyway, I wanted to getout of there, um, helped my
brother build his business.
Um, he started his own company.
I actually started out in SEO umand just like website marketing,
um, helped him, you know, rankon Google.
This was back in uh I want tosay uh 20 2007, maybe 2010-ish
(04:06):
era, um, which Google was a lotdifferent back then.
There was um some tricks thatyou could do.
I ran an ad campaign, uh, blewup his business, and you know,
he I think that's that's kind ofwhat planted the seed for me
wanting to start my own thing.
And then I got into uh the techsales world.
(04:26):
So I was a teacher for fouryears.
Um my wife and I met, she's fromAnchorage, Alaska, I'm from
Boston, um, couldn't be furtherapart.
So we kind of met in the middlein Seattle.
We moved to Seattle together.
Um, and I wasn't sure what Iwanted to do after I was done
teaching.
Um, I thought I wanted to use mymath degree, so I ended up
(04:47):
getting a job as uh a marketinganalyst at a group health
brokerage, um, selling, youknow, uh health insurance
packages to big companies, um,you know, like uh restaurant
chains and whatnot.
And I thought I was gonna godown the path of becoming an
actuary.
Actuaries do statistics forinsurance companies.
(05:10):
So I thought, yeah, I've got youknow a mathematical mind, I
could put my analytical skillsto good use.
Um, but I figured out prettyquickly that I had a very big
personality for an actuary.
And uh the in in the marketinganalyst seat that I was in, I
was building proposals for theproducers, the brokers, the
(05:32):
sales, the closers in insuranceare called producers.
Um I was building theirproposals and then watching them
go and deliver it, and they weremaking a ton of money, and I was
not.
And I thought, well, I don'tknow, how do I get your job?
So I asked around.
I asked a bunch of them, like,what do I do?
How do I how do I get your job?
And they said, Well, you gottalearn how to cold call.
(05:53):
That's just step one to get intosales.
So I said, Okay, cool.
And I went and uh startedselling life insurance from my
bedroom.
I got my insurance license inthe state of Washington, um,
signed up for with a family uhuh company called Family First
Life, and they trained me, theygave me a lead list, and they
(06:15):
said, just go hit the phones, goset up appointments, um, go to
the person's house, get them tosign a contract, you get paid.
Very, very tough gig, commissiononly.
Um, the leads that I was gettingwere completely just stepped on.
They were like, you know,four-year-old mortgage
protection leads.
So a mortgage protection lead iswhen somebody buys a house, they
(06:37):
get a letter in the mail from aninsurance company uh that says,
if you were to die, would yourspouse be able to cover your
mortgage?
If not, you should sign up forlife insurance.
Yeah.
Somebody fills out that form andthey mail it back in, and then
that's the lead, which soundsgreat, except the leads that I
was getting were up to fouryears old.
(06:58):
So it was every insurance agentin Seattle had called four
years, had called them many,many times.
Yeah, uh, and you know, tried tosell them life insurance.
So that's that's where I learnedhow to cold call.
That's where I cut my teeth.
Um, and you've I mean, you'vegot five seconds.
You say the word insurance, andthe person just hangs up.
Um, but I was able to set a fewappointments and go to you know,
(07:20):
go drive out to on location, andI was, you know, driving Uber to
supplement my income and startedto figure out like, okay, maybe
working my way up from thebottom in insurance is gonna
take too long.
See, I had already had a career,I had a math degree, and I
already had a career as ateacher, and I was starting over
ground zero in a new city.
Um, so I thought, well, I'm I'mpicking up all these uh tech
(07:42):
company executives in the middleof the day, and they're driving
from building, driving them frombuilding the building in my car,
you know, driving Uber.
And I thought maybe I could geta job at one of these tech
companies in a sales role.
Um, there's a lot of money intech.
Uh, so I applied for a fewdifferent jobs, and because I
had cold calling experience,like the first interview that I
went to, they pretty much justhired me on the spot because I
(08:02):
knew how to cold call already.
And I was like the my peers thatyou know, the people that were
getting hired in theseentry-level roles were kids
right out of college.
So I was 10 years older thaneverybody.
Um, you know, had already had acareer, already knew how to cold
call.
Um, so I hit the ground runningin Seattle.
Uh, worked at a very coolcompany called Zip Whip.
Um text message company.
(08:24):
Um, got acquired by Twilio a fewyears back for like, I don't
know, 800 million dollars orsomething like that.
Um, so very successful company.
I joined when they had justgotten their D round, Series D
funding.
Um, so they were blown up.
Really cool office right acrossthe street from T-Mobile Park in
Seattle.
Um, they had a kombucha keg ontap.
(08:46):
Uh they had scooters in thebuilding, they had company
lunch, like burritos everyFriday.
Very, very cool job, very laidback, very fun environment um
compared to being a high schoolteacher in Boston or working on
the back of a garbage truck withmy brother, which I had done,
you know, while I was in school.
So I was like, this is thecoolest thing ever.
(09:08):
I was hitting the phones, I wasbooking a bunch of meetings,
getting, you know, a base salaryplus commission on everything
that I set up for the accountexecutives.
I was like, man, I'm I I neverturned back.
I was like, this is the coolestthing ever.
Um, and that's where I figuredout, like, hey, nobody wants to
do this job, I can do it reallywell if I can just specialize
(09:28):
here.
Like, I think it's it's gonnaturn out okay.
Um, so that's sort of how I gotinto the tech industry.
And then I'll I'll pause thereand see if you have any
questions.
But then, you know, there wasanother there's another 10 years
after that that I could gothrough as well.
SPEAKER_00 (09:44):
Yeah, no, that is a fantastic story that people can
relate to because my son was inthe health insurance industry,
which is similar to the life,and you talk about getting your
nose bloodied.
I mean, these people, so whenyou were saying like four years
old leads, I was like, oh mygosh, my son would would come
(10:07):
home or share the stories oflike these people call you
everything in the book.
You know, it's like I wish theywould just hang up instead of
talking to me.
If they're not interested, justhang up.
You don't need to tell me what apiece of crap I am for calling
you the hundredth hundredthtime, take me off their list,
all that stuff.
So I think we have a lot oflisteners' ears, is what I'm
(10:29):
trying to say.
A lot of people can relate tothose cold calls because we hear
that cold calls don't workanymore, and that's the kind of
stuff you get.
But you have a book that youcame out with.
Let's touch on that real quickbecause we can debunk some
myths, right?
On outbound calls and andthings.
So, what out of this book, canyou uh introduce the book to us,
(10:52):
how you came up with it, andthen maybe pull one of the the
myths that you'd really like toaddress out of that book?
SPEAKER_01 (10:58):
Yeah, absolutely.
I'd love to.
So the book is called theIlluminati Sales Manifesto,
which is a little bittongue-in-cheek.
Uh, the the way that I'll giveyou the origin story.
So Justin Michael is a um friendof mine.
I actually hired him as a coachum while I was doing enterprise
sales.
Um, he we ended up workingtogether.
(11:20):
Uh, we did a bunch of consultingwork together.
We were kind of running aroundas freelancers, like you know,
helping each other do projectsand whatnot.
Um, and we had met up uh down inSanta Barbara, California, got
together in a room, and he said,Pat, what's wrong with the B2B
tech industry right now?
And I just started going off.
And he sat down at the computerand just started typing out
(11:43):
everything I was saying.
So we turned it into this longdocument and then edited it down
and like added to it and kind ofturned it into um what you see
today.
That was the I just released thebook that was five years ago.
Um, that we so we've beensitting on this document for a
long time and finally we'relike, man, we should just
release this.
Um, so the the idea was likeyou've I I kind of got uh chewed
(12:07):
up and spit out by a number ofdifferent companies.
Um, I worked for some reallygreat companies and I had some
other like sort of roughexperiences.
Um and and the the premise isthat the sales development role,
the top of the sales funnel, theperson that's doing the cold
calling has one of the mostimportant jobs in any business
to go find new customers whereyou didn't know you had them.
(12:28):
They're not inbound leads, theseare like people that don't know
you, they're perfect strangers,they weren't planning on buying
anything from you, and then theybecome customers.
Like, how do you go and findthose people?
It's one of the most importantfunctions in any business, but
it's treated as this entry-levelkind of stepping stone role,
which I think is a flawedconcept.
(12:50):
Like, um, that the the personthat's doing that job should be
held in high regard.
Um, when the opposite is true.
The person that's closing thedeals gets all the respect, gets
all the resources, you know,gets better pay.
Um, you know, they their theircareer path is very different.
They get um, yeah, they they getthe most money.
Um so I I did a lot of thinkingabout why is that and started
(13:16):
writing it down.
And I I think some of theproblem is this.
Um, the the entire model ofhaving a prospecting team, this
entry-level sales developmentposition, um, it came from a guy
named Aaron Ross, um, who wrotea book called Predictable
Revenue.
It was released in 2011.
Uh, predictable revenue is theBible of Silicon Valley.
(13:38):
Now, where he came up with theconcepts that were in that book
is he had scaled Salesforce.comfrom like 1 million to 100
million in revenue as a salesleader there.
And the problem that Salesforcewas having in the early days,
you know, cloud-based CRM,nobody had it, everybody needed
it.
Um, their account executiveteam, their closing team, they
(14:00):
would have a bunch of deals inthe pipeline, and then they
would spend all their timeclosing those deals, and then
the pipeline would dry up, andthen they'd have no pipeline,
the revenue would dip down, andthen the sales team would go and
spend all their time prospectingand put all these deals in the
pipeline, and then the pendulumwould swing back, and then they
would spend all their timeclosing those deals so that
(14:21):
there was this up and down kindof revenue motion that was
happening.
And Aaron's an engineer um fromStanford, and he looked at the
problem and said, Okay, well,what if we just have a dedicated
prospecting team um and adedicated closing team so that
we can kind of even out and beable to predict the revenue that
we're getting um every month,every quarter, every year.
(14:44):
Um, which is a genius way to doit.
But now the interesting partabout that is that Salesforce
was dominant in the market.
Like they had no problem, theyhad like perfect product market
fit.
Like cloud-based CRM was a newconcept.
Before that, you had a bunch ofuh sales reps that had
spreadsheets with all theircustomer info on it.
(15:06):
And if the sales rep left andwent to a competitor, they took
their spreadsheet with them.
So the company loses all thatcustomer data.
So it wasn't hard to call abusiness owner and be like, hey,
don't you want to copy thatspreadsheet that that your sales
reps have?
Um, so you know, the the theproduct market fit was
(15:28):
established, the reasons whypeople buy were established, so
they were able to train the SDRsand the SDR, you know, the sales
development reps, theentry-level reps that were just
setting up the appointments forthe closing team.
Um, and they they you know put amotion in place that was very,
very doable.
Now, what happened is that thatbook blew up, sold like
(15:49):
whatever, you know, 200,000copies or however many it sold.
Everybody in Silicon Valley thatwanted to start a tech company
read the book and said, Okay, soI need a prospecting team and I
need a closing team.
And had, you know, goes out andhires these entry-level reps
that don't know anything aboutthe industry, that don't know
anything about the product, theproduct market fit is not
(16:10):
established, the ideal customerprofile is not established, the
founder's not sure exactly whothey're selling to or why,
because they're just trying toget off the ground.
So this model is kind ofmisallocated to um new
companies, right?
Like every every tech startup inthe valley goes and hires SDRs,
and then when it doesn't workout, they fire them.
(16:30):
So the SDR turns into thisscapegoat kind of role.
Um, and that's sort of like thethe premises or the things that
I was trying to point at um uhuh when when we wrote this book.
SPEAKER_00 (16:45):
That's interesting, interesting that you say that
because going back to my son'sstory of getting his nose
bloodied a lot in the healthinsurance, making cold calls,
he's now at one of the topcellular companies, and he is
number two in sales in theregion.
So going from bottom of thebarrel to feeling like I'm not a
(17:06):
good salesperson to going to adesired company, like you said,
a product market fit.
That's two different things thatpeople don't even think about.
So that book is not evenapplicable to a lot of
businesses because you may nothave something that's as you
know popular as Salesforce, likeyou were mentioning.
So let's get into the cold calloutbound process, if you don't
(17:30):
mind, because I'd say there's awe can debunk that myth right
now, because right now it's Q3of 2025, and everybody's all
about digital sales, they'reabout AI, cold calls, cold
email, all that stuff doesn'twork because you got to get on
board.
But I kind of disagree.
So can you kind of go becauseyou also own a company that does
(17:51):
outbound, outboundless.com.
And so can you kind of help usunderstand like why it still
works and and then maybe how togo about it that might be
different from others and maybewhy it's not working for others
and why it is for you?
SPEAKER_01 (18:06):
Yeah.
Um, with the advent of AI um andemail infrastructure getting
easier and easier to acquire,um, there's a lot of agencies
that are like mine that havescaled up their business on the
premise that you could have acouple of guys, two or three
(18:26):
people, um sending tens ofthousands of uh emails that are
enhanced via AI so that you caninject these personalization
points into the email.
Now, the problem with that isthat there's a bunch of agencies
that are all doing this and setall sending tens of thousands of
emails per month, andeverybody's inbox is flooded.
(18:49):
There's there's a lot of ebbsand flows in the in the B2B tech
industry, um uh like trends ofhow people are doing things.
Um, the the personalizationpoint that's one of the myths
that I talk about in the bookthat personalization is a myth.
Um, the you know, five, sixyears ago when we wrote this.
SPEAKER_00 (19:07):
You're listening to small business pivots.
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Now let's get back to ourspecial guest.
SPEAKER_01 (19:37):
The the personalization point, that's
one of the myths that I talkabout in the book, that
personalization is a myth.
Um, the you know, five, sixyears ago when we wrote this, um
the the the premise was if youpersonalize your email to the
person, you are going to get ahigher response rate.
You know, like if I went andlooked up uh Michael, what your
(19:58):
favorite sports team was, and Iuse that in the subject line,
like that's gonna somehow getyou to buy my software more
often.
Um when the reality is that thatis not true.
Like, you need to understand umyour business, the the workflow
that you are trying to impact,like how your business operates,
like what your current state is,what your worldview is.
(20:19):
You need to understand thosethings really well.
And like the little tidbitsabout personal interests um
aren't aren't as impactful uh asthey once were.
Now, these AI enhanced emailagencies are still like working
off of that premise, and they'relike pulling these, you know,
they're looking at the person'sLinkedIn profile and pulling a
tidbit from it, and you know, umtrying to use um the person's
(20:41):
geography, like what statethey're in and what city they're
in, and and you know, uh use theAI to scale up some level of
personal personalization thatlooks like it's human, like the
whole thing is trying to get acomputer to appear as though it
was a human that was actuallyreaching out, um, which there's
some merit to it.
Like, if I get an email fromsomebody and I think, oh, the a
(21:04):
person spent time on this andthought about it and wrote it
down, like I might be more aptto at least just reply to them,
even if it's not going to be mything.
I might just give them thecourtesy of saying, Yeah, no,
thanks.
Here's here's why we're notgonna do that.
Reach back out next quarter orwhatever.
Um, but the problem is that it'sbecome so prevalent that as soon
as you see it in your inbox,like you just know that it
(21:25):
wasn't real.
And the reason why cold callingstill works is because it's a
human voice on the other end ofthe line.
There's been billions of dollarsinvested in millions of lines of
code written trying to solve theproblem of an AI being able to
talk to you, and it just hasn'tbeen done yet.
We're just not there yet.
Maybe in 10 years it'll bedifferent, uh, but we're just
not there.
(21:46):
Like when you your phone ringsand you answer it, and it's a
robot on the other end of theline, not only can you tell
immediately, you automaticallyjust want to hang up the phone.
Like, I don't want to talk tothis person.
It's the same reaction when youget an email that was written by
AI that's like trying to pullthese personal tidbits that they
found on my LinkedIn profile.
You can kind of tell that itlike fit into a template, and
(22:09):
sometimes it doesn't even lookright.
Um, but when the phone rings andit's somebody that has a good
phone presence and there's anactual human on the other end of
the line, I mean, yeah, we wefound that uh people are
generally pleased to be talkingto a real person.
Now, not everybody is, you know,it's still cold calling is a
tough gig, it's still yeah, 95%failure and you're having a good
(22:33):
day, you know.
If you get a five percentsuccess rate, like you're you're
doing great.
You're you're one of the best inthe business.
So it's still you know, prettytough going, but the five
percent of those people that youcan talk to, um, you know, that
you can actually have aconversation with, like that's
that's what's driving newbusiness people.
Now, you can use the technologyto enhance our ability to make
(22:55):
the calls faster, acquire thedata quicker, find the mobile
data, you know, segment ourlists really cleverly.
Um, you know, we work a lot ofthe work that we do for our
clients is splitting up um ourtheir lead list by industry, and
and we have a point of view inthat particular industry.
Like, for example, constructionfirms.
Hey, we work with constructionfirms.
(23:16):
Um, these are some of theproblems that we were seeing
with the other clients that wework with.
Here's how we solve them.
Was hoping we could go over somesimilar ideas with you.
Now I've personalized it to theworkflow, I've personalized it
to their worldview.
Like, I understand what thestatus quo is.
I'm showing them that Iunderstand that stuff.
Then I can go to the nextindustry.
Let's say it's IT servicescompanies.
(23:37):
Like, hey, we worked with otherIT services companies, we've
seen they have an issue withcash flow.
Um, you know, we've been able tocome in and give them fractional
accounting help.
You know, there's one of theclients that's adding.
So that that kind of approach wehave found works so much better
than trying to personalize basedon personal interests with AI.
SPEAKER_00 (23:58):
I will have to agree with you because the same things
have happened to me just in thelast week.
So, for instance, I live inOklahoma City, and if you follow
the NBA at all, we won the worldchampionship in the NBA, and
someone just reached out to me,and the first words out of their
mouth were, Hey Michael, I'm anOklahoma City Thunder fan, just
(24:19):
like you.
I went click, I'm like sales,right?
Because you're using that thatuh what would you call it?
Just kind of that knowing aboutthe person.
And I was like, automatic sales,like, no, if you're gonna kind
of cheat the system, like ifyou're I can't trust you
already.
And so, and then another one isyou know, you're talking about
(24:40):
those AI tools.
A lot of us can tell because ifthere's like three seconds, two
to three seconds of dead air,I'm like, oh, recording's
coming, click.
So, how does I've got someclients that they're like, I
want to make some outboundcalls.
How does one cut through allthat clutter?
I mean, you don't have to giveindustry secrets away, you know,
(25:02):
for your company of how you doit, but just what are some
things that would be helpful forthose that maybe not in a
position to hire your company,maybe not in that industry, or
maybe don't have the resources,but they want to grow and
they're considering outboundcalls.
SPEAKER_01 (25:17):
Yeah, you mentioned the two or three second delay.
What one of the things we foundis um it does put somebody's
guard up if there's a slightdelay on the phone, but as soon
as a human voice connects, it itlowers their guard a little bit.
They'll at least hear you out.
Um, and we open the calls likethere's a lot of debate on how
to open a cold call, whether touse the permission-based opener,
(25:37):
they call it or not.
Um, but we we use it prettyeffectively.
It's like, hey, this is Patrickfrom Outboundless.
Look, I I know I'm calling youout of the blue here, but do you
have 30 seconds so I can tellyou why I called?
Almost everybody is gonna say,Yeah, sure, go ahead.
Okay, Michael.
Yeah, we work with otherbusiness coaches.
Um, one of the things that we'venoticed is and they could go
(25:59):
from there.
Yeah, like that's that's how youopen the cold call.
Now, there's like a beginning, amiddle, and an end.
Uh the beginning and the end areusually pretty much the same,
right?
Like the beginning of the callis you get your your script
down.
Um I hesitate to call it ascript, I think of it in terms
of like a call framework becauseI don't want it to be wrote
(26:22):
memorized.
But the first few sentences thatyou say are going to be pretty
similar across the board.
Um, the middle part of the callis where it gets murky, it's
never gonna be the same twice.
You're gonna actually have tohave a conversation with the
person that's on the other endof the line.
And then the end of the calleither ends with, no, this isn't
for me, or yeah, sure, let'sspend some more time, you know,
(26:42):
20 minutes next week and youbook the meeting.
Um, so that that middle part ofthe call is actually like it's
the easiest part to do, but it'sthe hardest to prepare for.
And I say it's the easiest partto do because you're just having
a conversation with anotherhuman being.
Um, if you go into it with toomuch of an agenda in mind, where
you know you're the sales repand you're thinking, man, I
(27:04):
really get to close this deal, Ireally gotta sell this guy.
You you don't have to sell thewhole thing on the opening call.
All you have to do is get theperson 51% sure that you might
be able to help them withsomething that they are
currently trying to do.
Um, and your job is to decidewhether or not that's even
(27:24):
possible.
Um, so it's it's a filteringexercise.
Um, what you're trying to do isyou're trying to filter through
the leaves that you have infront of you and and decide
whether or not like there's evenpotential for you to help the
person and then communicatethat.
And if there is potential, thenmost likely they will talk to
you again.
You can book the meeting.
Um, you might find out like onceyou get to that meeting that
(27:46):
there were other constraints inplace that it's not going to be
the case.
But I mean, this is this is whatsales is.
You take a bunch of people on alist at the beginning, you put
them into your funnel.
At the top of the funnel, you'retrying to figure out which one
of these people might be acustomer, and then at the other
end, you get a small amount ofthat large list that you started
with uh that that might end upas a customer.
(28:07):
And you do that over and overagain.
You get more and more clever atit.
Um, you get really tight withwho your ideal customer is and
why you should why they shouldbe your customer.
Um, really trying to understandthat stuff, spending a lot of
time mapping that out and beingreally deliberate about it,
being really intentional aboutit, you know.
Um, segmenting by industry,segmenting by employee size,
(28:29):
segmenting by um revenue bands,you know, the companies that
make more than a million in ayear make sense for you to talk
to at the stage that you're at.
Um, yeah.
So I mean th those are some ofthe things that I think about
when I'm I'm thinking aboutstarting kicking off an outbound
motion um with one of myclients.
SPEAKER_00 (28:45):
So you mentioned uh 95% rejection, five percent
would be a great day.
So what would you say on averagea business owner should should
spend on outbound calls, youknow, because they have a
business to run also.
So what would you say theaverage is?
Like if I made using thatpercentage as the goal line, I
(29:09):
make a hundred calls hoping toget five out of those five.
What have you seen on outboundcalls like they actually convert
to out of those just on average?
Is there an percentage?
SPEAKER_01 (29:22):
Yeah, yeah.
So um what we've seen across theboard, no matter what way you
slice up the data, if you lookat it in aggregate in in any
time frame, whether it's overthe course of a year or a month
or a week, the average connectrate is about five percent.
So if I make a hundred calls,I'm gonna talk to five people.
Um, if I book a meeting with allfive of those people and I turn
(29:43):
them into customers, like youare the greatest salesperson on
planet.
SPEAKER_00 (29:47):
You're crushing it.
SPEAKER_01 (29:48):
Uh so I would double that.
I would want to talk to 10people and hope that I get one
or two of them that might turninto uh potential customers.
Now, with the software that'savailable now, you Could do that
in a couple hours.
It the hard part is getting thedata sorted out.
You got to figure out um whatyour lead list is gonna look
like, what your company list isgonna look like, where you're
(30:09):
gonna get the data from, um,which is why I would suggest
hiring an agency uh like to dothis for you because this is all
we do, this is what wespecialize in.
Um, but I mean, if you want todo it on your own, if you're
bootstrapped and you know you'rejust you just want to go and
make some calls, like you gottajust set the expectation to um
if I can get one customer, onepotential customer a day, then
(30:33):
I'm absolutely killing it.
And I would say set two 45minute blocks for yourself and
be religious about it.
Do one in the morning, one inthe afternoon, and just call for
45 minutes, 90 minutes a day.
If you can spare an hour and ahalf to go find new customers,
you're gonna learn a lot.
Once you have that manyconversations, if you're having
20 conversations a day andyou're learning why people are
(30:54):
saying no, um, the it's likecompound interest.
Every conversation you have addsto your ability to have the next
conversation, right?
Like this is what we're hearingback from the market.
You might actually learn thatyou might need to pivot your
business, you might need to uhchange your tack because
everybody that you talk to, likeyou're just getting absolutely
brick walled.
(31:15):
Um, I I think finding that stuffout is super important.
SPEAKER_00 (31:19):
Yeah, and for those that are fearful of picking up
the phone and getting rejected,I always use the quote of
discomfort means we're growing.
So, in other words, you justgotta start doing it.
And then once you start doingit, you know, it just now it's a
game.
Like, how can I learn from thelast one so the next one doesn't
(31:40):
call me that name or hang up onme or anything like that?
And so this has been all verybeneficial information.
Is there any data out there thatyou know of that says cold
calling?
You can there's a greaterpercentage of converting sales
versus filling out the forms ordigital leads.
(32:01):
Is there any data out there thatyou know of that kind of shows
the success rates of eachmarketing platform?
SPEAKER_01 (32:10):
Um, anecdotally, I have a really good feel for it.
I don't know of any particulardata on outbound versus inbound.
You know, somebody's handraising and they're coming to
you, they've already identifiedthat they're having a problem
and they're they've alreadyidentified that you were a
potential solution for it.
Like these are people that goand fill out the form on your
website and you talk to them.
It is a lot easier to closethose deals than it is the
(32:32):
stranger that you called thatwasn't planning on spending any
money on you, that might nothave even known that there was a
problem, um, that is just beingsort of having their eyes open
to the idea that there might bea different way of doing it.
Um however, like those like inany market, um, if you look at
the the especially in B2B tech,if you look at the technology
(32:54):
adoption curve, there's itfollows a bell curve, right?
Like the beginning of it, likethe the first few people that
you get as customers, like whenyou're trying to grow a small
business, those are the earlyadopters, those are the people
that are right on the bleedingedge of the tech that are
looking for new ways to dothings.
Um, the middle part of the curveis kind of um once you're
(33:14):
already established, once itthey're they're the trend
followers, like once it becomeskind of a trend that people are
gonna um you know use this typeof solution, like we've seen it
many, many times in tech.
Things become trendy, everybodystarts using them, they don't
even know why they're usingthem, they're just buying the
tech because that's whateverybody does.
Um, and then the end of thecurve is is uh uh sort of the
laggards, they're called in inthe technology adoption curve,
(33:38):
where like they just want to doit the way that they've always
been doing it, and they'llpretty much they're not gonna
change until um it becomes uhruntime critical for them where
they're just moving too slow andthe rest of the the world around
them is moving really fast andthey have to change.
Um, I was like that buying acell phone when I was younger.
I so I I'm gonna age myselfhere.
I graduated high school in 2003,and I think I I don't think I
(34:02):
had gotten a cell phone yet.
I was I was the last person outof my friend group to get a cell
phone because I said I thisthing is ridiculous, and now I
can't put the thing down.
I'm on my iPhone.
Um, so anyway, that when youwhen you think about it like
that, when you think about thetechnology adoption curve, if
you're a new business, you havea new venture, you have a new
way of doing things, you aretrying to sort out the people
(34:24):
that you're talking to.
You're trying to find thoseearly adopters, you're trying to
find the people that are on thebleeding edge of the technology.
And you can figure out if youlook at it that way, you can
figure out pretty quickly ifyou're talking to one of those
people or not, if they're gonnabe an early adopter, a fast
follower, or a laggard.
SPEAKER_00 (34:41):
On outboundless, you've mentioned it a few times.
What uh what's your ideal clientfor that business?
Who should reach out to you?
Who would it be beneficial for?
SPEAKER_01 (34:52):
Um, our ideal customer is early stage tech
companies.
So seed stage, series A funding,series B funding, um, wants to
grow, wants to most importantly,wants to find out um what the
market is saying.
Like we can have 20 liveconversations a day on your
behalf uh and find out if yourassumptions are true about your
(35:16):
ideal customer profile.
Um I'd say sort of uh anotherreally good client for us would
be somebody that has their idealcustomer profile sorted out,
they know exactly who it is,they just want a cost-effective
way to go and and grow into themarket segment that they already
have established.
So you've got maybe one or twosales reps that you've hired.
(35:39):
Um, things are going reallywell.
You just you have a long list ofhere's all of our potential
customers.
You just need somebody to go andcall them for you.
Like we can go and set up thoseappointments in a way that is
gonna be more cost effectivethan you trying to hire somebody
internally, man, spend the timeto manage them, outfit them with
the tech that they need, um, youknow, hire an ops person or try
(36:00):
to do it yourself, or you know,sorting out the CRM data and the
you know, finding all thecontact info and building the
system in place.
We've already got it, it'sturnkey.
You know, we had a client sign acontract on a Friday, Wednesday
they had two meetings booked.
Um, so I mean we we move reallyquickly.
You can turn it on, turn it offas needed.
(36:22):
Um, you know, we do we dotypically three months dents.
One, you know, every quarter youcan reevaluate if it's if it's
working for you or not.
Um, yeah, that's that's exactlywho we're looking for.
SPEAKER_00 (36:32):
So your leads are qualified more than the someone
that filled out a form fouryears ago, is what you're
saying.
SPEAKER_01 (36:39):
Yes.
unknown (36:40):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (36:41):
All right.
Well, I know you've uh got a lotof listeners here probably
wanting to follow you, learnmore.
What's the best place to dothat?
SPEAKER_01 (36:50):
Uh go to LinkedIn, Patrick William Joyce on
LinkedIn.
You can follow me there.
Um, there's a link to mysubstack there where I do a lot
of writing.
Um, you can find the book, TheIlluminati Sales Manifesto on
Amazon.
Uh the Kindle version is 99cents if you want to check it
out.
Um, if you find me on LinkedInand you have a cold call script
you want me to review, send itto my DMs.
(37:10):
Send me a connection request,mention the podcast, um, and
send me your call script andI'll review it for you.
SPEAKER_00 (37:16):
Fantastic.
Well, I I work connecting and uhI encourage our listeners to
follow or connect with you.
You've got quite a following, uh500 likes, engagements, you
know, or more on each post.
So you've got a lot ofbeneficial information that
people could learn more.
And then on your website, uhoutboundless.com, how would they
(37:39):
connect with you there?
SPEAKER_01 (37:41):
Yeah, there's a leading there's a link to book a
meeting with me directly there.
Okay.
Um just go to the website, youfill out the form, it'll put you
directly on my calendar.
SPEAKER_00 (37:51):
Fantastic.
Well, I know from time to timethere may not have been a
subject or a topic that I askedabout, but I know being on guest
on other podcasts, I'm like, Iwish we really would have talked
on this.
Is there anything that you feellike you'd really like to share
with our listeners that wedidn't discuss already?
SPEAKER_01 (38:10):
Yeah, I I would I would end it with this.
I I would say that um the mostimportant to think about, most
important thing to think aboutas a small business owner is um
to be relentless aboutunderstanding your customer and
giving them a good experience.
I think that that that is theone thing that um shines through
(38:31):
in any business that does well.
Um and and have integrity aboutit.
Like integrity is really, reallyimportant.
Um, think if you if you approachevery action that you take with
every um every customer, withevery potential customer, and
think about it in terms of howcan I best serve this person,
um, that will take you really,really far.
SPEAKER_00 (38:52):
That's golden advice.
Well, Patrick, you've been ablessing to many today.
I appreciate you sharing yourinsights and your time with us
today.
SPEAKER_01 (39:00):
Absolutely.
Thanks for having me.
I had a great time.
SPEAKER_00 (39:02):
My pleasure.
Thank you for listening to SmallBusiness Pivots.
This podcast is created andproduced by my company, Boss.
Our business is growing yours.
Boss offers flexible businessloans with business coaching
support.
Apply in minutes and getapproved and funded in as little
as 24 to 48 hours at businessownership simplified.com.
(39:26):
If you're enjoying this podcast,don't forget to hit the
subscribe button and share it aswell.
If you need help growing yourbusiness, email me at Michael at
michaeldmorson.com.
We'll see you next time on SmallBusiness Pivots.
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