Aug 2, 2019
[00:44] Tell us a little bit about you and your company.
- I am Brad Seaman, founder and CEO of MonsterConnect, which is based in Indianapolis, Indiana.
- MonsterConnect is sales enablement / lead generation service that help sales teams become 6-8 times more productive.
[01:14] Tell us a little bit about your background.
- I grew up in Indianapolis.
- I went to Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois near Chicago to be a youth pastor.
- While I was doing some landscaping at the family call center business, they fired the chief operating officer and I got the call to run the place.
[03:01] When and why did you start MonsterConnect?
- The family call center business did lead generation for a mortgage company. Before the housing crash, we started seeing the writing on the wall, so we diversified the business.
- We brought in a new guy to build a new division. We eventually spun that out from the business, but it became difficult to staff and hire with our quick growing rate.
- Two things gave us the idea for Monster Connect: the difficulty in scaling and the subjectivity of the business.
- This made me immerse myself in call center technology, and things changed in the industry to allow our business model.
- With our software, our agents navigate through phone prompts and gatekeepers. Then, when the prospect answers, the salesperson is connected.
[09:20] Cold calling is still used a lot in logistics, but it is much maligned today and there is a lot written about the end of cold calling. Please tell us why cold calling still works.
- The more effort you put in, the more results you get. Very rarely do you see a strong effort followed by a lack of results.
- There’s a tendency to lean into either inbound or outbound, but I think you need to do both.
- I understand why cold calling gets so much negative press. It’s tough work.
- Prospects are harder to reach now because they can screen their calls and there are a lot of robocalls that nobody wants.
- Salespeople have always wanted to find better ways, but if you need to sell something today, the phone is still the best tool.
- The web has brought a lot of great ways to get sales leads, but they take time.
- Ultimately, the salesperson who talks with the most prospects sells the most.
[14:50] To be a good cold caller, what do people absolutely need to do?
- The first thing is that you need to have good contacts. There are tons of tools that exist to do that.
- At MonsterConnect, we even search on job boards for companies that are looking to hire people to make outbound phone calls. Then, we already know that our technology would be useful for them.
- You need to have a good message; some type of differentiator. It needs to be compelling.
- The phone gives you the opportunity to build a relationship with someone. Some brokers get phone calls from different people who deliver the exact same message.
[20:41] What else do people need to be successful at cold calling?
- Discipline and focus. Specifically, I know someone who landed a huge deal because he was religious about prospecting regularly. He dedicates one or two hours per day to cold calling.
- One day, he was about to log out but decided to do one more call instead. The rest is history.
- It’s a lot like working out. Doing it regularly is very beneficial.
- Lack of lead gen typically comes from a lack of effort.
[27:23] If the only things people need to be successful at cold calling are great contacts, great messaging, and discipline, why do so many people struggle?
- I think it comes down to it being inefficient, difficult, and unpredictable.
- If you remove the inefficiency of dialing and not getting somebody on the phone, that can really impact your success.
- When you get one or two people on the phone each day, that’s not very productive.
- It’s also natural for salespeople to turn down their lead generation efforts when they land a few clients.
- It’s unpredictable. Building and maintaining a good prospecting team is a constant challenge, since sales is so volatile.
[32:31] How can your company help with these three issues?
- The first thing is we have some built-in accountability. You have a scheduled time on the platform, and we’ll help you make sure that you show up.
- It’s efficient because there’s no delay. We’ll connect you to a prospect that is ready to talk.
[34:58] How many hours a day do people work with your company?
- It depends on their desire. Some people think they’ll use it for eight hours a day, but really, that would be like going to the gym for eight hours a day. It’s hard to do.
- Somewhere between one and four hours is ideal for most people.
- In J.B. Hunt’s first week with us, they saw a 900% increase in productivity.
[36:06] A lot of companies are now moving to sales development reps. How would you guys compare to them?
- We can be a great help to SDRs. We don’t replace them, we make them more productive.
Learn More:
MonsterConnect: https://monsterconnect.com/
Brad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-seaman-3ab4a049