What is up PartnerUp!
Scott Leese, Co-Founder of GTM United and CEO & Founder of Surf and Sales and Scott Leese Consulting, joins the show to discuss the value of building your network. He emphasizes that old outbound methods are dying, sharing that he never picks up when people call him nor opens emails from unknown addresses.
Scott advocates for salespeople to grow and then lean into their networks. He proposes leaning into intros and influence, sharing how his unique community, GTM United, operates.
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Full transcript:
Jared Fuller 0:05
All right, what is up, partner up? We're back. Isaac, I've missed you, my man.
Isaac Morehouse 0:10
I know, Jared. So close with so far away still, you know,
Jared Fuller 0:14
I know. For the dozens of you that watch on YouTube, I will continue to make this joke. You'll see that Isaac is in has a new background. So he's firmly here in Florida and Tampa St. Pete. And I got a much needed makeover. So I'm not wearing the hat right now.
Isaac Morehouse 0:32
And we had we had questions about whether Jared would be capable of podcasting without a hat. It's like, if you cut Samson's hair, all the power is gone. But here he is. We'll find out if you lay an egg today. We'll know that the hat has to come back. Yeah.
Jared Fuller 0:46
So we so we had to bring on one of the goats from the sales space, who is wearing a hat today to talk about something that I think is like the culmination of so many of my experiences. It's really cool to see him come on the pod. Welcome, everybody. Scott lease Welcome to partner up. What's up, guys? Thanks for having me. Of course, of course. So I say one of the OG Scott, you've been in the, I'd say the content creation game. In other words, just documenting things that you've actually done in the field. And I think that's why your content always resonated with so many people from crazy out of this world experiences like going to like Costa Rica doing surfing sales to like what Thursday night sales to I mean, you'd have a lot of content out there in the space, helping sales executives figure out how the heck to make the number, right. And now we're the worlds are sort of colliding a little bit, so to speak. We've had some LinkedIn exchanges and seen our sales and partnerships start to talk to one another. Maybe we'll start with this. For a kickoff question. Why might it be an interesting time where sales leaders and partner leaders are actually trying to figure this out? Instead of just throwing the ball across back back across the aisle?
Scott Leese 1:55
The answer is actually so obvious that there's a lot of people that are going to get to hear it and kind of kick themselves why they haven't thought of it. And it's really simple is we do not behave and engage as sellers or buyers the way we did 510 1520 years ago. Nobody wants to pick up the phone. I do not pick up the phone, when my friends and family call me, let alone somebody. Because I am now trained for better or for worse, that the phone is a distraction. So my ringer is literally off 24/7 It's off. And I don't I don't talk to anybody on the phone. Unless it's like a pre planned scheduled thing. That's just the phone. Now, now let's talk about email. I don't know how many unread emails you guys have, or how many different inboxes you have. But I have a lot. And unless I know you and recognize your name, the odds of me opening and responding to your email are slim to none. And I am trained that everything is spam, and everything is junk. And everything is again, a distraction. Right? No one can deny those two things are less successful outcomes today than they were 510 15 years ago. All of the data suggests that. So then what did we do? We moved to LinkedIn. And we started getting people in the DMS. Well, I have 101,000 followers on LinkedIn. Okay. And you can imagine the number of people who are asking me if I need software development help in Kazakhstan, and if I'm interested in being a franchisee of Whataburger, alright, so I get so many messages in LinkedIn, that is difficult for me to find the ones that actually matter. So the response rates there are going down as well. So when the traditional channels don't work as well, we have a problem. And I believe that in very short period of time, the only way you're going to be able to open up opportunities is by utilizing your network and your brand. So I believe that go to market is not dead, but go to market is dying. And that will be replaced by Go to Network methodologies, including partners selling, co selling community led growth, customer led goat growth, and things like this.
Isaac Morehouse 4:24
So Scott, as you were talking about the phone call thing I had to laugh I recently went through this move. And normally, I block all calls from numbers that are not existing contacts in my phone. But I had to turn that off temporarily because I had like title companies and mortgage companies and all these different people that I needed to take these calls. And so for the last two weeks, I have been living in absolute hell, because the number of calls I get from unknown men I'm like, do I have to answer this is this urgent and it almost never is, but a couple of them have been so turn that thing back on it Again, I totally love what you're saying that it all starts with. Just it doesn't start with some highfalutin theory about your view of where the market is and why this needs to be sales needs to be this way, because of the whatever. It's the way buyers are buying. It's all about the change in behavior of buyers, we, Jared and I call that the shift from the highway economy to the WHO economy. Now there's too much information. So the way that you filter it isn't like, what information is the best, there's just too much you filter it by I'm only going to look at things that people I trust telling me I should look at. I'm only going to pay attention to things that people I trust tell me are worth time paying attention to. And so as sellers if you're not tapped into the influence Intel and intros from those people buyers trust, you're gonna get shut out. Absolutely. Absolutely love it.
Jared Fuller 5:51
That was that was a heck of an opening. Scott lease everybody. Wow. This is definitely going to be the one that you use snippet and you send to the the CRO or the VP sales. I mean, like, the reality is, is that I mean, I've seen a bunch of interesting conversations and math on this Scott, where people have actually done the math on like, Okay, we have a gap in sales productivity, like getting to that number at the end of the year, we're not seeing a picture. marketing's telling us, it's going to be here. So sales, what are we going to have to do and it's like, all A's need to do 65 hours of outbound a week. Like in order for us to get there at the current rate, like the math doesn't work, like there has to be a new play. And that's why as like, we've been calling it near bound right to like, kind of document, gate, outbound, you got social, you got email, you got phone call, we just decimated, why those things aren't working any better. So throwing more time at them is only diminishing returns, right? Not to mention that like, I don't know, every dog and their sister is going to have a chat GPT sales bot, right? Probably spam the market, that's only going to make it worse for you to break through if you're not doing the same thing. So then we're back to spray and pray for right like maybe, you know, hey, we're not trying to convert a basis point. Now we're trying to convert point one basis points, you know, like another BIP off of it. Tell me about that. Like, I think what you just said most VPs of sales and CROs the way you open that conversation. They go. Okay, that's pretty undeniable. So what the heck do I tell my sellers? Right? Like, where's that conversation out of the market? From your perspective? Like, hey, if your network is your net worth, oh, shit, that was right all along? Like why you should have paid attention to that? Would we heard it? What do I tell my
Scott Leese 7:35
sellers? Well, the first thing you tell them is you better start growing your network. As simple as that. Sort of North versus South approach, where employers would be mad if you were building your brand and growing your network and all that stuff, that argument needs to die. Because a founder needs that understand, the only way a seller is going to be able to close anything is by having a network and by adding a brand. So if I'm a salesperson, or I'm a VP of sales, I am systematically growing my network, LinkedIn algorithm, or whatever the rules of engagement are right now is like 25 people per day that you're allowed to add. That is my KPI. If I'm a seller, or if I'm a VP of sales, you need to add 25 people a day. There's a right message to do it that is non threatening is not trying to sell somebody anything, it could just say, hey, Isaac, looking to connect with other CMOS out there, let me know if I can ever be helpful to That's it. Shut the fuck up. Don't say anything else. Just send those 25 times a day. You do that 365 days a year, that's 9165 people. If everybody says yes, everybody won't say yes, just divided by two, you just added 5000 people or so to your network in one year. Most people are still under that size of a network on LinkedIn. If you go from call it zero to 5000, your entire world of opportunity will change. You go from 5000 to 10, it will change from 10 to 20. It changes from 20 to 30. From 30,000 to 100,000. The world opens up opportunities come your way. The first thing you need to do, bro the size of your network. Notice I didn't start talking about content creation anywhere in there. I just said grow your network. Right, right. Second thing you can do this is brain dead drop dead simple. Go to your advisors or your investors. They're already you know, part of the fabric of your company. Right? Even consultants, maybe that that somebody's working with and just send them a list of accounts that you're trying to break into right now. So Jared is unable to break into these. I don't know 100 accounts right now. Okay. Send me a CSV file. This again, this is like I'm putting this together duct tape and the staple gun right now. Send me a CSV file. that says company name, contact name, contact URL, you know, target persona or whatever, and just say, Scott, you and I've been connected for a while, man. I don't know if you are connected with any of these people like enough to provide an intro. But if you are, I'd love if you reached out and see if they were open to it. So You supply me with a little bit of language, then I look at the list. And I say, You know what? They just said three or four in here that I feel pretty good about. Right? So then I go to Isaac, who's one of those people as a Isaac, my buddy, Jared is hoping to have a meeting with you. I don't know if you have XYZ problem. But he works over here at this company, and they solve that. Are you open to taking a meeting with them? If yes, I'll make the intro. If no, no worries, dude, no obligation, don't feel bad. If he says yes to that, I make an intro to the two of you. Okay, you close the deal. I get paid 1015 20 30%, whatever, I'm happy, Isaac's problem is solved. And you're happy as a VP of sales or as a seller, because you just close more business. It's a win win win for everybody. And it's completely risk free. If you're only paying on the outcome of a closed deal, and I didn't have to do anything. Notice I didn't sell anything. All I did was just send a note, hey, so and so wants to talk to you? Are you willing to talk to them? That's it. Old school partner selling reseller agreements require me the partner to actually know how to sell the product, which is a lot of work, no broken sociogram a lot of work, a lot of training, Locus of Control is is gone. It's out of your hands, right? In this methodology, everyone becomes a potential partner for you. And we have effectively if we do this, right, this is gonna be slightly controversial, probably, but I'm gonna say it anyways, we have effectively killed off the role of STR in ers. Because why do I need them? Why do I need a full time employee? Who's in a sales development role? If I can utilize all of these influencers, advisors, investors, or here's the other kicker, communities to unlock all of this opportunity.
Isaac Morehouse 12:23
You know, it's what's crazy, is how few sellers are even doing that within the walls of their own company. If you work for a company that's got a couple 100 employees couple 1000. Just just going and looking at who your fellow employees are, who have they have an obligation to help your business grow and go into them and saying, Hey, so and so from the marketing team, or from the success team, I noticed that you're connected to this person, can you give me some info Can you give me like, I, I have only had salespeople come to me a handful of times, and do that and starting to happen more. Now at reveal, that's a big part of our thing. But even just like, it's like, it's right under your nose. It's like it's so close to home, the number of people who know the person you're trying to get to, or at least know someone who knows them or have some bit of intel that gets you closer and not availing yourself of that, in this hyper connected world is just like, it's madness. It's a total madness.
Jared Fuller 13:20
It's kind of funny, you know, Scott Barker? Right. And Scott, of course, yeah, of course. So, Scott, what? We did an episode a couple of years ago with him. Right? You know, they, I think they were they hadn't quite departed, sales hacker and outreach yet, but they had started GTM fun. And Scott was describing the department that he headed at Outreach, which was called department department of what strategic engagement. And it's exactly what you said it meant that every single target account of outreach did not make its way through the pipeline, without the entire company scrubbing their contacts and making sure they marked what influence they had around that account. And that's all this got did. But the effect of that, like, it absolutely should have been turned into like a sales hacker like series like how did sales hacker and outreach pull this off? It's very much near bound, it's very much go to Network what you said. And they were just surrounding their target accounts with all of the influence in the network of all the sales executives that worked in outreach. And it made perfect sense. It's just like, what a no brainer thing like your framing of it's perfect. And do we know whether or not it works? Well. The the number one sales engagement company in terms of like, just size, right, just straight size, guess what? That was their strategy, not just straight outbound. Their strategy, you know, three years ago for making sure they tried to quote unquote, beat SalesLoft was to do something that was not cold sales engagement. It was to do what you're talking about.
Scott Leese 14:44
Yeah. There's, there's some people and companies who had the foresight to look into the future. If you look at a race track, most people are looking right in front of them. There's some people who are already looking at turn three and turn four. Right? That's what those guys Hey guys and gals we're doing and that's on some level. What I'm trying to evangelize and and talk about right now,
Isaac Morehouse 15:08
what's the blocker? Scott? What keeps what keeps people from doing this? What do you what do you encounter when you when you present this? And what are the objections people bring to you?
Scott Leese 15:18
Number one, they don't have a network. So that is a problem and it won't work very well if you don't have a network.
Jared Fuller 15:25
Quick question on that. What about your companies or like your the network that's closest to you? So like, let's try to pull partners into this view, because I think it's inclusive, like we're talking about very similar things here. So for example, let's say you have a strong integration with like, I don't know, I came from drift. So drift in six sets, right? How could I, if we had a strong go to market partnership, marketing to sales? How could I tap into that? Like, it seems like sellers could also start there too, and yet, they're not. So like no network I'd agree with but what about your company's network where you have publicly stated important relationships and partnerships?
Scott Leese 16:01
I wish I had a good answer for you. You know, it's what Isaac said is just like staring you in the face and you don't see it. You don't think about it, it's just for whatever reason, it's been outside of what you know, the mechanized the VP of sales role, right kind of taught to do. It's like, here's our weapons, we have the phone, we have email, we have social we have in person events, we have direct mail, we have all these things. It just has not been talked about, utilize your colleagues utilize if two companies have merged, now you have an extended family of, of colleagues. And then there's the outside of the company, network.
Jared Fuller 16:48
Yeah, we just signed a big partnership, or Wow, this giant community just launched that like, oh, that's where my people are. That's where my buyers are J McBain one of our buddies calls him watering holes. Like that's probably another piece of your advice is like, you probably have to go live where those buyers live to. So like your network, you really want to knock it out of the park for a company, build your network around the target customers that you sell to to right, to some degree. Yeah,
Scott Leese 17:15
for sure. And people have in the last couple years, kind of known that they need to be quote, involved with community. But they don't really know what that means. Exactly. But I've also gone to external companies like I ran this company, Thursday night sales, a community of, you know, 38,000 people came to my virtual sales happy hour, in a couple of years. People would sponsor people would engage in the Slack channels and stuff like that. And they got, you know, leads, they made hires from it and all this kind of thing. But you know, what they didn't do from it. Sell, they didn't sell now. So part of what I'm doing at this community that I've built GTM united. I've got a couple 100 people in there right now. It's got normal community stuff, we do multiple live trainings, every single week coaching, development, you know, normal channels, all this stuff, there's a job board all these things. But we're also getting them paid. Because what we're doing is we're leveraging this partners partner selling thing, and immediately deploying this group of people on all these open accounts. And so everybody's laying claim, saying I can make an intro here, I can make an intro there, some of these people are potentially going to make more money from me paying them for brokering intros, and deals closing than they are from their regular job. So why has a company not, I don't know, acquired a community, for example, and then deployed this mechanism. Why don't they just partner with a community and deploy this mobilized global free commission only SDR force, I don't know, other than people are not looking at turn three and four. And they're still digging their heels in saying, If I can just write a better fucking subject line. If I can write better email copy, people will buy from me. If we can retrain everybody's cold call pitch to be a little bit better. We'll be able to do what we were doing before. So people are digging their heels into what they know. And you've got older entrenched, leaders, people like me, frankly, in their mid 40s or whatnot. Except these people are not evolving. At the same rate. They're just remembering what worked for them before. Whereas I'm going like, shouldn't what worked for me before is not going to work for people anymore. It's still working a little bit right now, though. That's the thing is like you can still get away with it right now. But what about two years from now?
Jared Fuller 20:02
Well in your mix has to change, like, it's working enough to where you can't kill it,
Scott Leese 20:07
what about three or four or five years from now, you really think you will, on two emails in five years that are written by robots, I do not
Jared Fuller 20:16
know, we'll have bots that, you know, obviously auto unsubscribe and blocking spam list, like, our bot will surface to us only the emails that actually require our attention, right, like, that's the way that that'll be is like, there's nothing that's gonna get through that wall whenever, you know, the chat. GPT, or Bing, or whatever version of email that comes out is like, as a monetization vehicle for these big companies, it's very clear that Microsoft is willing to throw 100% of that monetization out the window, which means that if Google doesn't want to lose market share to Microsoft, which they don't, they're going to have to kill that monetization too, which means you're not going to get the paid ads in the in the inbox that get open anymore, because the customer experience is just going to be the only the emails that you need to reply to.
Isaac Morehouse 21:00
Going back to, you know, when I, when I was like, why aren't people doing this? I think the question on the leadership level with some of the strategies you talked about, is a separate thing and get into that, but on the individual contributor level, I used to work with early job seekers, and in my previous companies, and we always ran into this thing, we call it the permission based mindset, which is like, beat into you after you know, 20 years of school, which is like, you know, you, you have to ask permission for everything, you only do the things that you're told. And we always had to tell people break out of that mindset. And I think that's often what stops you know, you work in a company, maybe you have no network, but your company might have investors. So the playbook that you gave, you can do that as an individual AE, then you can go you can go to your CEO, whoever and say, is this, okay? Can I send this to the investors, but to even to even make that ask most people feel like, oh, I don't have permission to do that, right? Or to go look at the vendors that you're a customer of, hey, we're customers of, you know, outreach or whatever tools? What if I reached out to our account rep over there, and said, Hey, right, like, I think there's this permission, this feeling that, well, I gotta have permission to do that. That's like a, that's like a bigger strategic decision, are we going to behave that way? Are we going to not behave? You know, do we ask investors these things? And like, breaking out of that and saying, anyone that's connected to my buyer, is a potential source. And I don't have to go ask permission, I get like, why not? Like, what's it going to hurt to your point, to just to just think about the possibility there and to break out of that idea that someone has to give you explicit permission, these are the plays that you get to run. I think that's like a first step for those ICs.
Scott Leese 22:38
And they and you know, part of the reason they don't is because they get in trouble if they do. Historically, that's a good point. You know, what I mean, they get like, there's backlash for doing something outside of what is approved. And even worse, you know, they maybe get put on a PIP or they get, you know, the environment become toxic to the point where they don't want to work there anymore. Their creativity or outside the box thinking is not encouraged, unless the person at the top was the one who thought of it.
Jared Fuller 23:08
Yeah, because, you know, the pipeline meetings are going to show sales math is a part of it, right? Not just your pipeline production on a rep basis is going to show the sales activity, right. So it's gonna there's there is some scoreboard that still keeping track of, you know, emails, calls, meetings, whatever those are. And if you're not hitting what is an acceptable benchmark, then, you know, maybe you're playing a little bit longer game on some pipe development plays that you're talking about that wouldn't translate into those same activities. But maybe,
Scott Leese 23:37
but I have no problem with a leaderboard or KPIs. What I'm sort of suggesting is like those KPIs need to change. Exactly. Well,
Jared Fuller 23:44
what's on the board needs to change.
Scott Leese 23:46
Now board is a few minutes ago, like one of your KPIs should be did you connect with 25 new people today? Bingo, or network growth this month, is a KPI to me if I'm a VP of sales, and I'm looking at my all my, my AES and STRS, I'm doing right now as a KPI to me.
Jared Fuller 24:07
What you're speaking to and this is something I definitely want to we'll do more content about this together in the future. I can just tell Scott is good, Isaac, it's directly related to your question to what's funny is, Asher, Matthew actually talked about this with me from partnership leaders a few weeks back, and he's like, Jared, I think, I think you need to talk more about a near bound mindset. And there is I was like, What do you mean? And then as I thought about it, because I have a very much sales mindset, but he's like, No, the the concept of selling and then putting network effects at the forefront of it. It is slightly different of a mindset, like how you approach that account, what your first engagements are, like, like everything about how you build your book, is all of a sudden has this network lens and it is slightly different, right? It doesn't mean that you no longer care about KPIs, it's that the KPIs might change, right? You're making x amount of new money actions per day, you might be trying to become a, let's say, a Scott, one of my my sayings is trust comes from helping people reach their promised land. So for example, you might take, you know, one customer or two customers per quarter and go through their entire implementation lifecycle with them, what challenges are they actually experiencing? Like, speak or write about that. So that way you have something to like, lean on yourself, right, from being a part of that experience and working with partners. So I think there is a there is a clarion call for like, a new mindset that is not because like, what's our role model in sales? Like if you think about the stigmas, you know, stigmas and stereotypes don't define us, but they're most often portrayed often something that is fundamentally true. So you have tech bro sales, right? Like that culture still largely exists. And then that where does that come from? It comes from Rolex wearing Martini lunch, drinking, you know, power suit wearing clothes are hungry executives that, you know, let's be real Grant Cardone is still famous, how he's still famous. I have no frickin idea. But he's still famous, right? Like that's still viewed as like this thing. And that mindset of someone that's attending Grant Cardone close them hard, close them quick, close them often.
probably isn't the same mindset.
It seems different to me, there's a different view.
Scott Leese 26:15
But it's way different to me. Yeah. And I mean, I can see the argument that somebody like him, you know, would make but to me, it's just rooted in the past. It's just digging your heels. I mean, what is his counterarguments? Like, oh, you must be a pussy. And you need to like dig your heels in order, like clothes harder, make more calls, you're not good enough that getting over these objections is like, dude, Stop, just stop. Stop with all that. You know, it doesn't it just doesn't work like that anymore. If you're selling something that is technical, that is complicated. That is nuanced. Where you have to be thoughtful, if you're selling like a $2 widget, fine. It's hard, close the hell of me Go ahead.
Isaac Morehouse 27:05
And something that requires you to put your own reputation on the line with all the people internally that you have ego, right, yes. layers, and those people need to have be influenced somehow, so that you don't have as much at stake like this, the surround, you really have to surround that buyer and all of the people that influence that buyer, so much more than just like, get me to a moment where I'm pressured into something. It's just, it's not going to it's not going to cut it.
Jared Fuller 27:36
Yeah, no, not not at all. I was gonna go back to Scott to the comment you're making on your community and what you're putting together GTM united? Yeah, yeah, I wanted to go back there to I don't know, maybe we should, we can do like the first live partnerships BD DL on partner up. But what TLDR, like, I'm interested in speaking to a place in an audience like that of sales executives about how to build this exact same motion, right, like as a prospective partner, like, that's exactly the type of thing that I'm looking for. Right. And I feel like, that's something that I've never cracked the code on. So like, I'm just as an individual geeked out on this concept is that I tried, I tried doing this a number of times where I would pay out individuals as part of a partnership, right? And like, there's this, it'll be interesting to see how like the future of work evolves, where it is actually easier to pay out, let's say beyond 600 bucks, right? to individuals that might be you know, in a network that is not necessarily formally associated with their company. That was one question that I had is that this has nothing to do with your company. Primarily, it has more to do with the, the network that you have as an individual, and then you brokering those through the community.
Scott Leese 28:51
I don't know if I want to be as bold as to say that I cracked the code. But let me just tell you what I did. And maybe that can help you if anybody doesn't know me, I spent the better part of 20 years as a VP of sales, building and scaling sales organizations, had a couple exits, and hired people all across the country, and had offices all across the country. So I networked out of necessity, before we knew it was something that I needed to do just to staff all these places. And then I started systematically growing my network. And then I started sharing content. All right, and before you knew it, I had a fairly large following another largest following on LinkedIn, but you know, I'm over six figures. A lot of people know who I am. I also don't look walk and talk like a lot of VPs of sales. Right, but a brand okay. Then I diversified. And I started surfing sales, which is its own community is a micro sales conference. Your old company used to spa So Jared, I take 20 People in sales marketing, CS founder level, to Costa Rica three times a year, you're training, to surf lessons, all this stuff. So pre times you have 60 people. So the community grows slow annually, but it's a tight knit community. And what I learned from that is like how to continue to engage with people, how to support people, support their ideas, help them find jobs, you know, connect them in terms of deal flow a few times, right? Then COVID hits, and I start Thursday night sales, this community grows to a 38,000 people, there's a Slack channel with 1000s of people in it, I start to do the same thing. And so what I started to realize is, I have this big network on LinkedIn, that I'm able to draw some segment to events, and daily communication and trainings, and whatnot, I'm able to build community and keep them engaged. But there is an ad sales was dependent upon sponsorship, revenue. And guess what disappeared in 2023. Sponsorship revenue more. So then I thought, well, what's the next evolution of this? And how does it relate to the future of sales. And I thought, well, community matters a ton. I'm very passionate about it. I still like coaching, training, delivering value, putting in you know, courses have holding events, all this stuff. But this whole partner selling thing is referral selling thing that I've been doing on my own I was the number one partner seller last year for Gong and for Orem did over a million dollars apiece for each of them. On my own. I thought there's got to be a way to do this at scale. And you know, what the missing pieces, I've never really tapped into my community and tried to involve them. And, and really not just like, tell them what I've been doing, but like, involve them and get them fucking paid alongside of me. Right. And so one of the reasons maybe that you didn't have like, the ability to talk about all this stuff is the size of your network is not the size of mine. Part of what I do in my consulting practice is I teach people different ways to go to market. I've been talking about partner and stuff and CO selling and teaching these startups this stuff. For a while now. I've been doing this full time for a couple of years. Right? Then I started talking in Costa Rica about that I started talking about it in go to market united. And I built this program GTM assist. So now all these people are doing it. So the audience is captains right now. There's, there's there's a rumble right now, where people like us are gaining momentum, as we start to talk about this thing, because people are frustrated with their inability to build pipeline. And right now everybody is trying to blame the economy and macroeconomic conditions and all this, and ain't gonna be better in a year. That's right, they're not quite willing to fully admit that the phone doesn't work as good anymore. And email doesn't work as good anymore. But there's whispers of it. And so, you know, what worked for me was, I had an audience, I built moats and communities, and now I'm involving them.
Jared Fuller 33:20
The network effects of like, in breaking down just what you what you said just now Scott is, it's, it's a perfect example of something I've been talking about more is that there was some nomenclature that I'm fighting back on that. I don't know, maybe Isaac and I had something to do with it, you know, giving before you get. That's not quite right. I think being pathologically helpful is like a better way of thinking about it. So for example, Scott, you built a whole bunch of trust and goodwill, not by just giving people random stuff, like, for example, the emails that you sent out to your community, or the messages that you posted, or the content that you created, was not just simple, like, Hey, $25,000, Slack, or, you know, Slack jackpot giveaway, right? Some casino type ad, right, the things you were just giving them stuff, what you were doing is you were helping them with the things that that we're actually working on. Right. And by virtue of you helping someone get to a better place. They're going to turn to you for future decisions. Right? And that mindset has to be very different. For example, everything that I have ever done that's worked out well, has emanated from a position where I've helped someone before I asked them of anything. And that includes like my, my co founder and partner on the show, like Isaac, for example, right? Like he's spinning up crashed his, his last VC venture backed company. And I wasn't even a customer of his at the time it dripped. But Isaac calls me and he goes, Hey, you were an amazing customer of panda Doc. I'm going through diligence. Can you help me out and talk to these VCs? Absolutely. So like I went through those calls Scott and helped him and like putting that Time to be that reference, you know, and Isaac, what did the VCs tell you?
Isaac Morehouse 35:04
Not? Not only that the Vc, Vc called me and was like, wow, that Jared guy, you need to hire him.
Jared Fuller 35:16
Right it but like you help people, and then you can come back and like we had so much more trust, because we, you know, we've helped each other over the years. And that's my network, right? Your network is people that like, had seen you in the battlefield and been like, man, that person's, they, they really helped me out with this.
Scott Leese 35:31
That's the key word is you build that trust, you know, and then once that trust is there, people believe that you're acting and behaving in a way that is out of love and respects, and truly designed to, like help them improve their situation. Right. And when when that is when that feeling is strong, you ematic automatically, like, get excited and kind of half bought in already, before you even hear what the idea is of their what they're going to do next. You know, if that trust was there, between the two of you. And Isaac, you know, called you tomorrow was like, Hey, man, I started this new company I got this, you're like half interested, already before even tells you the idea. Because that's how strong the bond is. And if you can do that at scale. Now you've really tapped into something.
Isaac Morehouse 36:25
So Scott, you talk through kind of your process as a community leader or a community builder, how you have built these communities and how you have used that tremendous, tremendous success. What about as a as like a member of one of these communities? How do you how do you advise people to get more out of communities? It's like, okay, I joined a new community of 5000, whatever, sales pros, marketing pros. Now I'm on the slack group. I don't know, I've heard I'm supposed to be like living in market and hanging around communities. Now what I get notifications all the time, what is your recommendation for how to how to actually utilize that effectively?
Scott Leese 37:10
Respond to the notifications. I mean, this people want like some, and I don't mean this disrespectfully it so please don't take it that way. But like, people want this, like wisdom drops? Where the answer is really pretty simple. You get notifications, respond to them, if you have anything to add. Or you could even just say if you said enough times, that's a really good idea. Isaac, I never thought of that. If you just said that, like a few times in a row, Isaac is starting to get name recognition, on that slack channel, and even might get familiar with whatever picture icon you had there. Right. And that is enough sometimes to like, be memorable. and think, Oh, that was that one person, they might be good at this or they liked that kind of thing. You also can ask questions. Literally just pose questions to the community of things that you're dealing with, with your business, or your role. Pay attention to things that people ask where they need help. And you help people to what we were just talking about. That's a great way to get involved and be memorable. The other thing is show up, show up to the events. Let me ask the question, do you think the people who host the events have no life? Because what I always do is like, well, I have a life. I have an outside life. I have a family. I have kids at this. I'm running the event Do you fucking think I don't? What are we talking about here, prioritize it, you make it a priority. If you know that your community holds events at 5pm Eastern Time, every Tuesday. Here's an idea. Don't block calls in meetings at that time. And hold it for that. If you know there's events every Friday or every Thursday, or whatever, I mean, hell at least try to go to one or two. even show up, turn your camera off. And just listen. Just through osmosis. Right? I can tell you which people from my communities show up daily. I remember even the ones that are quiet. If you go to the events, engage as quiet, engage in the chat. If you don't want to come off mute and have a have a conversation. Wait till the point where you feel confident or bold enough to ask a question. If that's like a roundtable q&a kind of thing.
Jared Fuller 39:44
Isaac, who was it on the last event that was making fun of my shirt and said that you'd need to do advice. We had a new wardrobe.
Isaac Morehouse 39:50
Oh, yeah. Trying to remember that was Yeah. Oh my
Jared Fuller 39:53
gosh, I've seen her multiple times. But my point is that much more memorable. Yes, yep. Yep. Right. Just like, like we have we have these great relationships with people that come to a bunch of our events? And they speak up? And Cheryl, was that right? I think Cheryl?
Isaac Morehouse 40:06
Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. And yeah, and the minute the minute I get an email from one of those people, and they're asking me something, the likelihood that I'm gonna listen and respond, Yes. Off The Charts.
Jared Fuller 40:20
Look at Justin Zimmerman is a perfect example. Like in our community, Isaac of someone that like showed up, participated in now has his own network is doing, you know, near bound is what Justin's doing. So there's someone that came from the partner hacker community that has his entire network and is kind of doing at a smaller scale. Scott, very similar to what you're talking about, just through partner marketing, for example, right. So like, he's helping people put together partner events, right, based on his network and partner marketing, right. And it's working very well for him with a with an audience size, by the way, like a following much less than 10,000, which is pretty bonkers. Like at an atomic level, does this work? If you're not Scott lease, the anecdotes that I'm seeing is it works for lots of people.
Scott Leese 40:58
Yeah, works for anyone. And I know that the bar is so low, I think in terms of like, what do I do? The bar is so low, it's just like, show up. What do you mean, what do you do? You don't have to add some perfect thing.
Jared Fuller 41:18
Beautiful. What an incredible way to end Scott lease everybody. I think that's the perfect entry point. Isaac before we end, should we call out? We don't have anything on the books yet with them yet. But I will make a shout out on the podcast about our newest partner. Should we?
Isaac Morehouse 41:35
Yeah, why not? Let's do it.
Jared Fuller 41:37
All right. All right. So we're partnering up with Mind Matrix. We have a lot coming with them. I've been going back and forth with Harvinder, the CEO over WhatsApp messages, like nonstop for the past few months. Isaac be like, Jared, we need to take on this. And then I bet no, Harvard was calling me I need to talk to my matrix. So we've been working on some great stuff. So giving them a shout out in a plug in this episode more to come. We'll see some posts from the my matrix team that we start to craft out some of their narrative, and then put some events together in the future that I'm very excited about. So more to come on that. But otherwise, I don't think I can Yeah,
Isaac Morehouse 42:12
I got I got one t shirt. Because it's so relevant to what we're just talking about with Scott here. Communities. Rev genius is a community of I think like 35,000 revenue professionals, and our very own Jared fuller. Oh, no, and their very own Jared Robin, are launching. I think it's the first ever I'm just gonna say it's the first ever b2b reality TV series. That's right. unfuck my funnel in live monthly show where Jared Robin and Jared Fuller, have guests joined, which can be you, you can let us know you want to come on the show. Why not? And talk about what's going on in your funnel, you hit your numbers you struggling and they will help you unfuck your funnel and give you some some real tactics and advice for do that. It's gonna be a ton of fun. It's gonna be equal parts, sensationalized reality TV, entertainment, and legitimate real coaching for sales. So that's going to be super, super fun monthly live series. Definitely check it out with Rap Genius.
Jared Fuller 43:19
It's in the banner at the top of partner hacker.com right now until June 25, when the first episode drops Live, which is going to be crazy to do. Yeah, it's like a live reality TV show where we're actually going through this. It's gonna be fun. Good cop who's bad cop? We'll figure that out. Jared and Jared, it was just too funny to not do some content like this. So we're gonna try to be goofy. Funny, and not not cringy. But actually, like, I don't know. I can't wait to get that cocky VP sales in alongside that VP of partner that they think they have it all figured out. And yet, you know, unveil to them that no, sorry, your funnel is fucked. Like you're doing things backwards. You're measuring things the wrong way. And we're gonna have some fun with it. So we'll see around for that, Scott. For all the people that are following on LinkedIn, obviously, Scott leads leads on LinkedIn, but GTM united, where else can people find you? And what should they be doing? As their first point of following you or getting in touch.
Scott Leese 44:14
Well, I respond to every single message that I get on LinkedIn, that's not a spam request. So feel free to hit me up there. That's probably the easiest way to get in touch with me. Yeah, check out GTM united.com. Check out surfing sales.com. And Scott leads consulting.com. Those are my three businesses that I'm running right now. And hopefully, something I said resonated with you. And if not, I'd love to hear why I'm wrong.
Jared Fuller 44:40
No, I think you hit the nail on the head with this audience. Scott. So partner pros. You got one of the goats VPs of sales on the conversation right now a ton of respect for Scott and his work and I'm super excited about what the future has in store for all of us as a movement and as an ecosystem. As we build more bridges to the direct organization. I think people like Scott play a very important role so Scott thank you so much for joining us on partner up partner up peace out we will see you all next time
