Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt in required, where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years, and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence. Com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you. With us right now, it's John Carson. John, you are the founder and CEO of Level Up Leads. You're found on the web at Level Up Leeds I oh, John's great to have you.

Speaker 2 00:01:15 Thanks for having me on Josh I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 00:01:17 Yes for sure. We'll give us an overview of the work you do.

Speaker 2 00:01:21 Yeah. So we're we're a sales development agency. So we work with small to midsize companies helping them with sales development prospecting appointment setting. So our our clients have more sales opportunities.

Speaker 1 00:01:35 Yeah. Well, give us just a bit of an overview of that world, like what's going on because this is a topic I talk about quite a bit. and, you know, today's, lead generation strategies, as it were, probably a little bit different than they were five plus years ago. Definitely. There have been some really great platforms, I think, that have been abused pretty badly by a lot of the amateur lead gen world. So? So John, what is working well today?

Speaker 2 00:02:06 Yeah. So what was working five years ago does not work today. I should let me take a step back. Yeah. Yeah, please. You can't quite. You can't do the same stuff.

Speaker 2 00:02:16 It's an ever changing space, so you kind of always have to be ahead of the curve. And so I think one of the issues is it seems like, well, one, there's so many tools these days. And then now they added on an email component to it. So you have so many people have access to email automation platforms and data. And so I think the email channels become tougher. It certainly was my strongest channel about five, five, six years ago. And now it's actually cold calling. So, you know, cold calling has been working since I've been alive. I don't think that's ever going away. And one of the benefits there is you get to have human to human conversations. You get to understand quickly, hey, am I talking to the right person? Hey, is this relevant to you? Okay, why? Why not? And it's it's much quicker feedback loop and it's much harder to ignore. Assuming you're you get them on the call. Whereas email I think I'm not trying to bash it.

Speaker 2 00:03:05 We we still use it and we're we're a proponent of it, but it's much easier to ignore an email than it is to have a phone call. And when you're on a conversation and answer some of those questions, and sometimes they're good questions, sometimes they're questions that may be a pain point for whoever we're speaking with. So, there you go. They're you're sparking some interest right there.

Speaker 1 00:03:23 Yeah. What do you see working well in initiating that, that kind of that very, very top that that initial awareness. you know, because again, I think if you're dealing with decision makers that are that are pretty savvy, that are really busy, you know, I don't know, I, I don't I think of like my own time. I pretty much use ChatGPT for a lot of questions I need answered. but I guess at the end of the day, you know, folks do need services, and, and so are you generally looking for people that are very actively looking for solutions. And that's where you hope to, kind of intercept, or are you just looking to.

Speaker 1 00:04:06 Well, I don't know, you maybe kind of fill in some of the gaps there. I'm trying to understand.

Speaker 2 00:04:11 Yeah. I mean, it'd be great if we knew who was actively looking. That would make our job. Yeah, right. Yeah. So, now there's tools like that have intent, and they kind of give you some insights, but it's a little hit and miss on that. If that was so perfect, everyone would be using it and everyone would be crushing their sales. And it's not it gives you a little bit of insight. that's intent. But, essentially when we work with a company, we need to understand what what are they doing now? What's working? What's not working? Have they gone to any conferences and just better understand who's their ICP? Why are they, who's likely to respond, or who have been the champions in their previous sales and better understanding that. And so that's really helpful moving forward because it company to company, it's going to be different. Everyone, every company is different even within the same space.

Speaker 2 00:04:58 You're going to have potentially different price points. just to offer is a bit different. and so it's about understanding who. Our clients and who their ICP is. And then from there we can create strategies that that together we make sense that together. you know we think makes sense. So it's a collaborative approach. and we we've come up with strategies that, hey, this is going to give us the best chance of success. Sometimes it works right out the gate and sometimes it doesn't. So sometimes you need to make adjustments.

Speaker 1 00:05:28 Yeah. John, what are some you know to our friend that's listening. what are some maybe misconceptions or we've already touched on email a little bit. but you know again I think in the past it's, it's, you know, now with AI, cheap labor, I mean, there's just so many things that I think that you can do, for lead gen. And I think a lot of it is pretty sloppy and messy and, and creates just more noise. and unfortunately, I think many of us who are pretty good at what we do.

Speaker 1 00:06:02 Like if we want to initiate those conversations. It's not our fault that marketers have ruined a lot of things. Are there any other kind of general trends that you're seeing, or maybe pitfalls that you would say? Yeah, be very careful with your spend around X or just anything come to mind there?

Speaker 2 00:06:23 Yeah. It's funny, I actually posted about this today, on LinkedIn, if if a company doesn't clearly have a defined ICP ideal customer profile, it makes everything else so much harder because you're essentially doing discovery for clients on the fly, and it makes the partnership a little bit more challenging, unless they're very aware and they realize that, which at the end of the day, a lot of companies, they want to see results. So that is probably the, the, the number one thing I look for. And the other challenging thing is companies will say they know their ICP and then they send over the list of contacts or titles. And it's like this huge list. So you need to do, you know, do a little digging with them and understand, okay, which titles can we eliminate? Let's start with a campaign targeting these 1 or 2 titles.

Speaker 2 00:07:07 And then from there we can better define that ICP. so that's that's the start. Now from there, once you have that defined, there's, there's a whole lot there's other things that need to be addressed in try to understand what's working, what's not working. It could be the channel, could be the messaging, could be the titles. I could go on. But that is the most important part, the ICP.

Speaker 1 00:07:28 Right. And so, level up. Are you pretty much just kind of focused on kind of generating the names, the quote unquote leads or whatever? or you also kind of get into some of the sales conversation or some of the sales processes or systems.

Speaker 2 00:07:47 So our clients don't have to hire us to do the sales. So what's important is that we're gauging interest when we get people on a call or, any of the other channels, and then we're peaking their interest, but then setting up the meeting for our client because we want our clients are going to know how to pitch their product a lot better than we can, right? So it's about understanding it enough.

Speaker 2 00:08:08 We have scripts we follow, and so we have common questions and objections and things like that. interesting. But it's important that we can follow that peak interest and then ultimately set up the meeting for our client so they can run them through a call or a demo.

Speaker 1 00:08:24 Yeah. And, and again, you know, when you're initiating a phone conversation, that's not the first step, like that's that that phone call. Or is it like this person who's receiving the phone call, is this the very first time they've ever heard of company XYZ, your client, or do they already have some familiarity built up?

Speaker 2 00:08:45 Well, it'd be great if they already had familiarity. That makes our job that much easier if there's some brand awareness and people are aware. so it rings a bell when you do get them on the phone or you are sending an email. they do recognize that. but no, there's, there's research that goes into it. Right. So we're researching the contacts. It all has to do with the strategy the campaigns were running.

Speaker 2 00:09:04 And so there's research that goes into it before we write the scripts. And then ultimately scripts are approved and then we're making those calls. now there's a chance they don't know. And a lot of times when you are doing cold calling, they don't know who you are. So you need to explain to them. Typically you want to talk about pain points first. and then you can explain to them, hey, this is how we solve that. This is what we do, rather than just reading about, hey, this is this is what we do. We're so good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that just doesn't work.

Speaker 1 00:09:32 Right, right. and, John, what are things that, that a company could do, or a founder could do that even before engaging with you. That would make your collective job easier. And I'm thinking about, you know, maybe it's defining their offer. Maybe it's how they present their authority or their branding or their website or just, you know, some of those other things that are going to be used as assets or part of the decision making.

Speaker 1 00:10:01 for any potential introduction or lead.

Speaker 2 00:10:05 It's a great question. And you touched on some of the important ones. So you mentioned website. That's just one example. So you might have a great service or a great product. But think about it. And the people you're reaching out to. Like if I receive an email and it kind of piques my interest, I go look at their LinkedIn page, I go look at their website. And if it's not a good website, it's a bit of a turn off. And so you might be losing people if if you don't have that at least decent. And you'd be surprised. Some of our clients don't don't have good websites. So that's just one example. other things would be having good marketing materials, recordings of previous demos, case studies, just to name a few. obviously, if they've done outreach before, they have some hey, this is what worked. This is the messaging we had. We can kind of use that as a base and then we can build off of that.

Speaker 1 00:10:57 What should I be asking you? I feel like, you know, a lot of things, but I don't want to keep siloing into an area that I'm interested in. I know you know some. I know you know some good stuff.

Speaker 2 00:11:09 Well, it depends like, Let me walk you through, some success stories that we've had recently. and I think one of the, one of the challenges of there's some pros and cons of working with a sales development agency. and there's a reason why it's actually, it's taking off. We see business, increasing. And I'll explain some of that right now. and part of it is just the some. So prospecting is one of the most challenging parts of the sales process. no one wants to do it less and less. People want to get on the phones and make cold calls, and it's expensive if you're doing this in the States, if you hire somebody, you've got all sorts of additional costs on top of, the salary benefits, increased tech stack training on ramp, to get in ramped up.

Speaker 2 00:12:03 You've got cost potentially in hiring. And then there's also no guarantee that works out. And so what you have to do is you have to do that process all over again. So by working with an outbound agency, it significantly lowers your costs and lowers your risk and speed to market. So it doesn't mean it's going to be a fit for everybody. But there's there's a ton of reasons why there's a lot of companies out there that are doing sales development, and there's a ton of reasons why it makes sense. Now I say all that, not to say we replace stars. That's not actually, what we're what we're trying to accomplish. Actually, a lot of our top clients have stars, so we work in, alongside them and help them, in setting up appointments. okay, but a few success stories. So, one thing that really helps is we touched on this earlier, but having a brand presence and having product market fit. So if you if you don't have a product market fit, it's going to make it so much harder when it comes time to do an outbound.

Speaker 2 00:13:01 And that has to whether it's you hire a VP of sales or someone internally or someone else, outsourced, like a company like mine. because you could, you could say, hey, I want you to. I have these goals. I have these KPIs for you. But if you have competitors and it's a crowded space and they have a better offering and better brand presence, it's just not realistic that it's going to work out. So those are some of the things you have to look for. Is product market fit. but also, what we found in terms of some of our most successful clients is having that brand presence. But also we started going up market because we realized that it became much easier upmarket, meaning bigger companies. So we do have a few that are publicly traded companies that are, over 10,000 employees. and so one of them, I should say they we, we were able to start with them beat KPIs by actually three x. And then they added on additional orders because they saw it working and now they want to start going worldwide.

Speaker 2 00:14:01 So part of that is that they have a really, really well known company. I'm not going to say their name, but you guys would probably all know them. until we hired people specifically that, assigned SDR specifically that had backgrounds in what they offer, specifically sales engineering. And so that's not easy to come by. And so, you put some of those things together with good messaging. you have a brand recognition, you have good stars on the phones, you have good scripts, and typically it leads to good results. And so we actually were able to assign them to a six month extension after three months. and they added on at second SDR. So those are some of the, the points we've seen that work really well having case studies, brand presence, having a defined ICP. so I know I'm going on a bit, but those are some of the things we've found to work really well with some of our, current customers.

Speaker 1 00:14:57 Yeah, a lot of times, people find this podcast because they're searching for you or they're searching for this topic, and, you know, this this episode is kind of come up for them.

Speaker 1 00:15:06 And so now they're listening, and let's say they've gone through this and like, okay, okay, this is all very interesting. what would you recommend next steps be for someone that's kind of in that research phase there. Maybe maybe they're not 100%, 100% sure that level up would be good for them. Or maybe they should go a completely different direction, or maybe they're not ready. how can they figure this out? Oh, I'm sorry, I may have broken up there. Let's say someone's researching, level up leads right now. They're listening to our podcast episode, and they may or may not be ready. but they'd like to find out. Like, what would you recommend? I don't know if you've got some resources you'd recommend for them. you know, obviously, you know, grabbing a call is, I would imagine, is likely part of your process.

Speaker 2 00:15:49 Yeah. So I think one of the most important things here is, is giving it enough time for things to play out. So if you haven't already proven this out yourself and you don't have a proven sales process, you can expect me or anybody else on this planet to to come in in two months or three months and hit homeruns.

Speaker 2 00:16:09 That's just not how it works. So you have to you give yourself a runway of 4 to 6 months, to let things play out. It's not like every time, every campaign you start with is always a success. Sometimes you need to make adjustments along the way. so that's that's what I'd say.

Speaker 1 00:16:31 Yeah. John, I want to just share. I appreciate your energy. unfortunately, there was a I think in the past, historically, there's been a lot of bro energy. when it comes to lead gen, I don't know what it.

Speaker 4 00:16:42 Is, man. You know, kind of the whole.

Speaker 1 00:16:44 Sales funnel world. but I just want to say it's been it's been a really great time chatting with you. your website is level up leads bio. what would you recommend people click on? What do they do next?

Speaker 2 00:16:57 Yeah. The best way is inquire. There's some buttons there. You can set up a call. You can learn more. Also, you can write me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active there trying to post once a day and my DMs are open if you have any questions.

Speaker 1 00:17:10 All right love it. Level up Leeds's John Carson. Thank you so much for the conversation I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 00:17:17 Thanks, Josh.

Speaker 1 00:17:24 Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence. Com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt in or email required, where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales.

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