In this episode of Prospecting Pros, John and Chris talk with Scott Lease, a sales leader, consultant, and founder of the Surf and Sales Summit. Scott has spent more than two decades building sales teams and helping create multiple unicorns and successful exits. He’s known for stepping into the toughest stage of a company’s journey, taking startups from zero to one hundred, and thriving under the pressure that comes with it.
Scott shares why he’s drawn to early-stage work, what he looks for in hiring, and how grit and life experience matter more than polished resumes. He explains why the best sellers combine strategy with hard work and why they never stop looking for the next challenge.
The conversation also covers pipeline strategies for 2025, including referral networks, content that builds trust, and small in-person events, along with why saying no is sometimes the smartest move.
[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I'm the guy that takes you zero to 100. But if I close a million dollar deal for level up leads, you better, you know, paint a mural of my face on the wall or something special. Like I mean I I matter, right? I can see my impact, I can feel it. Like I am keeping the lights on.
[00:00:17] Speaker 1: Right? So I want him to be really, really good at this one thing, not somebody who's done okay at a million different things. Like anything that we we've all been in that is a pressurized situation. And if you do it time and time again, you start to get acclimatized to that type of environment.
[00:00:36] Speaker 1: What job is harder with a higher fail fail rate than a sales person? I can't really find that.
[00:00:42] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[00:00:42] Speaker 1: They mask it behind work smarter, not harder. I never understood why I can't just do both. You know, why do I have to be real strategic and make four calls today? Why can't I just be real strategic and make as many calls as I possibly can while also being strategic. Um, you know, hard work and repetition and failure has has gotten a bad rap.
[00:01:07] Speaker 1: I think most people can grind and get to the top of the mountain once. But then once you've been there and you understand what it takes, I don't think many people want to put themselves through that day after day, month after month, year after year. You know, I think the best sellers that I've ever been around have that. They don't burn out. They create new companies or new challenge, they're they're hungry for new challenges and opportunities to learn and to push themselves. They're trying to find the their own limits.
[00:01:41] Speaker 1: I communicate really fast and respond to everything. I I would probably consider myself like an over communicator of sorts. I have learned over the years that people who don't operate this way are not great fits for me. I'm not looking to downshift and slow down, you know, to appease other people and accommodate your schedule. You're coming to work with me because you want to get shit done and you want to get it done quickly.
[00:02:04] Speaker 1: The go-to network motion, the referral motion, that is the fastest easiest way I think to go from zero to a million bucks in revenue that there is. You know, get a bunch of people to make mutual introductions. Everybody's asking about it. There's already trust. Those deals close faster, less churn, less support tickets, higher average contract value.
[00:02:25] Speaker 1: Imagine you go to buy a car and the car salesman is telling you about every nut bolt and screw in the car. Right? It's like, dude, I don't care about all that stuff, man. How much does it cost? What color do you have? And is it safe? Great. Give me the fuck out of here. Let me drive off the lot.
[00:02:41] Speaker 2: Welcome back to Prospecting Pros. We have Scott Lee and Chris Lingfelter on the show today. Welcome.
[00:02:48] Speaker 3: Howdy.
[00:02:49] Speaker 1: What's up, guys?
[00:02:51] Speaker 2: So the way I like to start every show is just do a little bit of a background, a little bit of a deep dive into how you got to where you are today. So Scott, take it away. Uh not for too long, but keep it under a few minutes.
[00:03:02] Speaker 1: All right, keep it under a few minutes. Uh Scott Lee, I run my own sales and go to market consulting firm uh for the last six plus years. I'm also the founder of a sales and revenue event called the Surf and Sales Summit and I'm co-founder of a Micro VC firm called Milos Ventures with my brother. I spent 20 plus years building and scaling sales orders in tech and in SAS all around the world. I have now worked and been a part of 12 unicorns and 15 exits. So all things scaling, selling, leadership, go to market, branding. This is the area that I have played in and I've always kind of gravitated towards early stage. Like I'm the guy that takes you zero to 100.
[00:03:49] Speaker 1: I'm not the guy that your publicly traded company calls in to turn the ship around. That has never been my uh my cup of tea. Um so yeah, that's who I am and this is a quick quick version. That's a under one minute version.
[00:04:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, that was quick. Well, that the I feel like the part that you dive head first into is actually the most challenging because things aren't figured out and that is the hardest thing. You know, it's easier I mean, easier. It's when you're going to go into an existing company. There's a lot of they already have a brand, there's there are things in place that've been around for a while, but to just start from scratch is challenging. Tell me like why do you decide to do that and like where do you feel your specialty is in
[00:04:33] Speaker 2: diagnosing those companies.
[00:04:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, whether it's more challenging than the opposite. I I don't know. Uh it is challenging though. There's a reason why so few people gravitate to it and go back and do it over and over again. You know, most most people do it once or twice and then say, what the hell with this, you know, it's too stressful, too nebulous, too much work, whatever. But I've I've always had um I've always wanted to be a part of something special. And and and felt like I made a contribution, all right? And not to pick on any one particular company, but you know, if we were all sales people for Microsoft or something like that, all right? Now we closed a million dollar deal today. Nobody cares. We're a line item on a spreadsheet, okay? But if I close a million dollar deal for level up leads, you better, you know, paint a mural of my face on the wall or something special. Like I mean I I matter, right? I can see my impact, I can feel it. Like I am keeping the lights on. Right? And I always wanted all that pressure, you know, if if you don't perform, you get fired. You do good, you get all the glory. I get that, right? I I played sports my whole life. I played two sports in college, so that I I never shy away from that kind of pressure. I was always the guy who wanted to take the last shot.
[00:05:50] Speaker 1: You know, in soccer, I was the guy who took all of our penalty kicks for example. High pressure, big moments. Great. I want it all on on me. And As I stayed at companies for a few years, always around year three, you know, I'd be three, four, five hundred people in the company and all of a sudden I'm in fucking like nine meetings a day and I need six signatures to to get every day to agree on a new flavor of Lecroy that they're giving in the office. It's like, what am I doing? You know, this is miserable. Like I'm not making an impact, I'm not changing people's lives at all. I'm not coaching, I'm not building anything. I'm just like Tinkering with stuff. Uh and that's not me, you know. So I think that I over time just became very very entrepreneurial in the sense of I like building things from scratch. and I like the pressure of that and I like the reward of that. Uh and so I just kept going back to it over and over and over and I've stayed there and to the point where hopefully I'm synonymous with oh early stage sales and revenue growth, you should call Scott. Nobody's done it more times as successfully. like that was my goal. So I wanted to be really, really good at this one thing, not somebody who's done okay at a million different things. So that's why.
[00:07:11] Speaker 2: The sports correlation is perfect. Not that you have to play sports to be good at sales or growing businesses, but there is a lot of correlation. Like specifically I played college tennis. I know I think you played tennis and soccer. If um, but I had like a lot of that same type of pressure situations and I think it really built me to like when I stepped into the workforce like to to head like dive head first and like just take it head on. So like for example, we would have practice matches against each other and if you lost you potentially were out of the lineup in the match like the actual match the next day. So you've got pressure on yourself in practice and then you've got pressure the next day to actually win in the match and just like it's it's ongoing and then you've got you know you've got teams ahead of you so like they're just they're just flat out better. So you need to practice outside and just like put in the work because otherwise you're just going to get steam rolled if you're not improving on your days off. It's just like putting in the work and I think a lot of that can translate. Let's just use an SDR as an example. Like you can't just show go to work and then just put in the hours and leave and expect better results. Like you need to be practicing uh the script, your tone, different things like that if you really want to level up yourself in your game.
[00:08:23] Speaker 1: It teaches you how to lose also and then how to let it go and forget. It doesn't have to be just sports like you said like You know, there's a lot of people who uh maybe were musicians or actors who had to get up on stage. You know, if you've ever played in a band or something like that or been a part of a school play like nerv-racking, super nerv-racking, you know. I'm making fun of my son a couple months ago because there's like a spelling bee. You know, and I'm like, dude, I don't want to stand up in front of, you know, my whole class and try to spell this word and look the fool if I don't know how to spell it. Like anything that we we've all been in that is a pressurized situation. And if you do it time and time again, right? You start to get acclimatized to that type of environment. It's like, oh, I have a big sales call. It's not that you feel nothing. It's just like, yeah, whatever, you know, I've been here a million times before, right? If it goes great, awesome. If it goes badly, shit. I I must not have been prepared. I must do something different. You know, I think it's really important to to find people in that SDR function who who have this type of experience. Not this is not sales experience, this is life experience, you know, right? They've been in pressurized situations. They've performed well, they performed poorly, they had to shake it off, get back up on the horse, try again. That's what you're looking for, right? Cuz what job is harder with a higher fail fail rate than a sales person?
[00:09:51] Speaker 1: I can't really find that.
[00:09:53] Speaker 3: Yeah. That ability to adapt is extremely important. And honestly, they don't teach it much these days anymore. coaching reps on how to adapt quick and just get used to failure because I remember one of the first things that I learned in sales was I'm sure everybody's heard this saying is, you know, for every 99 knows, you know, you're that much closer to that one yes on the 100th. You know.
[00:10:16] Speaker 3: Yeah. But they don't really teach that anymore.
[00:10:18] Speaker 1: No, and I don't know and I don't know why they they they mask it behind work smarter, not harder. You know, I never understood why I can't just do both. You know, why do I have to be real strategic and make four calls today? Why can't I just be real strategic and make as many calls as I possibly can while also being strategic. Um, so it's it's a shame, you know, there's definitely something to be said for work life balance and not losing yourself into your role, but we've really skewed the opposite direction a little bit and you know, hard work and repetition and failure has has gotten a bad rap, you know. I I know a lot of us wouldn't be where we are today without those experiences and wouldn't trade it for the world anymore, you know.
[00:11:08] Speaker 3: How would you kind of go through and, you know, telling a the rapper or just a sales person because in my experience in sales is usually the ones that are the most successful are the ones that just grind. And it is a grind, you know, to really get to that point to where you really have that kind of fuck you money, right? To where you can just take that one gig is. Did you see the same thing when you were kind of coming up in sales and when you work with, you know, startups trying to make the name?
[00:11:31] Speaker 1: With one kind of differentiator, it's I think most people can grind and get to the top of the mountain once. But then once you've been there and you understand what it takes, I don't think many people want to put themselves through that day after day, month after month, year after year. You know, and they kind of say, well, I did it. I made a hundred grand or I made a million bucks or whatever though, milestone is, right? But to be able to look at that and be like, now I got to do it again and again. or to look at it and be like, "Now I got to do, you know, one point better all the time over and over again across an entire career of years, decades, right? I've been doing this for 21 years. So I have somehow had to find a new why, a new reason to stay sharp, to stay edgy, to compete, not just against other people but myself, new goals, right? And I I think the best sellers that I've ever been around have that. They don't burn out. They create new companies or new challenge, they're they're hungry for new challenges and opportunities to learn and to push themselves. They're trying to find the their own limits. And, you know, you find a limit and then you're like, oh shit, I guess I got to figure out a way to go beyond that limit and then you get to the next one, you're like, all right, well, got to find a way around that one now. That thing is like insaciable, basically. I don't think you can teach that. You really got to try to find it. deep within people. I think you can help people optimize it and let it out a little bit, but it's it's got to be in there and I don't think everybody has it.
[00:13:08] Speaker 2: I think that's one thing that's very difficult to try to pry out of somebody in an interview too. I just think interviewing is specifically for sales or an SDR role like you can try to find grit or struggles that people have gone through, but to go that extra mile like it's just difficult and I listened to one of your your previous videos Scott and you mentioned that you were working, I think it would I forget the exact math but it was like you're working out a Saturday every week and so you're like if you've accumulated the Saturdays, you're like I'm putting in one extra week to work against my competitors or competition. It's like it's you can't really teach that. Like that has to kind of come from your background with the medical history as well as sports.
[00:13:44] Speaker 1: There's the one thing that I could control when I first got started, you know, I got started late for people who don't know, I got started late in sales. I was 27 years old. I had just spent the previous four years fighting for my life uh in the hospital and dealing with surgeries and opiate addiction from the pain medicine that they gave me and there was no such thing as an SDR BDR role back then. But, you know, it might as well be the same things entry level, you know, make 150 calls a day type boiler room environment. You know. Yeah, you can't I just you can't replace that kind of experience. You can it's hard to identify but you can, you can flush it out, I think. You know, you ask people questions about, you know, what's some of the hard things you've been through in life. You know, whatever you're comfortable sharing, doesn't have to be personal to be work, what do you want to share? You know, ask people about their hobbies, right? somebody's, you know, says, well what I like to do after work? I I come home and I play with my dog and relax and watch TV. Okay, good for you. Somebody else says, well I come home and I go to the gym for two hours. I'm training for an iron man and I'm uh launching this construction business on the site. Well that person I want to talk to. I'm like, how the hell do you have the focus, the energy, the determination to do all of that kind of thing. So, you know, you you find tips and tricks like that to try to pull it out of people a little bit as as proof. I'm not I'm not listening for them to tell me, oh I swear I have, you know, unmatched determination. I I want them to just talk about what they like to do because then I know it's it's in them. I don't have to try to implant it in them. They they already have it on some level, right? So that's what I'm trying to I'd be trying to optimize for.
[00:15:30] Speaker 3: I'd be curious how you take that kind of same concept and, you know, apply it to a company that you're going to consult for. I'm sure that you're approached by multiple companies. You have to say no to some, right? What's really the the differentiator of one that you'll take on and one that you say no, this is probably isn't going to be a good fit.
[00:15:46] Speaker 1: This is a good question and and uh most of my prospects ask me that question and I I usually tell them a couple things. I I communicate really fast and respond to everything. I I would probably consider myself like an over communicator of sorts. You know, if John messages me somewhere, I'd be shocked if it takes me more than 24 hours to get back to them regardless of platform.
[00:16:10] Speaker 3: You've been pretty good.
[00:16:11] Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm I'm pretty good. If you text me like, you know, response time is like insane. Super fast. Um, so I tell them that like this is who I am, this is how I like to communicate. Talk to me about your communication style. And so I have learned over the years that people who don't operate this way are not great fits for me. You know, because I'm left in the dark like what is Chris working on? Where is that thing? You know, like what I got to pester you for information? Like I don't know, that doesn't work well. So that's one thing is just how often they communicate, how fast they communicate. The second thing is, I need to ensure that they believe this is the most important thing that the company is working on in this moment. And they all try to tell you that, but you know, then they've got to go to an engineering and they're working on a big product release. They're fundraising on the side, so they can't show up. You know, they they had three demos yesterday so I couldn't draft our rempp sales pitch or something like that, right? Okay, well those are indications to me that they believe other things are more important. And I'm not looking to work with somebody who isn't ready to do this work and try to go really fast and and thinks that there's other things that are more important. I'm not trying to this on all these other things. I'm just saying, if we're working together, I want to move fast. My motor veins at a high RPF. I'm not looking to down shift and slow down, you know, to appease other people and accommodate your schedule. You're coming to work with me because you want to get shit done and you want to get it done quickly. So, I hold myself to a really high standard and I want somebody else in a partner who's going to move at that same speed as me. Well, those are those are two really, really big contributing factors to my decision.
[00:18:01] Speaker 2: And is that is that something you can figure out in in let's just say I don't know if you want to call it an interview but your initial calls or is it kind of like hey you have a one month trial period and you figure that out pretty quick in that one month period.
[00:18:13] Speaker 1: Well, I'm certainly not betting a thousand at trying to figure out trying to figure it out before, you know, like anything else, people tell you one thing and they show themselves and not be that thing as much. But in the early days, I didn't really press on it much. Now I press on it quite a bit and I look for stuff like I don't know this is a maybe a bad example but it's like maybe I sent over a proposal and two three days go by and I'm like, you know, did they fucking get it or not they asked me for the proposal, right? Yeah. So if they don't message me, yeah, I know this is maybe a bad example, but like if they don't if they don't reply back to me like, hey, I got it give me a chance to look at it or whatever. I'm thinking of myself that's not a good sign. That's not somebody who's over communicating. That's not somebody who's prioritizing this. Like you came to me and said this is the most important thing in the company and you want to get started on August 1st. How is it July 27th? And I haven't heard from you in three or four days. Like that's that doesn't make sense to me. Right? Now maybe that's a bad example because it's around a contract. But same thing could be with scheduling the appointment. You have people come to you and they they book time, okay? So John, I want to talk to you about, you know, level up lead. It's the most important thing in the business. Call it book for 2:00 p.m. on uh on Monday July 27th. Oh, I got I cancel it. I got a conflict. I I found time in your calendar for Thursday. But do it again for next week. Now I'm thinking of myself, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is like a bad, this is a red flag, right? Bad sign. Something's going on, they're chaotic, they're reactive. So, you know, you're looking for little clues like that, right?
[00:19:46] Speaker 2: So, so that's one side of it, right? The the people you're working with. How much does the actual product come into play on? Is it unique? Is it just another fish in the ocean? How like that's got to be some part of the equation too, right?
[00:20:00] Speaker 1: I have two schools of thought around this and and it is it probably pertains to where I'm at now versus when I first got started. When I first got started consulting and and doing all this kind of thing, I didn't really care that much, frankly. A little bit of a mercantile kind of mentality. I don't have like an industry I love. I don't have a type of product that I fall in love with. Like I don't really give a shit. I what I care about was like my opportunity to to build something special and be a part of something special. Now, that I've been doing this a long time and I'm in kind of a different tax bracket, let's just say. Now I'm looking at opportunities like, what can this become even after I'm gone? Is this a nine figure or a billion dollar exit? Is this logo potentially going to be powerful enough to help me get other business versus just now I made some cash today. Uh, does the tool actually solve a meaningful problem or is it the 9,000th AI note taker being released? Like I don't care about that. That doesn't do anything for me. But if you come to me with a platform that is unique, different, maybe going after a sort of underrepresented sector or like an antiqued industry, I might be like, oh, that's interesting. That's a $100 million private equity sale, I see that. Or you come to me with some revolutionary, you know, AI avatars person that, you know, actually works. That's very futuristic and now all of a sudden we got holograms selling to each other and all sorts of weird stuff. Now I'm like, okay, that's interesting. That's new, that's different, that's ground breaking. That could be a billion dollar plus company. So I look at it a little differently now from a product uh standpoint. And I do care a little bit more now about what type of product I'm attaching my name to a little bit. But in the beginning, I don't really care that much.
[00:21:59] Speaker 3: I would say that's one of the hardest things just from our perspective because we're approached by so many different types of companies from startups to to enterprise. And it's sometimes it's really hard to determine, okay, is this going to be a good account to work with? And that's that's always something yeah, that's always something that intrives me is just other people's perspectives is I mean you've been at a longer than I have, obviously and just how you approach it, you know, now that you have a name for yourself and people are coming to you more actively.
[00:22:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, not all money is good money, you know. There's definitely such thing has bad money that's out there. So, you know, you guys might talk to somebody and uh, you know, in the vending process, where you're both vending each other. You're getting some vibes like, man, I don't know about this founder's expectations. Like they think they're going to get a million bucks in pipeline next week. right? Like happens more than that. That probably happens all the time. So for me, they I don't have red flag, yellow flags going off all the time, you know, but if you talk to a prospect that it's like, listen, you know, I'm not one of these other delusional founders. Like I know this thing is going to take three or four months to like get get cracked in. That's like Green flag to me. I'm like, oh my god, what a relief. I'm talking to somebody who gets it versus somebody who's crazy.
[00:23:14] Speaker 3: You know. You actually said something similar to us, I think a little over a year ago when I was in Argentina visiting John and uh now we're in a more luxurious spot where it's easier to turn people away, but it it'll blow your mind. And I think it's just the nature of the what we sell, right? As we we meet a lot of unique people and unique companies, but it'll blow your mind than not the CSRs you'll get into conversation with and they're just like, yeah, but if month two we don't see, you know, around two to three million in pipeline is probably just not going to work. So what the hell do you think we are?
[00:23:44] Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, in the early days when you're in the early days when you're running a business like yours or or a agency, consulting business, in the early days you want to fight that and you because you need or want the revenue. And you you have this maybe it's ego or you know, kind of chip on your shoulder, but it's like, I'm going to prove this guy wrong. Like I I I can do it, you know, I can deliver or whatever. But once you've cop more established and you know, your bank account is a little more stable or or whatever you, you're like, get out of here, dude. I I don't need that kind of stress in my life, man. Three million bucks in pipeline by next week, get the fuck out of here. Go work with somebody else, you know? And there's a lot of power in that. And sometimes you find yourself saying no to fairly meety deals, you know. It's it's it's still hard. It's not like super easy. I'm acting pretty cavalier about it, but like, you know, somebody's floating a quarter million dollar contract in front of me and I don't like them. I don't like their communication style. Their expectations are weird. It's still awkward, man. It's still awkward to be like, "Ah, no." And I'm thinking to myself, why did I just turn down that money? God, I was stupid.
[00:24:53] Speaker 3: Cuz you know you're boarding. I'm going to be
[00:24:54] Speaker 1: And you learn from it. And you learn from it. You got to be discipline and force yourself to, you know, not work not work with us.
[00:25:01] Speaker 3: Yeah, going back to what Chris said it it blows my mind we'll get into some of these engagements with with companies and we're like we're talking with the CR and he'll like he'll turn to us for strategy. We're like, dude, you're the CR. How do you not have this figured out? Like you're you're you're outsourcing this and now you're wanting to figure out your strategy. Like what are you doing in in the role? You know, it happens all the time.
[00:25:25] Speaker 3: Yeah. And it's just like, what are these five marketers doing? Like what how do you it just blows my mind that who's cutting the checks here building these teams where they have five people in marketing and a zero point line.
[00:25:59] Speaker 3: No, it was there was also Chris there was that other one where they gave us the tier one target and we looked it up on LinkedIn. There was like four people with the same title that matched. So like how's your tier one target? Have you looked into it?
[00:26:30] Speaker 1: Oh boy. Yeah.
[00:26:32] Speaker 2: All right, but I want to I want to so Scott, you're you're in and out, you have a lot eyes into a lot of different companies. What do you think are some of the best strategies in 2025 for building pipeline? Every company is going to be a little bit different, but what are some of your what have you seen working for companies?
[00:26:48] Speaker 1: The go to network motion, the referral motion, that is the fastest, easiest way I think to go from zero to a million bucks in revenue that there is. You know, get a bunch of people to make mutual introductions. Everybody's asking about it. There's already trust. Those deals close faster, less churn, less support tickets, higher average contract value. So that one that's easy. Everybody should be doing that and and turning it into a system. The second one is pretty obvious I think in the last few years it's all kind of a content creation as a demand gen tool podcast like you guys are doing, you know LinkedIn, networking, brand-wide other platforms John and we were talking about Instagram earlier and stuff like that. Especially from on the founder level, right? Turning a founder and executives into its own their content into the own demand gen kind of thing and that way you don't have to outbond and you got inbound flow. That's the second thing. The third thing I would say is working really well is in person events, smaller kind of micro events, 10 to 30 people ish. Can be dinners with like like prospects and maybe seat it with a customer or two. I was that one the other day was a pickle ball tournament. There's like 40 people there. That was great. Everybody was interacting. You got you know, easy way to get to know people and establish early bonds of a relationship. Um. Those are the two. Yeah. I think so. It's a lot easier for everybody to play regardless of experience level, athleticism. It's also a lot cheaper by the way then than Golf. You know, and then you turn your eyes to traditional channels which just simply don't work as good as they used to, but of the traditional channels, you know, I still think you need to use the phone. I still think you have to call people. You got to temper your expectations. You got to probably be way more targeted, more research, tighter ICP, you know, really make sure you're relevant and and not just.
[00:28:57] Speaker 3: Well one one thing that works really well, sorry to interrupt Scott, is to call on top of an event that you went to, right? So it's like you warm them up, you go to an event or webinar or pickleball event and calling afterwards. It's like it's a much warmer intro than just going in pure purely cold.
[00:29:13] Speaker 1: Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. So some of our best campaigns have been around that. especially when it's the higher the ACV though, the more valuable that is 100%.
[00:29:20] Speaker 3: I don't disagree. Well, I'm kind of curious. I I want to dig a little bit deeper on that because I'm always kind of curious is say you're a new founder. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody cares, nobody really knows your product. is how do you kind of break into that initial network?
[00:29:33] Speaker 1: Say that one more time. You're a founder. You don't have.
[00:29:35] Speaker 3: Yeah, so you're a founder of a company. You don't really have an extensive network, say someone comparable like like yourself, right? Where it'd probably be relatively easy for you to spin up like a micro meeting or dinner or something with with people that you would want to do business.
[00:29:49] Speaker 1: Well, I think this is one of the reasons why you you enlist other people to help you with it. This is the point of advisors, uh consultants, brand ambassadors. This is also to my earlier point about why it's important as a founder to grow your own network and create content so people know who you are. So, if I listen, if I wanted to do a dinner in Austin, tonight, I could get 10 people to go with me. I'm not talking about my friends. I I could make one post on LinkedIn and be like, I got nine open spots for a dinner. Anybody who's a C level or above, meet me at, you know, whatever restaurant. That that thing is filled tonight. If you're a founder and you don't have that network, you got to start building one, number one. Number two, just that's what you're a partner with people for, you know? Pam, throw away equity, whatever, you know, get get people involved, right? And there's one in or two or 10 in damn near every city that there is. So it's I think it's a poor excuse to not execute if you just say, well, I don't know anybody, I don't have a you know, a big brand or whatever. Well, fucking find a way to make it happen. Don't partner with a bunch of people. That that's the that's the smartest, easiest way to do it, I think.
[00:31:00] Speaker 3: Yeah, I think and John have noticed that too is just building out that personal network and just connecting with more people is is more valuable than we probably originally put thought into.
[00:31:09] Speaker 2: Scott, one more for you. When you're talking, you go into some of these companies, they haven't hopefully something already established. What what seems to be if you can spot some type of trend as a gap in some of these companies in their go to market strategy. Is there a common thread and what they're lacking?
[00:31:24] Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a lot actually a lot of common threads in what they're lacking. Uh you might be surprised to know that most companies really don't know their ideal customer profile very well.
[00:31:37] Speaker 2: Not surprised.
[00:31:38] Speaker 1: Yeah. It still surprises me how poor people are at this. I I literally just got off a call where somebody said, we know our ICP. It's brands and agencies. Just like that. And I'm like, oh, from where? What language do they speak? What size is the team? How much revenue did they do? I just started asking all these other questions and they're like, well, yeah, you know, we we like smaller ones. I'm like, well why didn't you say smaller ones? Why is it not why haven't you spelled all this out? So they have too broad of an ICP in the beginning. They think well we can sell this to everyone instead of we should be selling this to one specific type of person right now because they're the easiest to get a hold of, they make decisions faster or whatever and we got plenty of time to expand out later on. That's number one. Number two is their pitch sucks. Their messaging remains difficult for people to create in the very beginning. For whatever reason. Founders have a tendency, for example, to overexplain everything. They think every little bit and and key feature that their product can do is important and they they want to describe it to you and share it with you. Nobody cares. Imagine you go to buy a car and the car salesman is telling you about every nut bolt and screw in the car. Right? It's like, dude, I don't care about all that stuff, man. How much does it cost? What color do you have? And is it safe? Great. Give me the fuck out of here. Let me drive off the lot. The more you talk to me about all this other stuff, I'm out. I'm not interested. You're complicated. You're stressing it. You're stressing me out. You're elongating the sales cycle. So their messaging is not great at all. And the last common thread is most people are just trying to make phone calls and send emails still. And they don't know why they have nothing in the top of the funnel. They don't know why they're sales people are frustrated and quitting. They don't know why they don't have pipeline, they don't know why they're not missing numbers. It's like, come on, man. You have got to get way more creative right now. I'm not saying stop doing those other things, but you've got to be way more creative. You might need to go visit people face-to-face. You might need to do some creative events. You might need to finally pay attention to content creation and networking. You might need to activate a partner channel, a referral channel, all this kind of stuff. I don't care what it is. Direct mail, you know, start sending people stuff. You know, post cards, send them a post card from Greece. Be like, hey, we were in Greece. We were just thinking about you. Here's what the view looks like. You should be here so we could chat. Whatever. It's different. The point is it's different. Those are those are three big themes I would I would say that I I see right now.
[00:34:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, the ICP really stands out for us. It's similar types of companies that we're both working with, they'll come to us and say they know who it is, but then you realize they give you a long list of titles across spread, you know, spanning across all departments. And so you're realizing that we're actually doing a three-month test to try to hone in who their ICP is, not actually, you know, appointment setting. Obviously that's the end goal, but it's like it ends up being more of a discovery because if you don't know, then how are you how are you expecting to see success from this? Like it just doesn't make any sense. So we see that all the time.
[00:34:44] Speaker 1: I think I think a lot of people think that uh building a really cool product is all you have to do and then the dollars follow. I can't tell you how many founders I've talked to who who at some point in my relationship with them have said, you know, I used to just think if I built the best product out there that everybody would hear about it and see it and and recognize it and then just buy. It's like, doesn't work like that, man. You know, the best product does not at all guarantee success.
[00:35:11] Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a few out there, but it's really hard.
[00:35:14] Speaker 1: Really hard. Very rare.
[00:35:16] Speaker 2: All right, so I wanted to wrap up this episode. Thanks for coming on Scott. Tell people about uh where where they can find you, contact you. Uh and then also your upcoming uh conference.
[00:35:27] Speaker 1: Yeah, so I I run uh these sales and leadership conferences called the Surf and Sale Summit. A couple times a year, usually in Costa Rica, uh or Portugal. This October, there's one in Portugal. It's the next one. We're sold out at the moment, but uh, you know, maybe somebody will drop out. And you can get on our wait list. We're going to announce sometime before the year is out where we're going next year. Um, check that out at Surf and Sales.com. And you can find me on LinkedIn, on Instagram, Tik Tok. I'm all over the the place, but probably the best way to shoot me and note is to just DM me on LinkedIn and happy to be of service to anybody out there who needs help.
[00:36:03] Speaker 2: Awesome. We'll put out all those links in the show notes. Thanks for coming on Scott. And
