On this episode of Prospecting Pros, hosts John and Chris sit down with Justin Michael, author of Cold Call ALGO and longtime sales innovator. Justin shares his wild journey from boiler room telemarketing to consulting for hundreds of startups and writing eight books on sales.
He explains why cold calling still dominates as the number one channel, backed by training data from over 200 sales teams, and how neuroscience proves most reps use broken openers that trigger fight-or-flight instead of real conversations.
Justin talks about the limitations of email and LinkedIn automation, recent FCC regulations that have killed off AI voice cloning, and why clean phone data combined with smart dialing is the last big advantage left in outbound. He also introduces his ALGO method, a new framework for high-status openers and tough but respectful conversations that lead prospects to change.
[00:00:00] Justin Michael: Yeah, I mean, I think the story of succeeding in B2B sales is a story of failure. I think that's how Michael Jordan describes it, too.
[00:00:08] Justin Michael: You sit in the folding chair and you'd wait for, you know, TV ads that ran at night to flow in and people would just jump on the phones and start, and you'd had a nine-minute script to get a credit card. You had like cops listening in to make sure you said the right stuff for compliance.
[00:00:24] Justin Michael: And then like, you know, the feds would raid the call center. It was, it was straight out of Wolf of Wall Street where I started. And it was good money. I mean, there's these two or three people at the center who are kind of the ballers and, and they were pulling down like nine grand in three days. Crazy money back then for, and then they would go to Vegas the rest of the week.
[00:00:43] Justin Michael: My opener is just the full name. It's a weird Dale Carnegie hack. I just say, "John Carson." And you're like, "It's Carson." But weirdly, everybody is stoked when you try.
[00:00:52] Justin Michael: So if 99% of our phone openers for 10 million reps is rep talks first and waterboards the prospect, it's fundamentally a neuroscience-broken approach. When you call someone, it triggers the fight or flight. It kicks the old piece of the brain.
[00:01:07] Chris Lingenfelter: Calling is still king. And it's not even close.
[00:01:10] Justin Michael: The last 200 teams that I trained or coached, 100% phone was the number one channel. That's why I also wrote this book.
[00:01:17] Justin Michael: And confronting people and blowtorch challenging, not disrespectfully, but having awkward, tough conversation because a human being, like, like the top person in sales is like, it's about change management and behavioral change.
[00:01:29] Justin Michael: It's not about alpha or toxic masculinity. It's about leadership. If you lead, the client will follow. If you stand at the front of the table with conviction in the boardroom and you lead them to a consensus, like Challenger Customer, they'll follow you. Timid, passive approaches, silent sales floors, it's going to give you an average outcome.
[00:01:50] Justin Michael: I still don't have a website, I don't have a YouTube. I do everything outbound. I show up in the DMs worldwide.
[00:01:58] John Karsant: All right, welcome to Prospecting Pros. On today's episode, we have Justin Michael. Welcome to the show.
[00:02:05] Justin Michael: Great to be here. Great to see you.
[00:02:09] John Karsant: Yeah, we also have Chris Lingenfelter, my co-host, so thanks for joining.
[00:02:14] Chris Lingenfelter: Of course, of course.
[00:02:15] John Karsant: As you guys know, we just like to have an open conversation around sales development, SDRs, appointment setting, anything in that field, but this conversation could go a few different directions.
[00:02:27] John Karsant: But Justin, what I'd like to do is, I know you've done a lot of these, but I want to, just for the audience, give us a little bit of background, like how you got here today. You've been involved in several different companies, advising, you have written books, but give us the, the rundown.
[00:02:42] Justin Michael: Yeah, I mean, I think the story of succeeding in B2B sales is a story of failure. I think that's how Michael Jordan describes it, too. I mean, I fell into telemarketing when I was 21, coming out of the music business. I was like a producer, I played in rock bands, I just kind of bounced around Southern California, and I had, I did telemarketing as a day job, and then I got good at it and had a team of telemarketers, so...
[00:03:11] Justin Michael: ...it started in a boiler room environment. And people are, you know, and the reps today, they're like, "Oh, I need better emails and a sequencer." And that's true, and getting perfect data is an awesome goal, right? You could do that with Cloudlead, Titan, Nexis, Salesbot thing, there's some new platforms emerging.
[00:03:25] Justin Michael: But back in my day, you'd get up at 3:00 in the morning, you'd drive to a box, like that, like the office, and they would throw Red Bulls at you when you were good. You'd sit in the folding chair and you'd wait for, you know, TV ads that ran at night to flow in and people would just jump on the phones and start, and you'd had a nine-minute script to get a credit card. You had like cops listening in to make sure you said the right stuff for compliance.
[00:03:49] Justin Michael: And then like, you know, the feds would raid the call center. It was, it was straight out of Wolf of Wall Street where I started. And it was good money. I mean, there's these two or three people at the center who are kind of the ballers and, and they were pulling down...
[00:04:00] Justin Michael: ...who were kind of the ballers and, and they were pulling down like nine grand in three days. Crazy money back then for, and then they would go to Vegas the rest of the week. And, uh, I was like, I got to learn how to do this.
[00:04:11] Justin Michael: So I started getting up at 3:00 in the morning, hitting the Eastern Seaboard, and sitting by these individuals. One of his name was Richard Nunez. They just, they just had cool names like Nunez. And I was like, oh, that, uh, the Farrelly brothers and the ballers. And then you had like Dave Heinen, and he had like, come up, uh, with Tiger Woods at golf. So I went golfing with him, and he, I mean, he would hit a ball all the way, I mean, it's just insane, like a UFO. Anyway, they were really competent at other things. And, um, within about four months, I went to the top rep in 10,000 reps, just emulating them, sitting next to them, and losing sleep.
[00:04:45] Justin Michael: And that's kind of when I realized like, maybe I had partially like a gift at this, but also if I applied it, something good would happen. And then for like 10 years, I didn't do much. I did charity fundraising, I worked in little SaaS companies, I bounced around incubators. It's kind of like, you know, the Einstein patent clerk story, and maybe that's too lofty a comparison, but, um, David Sandler sold snack food, you know? So...
[00:05:10] Justin Michael: I finally, around 31, after making $45,000 consistently, it's like, you know, I should just go to the Emerald City. I'm going to pack up and go to San Francisco. And then, you know, I got there. My first job was for Sean Parker. Um, immediately went up over 100 grand a year. And then my next job was Salesforce. I was around 32. And by 35 I built my own sales methodology for the top funnel. So it's like, oh, he's that weird guy with the method.
[00:05:35] Justin Michael: You know, like, I had no certification. I was just doing it because I, I saw, I worked for Mobile Technology out of South Africa, and I saw that at this time, like even around 2011, when I came to the Valley, you had sort of, you know, Jeb Blount and Fanatical Prospecting, and you had Mike Weinberg, and you had John Barrows, and, but a lot of the emails were kind of like, you know, F-tracking, full paragraphs.
[00:05:58] Justin Michael: And we know that a three-paragraph email takes the brain 11 seconds, hijacks the amygdala, and actually scares prospects. You don't want to send that. Three-sentence email, three seconds to process, right? So Lavender, a company I advised early on, they've proven that like a 50-word email, 60% higher conversion.
[00:06:15] Justin Michael: Okay, so moral of the story is, by 40, I worked up to be one of the top VP of SaaS sales ever in mobile marketing, ad tech, martech, sales tech. I made 250,000 base, almost 500k OTE, so I did good money. I wasn't like Ian Koniak, I wasn't the top person at Salesforce, but I worked for a lot of baby companies that were series A through C. Um, my resume is a little wild because I worked for 13 different mobile startups, and I always handled the top of the funnel.
[00:06:39] Justin Michael: So around 37, these, uh, investors, uh, True Ventures, uh, Om Malik, that were backing this company, they did Peloton, and he wrote Gigaom. And then Lars, Lars Nilsson was on the board. Lars Nilsson you should have on the show, but he's, he built the outbound program at Cloudera, he built the outbound program at Snowflake, he's a mentor of mine. So they did this international search for the best SDR mind in the world.
[00:07:04] Justin Michael: I was working at this company called Tune.com, 80 million, uh, run rate, double acquisition, and I was running their entire SDR team in eight countries. And I was doing all this experimentation, and I, I basically flew to Silicon Valley, sat in a room, and beat out like thousands of other candidates, and I back-shelved the co-founder and took over VP of Ops at an appointment setting startup doing AI.
[00:07:25] Justin Michael: Now, it looks like a typewriter now, but back in 2017, '18, we had 100 instances of Outreach and Salesloft and Reply.io. We had a copywriting team, we had a data team, we had an India operation, and we were kind of artificial intelligence and humans getting meetings. We had Drift bots running. Pretty cool stuff.
[00:07:44] Justin Michael: So that was really exciting. That got built up and acquired. And by the time I turned 40, I'm 45 now, I was born in 1980, I really, nothing after 1990 I will ever culturally reference, so get ready for a hot tub time machine. Um, but yeah, um, at 40, I had six job offers, and I'm like, okay, I'm going to go back and I'm just going to consult them all. And they're like, "No, W2 only. We'll feed you equity, that's it."
[00:08:00] Justin Michael: ...at 40, I had six job offers and I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to go back and I'm just going to consult them all." And they're like, "No, W2 only. We'll feed you equity, that's it." And I decided to just go for the consulting thing. I was inspired by, you know, people like Aaron Ross and Alan Weiss and David C. Baker. And the first four or five months, I made like nine grand, nothing happened. And then my fifth month, I did 100 grand, and my ninth month, I did 200 grand, and I became a California S Corp.
[00:08:25] Justin Michael: And then I decided to make a distinct methodology for consultants. And over the last five years, I've advised 200 startups, I've worked with a thousand people one-to-one, and I'm top three in the entire world for cash flows. So, it's myself, Ian Koniak, and Scott Leese are the three highest-earning solo coaches. So, yeah, I'm somewhere in there. I'm sure there's like five more who will come out like, "Oh, I'm doing more," and that's cool, but...
[00:08:47] Justin Michael: I'm leaning low a little bit, traveling around Europe this year. I'm working a lot advising CROs on my methods. I have eight books, seven in my name. I've had three different publishing deals. And, you know, put stadiums of people through those open-source guides. So, most of the front of G2, of the demand gen companies and appointment setting businesses, I've advised. And so, that's anonymous and NDA, but a lot of them.
[00:09:11] Justin Michael: So, they come to me and they just want to learn these methods and experiment with me, and that's also still a client base that I have.
[00:09:17] John Karsant: I've been following you for a while. I think back in COVID, I started, you know, I still have some of your materials saved, you know, like basically the text message type of email. And I'm curious, like over time, how has that evolved? Are you still big on that approach, or has it changed over, you know, just with tools and, you know, you just can't really be doing the same thing forever. I'm curious if it's changed, or you still kind of have that approach.
[00:09:42] Justin Michael: I've changed everything because, and there's some reasons why, and that's what this new book, Algo, Cold Call Algo, which stands for algorithm, but it's also an acronym: Ask, Level, Glitch, Offer, little matrix analogy in there. I wanted to do GAP, but don't want to piss off the Red Book men. But, so the thing is this: I track all the RevOps and all the vendors. I know hundreds of CEOs throughout the tech stacks because I wrote Tech-Powered Sales. And the number one thing everyone did is, "Hey, Justin, can you set appointments?" And I'm like, "No, I got out of the business." I hand that off to like Darko at Growthera or Miles Veth, just different vendors, you know?
[00:10:18] Justin Michael: So, where I went with this is, one, I worked for LinkedIn in the Empire State Building. So, LinkedIn has not opened its API. In fact, it's kicked off vendors like Seamless and...
[00:10:29] Chris Lingenfelter: Apollo.
[00:10:30] Justin Michael: Apollo, exactly. So, that's publicly known. So, they lost a case and you can scrape their data, but you're still scraping web data. You're not hooked into the API for full access like you would be with Facebook Ads Manager when you can really hit the whole dataset, right? So, that's a limitation. My thesis in Tech-Powered Sales is that 70% of top funnel could be automated in 2017, and we predicted ChatGPT, we predicted the advent of buying and selling bots, like Thomas Tunguz type stuff. But what we can't do now is you can't automate LinkedIn. You can scrape automate, and PhantomBuster is a great tool, Skylead is a great tool. Now we get the second throttle. Gmail, you can send 50 emails a day. So, if you're a SaaS company rep and an AE, they give you one email. If you're an agency, you have Clay, n8n, 15 email addresses, 15 domains, 50... you can go crazy with it to get volumes. So, like, the email channel died. It takes, I think the average is one meeting in a thousand attempts.
[00:11:29] Justin Michael: And then, yeah, and then the third thing happened, and Trump, I had to get it once, Trump, he, the FCC banned voice digital twinning. Like, you can make a twin of John Carson, you can go at it, and that can make your voice perfect, and I can have it call, but it's illegal now per the Federal Communications Commission as of last year. And of course, they banned it in Europe and Australia fall. So, companies still do it, but the fines are pretty steep, which is crazy. Like, text messaging is illegal, faxing is illegal, and you can't spoof people in calls. I was hoping in my book that it would be like, "Hi, this is Justin Michael's AI voice. Would you like to accept the call?" And you're like, "Cool, it's his AI," and you take it, or you have your AI take it. That's the future. I think that's where it could go, or get more regulated. So, in that scope of those three throttles, the last thing left is to go get pure phone number data and call people. So, 20 to 30% of people answer, and you go to TitanNext.io and they go and they hit it with algorithms and they scrape it and they give you, you know, how many hundreds of leads, and they come back and they say, "Hey, John, these 200 people pick up." And then I just call them. And it's crazy, like ConnectAndSell and Orum have modes now that are multimodal. You have parallel assisted dialing, 4x or 10x calling at the same time. So, calling four to ten numbers at a time, hot switching in. And all these vendors, but now, optimally, if you have that pure P1, priority one data, you hit it with a power dialer efficiently one after the other, and then you do boost connects, you do like the right time of day, predictive time of day, and that's the best optimization. Because if I have Chris Lingenfelter's number, why would I call him from four numbers? I'll just call him. You know, so, so the book, Cold Call Algo, is about the human staying in the loop and using artificial intelligence as the exoskeleton wrapped around it. The other big thing I saw in my 25 years of experience is I couldn't find any outbound books, very few, that were enterprise-grade. Matrix to account, multithreading, C-level calling, VPs, C-levels, executive suite, politics. Now, that information is in New Power Base Selling, Mastering the Complex Sale, Challenger, Spin, Solution, all the great strategic books to close the deal, and Sandler, but it's not at the very top of the funnel.
[00:12:00] John Karsant: Yeah, I mean, I think the story of succeeding in B2B sales is a story of failure. I think that's how Michael Jordan describes it, too.
[00:12:08] John Karsant: You sit in a folding chair and you'd wait for, you know, TV ads that ran at night to flow in and people would just jump on the phones and start, and you'd had a nine-minute script to get a credit card. And you had like cops listening in to make sure you said the right stuff for compliance.
[00:12:24] John Karsant: And then like, you know, the Feds would raid the call center. It was, it was straight out of Wolf of Wall Street where I started. And it was good money. I mean, there's these two or three people at the center who are kind of the ballers. And, and they were pulling down like nine grand in three days. Crazy money back then for, and then they would go to Vegas the rest of the week.
[00:12:43] John Karsant: My opener is just the full name. It's a weird Dale Carnegie hack. I just say, "John Carson." And you're like, "It's Carson." But weirdly, everybody is stoked when you try.
[00:12:52] John Karsant: So if 99% of our phone openers for 10 million reps is rep talks first and waterboards the prospect, it's fundamentally a neuroscience-broken approach. When you call someone, it triggers the fight or flight. It kicks the old piece of the brain.
[00:13:07] Chris Lingenfelter: Calling's still king. And it's not even close.
[00:13:10] John Karsant: The last 200 teams that I trained or coached, 100% phone was the number one channel. That's why I also wrote this book.
[00:13:17] John Karsant: And confronting people and blowtorch challenging, not disrespectfully, but having awkward, tough conversation because a human being, like, like the top person in sales is like, it's about change management and behavioral change.
[00:13:29] John Karsant: It's not about alpha or toxic masculinity. It's about leadership. If you lead, the client will follow. If you stand at the front of the table with conviction in the boardroom and you lead them to a consensus, like Challenger Customer, they'll follow you. Timid, passive approaches, silent sales floors, it's going to give you an average outcome.
[00:13:50] John Karsant: I still don't have a website, I don't have a YouTube, I do everything outbound, I just show up in the DMs worldwide.
[00:13:58] Justin Michael: All right, welcome to Prospecting Pros. On today's episode, we have Justin Michael. Welcome to the show.
[00:14:05] John Karsant: Great to be here. Great to see you.
[00:14:09] Justin Michael: Yeah, we also have Chris Lingenfelter, my co-host. So, thanks for joining.
[00:14:13] Chris Lingenfelter: Of course, of course.
[00:14:14] Justin Michael: As you guys know, we just like to have an open conversation around sales development, SDRs, appointment setting, anything in that field, but this conversation could go a few different directions.
[00:14:27] Justin Michael: But Justin, what I'd like to do is, I know you've done a lot of these, but I want to, just for the audience, give us a little bit of background, like how you got here today. You've been involved in several different companies, advising, you have written books, but give us the, the rundown.
[00:14:42] John Karsant: Yeah, I mean, I think the story of succeeding in B2B sales is a story of failure. I think that's how Michael Jordan describes it, too.
[00:14:51] John Karsant: I mean, I fell into telemarketing when I was 21, coming out of the music business. I was like a producer, I played in rock bands, I just kind of bounced around Southern California. And I had, I did telemarketing as a day job, and then I got good at it and had a team of telemarketers.
[00:15:10] John Karsant: So, it started in a boiler room environment, and people are, you know, and the reps today, they're like, "Oh, I need better emails and a sequencer." And that's true, and getting perfect data is an awesome goal, right? You could do that with LeadGen, Titan, next is SalesBot thing, there's some new platforms emerging.
[00:15:25] John Karsant: But back in my day, you'd get up at 3:00 in the morning, you'd drive to a box, like the, like the office, and they would throw Red Bulls at you when you were good. You'd sit in a folding chair and you'd wait for, you know, TV ads that ran at night to flow in and people would just jump on the phones and start, and you'd had a nine-minute script to get a credit card.
[00:15:44] John Karsant: And you had like cops listening in to make sure you said the right stuff for compliance. And then like, you know, the Feds would raid the call center. It was, it was straight out of Wolf of Wall Street where I started. And it was good money. I mean, there's these two or three people at the center who are kind of the ballers.
[00:15:58] John Karsant: And, and they were pulling down like nine grand in three days. Crazy money back then for, and then they would go to Vegas the rest of the week.
[00:16:00] John Karsant: All right, welcome to Prospecting Pros. On today's episode, we have Justin Michael. Welcome to the show.
[00:16:05] Justin Michael: Great to be here. Great to see you.
[00:16:09] John Karsant: Yeah, we also have Chris Lingenfelter, my co-host, so thanks for joining.
[00:16:13] Chris Lingenfelter: Of course, of course.
[00:16:14] John Karsant: As you guys know, we just like to have an open conversation around sales development, SDRs, appointment setting, anything in that field, but this conversation can go a few different directions.
[00:16:28] John Karsant: But Justin, what I like to do is, I know you've done a lot of these, but I want to, just for the audience, give us a little bit of background, like how you got here today. You've been involved in several different companies, advising, you have written books, but give us the rundown.
[00:16:42] Justin Michael: Yeah, I mean, I think the story of succeeding in B2B sales is a story of failure. I think that's how Michael Jordan describes it, too.
[00:16:51] Justin Michael: I mean, I fell into telemarketing when I was 21, coming out of the music business. I was like a producer, I played in rock bands, I just kind of bounced around Southern California, and I had, I did telemarketing as a day job, and then I got good at it and had a team of telemarketers, so...
[00:20:00] Justin Michael: Yeah, I mean, I think the story of succeeding in B2B sales is a story of failure. I think that's how Michael Jordan describes it, too.
[00:20:08] Justin Michael: You sit in a folding chair and you'd wait for, you know, TV ads that ran at night to flow in and people would just jump on the phones and start, and you'd had a nine-minute script to get a credit card. And you had like cops listening in to make sure you said the right stuff for compliance.
[00:20:24] Justin Michael: And then like, you know, the Feds would raid the call center. It was, it was straight out of Wolf of Wall Street where I started. And it was good money. I mean, there's these two or three people at the center who were kind of the ballers. And, and they were pulling down like nine grand in three days. Crazy money back then for, and then they would go to Vegas the rest of the week.
[00:20:42] Justin Michael: My opener is just the full name. It's a weird Dale Carnegie hack. I just say, "John Carson." And you're like, "It's Carson." But weirdly, everybody is stoked when you try.
[00:20:52] Justin Michael: So if 99% of our phone openers for 10 million reps is rep talks first and waterboards the prospect, it's fundamentally a neuroscience-broken approach.
[00:21:02] Justin Michael: When you call someone, it triggers the fight or flight. It kicks the old piece of the brain.
[00:21:07] Chris Lingenfelter: Calling's still king. And it's not even close.
[00:21:10] Justin Michael: The last 200 teams that I trained or coached, 100% phone was the number one channel. That's why I also wrote this book.
[00:21:17] Justin Michael: And confronting people and blowtorch challenging, not disrespectfully, but having awkward, tough conversation. Because a human being, like, like the top person in sales always, like, it's about change management and behavioral change.
[00:21:29] Justin Michael: It's not about alpha or toxic masculinity. It's about leadership. If you lead, the client will follow. If you stand at the front of the table with conviction in the boardroom and you lead them to a consensus, like Challenger Customer, they'll follow you. Timid, passive approaches, silent sales floors, it's going to give you an average outcome.
[00:21:50] Justin Michael: I still don't have a website, I don't have a YouTube. I do everything outbound. I show up in the DMs worldwide.
[00:21:57] John Karsant: All right, welcome to Prospecting Pros. On today's episode, we have Justin Michael. Welcome to the show.
[00:22:05] Justin Michael: Great to be here. Great to see you.
[00:22:09] John Karsant: Yeah, we also have Chris Lingenfelter, my co-host. So, thanks for joining.
[00:22:13] Chris Lingenfelter: Of course, of course.
[00:22:14] John Karsant: As you guys know, we just like to have an open conversation around sales development, SDRs, appointment setting, anything in that field. But this conversation can go a few different directions.
[00:22:27] John Karsant: But Justin, what I'd like to do is, I know you've done a lot of these, but I want to, just for the audience, give us a little bit of background, like how you got here today. You've been involved in several different companies, advising, you have written books, but give us the, the rundown.
[00:22:42] Justin Michael: Yeah, I mean, I think the story of succeeding in B2B sales is a story of failure. I think that's how Michael Jordan describes it, too. I mean, I fell into telemarketing when I was 21, coming out of the music business. I was like a producer, I played in rock bands, I just kind of bounced around Southern California. And I did telemarketing as a day job.
[00:23:07] Justin Michael: And then I got good at it and had a team of telemarketers. So, it started in a boiler room environment. And people are, you know, and the reps today, they're like, "Oh, I need better emails and a sequencer." And that's true. And, and getting perfect data is an awesome goal, right? You could do that with Cloudlead, Titan, Next, this Salesbot thing, there's some new platforms emerging.
[00:23:25] Justin Michael: But back in my day, you'd get up at 3:00 in the morning, you'd drive to a box, like the, like the office, and they would throw Red Bulls at you when you were good. You'd sit in a folding chair and you'd wait for, you know, TV ads that ran at night to flow in and people would just jump on the phones and start, and you'd had a nine-minute script to get a credit card. And you had like cops listening in to make sure you said the right stuff for compliance.
[00:23:49] Justin Michael: And then like, you know, the Feds would raid the call center. It was, it was straight out of Wolf of Wall Street where I started. And it was good money. I mean, there's these two or three people at the center who were kind of the ballers. And, and they were pulling down like nine grand in three days. Crazy money back then for, and then they would go to Vegas the rest of the week.
[00:24:00] Justin Michael: The last 200 teams that I trained or coached, 100% phone was the number one channel. That's why I also wrote this book. So, I hope, John, you and Chris both read it.
[00:24:14] Justin Michael: It's only 35,000 words. It reads like watching, you know, your favorite movie. It's like the length of watching Bad Boys 3. It's a very fast read.
[00:24:25] Justin Michael: But I think you'll—I mean, I know there's a lot of books to read, but this is the closest to the actual answer to what's going to work between 2025 and 2030 and beyond.
[00:24:37] Justin Michael: So, I'm pretty psyched about it. And it's also the first time that there's been a top-funnel method like ALGO. It's like SPIN or GAP. It's actually an acronym and a new way to open calls that are AI-enabled.
[00:24:51] Justin Michael: So, I've run tests on this stuff. I had a client just doing the messaging technique and he got like six call backs. I've had people drive all sorts of wild pipeline out of this thing.
[00:25:03] Justin Michael: Also, there's a whole generation now, Gen Z and millennials, and they're hungry to succeed and have something that works. And all they're fed is 1990s-style low-status approaches that are sort of like weak and conflict-avoidant.
[00:25:19] Justin Michael: All the money is in the conflict and confronting people and blowtorch challenging, not disrespectfully, but having awkward, tough conversation. Because a human being, like a—like the top person in sales always—like, it's about change management and behavioral change.
[00:25:38] Justin Michael: You have to sit with a person, like Scott Leese has the addiction model, they have to say, "I have the problem." They have to confess to you something's wrong. It can't really be this sunny, comfortable thing, selling. It has to get messy at a certain point if there's going to be a breakthrough.
[00:25:55] Justin Michael: And so, that's the number one thing that changed in me over 25 years, is I just became way more of a straight shooter. I cared a lot less about if someone got upset because I saw them getting upset as part of the growth and them getting out of their own way.
[00:28:00] Justin Michael: Yeah, I mean I think the story of succeeding in B2B sales is a story of failure. I think that's how Michael Jordan describes it too.
[00:28:08] Justin Michael: You sit in a folding chair and you'd wait for, you know, TV ads that ran at night to flow in and people would just jump on the phones and start, and you'd had a nine-minute script to get a credit card and you had like cops listening in to make sure you said the right stuff for compliance.
[00:28:24] Justin Michael: And then like, you know, the feds would raid the call center. It was, it was straight out of Wolf of Wall Street where I started. And it was good money.
[00:28:34] Justin Michael: I mean, there's these two or three people at the center who are kind of the ballers and, and they were pulling down like nine grand in three days. Crazy money back then for, and then they would go to Vegas the rest of the week.
[00:28:43] Justin Michael: My opener is just the full name. It's a weird Dale Carnegie hack. I just say, "John Carson." And you're like, "It's Carson." But weirdly, everybody is stoked when you try.
[00:28:52] Justin Michael: So if 99% of our phone openers for 10 million reps is rep talks first and waterboards the prospect, it's fundamentally a neuroscience-broken approach. When you call someone, it triggers the fight or flight. It kicks the old piece of the brain.
[00:29:07] John Karsant: Calling's still king. And it's not even close.
[00:29:10] Justin Michael: The last 200 teams that I trained or coached, 100% phone was the number one channel. That's why I also wrote this book.
[00:29:17] Justin Michael: And confronting people and blowtorch challenging, not disrespectfully, but having awkward, tough conversation because a human being, like, like the top person in sales reps is like, it's about change management and behavioral change.
[00:29:29] Justin Michael: It's not about alpha or toxic masculinity. It's about leadership. If you lead, the client will follow. If you stand at the front of the table with conviction in the boardroom and you lead them to a consensus, like Challenger Customer, they'll follow you. Timid, passive approaches, silent sales floors, it's going to give you an average outcome.
[00:29:50] Justin Michael: I still don't have a website, I don't have a YouTube. I do everything outbound. I show up in the DMs worldwide.
[00:29:57] Chris Lingenfelter: All right, welcome to Prospecting Pros. On today's episode we have Justin Michael. Welcome to the show.
[00:30:05] Justin Michael: Great to be here. Great to see you.
[00:30:07] Chris Lingenfelter: Yeah, we also have Chris Lingenfelter, my co-host. So, thanks for joining.
[00:30:13] John Karsant: Of course, of course.
[00:30:14] Chris Lingenfelter: As you guys know, we just like to have an open conversation around sales development, SDRs, appointment setting, anything in that field, but this conversation can go a few different directions.
[00:30:27] Chris Lingenfelter: But Justin, what I'd like to do is, I know you've done a lot of these, but I want to, just for the audience, give us a little bit of background like how you got here today. You've been involved in several different companies, advising, you have written books, but give us the, the rundown.
[00:30:42] Justin Michael: Yeah, I mean I think the story of succeeding in B2B sales is a story of failure. I think that's how Michael Jordan describes it too.
[00:30:50] Justin Michael: I mean, I fell into telemarketing when I was 21, coming out of the music business. I was like a producer, I played in rock bands, I just kind of bounced around Southern California. And I had, I did telemarketing as a day job, and then I got good at it and had a team of telemarketers.
[00:31:11] Justin Michael: So, it started in a boiler room environment, and people are, you know, and the reps today, they're like, "Oh, I need better emails and a sequencer." And that's true, and getting perfect data is an awesome goal, right? You could do that with Cloudlead, Titan, Next, this Salesbot thing, there's some new platforms emerging.
[00:31:25] Justin Michael: But back in my day, you'd get up at 3:00 in the morning, you'd drive to a box, like that look like the office, and they would throw Red Bulls at you when you were good.
[00:31:33] Justin Michael: You sit in a folding chair and you'd wait for, you know, TV ads that ran at night to flow in and people would just jump on the phones and start, and you'd had a nine-minute script to get a credit card and you had like cops listening in to make sure you said the right stuff for compliance.
[00:31:49] Justin Michael: And then like, you know, the feds would raid the call center. It was, it was straight out of Wolf of Wall Street where I started. And it was good money.
[00:31:55] Justin Michael: I mean, there's these two or three people at the center who are kind of the ballers and, and they were pulling down like nine grand in three days.
[00:32:00] Justin Michael: Crazy money back then for, and then they would go to Vegas the rest of the week.
[00:32:00] Justin Michael: All right, welcome to Prospecting Pros. On today's episode, we have Justin Michael. Welcome to the show.
[00:32:05] John Karsant: Great to be here. Great to see you.
[00:32:09] Justin Michael: Yeah, we also have Chris Lingenfelter, my co-host, so thanks for joining.
[00:32:13] Chris Lingenfelter: Of course, of course.
[00:32:14] Justin Michael: As you guys know, we just like to have an open conversation around sales development, SDRs, appointment setting, anything in that field, but this conversation can go a few different directions.
[00:32:27] Justin Michael: But Justin, what I'd like to do is, I know you've done a lot of these, but I want to, just for the audience, give us a little bit of background, like how you got here today. You've been involved in several different companies, advising, you have written books, but give us the rundown.
[00:32:42] John Karsant: Yeah, I mean, I think the story of succeeding in B2B sales is a story of failure. I think that's how Michael Jordan describes it, too. I mean, I fell into telemarketing when I was 21, coming out of the music business. I was like a producer, I played in rock bands, I just kind of bounced around Southern California, and I had I did telemarketing as a day job, and then I got good at it and had a team of telemarketers.
[00:33:11] John Karsant: So, it started in a boiler room environment, and people are, you know, when the reps today, they're like, "Oh, I need better emails and a sequencer," and that's true, and getting perfect data is an awesome goal, right? You could do that with Cloudlead, Titan, Next, this Salesbot thing, there's some new platforms emerging.
[00:33:25] John Karsant: But back in my day, you'd get up at 3:00 in the morning, you'd drive to a box, like that look like the office, and they would throw Red Bulls at you when you were good. You'd sit in a folding chair, and you'd wait for, you know, TV ads that ran at night to flow in, and people would just jump on the phones and start, and you'd had a nine-minute script to get a credit card, and you had like cops listening in to make sure you said the right stuff for compliance.
[00:33:49] John Karsant: And then like, you know, the Feds would raid the call center. It was it was straight out of Wolf of Wall Street where I started, and it was good money. I mean, there's these two or three people at the center who are kind of the ballers, and and they were pulling down like nine grand in three days, crazy money back then. And then they would go to Vegas the rest of the week.
[00:34:08] John Karsant: And I was like, "I got to learn how to do this." So, I started getting up at 3:00 in the morning, hitting the Eastern Seaboard, sitting by these individuals. One of his name was Richard Nunez, they just they just had cool names like Nunez, and I was like, "Oh, that, the Farrelly brothers and the ballers."
[00:34:25] John Karsant: And then you had like Dave Heinen, and he had like, come up with Tiger Woods at golf, so I went golfing with him, and he he, I mean, he would hit a ball all the way, I mean, it's just insane, like a UFO. Anyway, they were really competent in other things, and um, within about four months, I went to the top rep in 10,000 reps, just emulating them, sitting next to them, and losing sleep.
[00:34:48] John Karsant: And that's kind of when I realized like maybe I had partially like a gift at this, but also if I applied it, something good would happen. And then for like 10 years, I didn't do much. I did charity fundraising, I worked in little SaaS companies, I bounced around incubators. It's kind of like, you know, the Einstein patent clerk story, or maybe that's too lofty a comparison, but um, David Sandler sold snack food, you know, so...
[00:35:10] John Karsant: I finally around 31, after making $45,000 consistently, was like, "You know, I should just go to the Emerald City. I'm going to pack up and go to San Francisco." And then, you know, I got there, my first job was for Sean Parker. Um, immediately went up over 100 grand a year, and then my next job was Salesforce, I was around 32.
[00:35:28] John Karsant: And by 35, I built my own sales methodology for the top of the funnel, so it's like, "Oh, he's he's that weird guy with the method." You know, like I had no certification, I was just doing it because I I saw, I worked for mobile technology out of South Africa, and I saw that at this time, like even around 2011, when I came to the Valley, you had sort of, you know, Jeb Blount and Fanatical Prospecting, and you had Mike Weinberg, and you had John Barrows, but a lot of the emails were kind of like, you know, F-tracking, full paragraphs.
[00:35:58] John Karsant: And we know that a three-paragraph email takes the brain 11 seconds, hijacks the amygdala, and actually scares prospects, you don't want to send that. Three-sentence email, three seconds to process, right? So, Lavender, a company I advised early on, they've proven that like a 50-word email, 60% higher conversion.
[00:36:00] Justin Michael: I still don't have a website, I don't have a YouTube. I do everything outbound, I just show up in the DMs, worldwide.
[00:36:12] Justin Michael: And I do a lot of stuff really manually, just because people are let down if it's like a VA or a bot. People actually just want to know it's actually me. But, yeah, it's been a wonderful conversation. Really excited for everyone to read my book, "Cold Call Algo", as in algorithm.
[00:36:39] Justin Michael: And yeah, it should blow your mind or your money back. I'll personally Venmo you your $3. Don't threaten me with a good time.
[00:36:49] John Karsant: All right, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it.
[00:36:51] Justin Michael: Thank you.
[00:36:52] Chris Lingenfelter: Good talk.
