Sam McKenna - Founder at #samsales Consulting - Using Fear to Find Joy, Shortening Your Sales Cycle with LinkedIn, Breaking Through the Noise, and Being Your Authentic Self

Sam McKenna  00:00

I found that every pivotal job I've had in my career has been one that I resisted to begin with. So, I resisted my first sales job was at a company called Vcall. I was there for four years. I resisted going to LinkedIn. I thought I would get lost there. Pivotal change. I resisted starting my own business. It's so so scary. Took the leap. Here we are, right? We've done really well. I think it's an interesting thing for me, just kind of a quick mantra there that like joy really is on the other side of fear. Just take a deep breath, hold it, jump off the high dive, and just see what happens.

Callan Harrington  00:32

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back to another episode of That Worked. I'm excited to release this week's episode. My guest is Sam McKenna. Sam is the CEO of #samsales Consulting. #samsales is a multimillion dollar sales consulting company serving over 165 clients and consistently hitting triple digit revenue growth. Sam is an award winning sales leader, LinkedIn Sales insider, angel investor, board member, and highly sought after speaker. She has broken thirteen sales records, has over 70,000 LinkedIn followers, and she's been named a Top 25 Women in Revenue and a Top 20 Women in Sales and Leadership. She inspires sales professionals with her tangible sales tips and actionable advice used daily by executives and teams alike. That's a lot. But it's worth every bit of it. And she did not disappoint in this episode. We talked about her trademark "Show Me You Know Me," and how you can use it to cut through the noise. I believe it's more important in this market than it ever has been. We dove into tangible ways you can use LinkedIn to build your brand and shorten your sales cycle. And I loved getting the chance to understand Sam's mindset, how she goes against the grain, how she uses fear to find joy, and how she embraces her authentic self. With that, let's get to the show. Sam is the founder of #samsales Consulting. Sam, welcome to the show.

Sam McKenna  02:36

Thanks for having me. Way to show me you know me by including the hashtag in our name, too. I appreciate it.

Callan Harrington  02:41

Okay, so I want to talk about that. I want to talk about where that name came from. But before that, tell us about FedEx.

Sam McKenna  02:51

So I believe as a leader, right, we need to have a certain amount of debauchery, we need to have a certain amount of self deprecating humor, keep things light. So, let me tell you this story about one time, one of my reps, his name is Jason, and he knows this story obviously very well. But Jason and I were working on a deal with FedEx. We were very excited. It was coming to the end. It was gonna be really big logo for our organization years and years ago. We were so jazzed about it. And finally, we saw the red lines come in from FedEx, right? The legal counsel sent it to both him and myself. We're so excited. I was like- (gasps) and I sent him a Slack, we were using at the time, and I was like FedEx! And then he didn't say anything. And I was like- So, I called his desk and was like, oh my god, FedEx! I was excited. And he didn't pick up his phone. I texted his cell phone. Nothing. So I finally called him. And he's like, very long, drawn out drawl. And he's like, "hey." And I'm like, "hey, oh, my God, FedEx! Did you see the red lines came in?" Up, up, up, up, up... And he was like, "oh, what?" And I'm like, "oh my God!" I'm like, "what are you doing? Where are you? How have you not see this?" And he's like, "oh." He's like, "I was in the break room getting an orange," and he was like, "what's happening?" And I'm like, "oh, my God, move your ass! Head to your desk, red lines are in from FedEx, let's go!" Total urgency. So we laughed about it later. And of course, I called up the BDRs in the Charlotte office. And I was like, "before Jason comes in tomorrow, I need you to pack his entire desk up, like build tons of FedEx boxes and put oranges everywhere." So we came in the next morning, and I was like, I will teach you to never make that mistake again, to always be checking your phone. Urgent bird gets the worm. So it was great, but yeah, the pictures definitely made the rounds to our global company. And got at least a little light humor there.

Callan Harrington  04:24

You have to do it in sales, because the job is... I made a comment earlier, I was like, the job's too hard.

Sam McKenna  04:31

Yeah.

Callan Harrington  04:31

You have to be able to laugh about that. And I know that's a big thing with yourself as well.

Sam McKenna  04:38

Yeah.

Callan Harrington  04:38

Which brings me to a second story. So, you're a contestant on Nickelodeon. What show?

Sam McKenna  04:46

I was on Legends of the Hidden Temple. I was an Orange Iguana.

Callan Harrington  04:50

No. Well, that's just all too fitting right now. But, so you were- that was my favorite show. I did not realize that it was Legends of the Hidden Temple. How far did you make it?

Sam McKenna  04:59

I did not make it far at all, which I blamed on my teammate, until my husband I think went through like 137 different clips to finally find my session and prove me wrong. That it was actually me that got us out. It was the very first challenge. We were supposed to cross a moat, and I did not do a very good job with it. I also- the reason I was on Legends was because I tried out for Guts, and they told me I wasn't athletic enough to be on the show. So I got relegated to be on Legends of the Hidden Temple instead. Also, side note, my dad's side of the family have worked for Nestle. My grandfather, in fact, was Chairman of the Board for Nestle in South America for some time. And as a prize for being on Legends, I got a lifetime supply- which is really like twelve bottles, by the way- a lifetime supply of Hershey's syrup. Which is still a story my family tells, because they were so pissed that it was Hershey's instead of any Nestle brand. So really, really went out with that appearance there.

Callan Harrington  05:53

Oh, that is fantastic. Where I thought you were going for a second when you were talking about your husband, I was like, did she meet her husband on Legends of the Hidden Temple?

Sam McKenna  06:02

Could you imagine? We were thirteen, and we've been together since?

Callan Harrington  06:05

Well, it's definitely a common interest. All right. So, switching gears a little bit. I am super curious about the name #samsales. What was the inspiration behind that?

Sam McKenna  06:16

So I think, you know, I was one of the original posters on LinkedIn, right? I saw a community there. I think the first time I started posting was in 2011. And then I really started to think about: how do I get my sales tips out there? It was, I think my first official #samsales I think we found was 2015, if not 16. But I would always get this feedback from my leaders. And they said, you know, we never thought to do that, or that's such a smart strategy. I would have, you know, the CEO of our company, who was a twenty year veteran of Dun & Bradstreet as a sales leader, who would tell me my tips were smart. And I'm like, how can this be smart? How can these not be things you guys already do? So, I decided I'm gonna just start a campaign to post my sales tips on LinkedIn. And I thought, well maybe I'll do it more than once. So I need a hashtag, and what should it be? There's a reason, Callan, I am in sales and not marketing, because the creativity was boundless, and pairing my name with what I do for a living. And that is where I came from. So #samsales was born, just to make sure on the off chance I posted more than once on LinkedIn, my sales tips, that I would have a hashtag to accompany it. But I'll tell you too, like what an amazing thing to do. To create a hashtag, all you have to do is type it out, make sure it's not owned by somebody else, but type it out. Poof, you've created it! Amazing! But I'll tell you, the really cool thing is when I got recruited, I eventually left that company, I went to another company called ON24. And then I got recruited away to LinkedIn. And while a bunch of people knew me at LinkedIn, my leader, the person who was hiring for the role, didn't know me. And so while we were interviewing, at the end, I said listen, I said, if you really want to know what I'm about with sales and leadership, just Google the hashtag samsales and see what you find, right. And in an instant, he found all of my content, all the things that I had posted, was able to just even see how far and wide it was used by other people using that same hashtag, right? In kind of like, honor of like, this would be samsales approved or whatever. It was really impactful.

Callan Harrington  08:01

I love that idea. I never thought about doing it. I mean you hear about branding a key word. And you know, when you think of the Law of Category from a marketing perspective, and things like that, it's essentially what you did was build that out, and you can tie it all to yourself. So 2011, I remember when I first started, I was selling insurance. Well, slash financial advising, I was selling insurance. And, and I remember this is before InMails, you could message everybody on LinkedIn.

Sam McKenna  08:34

Oh, yeah. It's great.

Callan Harrington  08:35

But nobody was posting. Why LinkedIn? Did you start elsewhere and then move to LinkedIn, or what prompted that?

Sam McKenna  08:42

It was so interesting, after I jumped from being an account manager- I was an account manager for two years, and then got kind of dropped in the deep end of enterprise net new sales by our CEO who was just like, "I think you can do it." And I'm like, I'm scared as hell, but okay, I will give it a shot. In that kind of leap I had my very first meeting with a chief marketing officer, and his name was Jim Durham. And he and I met, and at the end of that meeting, he said, "listen, why don't you go and look at my LinkedIn profile? Look at all my connections on there. Anybody that you want to know, just send them an email and say that I recommended you guys meet." And I was like, are you for real? So I did that. But I think it's in that, like the power of the network, and then the power of posting and starting to get your name out there, just became very obvious to me, right? And I used it as a place, not even to self promote, but to help people. I think, in fact, my very first post was: I know about some sales openings at a company in McLean, Virginia, if anybody's looking. I think that was as exciting as the very first post gets. But you start to see that right? Like you start to see impressions, you start to see likes, you started to see people say: hey, we don't know each other, but I saw your post and I'd love to connect. And I'm like, oh. And it just became such an easy 24/7 networking event, right? Just like it is today, but so many people still don't see its value.

Callan Harrington  09:55

Yeah, I've definitely experienced a lot of what you're saying. And one of the things that I've talked about quite a bit is, I got into it for lead generation. But that's not what sustained it. And one of the things that I think was really interesting was, it's probably the best nurturing platform I've ever used for anything. I mean, you have, you literally have trigger events. If you use Sales Navigator, you have trigger events, you can save all of these things. What have you found that to be? Have you found it more on the new business side? The nurturing side? What does that look like for you?

Sam McKenna  10:28

I think it is the easiest way to just effectively shorten your sales cycle, right? So you think about a couple of things, majority of our buyers, right, 90% of them are not in an active buying cycle. In fact, 30% of them are lurking, they're learning, they're trying to figure out, do they want to change at some point? If so, who should they use? Most people, when they do get to the buying decision, right, 90% of them have two or three of their vendors already selected. If you are not in that, right, you're probably out of luck in terms of getting selected or even being considered. So I think when you think about LinkedIn, and what we post in terms of our thought leadership, and our tips and tricks and our events and all that, we're not only nurturing our existing buyers, people that we're already connected to, we're basically continuing to invest in them until they are ready to buy. But hopefully they engage with us. And then we can effectively borrow or rent their audience as well. So if you comment on my posts, which you are often- you often do, and you're so generous and kind to do that. That means that people that you know are also seeing Callan engage with Sam McKenna's post, yada, yada, and then hopefully they engage with it as well. And then you can build a whole process to building your network out, right. I have almost 70,000 followers on LinkedIn. And it's not by accident, right? A lot of that was just a snowball effect of a start. But the second thing is something we talked about in our LinkedIn influencer playbook that's on our website, is that you can build a systematic process to not only capture all those net new people, but then to also move them off of LinkedIn onto your own site. Right? That's an important component because we're working on a platform that's free. And that can go away, you know, at the click of a button. It never will, LinkedIn will always be here, but... Yeah, to me that's it right? Continuing to nurture our existing buyers while getting so many new ones. It's meeting our buyers where they are.

Callan Harrington  12:05

You hit on a really- a really good topic that I did not- it did not register to me when I first started posting on LinkedIn. It's: the goal isn't necessarily to grow the biggest following. Not to say, I mean, you definitely- I think there's value in growing a bigger following, because you're getting a bigger reach, and more of your ideal customer profile is going to see it as a result. That said, you hit on a key point, it's how do you move people from this platform off of that platform? Which, of course, LinkedIn is not going to love, right? Why they deprioritize links when you post and things like that. Now, when you're doing that, are you driving them to a newsletter? Are you driving them to just your website in general? What does that look like for you?

Sam McKenna  12:50

We have to have something of value, right? So think about your LinkedIn network. Nobody wants to be told and they don't want to be sold. And you'll see even people with the biggest followings. You'll see, like for me, for instance, if I post something that's about leadership and helpful, I get a ton of engagement. If I post something that self promotional about our playbook or webinar or whatever, like, meh. So we know our audience doesn't want that. So if we're just saying, hey, come in, you know, sign up for our webinar or something like that. We've got to make sure that whatever we're doing to take them off the platform gives them value. And we also can't say: we have a great newsletter, come sign up for it. What about it? Right? So when we talk about our newsletter, right, we'll say like: it's funny, it advertises our events, our free women's group, the more the merrier, we have 1000 or so people that are signed up for it. Making sure that they kind of understand the value that's in it for them, what they're going to learn. It'll help them never miss a post that we have, and that they can capitalize on all the events that we do for free. It has to be that whole- what, right, we always talk about what's in it for them. We can't just say sign up for our newsletter. We have to say sign up for our newsletter; here's what's in it for you. And then we move people off. Especially if you have fans. If you have people who are like, who get upset when they miss a post, right? Like we know the bell feature on the profile doesn't work this is the easiest way to say: here's how to never miss anything that we're doing, sign up. And then there's a whole snowball effect to that, right? You sell sponsorships for your events. You sell sponsorships for your newsletter. You sell ad placements, etc. Right? There's tons of revenue that can be capitalized on that. We are giving it away for free, but we are getting money in return by just being smart.

Callan Harrington  14:16

Yeah, and it's adding value the entire time because you've got and I wish I would have realized this earlier and created a- I'm in the process, I'm going to launch my newsletter in probably a couple of weeks.  And I realized that was one of the biggest missing pieces, and it's long form you, have more control, people are opting in, so you got a little bit more freedom to put a little bit more in there. You know one of the things that I'd love to get your opinion on because I know this is a big area for that #samsales focuses on is ghostwriting for executives on LinkedIn. I wish that I would have done this when I was at a company. What kind of brought that idea for you to really start doing that. What I'm really curious about is, what have been the results of that, and the time commitment on the executive?

Sam McKenna  14:27

Cool! Yeah, the idea came from a very well known executive at a very well known social media platform, who said, I know I need to do this, I don't know what to write, I don't have the time, I can't manage any of this. I don't know what to do with my DMs or how to grow my network or how the algorithm works. I know I need to do this, but how can I even make time for this. And that's where it was born, I was like, well, we can do that for you. We can interview you, we can pull your stories apart, we can pull all the things you're already doing on Forbes, and writing all these publications. We can pull all that, right, and create amazing content for you. And then I'm like, well, if this one person needs it, I bet a bunch of other people need it. So we started to really punch the gas, right, on how we advertise this, how we talked about it, and then blew the lid off of it. You know, we do it for chief communications officers and COOs at twenty thousand person companies, SVPs at the likes of Meta, you know, really important organizations all the way down to entrepreneurs, or people who just got their seed A funding and know that they need to step it up. We do it for a musical act that has a residency in Vegas. And that is all I will say about that. It's really cool, right? Like people want to build a voice on LinkedIn. So I think for us, it's really capitalizing on everything that we know, like, how do we maximize the algorithm? How do we interview you? How do we pull content out? How do we write a great hook? Right? How do we get you visibility? How do we meet your buyers where they are? I'm going to say this too, right? If you are an executive, and you're listening to this, or if you're a head of sales, and you're listening to this, and you say, "well, our buyers aren't on LinkedIn." First of all, they totally are. Second of all, they don't have to be. Right? If I see something really great, and I have a group chat, I'm going to drop in a group chat, I'm going to throw it up on six different Slack channels and say, this is really cool. The word of mouth will trave. You have a LinkedIn profile. 900 million members globally do. So you can still click on the link, and you can see what I wrote. You need to have a voice. Your competition is either not on LinkedIn, and you have a competitive advantage, or they are, and you need to catch up. They're reading someone's content. Better be yours.

Callan Harrington  17:05

Yeah. And the reality is, from what I've seen, and this isn't any huge secret, but we follow people, we don't follow companies. And I mean, don't get me wrong, there are some companies, like I'm gonna follow Accenture or McKinsey's reports, because we know that they put a ton of data in behind this, and we're going to do that.  But by and large people follow people, they don't follow companies. And if you're not doing that, I think that's a big gap. And you mentioned, one of the ones I think is really interesting is startup founders.

Sam McKenna  17:22

Yeah.  Yeah.

Callan Harrington  17:33

So just by the nature of continuing to do that, it's interesting. So one of the things- I would love to switch gears a little bit. And so when you went to ON24, and as I understand it, you did not want to be in sales whatsoever. And you joined and you were really successful. What changed? And what were some of those turning points where something- what clicked where it was like, oh, okay, I'm pretty good at this? Because I'm doing X, Y, or Z. You're interesting by nature. Your story is, how you came to do this, because you're doing something that really just makes no sense to do. We know the stats. Most of these businesses fail.

Sam McKenna  17:33

Yeah. Yeah, I found that the every pivotal job I've had in my career has been one that I resisted to begin with. So I resisted my first sales job was at a company called Vcall. I was there for four years, I resisted going to LinkedIn, I thought I would get lost there. Pivotal change, I resisted starting my own business. It's so so scary, took the leap. Here we are, right, I've done really well, they need it's an interesting thing. For me, just kind of a quick mantra there that like joy really is on the other side of fear. Just take a deep breath, hold it, jump off the high dive, and just see what happens. I think the reason I didn't want to be in sales is because I knew sales to have the reputation that so many people have of sales: pushy, slimy, grimy, calculative, opportunistic, right, all that very lovely stuff. And it's just not me. I care about people. I care about solving challenges. I care about being of help, and oh my god, that's what sales is. Right? So for me, the lens change when I heard that right, people aren't taking meetings with us for their health, they have problems, they have challenges they're looking to solve, they're giving you time because something something needs to be improved, changed, etc on their plate. As soon as I changed my lens to that and I thought how can I be a pair of hands? How can I think about the challenges they have, right? Like that's where the early days of sequence writing for me, one of the things that samsales does so wel,l started because it wasn't like hello, we have webinars and a platform. Do you want to buy it? It was hey, here's the challenge we hear from our buyers all the time that we solved. Do you have that same challenge? I bet we can help you. Wait, what? Right that's how we really think about it. It- we're here to help. We're not here to market. Here's what we do, come buy us. We're here to say we know you have a challenge, and that's it. I think for me too, I was given the gift of the little red- what is it? The Little Red Book by Jeffrey Gitomer.

Callan Harrington  19:51

Yeah, The Little Red Sales Book, or something like that. Yeah.

Sam McKenna  19:54

Yeah, in fact, I literally can see it around my camera. I still have it. But I was given that as a gift. I went on vacation. And my then-husband- Not my current one, who is a delight. He was a delight too, don't worry. But my then-husband said, "we're on vacation-" We made it thirteen years, we had a really good run. But my thenhusband said, "we're on vacation, you know, like, don't read, forget about work". And I was like, okay. And I was like, I have to go to the bathroom. And I literally took my book into the bathroom, I sat in the bathtub, pretended to take a bath, and read my little book. It changed me by thinking- like when I read Jeffrey's book, and all the things he was teaching, I just found myself- it's a really good book, by the way. But I found myself saying, no shit, no shit, no shit, no shit. I knew this stuff. This was- I wasn't learning anything.

Callan Harrington  19:54

Yeah.

Sam McKenna  19:54

I was realizing that I already had the skill set. And I think the skill set to me is just having good manners, giving a shit about other people, asking active listening questions, showing them you know them, remembering things about their lives, looking to solve challenges, being a connector. It's all stuff that I just learned how to do as a kid, being from Switzerland and having two entrepreneurs as parents. That's what changed for me. And that's what I love about this, is that not only can you be the antithesis of that sleazy, grimy person. I've never made a cold call in my life, right? Not only can you be the antithesis of that, but you can also make a shitload of money by really capitalizing on your unique skill set. It's awesome.

Callan Harrington  21:14

I love that story. And that book for me was really Predictable Revenue.

Sam McKenna  21:21

Oh, yeah.

Callan Harrington  21:21

Because it, it hit the RevOps side, and I read all the sales books, and I'm not- I loved a lot of them, including the one that you mentioned, but Predictable Revenue was, oh, this can be a process. And you mentioned sequencing and things like that.

Sam McKenna  21:36

That was an interesting book for me too, because I remember my then CEO at ON24 being like, this is the most amazing book. And I was like, I can't wait to read it. And then I was like, no shit, no shit. It was the same thing. I'm like, why is everybody losing their minds? I could have written this. But it's, you know, again, like, I think to your exact point, right? It's a process, right? Like sales is a process, and having them mapped out and getting to see that connecting those dots is everything. I love- again, Jeffrey's book was cataclysmic for me. It wasn't anything revolutionary. Same thing for you, right? But like, sometimes you just need to read that, and Predictable Revenue and be like, I already know this stuff. Now I see it in front of me.

Callan Harrington  22:13

Well, it's validation that what you are thinking is not crazy.  Right. Because I think- I don't know, maybe this is my own opinion, but we get stuck in okay, this is what was successful for years. So we're going to keep doing this. And then it's like, wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense. Then you see somebody else is talking about it, like, oh, okay, see I told you that didn't make any sense. And it's kind of that- it brings it full circle, that total validation. Where did Show Me You Know Me start?

Sam McKenna  22:16

Yeah.  It's funny, I will give credit where it's due. Lee Hacohen is one of my mentors, best buddies was the officiant at my, what my second and final, wedding. And years ago, maybe like 2009 or 10, maybe a little later, he said this, he's like, "you gotta- you gotta show me you know, me, right, like, dude, make the effort." And I was like, oh, that's so smart. So I started to say it and say it and say it. And then it became our tagline. And it's hilarious, because he's like, everyone- does anybody know? That I was the one that started it? And I was like, no, shhh, don't tell anyone. But we really made a thing out of it. Because I think it's so important, right? It rhymes. And I think it's the coolest thing, because it's really adopted. Right? Even HubSpot uses it in their onboarding. It doesn't pay us anything. Hello, HubSpot? Are you listening? It's trademarked. But it's the most important thing that I think weaves through our customers and our buyer journey, right? You have to show your buyers you know them. From the very first email we send them with the very first subject line, all the way to when we've had a client for twenty years. I want to tell you just something really cool. Like literally, I cried about this earlier today, we got a clip from one of our partners. They hold a- they run a BDR peer group, and a BDR got on there. And he said, I have got a lot to share today. And he said, "I was put on a PIP last month." Right? And this was March of 2023. "I got put on a PIP last month. The only playbook I had access to was to make dials and dials and dials. And that's all I did. And I would just kept getting blocked from these numbers. And then I just listened to what Sam McKenna said. Instead, I threw the entire playbook out the window. I started doing Show Me You Know Me". And he shared today that he ended April at 190% of goal, from going on a PIP right, and then saying: I'm gonna do things differently, right? I'm gonna give it a shot. I'm gonna show my buyers I know them. I'm gonna pull experts out from their articles. I'm gonna ask ChatGPT for a little help on what the hell to write about what they're saying, right? I mean, like, this is what we do. We saved someone's job, you know? Through our methodology. And it's one of like 100 stories this year, 1000 stories that we haven't heard. And you think about that, like showing a client you know them, putting in the effort. It's not hard, right? Nobody does it. We're the queens of Show Me You Know Me. We're an all women team, so I can say we're the queens of Show Me You Know Me. The queens of Show Me You Know Me, and people don't do it when they outreach to us. If I look at my inbox, it's full of spam. So you think about what your competition is like. It's nil, right? Alyssa Merwin, the head of Global Sales at LinkedIn, my former boss, holds one of three identical jobs to her, reports directly to the COO. She posted on LinkedIn a year ago, talking about how in the last three years she's received four personalized emails. That's insanity. Your competition isn't doing it. Put in the effort and you will clean up.

Callan Harrington  25:21

The reality is, it doesn't take that much effort. You can. And I'm not saying if you've, you know, if you've got five named accounts, you should. You should put in extra effort. But the reality is, it doesn't take that much. Just even showing that you know, the industry that they're in specifically, and drop something from their LinkedIn will go a mile, it'll put you miles apart from your competition. One of the things I'd love to actually just call out was, what a bold move on that SDR.

Sam McKenna  25:54

Yeah.

Callan Harrington  25:57

Like, did you say the culture was it was like, here's your numbers. Here's what you need to do. And not that. And to be clear, not that I think there's anything wrong with that. Now, I'm up for the debate all day, but just the fact that he threw that away, and then said, "no, I'm just not going to do this". But you know, his numbers like activity wise, that that manager, that was the culture was going, "what are you doing? Where are your dials? Where are your dials?"

Sam McKenna  26:18

I think like the one of the things that has always led to my success, frankly, is insubordination. When I hear something that doesn't ring true to me, or who I authentically am, I do or I make it look like I'm doing the things that I'm supposed to be doing while I do it my own way, and then I win. And, yes, that is very samsales, and that is very, like conceited, egotistical, whatever you want to say, you know, about my personality. But I've definitely had, for better or worse, a "I know what's best and I can probably do it better." I will tell you, right, this rep had basically nothing to lose, if he kept doing what wasn't working, he was going to be on his keister anyway. So instead, he's like, you know, what, why don't I just take this chance this thirty days that I have, make a gamble and see what happens. And 190%- you think about what he made, too is probably in accelerators, right? Hopefully. He has a good compliment there. But to me, it's the same thing, right? We talked about this, hit your KPIs, robocall, and you know, hit your Connect and Sells too. Make 100 cold calls a day, and then pull an extra hour at the end of the day to do some Show Me You Know Me. Do it on ten people a week, do it on twenty people a week. What I promise you is that number one, no one is going to give a poop about how you got to your number. They're just gonna care that you got to it. And then at some point, when you keep getting to your number, and other people don't, they're gonna say, how are you doing it? And you're gonna say "by not listening to you." Just kidding! By introducing this methodology that I do, right? Like we obviously want to be polite and tactful, and professional and all that. But you think about that, right? I never made cold calls. It was never even part of our culture in any of the organizations that I worked in. And that is a hill I will die on. And yes, I have a TikTok and yes, I think I've even gotten death threats about me saying cold calls don't work, which is super fun. But I think you just you do what authentically fits you, you give it a shot, right like, and you can try these systems by working a little bit more if you really need to, if you need to make your hundred cold calls. And then you put in a little bit of extra time, test your method, give it a shot, see what happens. But I think to your point, right, like, thinking about what you said earlier, with Predictable Revenue, that book was popular for so long. It still is popular, right? You think about some of these methods that have evolved how we use technology in a different way, how we have to also get back to being people instead of all scale scale scale all the time. And you've got to keep up with modern trends. I think that's one of the most- the biggest diservices that we see with a lot of leaders that we talk to, is that they still believe, you know, like, well, networking events is where it's at. And we're gonna make one hundred cold calls a day. And we're like, man, you are missing so much of what's out there to be successful.

Callan Harrington  28:50

I think that you hit- I never thought about it like that and- is test it in a vacuum, right? If you know that you're in this culture where you have to hit X amount of dials, and that just is what it is. Okay, hit them and then carve X amount out to do just highly targeted Show Me You Know Me prospecting, and see what happens. Because I do agree with what you're saying. I think my viewpoint is whether it's cold calling, or all inbound, I think it all just it's all what's the cost per acquisition and what's your lifetime value, and just take a look at that. Does that make sense? Can you make that work? And some companies can't. You can't do it. You can't cold call because there's a lot you know, the market doesn't make sense. And other places it's really hard to drive inbound. But even if you're cold calling, if you've got you know some information ahead of time, you're gonna be in such a better spot.

Sam McKenna  29:44

Yeah. Well, and think about this, right? Like everything that bleeds through our trainings at samsales. We talk about the art of being different, right? It's not about making ten more calls. It's not about ten more emails. It's about being different. So even think about two things here. Right? You talked about inbound leads. Let's say instead of immediately responding, let's say instead of auto, you know, responding with a Chili Piper over the world, sorry guys. But instead of doing that, right, let's make sure we properly score our MQLs and let's get our top tiers to our BDRs to do some Show Me You Know Me. Imagine if you're an inbound lead, right? We know that not a lot- We still have to work to get an inbound lead to actually book time with us. Imagine if you email that inbound lead, and you take four minutes to look at something on their profile and connect the dots. Thanks for Contact Us form plus Nickelodeon. What? What is it? Right? You'd be so shocked, right? That person is gonna respond. They're gonna say, "who am I dealing with here?" We're giving them a different experience. I think for cold outbound, if you do something, right, and you look at that person's profile. Again, let's say- or I'm an open book, but let's say I had nothing. There was a tumbleweed going across my LinkedIn profile. You could find so much: podcasts, articles, things that I've spoken at, etc. You could find all of that, jobs, where I'm mentioned in LinkedIn posts. And imagine if you put something like that in your subject line, right?  Barefoot Contessa plus LMA conference plus whatever your company name is. You're standing out. It's not even that you've done the work, it's that it looks different in your inbox, right? Instead of like quick connect, Sam, quick question, leading IT cloud computing. And then Barefoot Contessa plus LMA conference plus your company name. You're gonna open that. You're fighting to even get a bloody open. So put the work in.

Callan Harrington  31:22

Yeah. And I would say especially if you're an enterprise, right? Because enterprise, you just have to do so much more at every step. And now it's worth it, it's worth doing more, because the deal sizes are larger, your commissions are larger, everything's bigger.

Sam McKenna  31:35

Let's even talk about that. Right? Like that is all I've ever done is enterprise sales. And so you do have to work harder, but you also think like, there's something like big and sexy about enterprise logos. And by no means are they right for everyone. They're really not right for samsales, right? If we go after the Deloittes and the AWSs of the world, it's gonna be a slog, right? And it's going to be tough, right? They probably already have that in-house already. But everyone's really excited about enterprise sales. So they go after a lot, which means your competition is even more fierce, because the volume is higher. Right? An SVP at a Deloitte is getting, I don't know, fifty emails a day? There was just answered yesterday, or last week with the Chief Marketing Officer of Baker Donaldson, a national firm, Adam Severson, who says he gets ten to fifty, five-zero, sales emails a day. A day! Can you imagine?

Callan Harrington  32:21

A hundred percent.

Sam McKenna  32:21

So think about this, right? When you do that Show Me You Know Me, when you do your research, the higher you go, the more important it is, right? But when you do that, you're also saying something to that VP of sales at a Deloitte, who has absolutely no time to give a new vendor, you're saying I'm different. Time with me is going to be well spent. I have decided to go about this in a completely different way than the spammy salesy stuff. And you're not only going to build a better brand, you're probably going to earn the right to the meeting, you may even just receive a response that directs you in another place. But then you can connect to that person on LinkedIn, you can start building a relationship, you can build rapport, you can nurture them. And the other thing is that because you showed up in a different way, and you'll probably continue to do that. You'll also earn their trust and their referrals. So we have a chief legal officer, Christine, that's one of our clients. And she's like, I don't refer anybody, I refer you. And there's a reason for that, because we show up in a different way.

Callan Harrington  33:14

Yeah. And you hit one of the pieces in there where you mentioned, you mentioned specifically that, it'll get forwarded to somebody else. That is just as good if not better, because that person thinks- they don't know that this was a pure cold email, they just think that this person is already vouched, this is a really good thing, we need to do this. And then they schedule almost immediately.

Sam McKenna  33:36

Think about the value of that. Also, you being able to pick up, like you use a platform like Outreach for Salesloft. You can see those opens, you can see those quick forwards, you can see there's something interesting. And frankly, even if they don't respond, like let's talk about the FedEx and oranges and self deprecating humor that we kind of use there. I would say the same thing. If I saw a buyer that kept opening my email or forwarded it along, I'd reach out and I would probably put before the RE: of the subject line, I would say great emails or terrible, you know, funny, terrible emails, something like that. And then I would say, I see you're forwarding them to a lot of people. I see you're opening them. You haven't responded. So either one of two things is happening, one, there's interest and you guys are talking about it, and you just haven't responded, or you think they're really badly written and you guys are all having a laugh? Which is it? Hopefully not the latter, right? And like you put the little smiley face, like you show your personality. I'm gonna just say that too. Don't be afraid to do that. We can be our authentic selves. We can be humorous. We can use jokes, right, and emails while still being professional, and just again, showing up in a different way. I heard that early on in my career that my enthusiasm, bubbliness, and smile- like smilyness, made me come across as untrustworthy unprofessional and there was something else, oh junior. And I was like, well, shit man. This is who I am. What am I supposed to do? So I think to that advice, like with all advice, you know, cross reference it with other people you trust and then decide. But I kicked that to the curb, and you're always gonna find a little bit of immaturity in working with us.

Callan Harrington  35:03

I love it. So, here's a question I have. Why start a company at all? You were very successful. Now, you may have just answered this, because what I heard specifically was, you were very much "I'm going to do what I want, regardless." Which is pretty much an entrepreneur to the tee. Was that the reason? Was it I just had to do it my own way. I can't do this somebody else's way any longer? Yeah.

Sam McKenna  35:26

I said, you know, I think for me that one, I want to say that getting to LinkedIn was the Holy Grail for me. Even though I turned down that first job, it was more again, like I said, it's it was fear, fear that I was gonna get lost at a company that size, which ended up being the completely opposite, complete opposite of what ended up happening, right. I got to speak on stages, be part of campaigns that they ran, it was incredible. I think for me, two things happen. One, I just kept breaking records, right. So when I was at LinkedIn, I broke my thirteenth sales record. And it just makes me think, made me think, right, like, this is kind of my nature. I know how to do this. I can teach it to other people. I'm so inspired when I make impact. I told you, we cried hearing about 190% of goal, from PIP to 190%. I figured there was something that I could do to impact just more than one organization. On the flip side, I had been on a plane every single day from the second week of January until I think the day I quit.  Am I right? And that I left LinkedIn, I'd been on a plane. You know, sometimes my bags weren't even unpacked, by the time I needed to pack them again, and then leave my family for four days. My husband and two dogs, I don't even have kids, you know, tugging at my pant legs. And so for me, it was like exhaustion. And I haven't even been at this game for very long. I've been in sales for sixteen years, right? We know people who have done this and been globally on planes for twenty years. And they're like, "oh, my God, don't even talk to me." But I think it was tired. And I wanted a little bit more control over my life. And then the other thing was, I wanted to make impact beyond just one organization. So the goal, right, as I talk about all the time, the goal was I'm going to work part time. I'm going to spend time with my dogs. I have a list that still undone of like things I'm going to do. I'm going to get a library card at the Library of Congress. Still haven't done that yet. I'll get there one day. But it was awesome. I was very, very lucky to have two clients, one of which is still someone who is very, very close to us. The other one got acquired, which is awesome news. But I had two clients that said, "hell, if we know what we're doing in sales." Like will, you come and show us, and I was like, uh yeah. And so I started to dig in, and I'm like, oh my gosh, there's so much to teach. And then, you know, we really blew the lid off. We started in September, we hired our first person in February of 2020, right before the- literally like right before the world shut down. And then you know, we were over 170 clients, saw a female team of ten, a women team of ten. And we've done pretty well. But it was just, I think, to me, it's the ultimate sales challenge. If you think you're good at what you do, there is nothing that will challenge you and terrify you, than being an entrepreneur and selling yourself. There's no product to hide behind. When somebody says no thanks, it's no thanks to this, not to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ON24's webinar platform. It's tough. I've never worked more. And I've never had more joy.

Callan Harrington  38:11

I'm super curious. This didn't really click to me until you just said this, but was COVID a huge catalyst? How you sell is perfectly matched for COVID. You had a post the other day where you were talking about, you gave a virtual walk the halls. When I read that I was like, I did enterprise sales as well at a point in my career, and if you want to do it really well, you walk the halls. You meet the other people, you get connected to the VPS. You go deep, and you go wide to have all those. And you laid out this perfect roadmap to do that digitally. Did you find that to be a huge catalyst during COVID?

Sam McKenna  38:47

For sure. And I think the most interesting thing to me about that playbook, right? It's like modern day prospecting. We're gonna- I think I should have posted it during the week instead of a weekend, because it got relatively low engagement. But I will say, here's what I'll say. I think it's like 21,000 views still, still nice numbers.  The thing that I think is interesting is that when COVID hit, the amount of organizations that were reaching out to say, "how do we do this?" Like, how are we supposed to sell behind Zoom? How are we supposed to use LinkedIn? Like, we don't have networking events? We can't go in person. What are we supposed to do? I almost like was baffled. And I looked at them and said what did you do between your conferences and between your networking events? And between your in person meetings? Like those are like massive bricks and boulders of your sales process? Like where's the mortar? What did you do then? Right? And they were like, I don't know. And you're like, cool. What? And we say that about samsales, right? Like I think your sales process, right, your Sandler's, and your SPIN Sellings, and your Challengers, all of those are the bricks of your sales process. Right? You need those. We're the mortar. We're methodology agnostic, but it's like you know what to do and what stages to go through. We teach you how to do it. And that's exactly what we taught, right? How to show up on LinkedIn, how to build a network, how to connect with people in a non-cheesy way, how to not pitch slap with a P, every single buyer that comes your way. What do you do to build rapport on Zoom? How do you start the call? Is it okay to capitalize on someone's background and say something about the Legos that they have on the shelf behind them? All of that stuff that, for me was always part of my sales career. I've been remote since 2011. You know, and like, while I went in person, it certainly wasn't the most efficient thing, right? We had to qualify deals before we met in person. It wasn't that, you know- Clients ask us, how do we get more discovery calls in person? I'm like, Jesus, why would you? Right? And it's true, like, let's be efficient, we can connect in meaningful ways this way. So COVID was huge for us. But I'll say like we- every single year, I set a goal for myself. When I was thirty, when I was thirty years old, was the first year I made six figures. It took me until then to do that. And I said, I'm never gonna make less money in my life. And I've held true to that every single year. Earn, you know, a seven figure earner at this point. And always thought about that for our business as well, how do we make sure that we keep growing and keep pushing the gas? You know, the sky's the limit for us.

Callan Harrington  39:03

Yeah, that's pretty good. (laughs) Last question I have. If you could have a conversation with your younger self, age up to you, what would that conversation be? And what advice would you give them?

Sam McKenna  41:15

Don't make me cry a second time today.

Callan Harrington  41:16

That's what I'm going for. (laughs) I would say hold your breath and jump off the high dive. There are so many things that I did based- wrapped in fear when I was younger. Scared of if I would make money, scared of if I would succeed my career, scared if I even picked the right school, right, and I make decisions with a hell of a lot of intention. It's also why most of the big swings I've taken in my life, I think all the big swings in my life have ever worked and worked out pretty darn well. But I wish I'd been a little bit less fearful. I really wish and for every big decision, you know, for people who are thinking about starting a business, having a kid, getting a divorce, whatever it may be right, like, talk to your mentors, take a deep breath, and then jump into the deep end and see what happens. I love that. The story that I tell is to the tee, I can't even make this up, is that I'm not good at starting in the shallow end and walking my way to the deep end. So I have to just jump straight in. I love it.

Sam McKenna  42:12

I'll meet you there. (laughs)

Callan Harrington  42:14

I ove it! Sam, this was awesome. You gave so many good takeaways, and I appreciate you coming on. Thanks for being here.

Sam McKenna  42:21

Thanks for having me. Great conversation. Thank you.

Callan Harrington  42:23

Absolutely.  I hope you enjoyed Sam and I's conversation. A big thing I took from the episode was trusting yourself. If you've got a way of doing something that's different than the norm, do it. The result could be amazing. If you're not following Sam on LinkedIn, I highly recommend jumping on there and hitting the Follow button. And if you did like this episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review an Apple Podcast or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you next week.