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What are some strategies you can consider and test to sell better as an entrepreneur? We find out from Gessie Schechinger who is the VP of Sales at OnCourse.
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Gessie Schechinger is the laziest salesman in America as well as Vice President of Sales for the OnCourse Sales Engagement Platform.
Gessie is passionate about leveraging technology and automation to surpass revenue targets so he can help protect golf and bar time for the salespeople of the world. Gessie won annual sales awards at 2 different Fortune 500 companies. His 20+ years of sales experience began in an outbound call center where he averaged 450 calls per week and blew out his quota by 297%. Unsurprisingly, he moved to field sales where he traveled 300 days a year convincing the biggest companies in the United States to open their wallet.
He now spends his time educating sales leaders to utilize the most effective sales tool in the world and co-hosts the mediocre podcast, TechTales.
Learn more about Gessie and his work at > https://www.tryoncourse.com
We also recommend:
- Rod Yapp: Next Level Business with High-Performance Leadership
- Jim Lawless: Overcoming Fear and Operating With Risk
- Jacob Morgan: The Future Leader & The Skills & Mindset They Need Today
Transcription of Interview
(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)
Adam G. Force 00:11
Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome back to the change coder podcast show. This is your host, Adam force. And if you missed last week’s episode, check it out was with the Vice President of sustainability and one of the founding partners of the massive scooter company called lime. These guys have over 100 million rides. If you’re living in one of the cities, they’re doing the tests and you’ll see scooters flying all over the place. Really great conversation. So swing back and check that out. We’ve talked about a ton of good stuff that you guys will find value in. This week, we’re talking with Jesse, I’m not even gonna try to pronounce Jesse’s last name. It’s a little bit of a tongue twister, but it’ll be in the description notes. He is the vice president of sales at on course and that is a sales engagement platform. And Jesse has been in sales for I think most of his life and he has a ton of experience. So we’re going to pick his brain about selling because obviously this is something We all need to do if we want to scale impact Don’t forget to stop by Change Creator calm we have a ton of fresh content out there for the podcast feature articles. Plus we have the waitlist for the captivate methods. So if you want to power up your marketing with storytelling, and really set your business up for automation and long term sales, this is a program for you. So when you’re on the waitlist, we’re going to send you some info, and you’ll get invites to check out some next steps and learn about the program to see if it’s a good fit for you. Okay, all right, guys. We’re not gonna waste any more time here. We’re gonna dive right into this conversation with Jesse Okay, show me the hate page. Jessie, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today, man?
Gessie Schechinger 01:41
Awesome, man. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Adam G. Force 01:44
Yeah, well, I appreciate you making the time as usual. Very cool. You know, you’re you’re big into the sales scene, which is why I’m excited to talk with you today. So we’re gonna dig into some of that good stuff because, you know, as entrepreneurs, if we’re not selling all we got is a hobbie right
Gessie Schechinger 02:02
that is the bane which is the revenue, no doubt about
Adam G. Force 02:05
it is that no revenue, no impact? Yeah. So why don’t you kick us off with just a little bit about what you have going on in your world today. I’d like to just get to the peak of the of what’s going on and see where you’re at now and then we’ll we’ll back into how you got there.
Gessie Schechinger 02:21
Sure, not a problem. So what I’m what I’m majorly into is just really like how technology is impacting sales, and all of the different tools and some people get super lost, and I call the CEO of SAS, right, and there’s a million different solutions out there. And really, what I’m all about is how you can amplify your sales efforts, and what tools you can use to amplify those efforts and leverage you can pull and so we have a little program, on course, which is a sales engagement platform, but that’s really what our messages is amplifying sales teams, making sure that That the brainless type of work of sales you don’t burn too many calories on and really focus on the area that you can you know, that actually takes your time and make a difference.
Adam G. Force 03:10
Yeah, I love that. It says in your one sheet or that I got about you it said you’re the laziest salesman in America. Tell me Tell me about that.
Gessie Schechinger 03:21
No doubt. So I’ve had like every different sales job you could have from working in a call center to out there Field Sales, doing you know, traveling the road, 300 300 days a year, and really as it comes down to is one nothing annoys me. We’re more than like, brainless paperwork and entering things into a CRM, like I would go out stay at like some Embassy Suites, a little cocktail hour from like 530 to 730. It’s like, I just want to be drinking and having a good time. I want to be sitting here entering in things, and there has to be like a much better solution for that. And so I teamed With the the guys that simtek and we build a platform like literally, all I as a sales professional want to do is just be in front of customers and talking and reaching out. It’s like how can we automate all the nonsense so that I can kick back and have a beer?
Adam G. Force 04:14
I love it. I love it. I you know, Amy, my co founder and I, our philosophy here at Change Creator is work less make more.
Gessie Schechinger 04:23
I’m 100% I’d be a great fit.
Adam G. Force 04:27
So right now you’re vice president of sales for on course right, which is that the sales engagement platform you mentioned?
Gessie Schechinger 04:35
That’s correct. I recently I’ve kind of moved to be the chief revenue officer. But But yeah, I’m very much engaged in the on course platform.
Adam G. Force 04:44
Awesome. Awesome. So now you you’ve won some annual sales awards and things like that, and you’ve been doing this for a long time. So maybe just give us a little bit in a nutshell about your the highlights of your sales experience, and then we’ll start kind of digging into it.
Gessie Schechinger 04:58
Yeah, sure. So Early on in the call center type days, I was working and we sold a medical record retrieval service for attorneys and big life insurance carriers, stuff like that. And we would sell the service to people and then I, again, largely being lazy and everyone was calling all the same people I was like, I gotta figure out a shorter way to sync this bot. And so I was like, Who else needs medical records and getting into workers compensation group found a big loop there as a brand new market and things got you know, all the low hanging fruit just kind of hit it was like Okay, perfect, boom, smash this year’s quota. And then furthermore, just really trying to you know, I moved from there to working for a couple of big companies. One of them is a very global, very large plastic factoring company. Did Field Sales and national accounts for those guys. Again, also exploring I mean, we are big into plastic is has a tough record, especially with with your And audience, but we were definitely trying to work on sustainable solutions and corn and all those type of things. Yeah, we’re gonna kind of have alternatives kind of reduce that footprint, right? And so work for those guys forever. And then eventually just got to a point where, again, Embassy Suites burned out whatever, like this, there has to be an easy way. And I got into technology. And I tell everybody about delving into the software world that it’s a lot like scuba diving, in the sense that it’s as beautiful as it is terrifying. You learn about all the things that are possible with software, and then you learn all the scary stuff that happens along with those amazing beautiful things. And so when I met up with these guys, I we really had to focus on like, let’s juice up sales and we built a tool. We put in a couple key components. And I’d really love to you know, Adam, a lot of people I know from listening to your previous podcasts might be in that first like five years of their business. And the one thing I know about that is like that’s typically where money is the tightest, and you’re trying to hit a squeeze rocks to get some blood out of a squeeze every dollar. And I really just wanted to talk a little bit about how the zip tech path and what we did and then how that led into on course, and really just some real stuff that you can do to amplify your sales efforts if that’s fair.
Adam G. Force 07:32
Yeah, sounds good.
Gessie Schechinger 07:34
So, Adam, yes, you this and this is probably a silly question, because I’m only a nerd the reads this stuff. But have you ever heard of the Toko report?
Adam G. Force 07:43
I haven’t read it. I’ve heard of it.
Gessie Schechinger 07:46
Yeah, so basically, the Toko is a organization that all they do is study outreach, and they study lots of things on like, how many emails until somebody engages How do you best like how many times touches lead to a sale. And they do all of these really cool data and analytics, and it’s over Twitter 42 businesses. But using some of that stuff, who am I really toyed along with in today’s market, you have to hit people on a lot of different channels because you’re not really sure how people are going to communicate. Back in the day, everybody was cold calling, and you’re just smashing through the nose dial for dollars. And the more people I call, the more sales I’ll get. Nowadays, it’s a fundamental waste of time, because you’ll spend two to three minutes and some automated phone tree like that times burned, you know. Whereas if you move to LinkedIn, and you can prospect there, you get a lot faster you have email, I would never recommend SMS for cold outreach, but it’s amazing on follow up and customer retention. And so you have all these different channels and levers you can pull and conducting, you know, kind of automated sequences in order to priming the pump. And so, for example, the total report tells us that an outbound lead is going to take you anywhere from 14 to 16 touches. And those touches have to be everything from called email to LinkedIn. Right? So you need a warm body to do the calling, but you don’t need one to do the email. And the LinkedIn can be fast. And there’s ways to do that personalized. So have you cut down the beginning part. So you’re only spending your time doing the calling that’s actually worth your time. And not just leaving voicemails all day? All right,
Adam G. Force 09:31
yeah, no, I love that. We’re all about automation in you know, setting up those sequences, and we always call it a digital conversation on our side. And this is what you know, we teach on our end for entrepreneurs just to just shift the perspective away from funnels, because when you think about it, it’s like back in the day we go door to door and we knock on the door, we can sit down for an hour and talk to somebody but today we’re not really doing that. And we’re kind of breaking up that one hour conversation into these little digital sounds. bites across the internet. And you got to kind of figure out how to get someone to go through step by step to hear hear that sales conversation, right,
Gessie Schechinger 10:07
Oh for sure.
Adam G. Force 10:09
That’s the tricky part
Gessie Schechinger 10:12
I know you got to be different. And actually, one of the funny story about that is, I was super fascinated the first time somebody sent me an email that had like a video embedded in it. I was like, This is the coolest thing in the world. We’re gonna crush it with this. Yeah. into your point, like you have to navigate and you have to know it’s applicable. I like literally, like pulled the cruise ship a different direction, like everybody first email, send off these video emails. It’s gonna be awesome. And then we looked at the analytics, and we realized that like, nope, actually, everyone just deletes their first five emails. And we’re not getting anywhere. But when we positioned it around the sixth or seventh one, like Oh, man, it was awesome. And we started getting, you know, way up as far as are open and click rates started increasing dramatically and so It’s all about the cool, shiny new object. And it’s also about when you use it.
Adam G. Force 11:04
Yeah, timing is important, right? And this is constant, a constant point of conversation for us is, you know, not only in the the steps you take as an entrepreneur, but even in the sales conversation, your timing of when to say things, when to do things is gonna matter a lot, because if you hit the person, and they’re at the wrong point in their journey, it’s just gonna fall flat.
Gessie Schechinger 11:27
Oh, 100%. And I know that like in previous podcasts that you’ve had, you’ve mentioned, you know, like, like sales systems, right? Like getting your sales system in place. You know, tools, like on course, because of the analytics and moving the messaging in different areas and places like it really helps you to kind of drill down and map and nail that sales system, so that then you can amplify and you can make those adjustments into new people in personnel and all that kind of stuff. And so you’re not burning money. I thought it was an excellent podcast. You have it on exactly who the guest was. But you talked a little bit about it’s kind of useless to hire a bunch of salespeople until you have a system that works. Yeah, I think that’s an excellent point.
Adam G. Force 12:11
Yeah, you know what? We did something about my co founder, I did a talk about delegation. And this quote just kind of jumped out from us. And we were like, you don’t hire a sales team. When when you need like, when you’re not getting sales, you hire a sales team when your sales are thriving. It’s like, if you don’t have the system working, you’re just gonna bring a sales team in to beat a dead horse that’s not working versus we have a process that works. We figured out our narrative and now you can really skyrocket the sales.
Gessie Schechinger 12:41
Yeah, don’t get like seven people trying to dig a hole with a spoon isn’t nearly as good as one guy with a shovel.
Adam G. Force 12:46
Exactly. Exactly. And it’s tough man. Like you mentioned, a lot of the folks who are listening are in the first five years, maybe even the first two or three and there’s decision overwhelm and you know, sad Which is shiny object syndrome. And it’s just so saturated. So it’s nice when you can get a little clarity on where to put your attention because we have limited attention but unlimited options.
Gessie Schechinger 13:13
That’s, that’s true and actually on the arm other companies called zip tech, custom development, and we build lots of applications for people. And one of the things that just like it just floored me was literally there’s a SaaS application to monitor your SaaS applications, which is just amazing. I got to show like, when they expire, how many licenses you’re using all kinds of stuff, but I was like to buy like we fit next level.
Adam G. Force 13:38
Yeah, that’s how I felt when they had storage units. I’m like, we have so much crap in our house now. We’re gonna just start expanding into another unit. Start putting more crap in there. That’s like SAS overload.
Gessie Schechinger 13:50
Oh, no. That’s the problem. The storage unit is like you realize like, you’ve just lived without that stuff for years. But to the the, the SAS is incredible and And one of the things that we’ve tried to do with encores is like we’ve consolidated a lot of tools, right? And so inside our tool, you instead of having multiple different things like we have the dialer, we have the equivalent to like a MailChimp, we have your general CRM functionality so that you can monitor contact management and pipeline, all that kind of stuff, as well as that sequencing portion. And, you know, one of the cooler things and, you know, I would encourage a lot of the people who are starting out because it’s a really cool way to differentiate yourself is SMS as like 100% open rate, like people for good or bad, they’ll always read their text. And one area that we found that it’s been crazy influential is customer retention. And a lot of times people look at these sales tools in their thinking like, Oh, I need to automate the front part. We all also need to think about How you can automate the second part because that could be a big deal. Because a lot of times, when you start out you have maybe have like a one or two like really key customers. And you can’t let those guys go right? Like they’re, they’re paying the power bills, the mortgage, like, hey, those guys are like get all your attention. But you still want to be catering to your customers and upsells and all that kind of stuff, make sure that they’re happy. And setting up automation to take care of the retention part is equally as beneficial. And we found that a lot of fruits came from that labor. And so we built in this SMS thing into the tool and it really use remarkable when like you have a depending on what you’re selling, but if you have a customer service person, whatever and they’re just fire off a quick text saying like, hey, how’d everything work? How is how you’re happy with your product, etc?
Adam G. Force 15:47
Yeah, so tell me a little bit like just ground us. I mean, we’re always looking to help people find tools that will simplify their efforts, consolidate things make it easier to have a automation and sales so as far as your as on course goes, let me just ask a couple questions just to give clarity for anybody listening because again, like we all we hit, we get hit with a lot of tools and you know you have you have the MailChimp, the active campaigns ConvertKit, all the CRM, the email platforms and all that stuff is, is this complimentary to that or supposed to replace that?
Gessie Schechinger 16:27
This is to replace all that is is designed to be we’re on the first of four releases. And it’s designed to if you’re an entrepreneur, setting up a business, you don’t have to go sign up for 10 different licenses. This is going to be your all in one sales platform. That’s our that’s our goal. That’s the part we’re trying to. We’re trying to hit.
Adam G. Force 16:50
Okay, so let’s pause there. So, as far as it goes, you’ll be able to set up different lists of people tag them for automation. kind of have branching logic and your email sequences Is that accurate?
Gessie Schechinger 17:04
Correct. And then in addition to that, you’d have the normal pipeline, you know, features functionality. And then we have a cool again, laziest sales guy in America, we have some cool extra features. So for example, if you prospect on LinkedIn, we have a Chrome plugin, where literally, if you just see a prospect your life, you click a little button, and it automatically creates the lead in for you, it throws him automatically into a sequence. And you’re just crushed right along, you can actually do big lists where you can just hit the chrome plug in and it’ll cruise down the list. So if you were really good filter, so we’re we’re really trying to cut out all kinds of time.
Adam G. Force 17:40
Yeah, and we’ve done a lot of prospecting on LinkedIn, we do some b2b work as well. And there is I mean, it’s a powerful tool and I forget I was using some other plugin to to see I can help you get people’s like emails and see the list of people and all the information they’re about and stuff. That. So it sounds like you are helping extract important leads and save them into the system from from LinkedIn.
Gessie Schechinger 18:09
Yeah. And I think that if anyone’s ever tried to prospect on LinkedIn, the one of the first things that they’ll find is like, let’s say that you went through 100 people, right? You’ve sent messages to all these other people. And then good luck scrolling back through your inbox to try to find that first guy, because that thing just like goes over and over and over. And so what the problem we fixed was like, Okay, well, that’s crazy annoying. And so we ended up putting this thing and so it just it sets a follow up tax and then just copy that URL into the LinkedIn URL so that you can go hit and get straight back to them and then you know, where you where the conversation. And the other I would say cautionary tale is nothing is more transparent than templates and LinkedIn messaging. And so if I had advice for all of your audience and I have done a ton and ton and ton of Nobody’s reading two paragraphs of your message in LinkedIn. They don’t they do not think that you put that together yourself. They they know that you copy paste it. And so brevity is important. And being real, understanding what they’re doing make sure we call the two by two, you take two minutes to make two personalizations. And really just kind of drill in that way. And, you know, as cool as automation is use automation to do the brainless stuff as far as the reminding and doing some follow up emails, and there’s definitely a place for templates when written correctly. But really, you just want to trigger yourself to just always be doing the right thing at the right time.
Adam G. Force 19:41
Yep, makes sense. I mean, it’s it’s it’s that relevancy because I get I get a ton of LinkedIn messages from people and it’s always about, you know, can I get on your podcast? Can I be featured in you know, the magazine or whatever it might be. And then, you know, or or just random messages that are like you said, A couple paragraphs, and unless there’s something that is very relevant that I would see and be like, Oh, well, it really makes sense that you’re reaching out for this particular reason, it will catch my attention. But I would say 98% I look I barely even look at because I just don’t catch my attention with anything relevant.
Gessie Schechinger 20:18
Ya know, and that’s why it’s super, it’s really important to to do to do two things, right. The first is, take the time, make it personal. But also, people like back in the cold call days, people just straight up hang up on you, like they didn’t care at all. People are kind of nice on LinkedIn by and large. And so they’re being pretty nice to us to be nice with their time is what I tell all my guys and like I said, Let’s find people that we actually, we looked at their business and we have, you know, before putting anyone into an automated sequence. Like this is the biggest I think miss that a lot of people have is like, they’ll just take down like a huge list from like zoom info or someplace. They start pounding out stuff to the list, it’s like, you could be burning a lot of calories on people that have no need whatsoever. My advice is like, take the time to make sure you got a super good list. And then you can’t beat the heck out of those people. Because you know, like, like, they’re either your competitor is gonna drop the ball one day, and you’ll be there or something. But like, take the time in the beginning to really drill down that list because you’re putting a lot of horsepower behind that intelligence. And you want to make sure you get it right from the get go. And then you won’t have you know, people are asking me to do all kinds of weird stuff like, dude, I work for a custom dev shop. I’m not gonna hire a custom dev service. Like please give it a second thought before you reach out to me.
Adam G. Force 21:43
I surprised they even said anything. That’s interesting. We should get a little educational feedback.
Gessie Schechinger 21:51
As a guy who’s had to cold call most of my life I’m very pleasant. I believe in karma.
Adam G. Force 21:56
Yeah, well, you know, and that’s, that’s the smart way to do it. For sure. Are you ready? Want to put your best foot forward and things tend to work out a little bit better that way. So tell me a little bit about just from your sales experience. I mean, I it sounds like on course, is in its early phases. Yes. He said it was first released right now.
Gessie Schechinger 22:17
That’s Yeah, yes. 100%. And so we’ve had the first release. And so we took on beta users in February. And then we’ve had about 200 or so users in it, that all through that we worked out all the bugs and kinks and anyone who’s listening that’s ever build software might be in the process of building software, they know how that stuff goes. Lots of lots of polishing because we like to put us Fs but like work through and then we launched in September. And not to you know, toot my own horn but beep beep we’ve we’ve had a bunch, you know, we ended up getting 500 new users and like two months in so it’s been pretty awesome. And our onboarding team and the only thing that I would say, is where how we’re trying to stand out is yes, obviously, I think it’s the greatest tool in the world, because I built it, right. But how we’re really trying to stand out is the fact that one we have a the two things that are always going to kill you with this stuff is a price. And then B, people are just like, I gotta take all my stuff and put it into a new system. Yeah, no, thank you. Right. And so we don’t do that. So we have a we have an in house implementation team. So you don’t have to find a third party. You don’t have to do anything. We have it all under one roof. We can go in and get you out of your old system into the new system. relatively painless. I like to say there’s no pain involved, but relatively painless way. We take care of all that for you. And then, as of right now, especially for all the people on the show. If you just say Change Creator, we’ll do $100 A month per user deal
Adam G. Force 24:02
$100 a month per hour per user, per user business owner, like the team that you’re saying, for users using the platform?
Gessie Schechinger 24:11
Yeah, per user. So if your company wants to do it, if just on the demo request, if you go to WWE, try on course, calm. And you mentioned Change Creator, that is about 20% off of our normal price.
Adam G. Force 24:25
Cool, cool. Yeah, I was actually gonna ask you if there is a trial, I know, a lot of times with this stuff, you know, hearing about and do all this stuff is great. But getting in there, and just getting a feel, seeing how it looks and how it functions is a huge step in that exploration phase for somebody when they’re making a big decision. I mean, if you’re just starting in your first year of entrepreneurship, this is easy peasy to migrate. If you even have anything set up yet. That’s easy. But if you have automations, and you have a 50,000 person list, and you got to move a bunch of stuff over, it’s a bigger decision, right? Like you said, so just having a that opportunity to check things out and get a real feel for it.
Gessie Schechinger 25:04
Yeah, I just want to make sure to clear so like, we will give any of your listeners a discount on the per monthly price. But we don’t do failure free trial, we will give you demos, we will show you the implementation plan. And for the first year, we provide training at no cost to you helping you set up all of the cool automation secret. Like the other big problem with these CRM systems is people only use like 30% of them. Because they don’t they don’t know what they don’t know. And selfishly, I’m talking to a bunch of business owners so we can all be real here. Yeah, right. You’re gonna get into the tool. And if I make it, if you know, it’s super well, it’s gonna get sticky to your business, you’re gonna like it and I’m gonna have you forever. Whereas if I just let you go willy nilly into the tool, you’d be like, Oh, well, you didn’t know about the seven features that might kind of help you. So we really believe in investing into our clients. Yeah, onboarding very heavily to make sure that everyone’s good. That’s why like, we hold your hand. So it’s basically a white glove thing throughout the first 12 months.
Adam G. Force 26:07
Yeah, I think that’s smart. I mean, it’s a good it’s a good thought process, meaning, you know, if you go in there, and you’re not really clear about how this can help, not just for where you are now, but where you can grow into using the features, there’s a lot then that could be missed, and you may not become, you may not use the technology and take advantage of it. So doing the demo is probably smart. So I think that that makes sense. That’s a good good philosophy, because you’re right, like you really then have an opportunity to see what everything is all about, and where you can go with it, you know,
Gessie Schechinger 26:42
exactly. And when I’m, you know, have my full sales guy hat on, I basically just tell people like this is the tool that’s going to help you grow so that you can hire more users. And so that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to get your business to grow so that we can charge it for our users.
Adam G. Force 26:59
Yeah. No, it’s it’s good. I like it.
Gessie Schechinger 27:03
Everything selfish at a certain level.
Adam G. Force 27:05
I mean, listen, if we can’t make money, we can’t help people, I always try to reposition the selling process because people get so scared of it because they think oh, sleazy sales. And it’s really you have the wrong relationship with sales in your mind. Because it’s really, the best thing you can do for a client or customer is sell because that’s how you transform their life. And what you guys are doing is offering a service to make someone’s life easier, meaning they get more sales, they get a they grow a stronger business, so that you should be pushing the sale, you know?
Gessie Schechinger 27:36
Absolutely. And we’re trying to, you know, exactly like do that TEDx type routine and give them you know, the the amplification that they can for their business for sure. And, again, nobody would buy anything unless you could solve a real problem. That’s that’s all it really moves the needle in my experience.
Adam G. Force 27:53
It is Yeah, I agree. So I mean, it all sounds really cool, man. I sounds like there’s a lot there to dig into. So Listen, anybody listening? Now this could be an interesting evolution in SAS to just help scale your business because it’s coming from the mind of a sales person who knows what you’re looking forward to, to grow the business. So, no, I haven’t played with it myself. So I can’t say anything specific. But we’re always looking here at Change Creator to just to see how do we get more efficient with our time and our money. And the tools that we use are important. There’s just so many of them that you know, you just gotta, you just got to be smart about where he’s doing. Well, because we did a big migration last year, from AWeber to Active Campaign for reasons of behavioral marketing automation. And, you know, Active Campaign is very big with the behavioral marketing. It’s been pretty freakin amazing. And it’s done wonders for our open rates, click rates and all that stuff. And it sounds like you guys offer a lot of those types of automation. Among other things, for managing the sales process and stuff, so could be pretty powerful. So I appreciate you sharing some of those insights and the discount opportunity for people.
Gessie Schechinger 29:09
Yeah, absolutely. Again, like, so we’re getting the word out. And, you know, we’re our, our CEO, actually, he exited two different software companies. And even on the other side of the business, where we have some people that are building applications that basically are their business. And sometimes we’re their dev team for the business. We get these guys in because we know it just helps them grow. And they’re just like, everybody’s just so tight on budget in those first couple years that you use something that is going to be affordable, and that can get you through the next you know, five to six years.
Adam G. Force 29:45
I mean, that’s it. That’s it cuz Yeah, and you gotta be willing to invest in these things. Like one mistake that we’ve learned, just you know, this is my second business and I learned early on is you’re afraid to spend money because you don’t know if you’ll make it back but then you end up just spinning your wheels for a while. Time and spending more money in the end, because ultimately, you do need the right tools to grow your business and you have to be willing to invest in yourself, you know, I’ve paid over, you know, four grand just to have a sales page, someone do copywriting for a sales page, you know, it’s like these things, if you want it done, right, and it’s an important piece of your business, then, you know, you just got to do these things, right?
Gessie Schechinger 30:21
And I tell people, this is again, you know, call it sales pitch, call it what you want, but I tell people, think of how much it would cost you to have an employee to do it. And then you can justify the cost pretty easily that way.
Adam G. Force 30:33
Yeah. And hey, listen, you’re a sales guy. When you’re doing this stuff, you got to look at ROI. What is the ROI is it’s am I afraid, I’m afraid of the expense? Well, that’s the wrong mindset. The mindset would be what’s the return on this? So if I get something like on course, what’s the potential ROI here if I actually take advantage of it right.
Gessie Schechinger 30:53
And as we all know, there is no ROI as great as email. And even with all the junk coins you get, and even vault The ones you’d like one of the things I do every single morning. I don’t know why, but I smile about it. Because I delete, like 20 emails, the very first thing I come to my computer, but some guys get past me, you know what I mean? They get to me, they’ll say something like, okay, maybe I do want that. Yeah,
Adam G. Force 31:16
it works. And I mean, it doesn’t work. And we’re very big on email. So that’s not going anywhere. And I’m curious about, you know, the chat bots on things like Facebook to help like with messenger, but also the SMS. And I’ve been sensitive about SMS technology just because it’s much it’s, it’s more personal than email is today. So it’s really for I think, when you’ve already built trust with somebody, so they’ve already raised their hand for your business, like you said, I think I’d feel more comfortable with very selective follow ups for them that they request.
Gessie Schechinger 31:50
Yeah. And it’s, you make a great point, right? Because again, it’s a gamble. It can totally rub somebody the wrong way. Like if I get these weird, like text messages, right? Normally, it’s just like, oh man, like, Who is this guy get out of here like you must think sometimes in sales. And I’m sure the sales guys out there, they could relate to this. So you’ve gone out and you’re calling on. Now you’re emailing back and forth. And they get that first text. We’re like, who are relationships move to texting now, we’re getting close.
Adam G. Force 32:20
It’s true. It’s true. Text Messages where I’m like, what the EFF is this? Like, who are you stop? Like, why are you in my personal like, this is for family and friends. You know?
Gessie Schechinger 32:29
Like, sorry, homie, we’re not there yet.
Adam G. Force 32:33
Yeah, it’s like, it’s like, well, yeah, it’s exactly yeah, we’re not there yet. But yeah, these things all its timing and, and being smart. And I guess one thing I always like to ask people in the sales space and we’ll wrap up here so I can be respectful of your time. is, you know, telling stories, like how important have stories been to giving clarity to people and getting people to understand you know, and pull them across the finish line.
Gessie Schechinger 33:00
So I, at when I was at Barry global, I did one of the sales trainings. And as a part of that sales training, we talked about how a story was 1000 times more memorable than just throwing up facts of people. Right. And so here’s a classic example. And hopefully this is relevant to the conversation or the question you’re asking. Sure, you know, as an example, it’s like, our plant is five miles from your facility. You know, like, that’s a great stat and they can allude to it. Or, you know, the alternative is like, hey, Adam, you know, I gotta be honest with you. I had this customer two weeks ago. He’s right down the street because our plant was eight miles away. He was an emergency. We got the order over right there. lickety split, same day, blah, blah. Like, you can see how the two messages are a little bit different one like one like you’re like okay, I see how this advantage plays out. And So moving some of that narrative stuff into a story is extremely helpful. And it just makes relatable people just remember stories better.
Adam G. Force 34:07
Oh, yeah. Oh, they do. So depending on where you are in that conversation, like where somebody is, you might need to tell a certain story to help them understand. So if they have some objection about not having the time, you might tell a story about how somebody used your, your product and ended up freeing up a lot of time, right? Oh, okay. So meaning I should make the investment then it’s not that. They might say, I don’t have time to learn something new, but in the end, it actually solves that problem, right.
34:35
100% Absolutely. Yeah.
Adam G. Force 34:38
Awesome, man. Well, listen, I appreciate your time here today. Any final messages for young entrepreneurs? I mean, trying to get their sales rockin and rollin.
Gessie Schechinger 34:51
The last thing I would say is that the old adage for sales was 75% of the job is showing up. You got to be there to get the yes With the tools today, go out and find things where you literally only have to do the 25%. Now, because 50% of the showing up, the follow up all those things is getting done for you. And so don’t be hesitant or fearful of the tools don’t worry about, you know, depending if especially if you’re in a high velocity sales situation, I highly recommend Rhea to do lots of selling to lots of customers. In order to build your business, you’ll have like just four key ones. When you’re doing that kind of stuff, don’t be afraid of the automation. And also don’t lose your personal touch. Just because it’s templated template or something that doesn’t mean it can’t be in personal. It doesn’t mean you can’t hear your voice through it. If you talk like an attorney and avoid can an email message. Like it’s not if you say Hey, what’s up Adam? How’s it been? Like, you know, it’s gonna be a lot better than just trying to throw up some random facts about your company.
Adam G. Force 35:57
I love it. Be yourself. Be authentic. People do want to know what you’re all about, like, why are you doing this? Like, why? What’s in it for you? Everyone always says that the customer wants to know what’s in it for them, which is true. But they also get to you and say, Well, what are you? Why are you doing this? What’s in it for you? Because you know what I mean? Are you shady? Are you real?
Gessie Schechinger 36:16
Well, yeah, that’s like, it’s like, hey, I want you to get involved because I think I could turn your company so big that you go for two users to 100 users, and I want to ride that train. Like that’s what I’m trying to do for your company. I’m trying to suck more money out of you. Boy, I suck money idea, you’ve gotten way bigger. So that’s really what we’re trying to do. I love that man.
Adam G. Force 36:34
Well, and on that note, appreciate you sharing and sounds like you have a really interesting product that is doing well so far. And let’s give one last shout out where people find you. And so they can learn more. And what that that discount opportunity was in case anybody wants to check it out.
Gessie Schechinger 36:54
Yeah, no, thank you very much. So if anybody’s interested, just go to try on course dot COMM And then also in LinkedIn, it’s on course sales engagement platform. You can look us up there. We’re also like on everything, Twitter, Facebook, all that nonsense. But you can find us all there. And then again, if you mentioned something to the SDR that helps you with that request. Just say like, Oh, I heard about him on the Change Creator, podcasts, it will make sure that right now we’re typically at 125 bucks, but for you guys to do for 100 bucks.
Adam G. Force 37:29
Got it. Awesome. All right, man. Appreciate your time, Jesse. We’ll be in touch and talk soon.
Gessie Schechinger 37:36
Hey, Adam, thank you so much. I really enjoy your podcast. It’s fantastic. And, you know, it’s great. I learned all kinds of business stuff from you. But then I also realize that there’s stuff like pig island in the Bahamas. There’s all kinds of weird stuff that you can get from this podcast, in addition to the education, so that’s great.
Adam G. Force 37:54
Awesome, man. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to Join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag Comm. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.
