Josh Fedie is the Founder and CEO of SalesReach. After 20 years of working in both sales and marketing roles, and immersing himself into the world of digital product development, he decided to create a better system to help business development representatives create personalized experiences for their prospects. With the belief that trust and velocity are closely aligned and that organizations are more successful when marketing and sales teams work together, he launched SalesReach in 2017 to “Build a Better Buying Experience”. In just a few short years the company has earned the business of global brands like WeWork, Workday, and Google and successfully closed 1.5M in funding
Welcome to Monster chats presented by Monster VoIP where we share the tools methods and best practices the business leaders use to build new connections strengthen relationships and impact sales in organizations of all shapes and sizes if you have any questions that come up during today’s episode please text them to 424.378.6966.
Collin Mitchell:
Today we’re going to be talking with Josh Fedie from sales reach about how to be compassionate and empathetic in sales during the pandemic how sales reps can start building their personal brand and how companies that they work for, can support them in building their personal brand. I’m Collin Mitchell the host of Monster Chats and the founder of Monster VoIP, today we’re talking with Josh Fedie, Josh de is the founder and C. E. O. of sales reach, after twenty years of working in both sales and marketing roles and immersing himself into the world of digital product development he decided to create a better system to help business development representatives create personalized experiences for their prospects with the belief that trust in velocity are closely aligned and organizations are more successful when marketing and sales teams work together he launch sales reach in 2017 to build a better buying experience and just a few short years the company has earned the business of global brands like WeWork, Workday and Google successfully closed a 1.5 million in funding. Josh welcome to Monster Chats tell us a little bit about yourself.
Josh Fedie:
Thanks, yeah, well I mean I think you basically summarized that there I I gave you an entire chapter on my life to start this podcast outlet but, yeah, I mean, some of the things I’m really passionate about are entrepreneurship, starting businesses, personal branding, sales and marketing, are just, they’re not so much what I do for a living they honestly are kind of just hobbies of mine I just think that I’m really passionate about so I’ve always worked in both sales and marketing roles in my career and I’ve saw the in fighting that happened between those teams from literally both sides, and I was just kind of baffled on why these two teams weren’t coming together more and why wasn’t easy for these teams to come together more, what’s funny is that we’re seeing it, those companies are coming together and it’s really fun and there’s a lot of technologies that are being built to help support that synergy in that collaborative nature that need to exist but we wanted to be a part of that so that’s why in the team built our product sales reach, to just kind of help bring those teams together and help enable customer facing teams to create better digital experiences for their clients, try to eliminate that really bulky B2B buying process that exists right now if anyone listening is ever made a purchase in their consumer life and then the next day got in the office and try to make a purchase on their business life there’s a huge difference between the two and it doesn’t have to be that way it doesn’t have to be so clunky and challenging in the business space all the same technologies that are utilized in the consumer space has to be leveraged in a business space we just have to get things there so that’s what we’re here for that’s what we do.
Collin Mitchell:
Yeah, awesome and I’m a sales reach customer so I love the product and you know I think it’s something that really. I mean something that I really found fascinating but it was like you know when there’s multiple people involved in the decision-making process right and you have to send that email with the slide deck and the case studies and the proposal and hope that everybody gets to see that and you know also whoever you engage with, is it going to get that personal aspect that you had maybe with the person you’re engaging with, right? so on the sales reach you drop the video you have everything that they need and can be shared with everybody who’s involved in making that process which is amazing.
Josh Fedie:
Yeah I mean I think you’re talking about the two traps that we fall into as sales professionals right now, trap number one is that we assume that we’ve built this incredible relationship with the one point of contact that we have and that that person is going to really become our advocate to the team and saying our praises and present everything the way we want to present it right we fall into this trap were we believe that we’re we have, but you know what the other vendors have a good relationship with that person as well and at the end of the day you know they’re going to do the best job that they can but things are going to be forgotten and things aren’t going to be presented exactly the way that you would have presented them, if you were in that room and it’s true there is seven to nine people that review every single deal before moves forward and when you think about the fact that you likely have only talked to maybe one or two of those people before they make that final decision you have to do things to make it simpler for them to bring it to the team and have the team review what they want you to review but the other trap that we fall into as sales professionals is the call and answer, for years people have asked us for things, right? the way it works is they reach out to us however they do, they call us or they fill out a form on our website or whatever it is but they reach out to us and they ask us for things and we send them those things and then they ask us for more things we send them those thing and we feel like we’re doing our job because they asked and we answered but the problem with that is we’re not organizing this in any way we’re being reactive for not being pro active we’re not actually helping them because all we’re actually doing is giving them more clutter that they have to sit through and makes sense of, before they feel comfortable making moving forward and making a deal with us, and so that’s something that whether you’re utilizing our software or in your other sales process using any softwares or whatever it is always be thinking “am I making it easy for my prospect to review the information that’s mission-critical? for them to move forward with me, because you have to remember they’ve assembled their own information off your website they’ve done their own homework, and then you came into the picture and you through even more on top of that we’re building a cake right now we’re like four layers deep up all this information and now it’s time to sit down and eat that cake it’s time to sit down and like make a decision and they’re going “what am I supposed to be paying attention to here?” “I got this stuff on my own and this felt good until the sales rep that sent me this stuff and then this kind of felt good and I’m looking at all the stuff and none of this really makes sense anymore and now I don’t have confidence”
Collin Mitchell:
And even if the sales rep even remembered to send them everything that they asked for, right?
Josh Fedie:
Right! many times we don’t, honestly like there’s so many balls in the air during the sales process especially if it’s six to twelve months right we might think we had sent something and maybe we didn’t and, you know, none of us are leveraging our C. R. M.’s the way we should, right? across the board that’s a statement I can make no sales rep is embracing their C.R.M. the way they should, sales reps take C. R. M.’s for whatever reason, right? and I don’t know if it’s because they feel like it’s their boss fine on them or if it’s just to cover some of their day I personally think it’s because it’s not customer-facing it doesn’t really help them move the needle because the customer doesn’t see all these great notes they’re taking, right? so they kind of feel like this is a wasted effort when they could be doing other things but regardless, yeah, it could be forgotten.
Collin Mitchell:
That’s a whole another episode we could go into, right?
Josh Fedie:
I don’t know if I want to get on that bandwagon but yeah I mean yeah, it absolutely could be.
Collin Mitchell:
Yeah, so, you know, we’re talking about, you know, how to sell during this time during the pandemic, you know, what everything is going on we’ve now been extended, you know, the state home orders have been extended, more stayed home orders have been initiated, you know, how do we sell during a time like this?
Josh Fedie:
Yeah and if you can’t tell. I’m in my home office right now, that’s why there’s bicycles behind me in the lighting isn’t as good as it usually is when I’m in my office I miss my office like crazy I have my office perfectly set up for my needs and here I am in our home office we’re just literally yesterday my daughter was taking a piano lesson behind me because the music room is as well as in my office and she was taking a piano lesson over zoom while I was trying to edit a video, these are things that we haven’t had to be faced with…
Collin Mitchell:
I saw pictures of that on LinkedIn.
Josh Fedie:
Yeah it’s, it was a real story really happened but yeah I mean we’re also in from home and and, you know, that poses some challenges in itself I think number one sales is a very collaborative game that work in and I think that a lot of sales people like to take way more credit that is due for the deals that they landed and they think “all I’m doing it’s myself” like “I landed that deal” “I landed that deal” and I think that this is causing a lot of sales professionals really reflex and realize that you know there’s a lot of people responsible for those deals you landed, there’s a lot of important people in different groups within your organization that are helping you land those deals and I think we’re starting to realize just how involved all those different people in our teams are to moving that needle because now that we’re dispersed and distributed it’s harder to stay top of mind with them it’s harder to have a quick conversation even though they’re one phone call away it’s for some reason harder to have that conversation with people that we’ve never had to have conversations with in that way even though that’s the way we talk with our prospects all the time we’ve never not been able to just not walk down the hallway and talk to people that we have a quick question for right you get a quick answer so that’s been a bit of a challenge on that side.
Collin Mitchell:
So some people are saying that there’s actually some, you know, I hate to use this word but there’s some benefits to the current situation like some people are easier to get a hold of because there’s a lot of folks at home not doing as much picking up their phone wanting to have some sort of connection with people because they’re not around others so you know, contact rates are increasing the playing field is more level right, nobody has home-court advantage anymore because nobody can do face to face sales it’s all phone video you know using sales tag, everybody is in the same boat nobody has any advantage over you know their competitors.
Josh Fedie:
Yep, I would say people do have an advantage over their competitors and the people that have the advantage of their competitors are the people that were in a meeting and learning to use digital technology in their sales process long before this ever happened I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve had recently that started the minutes late because everyone’s trying to figure out how to use Zoom, this is a huge problem right I mean the fact that people don’t already know how to select their video recorder and they’re audio recorder from Zoom or a Google chat or whatever you’re using right this is a huge problem how…
Collin Mitchell:
About the equipment, right?
Josh Fedie:
No, it’s absolutely insane but…
Collin Mitchell:
Have you heard of Zoom Booming?
Josh Fedie:
Yeah, I’ve been Zoom boomed because I did a quick impromptu happy hour and I posted it on Twitter and I had three people come on that inform me how much they hate me and I don’t know what country they were calling from and then they tried to share screen which quickly denied because I can only imagine what that would have been, but regardless, yeah, I mean I think that there, the playing field is not completely leveled the people that have had a growth mindset that have embraced these tools and already learned these things they are light years ahead, right? and now everybody scrambling to catch up and it’s starting to realize that, you know what, this is not gonna be a two-week thing this is not gonna be a four-week thing this is going to be the new normal for quite a while now and we need to learn how to use the stuff and double down and I think that, you know, to go back to your earlier question about leading with empathy, one thing I’m noticing and I hope anyone listening to this pays attention to this and looks at their own activities to see if they are doing this. There’s a lot of fake empathy happening out there, and what I mean by that is that I’ve seen a lot of emails come through my own inbox and I’ve heard other people and organizations talking about these messages, things that they are like pushing on their sales team or they’re like “Hey” in the subject line ask them how their family is doing and I just want everyone to really think about that if you actually have a great connection with your prospects if you really do have a great connection with them, asking them how their family is doing that’s solid, that’s solid, right? absolutely on that, if this is somebody that you’re just reaching out to, on a cold outreach or very look warm outreach and you don’t know anything about this person you’ve never asked me about their family you don’t know if they have children or if the parents are even alive or any of that stuff and you’re putting in the subject line “I hope your family is doing all right” that’s fake empathy right there.
Collin Mitchell:
I’ve seen exactly what you’re talking about, so the messaging is the same but the subject is different the first line is different right not a lot has changed right I mean people need to be selective, what I hear you’re saying is people need to be selective of who they are reaching out to and what they’re saying.
Josh Fedie:
Yep but you do, it’s a good idea to acknowledge the situation we’re in I don’t think that spamming your message with COVID-19 is a great idea but acknowledge in that you know what businesses are making changes they are maybe not moving forward with all the things they were saying they were going to move forward four weeks ago it’s okay to check in with your prospects and see you know have any, has anything changed on your end? are you still planning to move forward with the initiatives that we had teamed? you know important to you one or even two months ago or are things get a table? it’s good to be there for them but what I think is the best thing right now and I saw this recently on LinkedIn, Danielle Disney he put up a post about the difference between social selling and social marketing and I thought this was absolutely brilliant right now I’m doubling down on social marketing and building my personal brand because I want people I want to bring as much value as I possibly can to people to the content that I produce on LinkedIn, my audience for my product is on LinkedIn, exclusively like sales professionals are my audience they are all over LinkedIn so it is in my benefit to just bring value on those channels build my personal brand well also marketing my business in a value-driven sense so that they understand what I’m bringing to the table and when they need it they will proactively engage with me I don’t need to proactively be engaging with them so much right now in my mind now is the time to be doing more of the social marketing and a little less for the social selling the pieces of the social selling that I do think people should be doing definitely don’t be sending out the contacts with the immediate sale like everyone’s talked about that we don’t need to do that anymore, but the part of the social selling that we should be doing is look for other people on the social space channels that are an ideal customer fit for you and start interacting with them in the chat right start interacting with them in comments, liking, commenting, because again this is your way to the top of mind when they do have a need for whatever product or service you have, but, right now sales professionals at least in my opinion we just need to be available but we can’t be pushy because everybody’s got so much stuff going on in their life right now the last thing they want is somebody really hard selling them.
Collin Mitchell:
Right now so let’s go back for a second because this is, you talked about building your social brand right which is something, your personal brand on social, right?
Josh Fedie:
Yep.
Collin Mitchell:
And I know that this is something just from conversations we’ve had that you’re super passionate about right so tell me like your sales rep who is now at home you know doesn’t have a lot of experience on video doesn’t have a lot of experience with LinkedIn, how do they get started? how do they know what they can or can’t do? what their company will even allow them to do? and, tell me about that.
Josh Fedie:
Yeah so my advice in this space you know don’t believe this a hundred percent right you’re going to have to like ball out what kind of company do you actually work for well my advice is to just get started if you think that you have something of value based on your role in your organization or what you do in your personal life and you think that your clients or prospects or customers on your organization would like knowing this about you, start telling those stories bee a storyteller, bring value to people, it doesn’t necessarily have to be specifically about the company that you’re working for that’s not what personal brand is and a lot of people get this mixed up when they think well anything I put on LinkedIn has to be about my business anything I put on Instagram has to be about my personal anything that goes on Twitter could be a funny thing doing my business or a personal whatever no it doesn’t have to be any of that stuff but what you should be doing is letting people know who you are as a person what you believe in what you’re passionate about what you will stand for what will not stand for those sorts of thing those are important because people work with people they like and people work with people that they trust and they’re not going to like or trust you if they don’t know who the heck you are as a person that’s pretty simple right so just get started now what I would say is for organizations patient want their employees to do that because the the staff are out there, If I were working for a company right now I would have ten times the following on my social channels that that companies company page has on any social channel that would be the same for you Collin it’s the same for anyone that is a global stat that people are engaging with people on social channels they don’t engage with brands social channels so the best way for a brand to engage with their potential customers are customers on social channels is to engage with them via their employees by enabling their employees to be better about being proactive and creating that narrative and that personal brand and telling their stories and companies really need to take a backseat they need to take a step back marketing can’t get in the way of this marketing cannot say you can’t say that or those pixel dimensions were incorrect on that logo or that color was slightly off it should be like this and you can’t don’t get in the way of people let them do those things it’s only going to benefit your business in the long run but this all starts at leadership it all starts with leadership if your organization wants people to do a better job to feel like they are allowed to go on a social channels to build their personal brand at this is something that the organization support it has to start at the top the people at the top need to start doing these things themselves that’s what gives everyone else in the company permission to do it themselves as well.
Collin Mitchell:
Yeah now we’re gonna take a quick second to tell you about what we do here at Monster VoIP so what we do is we save companies anywhere from thirty to fifty percent off their current business phone bill well providing them more value and more features if you want to learn more about Monster VoIP you can text us at 424.378.6966 so getting back to what you were saying Josh you know you said that it starts at the top right so if leaders are. you know, being an example that it’s okay to build the personal brand via social media right but there’s a lot of leaders that are not doing that right so your average sales rep at your small to medium-size company that doesn’t have a leader that’s doing that how do they get started what would you suggest.
Josh Fedie:
Yeah, so and it doesn’t have to be the C. E. O. right but I think that every company needs to appoint somebody at a high level in the organization that is comfortable with these sorts of things this is why companies have brand evangelist, right Guy Kawasaki was one of the first brand evangelist right for Macintosh computers and those kind of roles are really important I was recently on the customer experience podcast with Ethan Mute he is the brand evangelist for pam bam video right having those brand evangelist those are the people at the top that are kind of creating that content wrapped in their real house that’s in their human nature to do it you just need to have somebody that is high profile that’s doing it that’s it and then that person needs to be encouraging all the other people that are doing that, that person needs to act as a coach so I do this a lot with my team as well where recently, my marketing manager said Hey I want to start a I want to start a podcast and I said cool what do you want to start a podcast about and he said well I want to do a podcast I’m a marketing guy so I wanted a podcast about marketing and I said okay so at the end of the day it, in a way it’s going to help our business because yeah we talk to marketing teams as well but this is more of a passion project for you and I fully embrace that and understand that and I want to encourage that because you’re building your personal brand in anyway is gonna help my business so here’s what I’m gonna do for you I want you to record your first episode all by yourself I want you to explain the topic what this podcast is going to be I want you to talk for ten minutes straight and I want you to send that to me when you’re done and if you send it to me and I listen to it and I’m entertained and I think that this is something that has some wings and if you can tell me your first tagged guest I’m gonna buy you all the equipment you need to do this yourself from your home or from your office while you’re here without having to like leverage any of my production studio and having to borrow time out of my office to do it right I want to give you everything you need to do this and run with it but my expectation before I’m gonna invest in that is that you need to show me that you’re actually going to make this because as you know when you’re getting into podcasting the hardest thing is to just A- figure out what the heck you’re gonna talk about. B- Is the try to figure out now how do I grow this right so what is the topic of this number one and how many different directions can I go with this because a lot of people have these really narrow ideas and they get to their third episode and like ninety percent of podcast end after their third episode because of this, because it’s like I reset everything I know about this I have nowhere to go right so try to figure out like how many different episodes could do, create a content calendar this is the same thing marketing agencies do for their customers all the time let’s create a content calendar so they don’t know what we’re gonna talk about when we talk about when it’s going to be released and if it’s really hard to do this if we can’t get past four, five ideas and we probably should do a podcast about this because if it’s hard now wait when we’re trying to talk about it, so…
Collin Mitchell:
Hopefully, there’s some leaders listening they can you know take some notes of your example there you know I think that’s a perfect example of leading by example and encouraging people to build their personal brand right which ultimately is going to benefit the company that they represent and unfortunately there is you know some companies that are blocking some of this stuff so you know if your sales rep and that doesn’t fit with what you want to do you know then maybe it’s not the right environment for you right.
Josh Fedie:
Yeah.
Collin Mitchell:
Do you agree with that or…
Josh Fedie:
Absolutely and I’m a big fan quitting the second that I realize that it’s not a good fit right so I mean if you look at my track record on LinkedIn you’ll see that there’s jobs there’s some jobs that I haven’t had for very long I’ll try to keep every job for at least a year but honestly the second I realize that something’s not a fit I get out of there because specially in sales you have that passion for what you’re selling if you don’t believe in the team the mission the dream the final product that is being created whatever it is whether it’s a hard product or you know software agency or you know whatever it is if you don’t believe in it selling it is gonna be hell every single day because every single day somebody’s gonna be reaching out to you and saying I need you to be the person that validates that I’m making the right decision moving for and you’re gonna have to lie and say yes, you’re making the right decision I have every confidence in my team we’re going to do everything that’s right for you and you are going to every day it’s going to tear you up and so the second that you know it’s not a fit for what your mission vision values are as a person then you have to move on absolutely.
Collin Mitchell:
Yeah and I just want to go back to one thing you mentioned as well for you know the sales professionals out there looking to get started with building their personal brand you know you mentioned that it’s okay to share you know personal things on LinkedIn and I know that you and I both believe in that and you know I saw somebody post something one time that they said you know stop complaining that LinkedIn is not Facebook, you know, business is personal you know business is now personal the business landscape has change is personal I think it’s totally okay to share you know personal on LinkedIn as long as that’s not all your sharing right mix it up give us a variety of stuff and I think that’s the best strategy just be yourself right.
Josh Fedie:
Yeah yeah I mean I think that what you should be striving towards is creating a full picture of who you are so I am of the belief that there is a channel for different types of calls right so I don’t put a ton of like family stuff on LinkedIn I do sprinkle in every once in a while because…
Collin Mitchell:
I think the picture of your daughter with the piano was the first personal post I have seen from you.
Josh Fedie:
I sprinkled in everyone smile and I do it kind of subliminally right but I do think it’s important that if someone only follows me or if I’m only connected to them on LinkedIn I wanted them have a full picture of who I am as a person because I’m nothing without my family it’s a huge part of my life however I do encourage people to follow me on Instagram Twitter those are the only other social channels that I use or my podcast right because if you follow me on those spaces I’m pretty intentional about the kinds of things I put on them I think that’s Twitter is a great place for humor I think that Instagram is a great place for family everyday life the kind of food I mean in the kind of cars I’d like to see I’m I’m big on cars me my and my son go to car shows all the time so if you go to my… is nothing but cars and food and kids that’s it right but it helps kind of like build out the full picture of who I am now if you’re only interested in me from a business perspective I want to honor that and that’s why I try to keep linkedIn more business professional but the people that follow me on linkedin that want to know who I am more than just a business professional what I do outside of business they’re the ones that will proactively followed me on other channels and I want to keep the message completely different on them so that they’re not getting the same message everywhere and they have a full picture why am.
Collin Mitchell:
Okay, awesome well we are out of time today Josh thanks again for the investment today and welcome to Monster Chats community. Before I let you go tell us something personal about yourself I know you already told us a lot but tell something that we don’t know what your favorite app, what’s on your playlist what are you reading you know what you’re going to do you after the state home orders lifted, anything.
Josh Fedie:
Yeah well, I’ll tell you one thing I so I’ve been building this business for the last three years and one thing that I’ve stopped doing is riding these beautiful bikes that I have behind me and working from home here has been a constant reminder that I need to get back on the bike and so I’m gonna start doing that real soon here because I don’t have to wait for the state home order to be lifted to get out and get some exercise today these are three of the most beautiful bikes you’ve seen in your life back behind you right here…
Collin Mitchell:
I wanna see a video of Josh on the bike…
Josh Fedie:
The problem is these are road bikes which require full spandex nobody wants to see that so..Thanks for having me Collin this has been great.
Collin Mitchell:
Yeah awesome so Josh tell us what’s the best way for people to reach you anything else you want tell us about sales reach.
Josh Fedie:
Yeah. If anybody wants to get in contact with me if you send me a connection quest on LinkedIn then please just put in a note I’d love to know kind of what prompted it if you maybe you heard it here on Monster Chat wherever you came from I love to have a like a quick little note so we can start building a relationship that way you can always just reach out to me at josh@salesreach.io or if you just go to salesreach.io there’s a chatbot on there you can just say I want to talk to Josh on the chatbot…
Well they’re the job because the Josh by yeah we.
Collin Mitchell:
The Joshbot.
Josh Fedie:
We call it the Joshbot, with some glasses in a scruffy beard and then we thought you know it looks too much like you out and I think it was intentional honestly so they just decided to call Joshbot.
Collin Mitchell:
Yeah awesome all right if you’re listening to the podcast please subscribe review and share we’re listening welcome your feedback the show is for you we’d love to hear from you thanks again Josh appreciate it take care.
Josh Fedie:
Yeah you too bye.
Collin Mitchell:
Thank you for tuning in for another episode of Monster Chats presented by Monster VoIP where we share the tools methods and best practices that business leaders use to build new connections, strengthen relationships and impact sales in organizations of all shapes and sizes if you have any questions from today show and want to reach us directly please text to question to 424.378.6966.
