I’m The Boss Man
Today, I thought I would do something special and talk about a YouTube video that changed my life. No, I’m serious, it feels silly to say, but the video above should be the Bible for anybody doing outbound sales.
Some context:
Jimmy “Pretty Boy Floyd” Mataya is a professional pool hustler (if you rewatch The Color Of Money, you’ll see him in it). The video above is a four minute compilation of a much longer video that he made. You can find the whole thing here.
When you watch the four minute video, you’ll find yourself laughing at the guy. He sounds like a real idiot. Part of that is the editing of the video - but, I assure you, part of that is just him.
I’m a pool player, not a heavy weight boxer
And he’s not a polished executive either. But what he is is someone who knows his craft incredibly well. And I believe it’s always important to listen to those people - because they can impart serious wisdom that you can use on your own craft.
You’ll start watching the video to laugh at him, but as you watch it more and more, you’ll realize… wow, he is really on to something here. I’ve probably watched it over a hundred times. The first ten to twenty - I was at a circus, laughing at a clown. Then after that, I was like a disciple at the feet of Buddha.
(I would also recommend watching the full video to get the context of what he’s talking about. You can skip the second half, which is just a weird reenactment of him hustling someone at pool.)
So, for today’s post, I want to go through this video and talk about how his different quotes apply to outbound sales.
Trophies
What can you do with a trophy? Collect dust, that’s all you can do with a trophy.
Oh, you’re going to put a trophy up for collateral? Yeah, well, the guy at the bank doesn’t think so, and I don’t either.
The guy hates trophies!
This reminds me of an interview question that I heard that John Bogle - the Founder of Vanguard - used to ask, “do you want to be right, or do you want to be rich?”
If someone said “right” then they wouldn’t get the job.
When it comes to everything in life, we can find ourselves holding on to our ego. We care a lot about whether or not other people like us, we care about our “success metrics,” we care about saving face, we don’t want to “be a bother.” If someone tells us to go fuck ourselves, it hurts our feelings.
These are all trophies. And all they can do for you is collect dust. The guy at the bank doesn’t care about your positive response rate, and neither do I.
There’s only one metric that counts when it comes to writing cold emails: cash. How is this email going to lead to closed revenue? How is this email going to lead to the right closed revenue? The type that we’re not pulling down our pants to get a deal with no margin. The right type of logo that we can slap on our website to get other customers.
A lot of people say they want to get closed revenue, but they end up beating the champ in Shambukawa County.
NG, my friend, No Good!
Cash
Play the guy who’s got the cash!
If you follow a lot of cold email hucksters on Twitter, you’ll see a lot of them posting their “receipts” - meetings that they got with this great sequence that can be yours for only $150!
But when you dig deep into the meetings that they’re bragging about, you’ll see the same thing: Marketing Managers, low level Directors, etc.
“But we got a foothold in the company, and we’re working our way up!”
NG, my friend, no good!
When you cold email a company, email the people who have the cash. The Budget. The Authority. And convince them that they have a Need and give them a Timeline. That’s BANT for you, baby, and it’s how all leads are qualified in real sales orgs.
If you spend time talking to some low-level dipshit, you’re going to be wasting that time. You’ll have your trophy (“I got a meeting!”), but you won’t have any cash. They can’t spend, so why are you talking to them?
More seriously: one thing you find when you do outbound sales is that the Managers and Directors of the world don’t even understand the priorities of the business. Why would they? Their success is tied to arbitrary metrics, not to a real P&L.
It’s like being a door to door salesman and pitching the house’s toddler on some new light fixtures. Sure, the toddler might fall in love with them and harangue his parents… and you might eventually get a sale or two from it.
But you’ll be wasting your time, which is better spent with the people who have the cash.
CASH! That’s where it’s at with me. You can have the trophies
Ed
‘Who’d he play?’ ‘Well, he played Ed.’ ‘Who won?’ “Well, Ed won.’ ‘Ed WON!?!? Ed’s the worst player in here! How did Ed win?’
‘There’s that sucker that lost to Ed!’
If you’re one of those hucksters I mentioned earlier, you might listen to this clip and say, “see, you should start at the bottom - Ed - and work your way up.”
But that’s misunderstanding Ed, and that’s misunderstanding Jimmy. If you had that reaction, let me tell you: I won’t be bringing you with me when I’m eating lobster and caviar.
The point of the Ed clip is value.
You lose to Ed so that the other pool players think you’re a sucker. They think you’re a rube. They think they can take advantage of you.
Translation: they think they can get a good deal from you.
The first thing that Jimmy does when he walks into a pool room is communicate value to his prospects. He lets them know, “you play me, you can make a lot of money.”
And that gets his prospects salivating. They line up to play him, because they think they’re going to take him for a ride.
When cold emailing your prospects, you should communicate the value of your service so they’re salivating over you in the same way.
“Oh, you’re only going to charge me $5k a month for this? What a sucker! I would have paid $10k! $20k! $50k!”
When you get people that hot and bothered about you, when they think you’re a rube that they can take advantage of, then you can start closing some real deals. They’ll think they’re pulling one over on you, and you’ll be depositing cash at the bank.
Or, you can keep your trophies. You can feature dump in your email. And then you can pull down your pants and give a 50% discount.
But you should know by now what Jimmy and I have to say about trophies, so say it with me:
NG, my friend: NO GOOD!
Tyson
I don’t wanna win fifty million dollars if Tyson is waiting for me in the back alley!
This a simple, but powerful warning against Pyrrhic victories.
Oh, you hustled everyone in the bar, that’s great - now they’re going to go, kick your ass and take their money back.
They’re not going to leave you alone until they know they got that watermelon that’s in your pocket, sitting in their pocket!
I alluded to this earlier: there’s a lot of ways you can fill the top of your pipeline with bullshit.
You can email low-level rubes who can’t buy anything.
You can trick people into meeting with you.
You can talk about something other than value - so you have a bullshitter on the call.
That’s great, you got those meetings.
Did you get any cash from it? No, all you got were some trophies.
NG, my friend: No Good!
Now, let’s even say you even close some of those deals. Congrats!
This has happened to me before in my sales career. You shoehorn a customer who’s not a great fit into your product, but you still got that sweet signature.
What happens?
You have to spend half your time in implementation, only for them to churn, and they don’t pay half their contract. Or worse, they ask for their money back.
That watermelon that you thought was in your pocket, is now in theirs.
NG my friend: No Good!
You can solve all of these problems by making sure that the top of your funnel is well targeted. You’re going after the right personas with the right message and you know there’s a good fit.
Other people might have a bigger pipeline, but you know that’s just a trophy. You’ll end the day with more cash in your pocket.
And that’s all the guy at the bank cares about.
That’s all Jimmy Mataya cares about.
And that’s all I care about.
You can keep the trophies.
Stroll out, and come back next time