Winning The Outbound Sales Game with Thibaut Souyris

Full episode transcript

Alper Yurder: So today in the therapy chair We have Thibaut Souyris who is the CEO and founder of SalesLabs. Thibaut experiments with the best go-to-market and social selling tactics and shares very generously Which is 50,000 followers on a daily basis. In fact, that's how I got to know him

He has over a decade in sales and growth experience in companies like Applaus, Branch and M3 Learning and is featured in Sell Better, HubSpot and countless other blogs and podcasts. He's an advisor to AmpleMarket and he's the host of the B2B podcast. Now today we'll talk about his success, the joy, the pain and the journey to getting there. Also, I will share some very practical advice. I actually want to go over some of his recent LinkedIn posts on how to make it because it's top of mind for a lot of our listeners, obviously. Welcome to the show, Thibaut, how are you feeling today?

Thibaut Souyris: I'm feeling great. Thanks Alper for having me. And yeah, excited to dive into Sales Therapy. It's been a while since I didn't go to therapy, so I'm excited for that.

Alper Yurder: Really? Oh, where were you going before?

Thibaut Souyris: I used to go before I met my wife actually and I was always having problematic relationships and everything. I did it and I met my wife and that really solved something for me. So that was a... if you're feeling bad, don't be ashamed to go to therapy because it's the best thing you can do.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, I mean, it's the best gift you can give yourself. I agree. And the sooner the better, but I love that your wife has become your therapist now. Okay. That's a luxury that also cuts the expensive item.

Thibaut Souyris: Pretty much. Yeah, exactly.

Alper Yurder: All right, so Thibaut, I don't know if my introduction was good enough. If there's anything you want to add, we'll cover a lot of the journey today. So maybe we tackle them as we go. Um, generally I like to start the therapy with, um, you know, any good therapist starts with childhood and growing up years, I love to understand those early, you know, younger years, childhood and youth before the job experiences, et cetera, because that kind of shapes the person that we are. So let's hear it from you.

Sure, so any specific point when I should start, at what age should I start?

Alper Yurder: Whatever you feel like maybe you can start at the age of your boy because you have a 20-month-old baby I believe if you want start from there or wherever you like

Thibaut Souyris: Yeah, so 20 months is a bit early to recall. I can start so I can tell you a bit more about it. I was born in Geneva in Switzerland. And when I was four or five, we moved. So we were living at the border like a lot of people do. So both my parents are French. I was born in Switzerland. They were working in Switzerland but living in France. And at four, we moved to Switzerland, so not far. But we became real Swiss, let's say. And so I did my school over there. I had a really happy childhood over there. And when I was 11 years old, I got sent to a boarding school. So it was not because I was a bad boy or whatever. It's just Switzerland is a very nice country, and it's also a country that's very pragmatic. So what they do, they don't have crazy expectations, like in France where everyone has to be super highly educated and has to go to university. So at 12 years old, you have basically 80% of chances to go into a general kind of branch where you're gonna go and prepare to learn a job like a plumber, you know, like all these really useful jobs.

And basically, my parents who had a higher education didn't really want me to go and become a plumber. They really wanted me to become like, you know, to have a university degree and everything. So they moved me to a French private school at 11 years old. It was a boarding school. And so I was going every week, every Sunday, and coming back every Friday. And I did that for seven years. And that was pretty tough at the beginning, but these were really important years. Yeah, exactly..

Alper Yurder: You did that for seven years. You're basically like the child of the royal family or something, like the king child.

Thibaut Souyris: Yeah, or Harry Potter, basically, something like that you could think of. But yeah, that was not as hard as the thing you see in The Crown, but it was definitely a learning experience. And that young, it's a bit of a struggle, but then you learn a lot of things there.

Alper Yurder: I mean, I could barely put up with the bullying that I observed myself and I saw around me in high school. Like, I can barely think of boarding school. But at the same time, I guess the friendships become a little bit deeper with those you are friends with

Thibaut Souyris: Yeah, you know, it's more like you learn. So I remember every time I was leaving on Sunday, I was crying for a whole year every Sunday. And at some point you get tired of crying and you just start focusing on something different. So I think this changed a lot of things for me and it helped me really kind of when things are not working like I want, just stop crying and start fixing it. So that was really helpful for that.

Alper Yurder: Oh, I love that. Like, yeah, at some point you learn to man up in the traditional way of it. Actually, it's really a great way to put it. Like, at some point you stop crying. And I think I feel like that every other week in the founder job. I cry, I cry, and then I stop crying and I just man up and continue. Do you feel the same with your work?

Thibaut Souyris: Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's not the thing is, I remember my And that told me when I was really young, I think it was maybe 10 or 11, he said, you see, you know, in life, things will get harder and harder as you go. As the level increases, you're gonna have more work, it's gonna be more challenging, and it's gonna get harder. And for me, the hardest time I had so far was in boarding school. So everything from 18 to where I am right now has been easier. So it's more like, you get used to all these and you know that life is just a pendulum when things are going great and they're going bad to it and things will go fine.

Alper Yurder: Okay. Oh, I love it. This is actual therapy. I don't feel like going into work and business at all. This is really cool. So I'm glad that it's the only way for you. I think for me it started the only way. I started only after the age of 30 when I moved to London, like obviously university was very nice and all that, lots of fun, but my very first working years were very tough. I started as a strategy consultant at Bain, crazy hours, 2 a.m. every day, I was away from home, crying and then going back to work as you learn to do, like start to find another way. Did you have it hard in the beginning as well in your career or was it kind of fine for you?

Thibaut Souyris: No, so I started like, I did university in Montreal in Canada, and then I started as a QA manager, you know, for a small startup. And so I learned a lot of really good things. And at this time, I was also a co-founder in another startup where we wanted to revolutionize aviation, general aviation, you know, like laser aviation, and it didn't work because there was not really a real market. And it was just like, we did all the mistakes we could do. And so I learned a lot from that and basically I just have a bachelor's degree. pretty much uneducated to the standard of, for you, for example, you have like, I don't know, 20 masters to go and paint as a strategic consultant. I guess you must have been really good academically. For me, I was really bad at it. So I was focusing on my startup. So I learned a lot of things about business by making mistakes. And then I moved to Germany, where I did like my first kind of official sales role. And that was a really nice moment because I learned and I discovered about sales. And so it was really amazing. So yeah. My first professional years were really nice and really they taught me so many things.

Alper Yurder: Because you touched on me, I mean, yes, I've been successful, blah, blah. Like I had to earn a scholarship. I was a Turkish citizen living on a visa, so I needed the visa. So I had to be successful. So success is always driven by other fears and anxieties in my life. That's another topic. But for you, what I'm really curious about is like you've been moving between places. Now you're in Mexico. Is that what you told me? Am I wrong? Okay. Oh, Geneva.

Thibaut Souyris: Yeah, No, no, you're right. I'm in Mexico. Yeah.

Alper Yurder: So your life was Geneva in France and for those I'm very familiar with, you know, Geneva, the airport is one side is France, one side is Switzerland. So it's basically like being in both countries. Then you moved to Canada and then you came to Germany. Very, very different cultures. All of them are very different cultures. Like, did you have any highlights and lowlights of how you navigated those cultures?

Thibaut Souyris: So you see when you go and it's very different living in a country compared to going on holiday. When you go to a country, you always start with the honeymoon phase, and it's very nice, exciting, everything's new, the food is great. And then you get to a phase where you kind of get the blues and you're really sad of where you're coming from. And so I made this change like four or five times in my life, and so what's really interesting is that as time goes, you start learning about these phases of your life, or when you go to a country and you start living there, change and you know you just really get used to being a bit uncomfortable and really feeling how you'd say, yeah you start feeling at home everywhere and nowhere. So for me it's fun because I live the rest of the time of the year in France where I'm pretty much from in the south of France where I lived like my family is from and everything.

And actually I find that I really love living outside of where I'm from. I just really prefer being an outsider to a new, like another culture. And I just feel at home more where I'm not from basically. So it's kind of very strange, but as I've been changing and everything, I feel more at home in another country than in my own country.

Alper Yurder: Hmm, that's very interesting... I'm not sure if I have the same. It takes me time to get used to it. I lived in... You know, all over the place, Italy, France, Netherlands, US, and then now settled in London. I feel like home in London, which I've been for a decade, but it took a lot of getting used to. I don't think I'm as adapted as you in that sense.

Thibaut Souyris: Thank you. Yeah, for me that was really my experience on this. It's just, you know, when I saw you from Turkey initially, right?

Alper Yurder: Yeah, yeah, I'm from Istanbul.

Thibaut Souyris: Yeah, and so because what I found is when you come back to the place where you're from, a lot of the time people are very one-sided. So just for me the fact that in the south of France speaking English is very rare, very uncommon. So you see a lot of people have a vision of life which is very French and so for a lot of people they think our France is great, it's romantic, but people have really kind of really specific stress and problems and fears that are just you know...

Thibaut Souyris: stuff that you don't have in other countries. People just survive in other countries. Where in France we just are super covered and pampered. And so people are just complaining and relying on the state to solve their problems. And I'm like, you're so lucky. Exactly.

Alper Yurder: This wine is not good enough. That's the problem. My wine is not as good as the other one. Yeah. To be honest, now that you explain it, I completely agree with that. And I think this happens to everybody who lives abroad for a couple of years or whatever, they go back, they don't belong to either totally now, but it's in a negative way, they don't belong. But in a positive way, you actually belong everywhere, because you're adaptable. You know, you can find your way without that.

Alper Yurder: Going to your working life and your professional life. So you started that first proper SaaS tech experience in Germany. Can you walk us from there to there? Like how was life for you? How did you learn to navigate the world of tech sales and B2B sales?

Thibaut Souyris: Yeah, so I started at a company called Applaus and I was hired as a full cycle account executive to kind of grow the French market and so there was pretty much no presence in the French market and we weren't, it was a crowd testing company so we basically

Alper Yurder: you are a general manager without the titles.

Thibaut Souyris: Exactly, you know, expectations of a general manager, pay of an account executive. So, but I loved it, you know, I was very, that was very nice for me. So I landed here and I remember I was like, okay, I'm going to be a professional. Finally, I'm going to do work with people who are really mature and you will, you know, it's just going to be great. And actually I kind of landed in a group of friends, mostly guys. So it was the real kind of boiler room atmosphere, which was very, very nice at the time. So I'm very happy. I lived this. I would

Thibaut Souyris: I hate working in an environment like that, and a lot of people would hate nowadays doing that. But at this time, that was what I needed. So I made a lot of friends and I looked forward to it every day. I booked meetings, I closed deals, renewed deals, went to Paris to kind of go and see some customers. So these were some very foundational years in my life. And my manager was really, really somewhat very interesting, a bit of a sociopath, but he was so good at understanding human dynamics that he explained me many things and I really to kind of see his understanding of human politics and how people work in organizations. So I learned a lot, and I became a manager. So I managed the team, we went from zero to 2.5 million in AR and zero to 10 employees basically in the French market. And so that's what I learned a lot. And it was a really successful two and a half years for me. And then I moved to another company because you know, it's like normal cycles, you know, you go and then you just wanna.

Alper Yurder: The average tenure is if you're somewhere for two years, you're lucky. Um, but that boiler room experience, and I'm going to dive into that a little bit. It's funny. I think you had the training from your boarding school years for that anyway. But I was that boy. I was that boiler room, all boys, all boys boiler room experience for you. What do you mean by the boiler room? Boiler room.

Thibaut Souyris: So it's more you come in the office in the morning and then there's this kind of really strong camaraderie basically and so we were basically, it was a very successful few years for the company in Europe. So we were all kind of closing and there was this really healthy competition with people. So that was not always the case, but in most cases that was like that. And so we were, who's gonna close the bigger deal? Who's gonna ring the bell the stronger? And then we were partying together. And so it was,

when I started, so that was really amazing, 24. You learn so many great things, you meet so many great people, you create really strong bonds, so I made really good friends. I met my wife at work also, that was in the later years basically, but basically, so my wife is not my therapist, I just went to the therapist and then met my wife. So, yeah. And so, now that would be strange.

Alper Yurder: No, I didn't get that. I understood you didn't marry your therapist. But in a way, she is your therapist.

Thibaut Souyris: And so it was really nice because you had this very strong population. And it was, yeah, we were different cultures. I think there were like 18 different languages, cultures, or people from 18 different countries. So it was just really nice to get to know everyone. And in Berlin, you know, if you've ever been, it's just very, you meet a lot of international people and it's very exciting to do that. So that was really good. I would say it was, it would be really, it was really good for me. But if I was a woman going in there, I would have hated it. So that was a great place in another time, but I would never want to go back to something like that because you need to be a lot more inclusive whenever you're doing sales.

Alper Yurder: No, I get it. I think we've all been through that. And then the world also changes. This is almost like now almost 10 years ago. Time flies. And coming to today a little bit more in your current role, in your current role. So you're now the boss, you are the founder, you are the CEO, you are the man who's sharing his wisdom generously, actually not just the wisdom, but the trials and errors. Like obviously it's called the SalesLabs. 

Alper Yurder: So coming a little bit more back to today, obviously you have all this experience and wisdom, but you're not only sharing the wisdom, you're actually sharing the experiments. And that's kind of the idea, I guess, with SalesLabs. And that's what you say very openly, that you are trialing and experimenting and then sharing those experiments with your audience. How has that journey been for you? It's been five years or so you've started building it?

Thibaut Souyris: Yeah, it's been five years since I left my last job, maybe a bit more now. And yeah, so I came up with Sales Labs because it was one of the only websites that was a domain that was available for cheap saleslabs.io. And so I kind of worked with that. And also the concept of experimenting was really what I wanted to try. And so, yeah, I've been doing this for quite some time. At the beginning, I was a consultant. So if you had any problem about B2B sales, I could solve it, like implementing CRM training, coaching, documenting, whatever you want. And so I started realizing that. When you do that, you become a very kind of expensive, expendable employee. So people just pay you a lot of money because they want you to be there, and then you realize that the best way to make the money is to find a problem and become a part of it. And that's not really what I wanted to do. So I switched slowly to training and then doing online courses. And now I have 37,000 followers. I'm a top voice on LinkedIn because I've been posting for over three or four years now. And so now I have a much bigger audience and much bigger people who are, a lot more people who are seeing what I do. And so that's the idea is just to show what works in prospecting, what doesn't work for me, share my outcome, and people that can try these kinds of things.

Alper Yurder: Excellent. And in this section, I like to generally put you in the therapy chair. And I ask you like, why did you come to the therapy today? Which basically means what is the problem you're trying to solve about your business? And then I will actually put you in the therapist chair and we'll start talking about all the good stuff that you normally share to solve others' problems. But what is the problem you are trying to solve for yourself or for your business right now?

Thibaut Souyris: So for me now, what I'm trying to do, my North Star, basically what I always aim for, is to find a way to make the most amount of money in the least amount of work.

So, you know, I have a, that's the exact opposite of being a consultant. So, you know, what I love is enjoying my time and choosing what I do with my time. Doesn't mean I'm not working. It just means I want to be able to choose not to work. And so, so my, my biggest challenge right now is to make sure I scale this revenue where I'm able to sell online courses and sponsorings and then basically find ways of detaching from the business, getting online assets to work for me. And so.

Alper Yurder: I love it.

Thibaut Souyris: I'm making a good amount of money but I want to be able to make even more and work even less. So that's the kind of equation and things I'm focusing on.

Alper Yurder: Okay, Thibaut, you're such an easy person to speak to. You're so, also you're very honest about it. Like what you're doing right now is, it's, I mean, some people wouldn't be as honest about, you know, what they're trying to get to. And I think at the end of the day, we're all trying to do the same, make more money. But at the same time, I would say not necessarily work less, but be effective, you know, when you're doing it in my job, at least for you, it might be work less. And so to me as now a new founder and building a product, et cetera, it's almost like you're trying to productize whatever you can as much as possible. Would that be a just thing to say?

Thibaut Souyris: That's very good, I produce a lot of my knowledge. And so now I'm finding ways to productize even more, but maybe also become an advisor for different companies. So I am one for the Apple market. And so finding ways to, yeah. And so finding ways to kind of make, you know, like use my audience to kind of talk about a specific product and get a cut of this is a very good way of doing it. So there's so many different avenues and so this is what I'm trying and productizing is a good one.

Alper Yurder: There's so many people who, so actually I, yeah, the first I knew about Ample Market before.

But when you spoke about it, it was very genuine because we always have this challenge too, and I see a lot of people doing this now, like creative economy influences, blah, blah. And I see some posts which are like, I'm like, okay, this is paid, you know, it just smells paid and it's kind of BS. So when it's not done genuinely, I think it can be really tricky. So I have two questions for you. One, how do you balance that? Like now you're an advisor to a sales tool or other sales tools, which try to make it. And the other question is even more interesting. I think for those who are trying to do the same, productize their knowledge, which we all do, like what are your do's and don'ts? What are your learnings in that journey of trying to build a product out of that knowledge, out of that service.

Thibaut Souyris: Thanks for watching so I mean, the first question about the creator stuff. So for me, it's a very tough one because Typically, my goal of making more money and working less is taking everyone's money and finding a way to do that. And so for example, I started doing a lot of LinkedIn posts that were one post here and there that's sponsored, and I always mark sponsored by, because for me, I don't wanna be this guy, say, hey, I tried this product, and then try the competitor next week and say, oh, this is amazing, it's more, hey, this is my knowledge, this is the tactical stuff, by the way, you can use it in this product. And for me, I wanna say, using one product this time. and the next week the other product. But it's kind of like, doesn't really work like that. So for me, I'm kind of breaking a bit on this and finding people who are finding a better longer-term vision. So I have EmplMarket, Casper, for example. They're great partners, great sponsors who are working longer hours with me and have a better vision of expanding their content and producing, making sure that their content is seen by more and more people. So that's a bit of a challenge, like, get the quick bugs or think a bit more strategically.

Thibaut Souyris: I experimented for six months with QuickBooks, and then I was like, okay, now I don't want to keep doing this, I want to do things more strategically. And for productizing, so for productizing, the thing is what I found is if you go and start having conversations with people and it's always the same question, and so in prospecting it's always about sequencing, what should I write, when should I contact people, how many people should I contact every day, if you get the same questions over and over, you can create, let's say, an informational product, an e-book.

Alper Yurder: Okay, I love that.

Thibaut Souyris: online course, anything that's going to answer these questions for a fraction of the cost of what people would pay you for one-on-one. And so for me, I got coaching sessions. Sometimes people want to work one-on-one with me, but in most cases, they don't need to. So I package this offering into a self-based course or even a do-it-together course with community and so you're able to kind of work with other people. And that's really how you typically productize.

And yeah, that's really what I would recommend is if you get the same questions over and over, package your answers in something you can say online.

Alper Yurder: I love that. I think even of us now, because the product that I'm building, so it started from my own pain point. large complex deals, closing them is terrible. It's even worse for the buyer, blah, blah. And then other things like customer success would always grill me because I wasn't transparent in my selling. So I'm solving all these things. But I love that one question is what we all strive for, I think. Like every day, every iteration with the product, with Flowla, I try to go, what is the one thing we're solving? What is the one? And it's not always easy because sometimes you are solving many things. So how was that? What can you recommend to somebody that prospecting for example, how do they figure out that one question that they're being asked?

Thibaut Souyris: So, I mean, it's really tough because you can be asked a lot of questions and you may want to kind of expand really quickly. So for me, like, for example, I would say it's not so much one question, but it's more what's the group of people you're serving?

and what are they coming to, what's the issue they're trying to solve all the time. And so for me, it's SDRs or CS people. And it's more as to CS people because it includes a lot of different types of people prospecting, but anyone who has to book meetings to be successful in their jobs, they typically will find ways of working with me. And so it's always, it's evolving. But for me, there was one thing, it was the reply rate.

Thibaut Souyris: And so it's more like driven by market dynamics where people do not reply anymore. And so how do I get more replies? And so that's really the biggest focus of my prospecting is how to start conversations, because once you start them, it's a lot simpler to book a meeting. And so finding these was just the end years of hearing the market and seeing what people are doing. And typically a concrete way of doing that is asking questions or in a quick survey. So you talk to people, you interview them, and you ask the final question, what's one question I should have asked that I didn't ask. That's a very good question to understand exactly what people are faced with. And if it's many, many people with the same problem, you have something interesting.

Alper Yurder: Okay. I love that. What's the one question that I haven't asked that I should have asked? Okay. I'm making a note of that by the way. Now I'm being told off by my editing team because I do a lot of this and people are like, what is this guy doing? I'm just taking notes of the good stuff I hear. So right now I'm going to start putting you on the therapist chair because you already start doing it. So I want to discuss the tips and tricks of your trade. a little bit. But I want to take a different angle. I really love your LinkedIn posts. Time after time you share very practical stuff. I don't think you share any BS. It's very practical. Here's how to do it. Here is, you know, try it and error it, etc. So I'll go with them. But before I do that, everyone shares the good story, the positive, the success, and etc.

Alper Yurder: Aren't there times where you're like, you try, you try, you're not getting any replies, you're not booking anything? Like, how about those times? What do you do then?

Thibaut Souyris: Yeah, so what do I do then? So basically, I try this, there's always failure every day, in everything I do. So you have different stuff that you try. Sometimes when you try a new sequence, you don't get any reply. One thing that's very important is to kind of document or put really specific thresholds that you want to reach or you say, for example, I'm going to experiment with the connection request and for two weeks, you know, I'm going to stick to it. So for me, it was, for example, I launched a course which was called Escape the Hamster Wheel, which was really in direction of solo, not solo, but says people who are tired of working for others and want to do basically what I'm doing. And so I did it twice. letter and a podcast and then an online course and it failed. Like both, you know, people were not responding to this. And so for me, it's always coming back to, you know, understanding that I may want something, I may want to kind of go into greener pastures or try different stuff, but you know, it's always about understanding that people expect me for one specific thing. And that's what matters in the end And so trying to go and show what I've done, my experience, like everyone's doing it. Everyone's saying, hey, this is how I became a solo runner and now I'm just like traveling the world, blah, blah. No one cares about that in orbit. People care, but they don't wanna see that from me. They wanna see tactical stuff that are really specific for helping them be better at their job. And so for me, that was an example of a failure. And I keep coming back at it every two or three years. And then every time it's a good reminder that people just wanna see.

really good prospecting tips and not see how to become an entrepreneur and leave your job.

Alper Yurder: I love that. This is definitely going into one of our shorts because In my one year of LinkedIn journey, this is something I discover But then you fall into the trap because you know sharing your journey, etc You get the likes people enjoy it you have your friends who want to hear about it So you do it but at the end of the day if you want to reach a broader audience, they care about Themselves, you know, so you need to talk about how to help them rather than talk about just your journey or anything Yeah, okay

Alper Yurder: So let's go into some of these rapid-fire questions for you, if you don't mind. And at any point, feel free to answer them, not answer them. But here, I'm going to dive into your own posts. So let's see. One I really like, and this is actually how this is the post after which I reached out to you to say, dude, I want to talk to you. The math behind booking 144 outbound meetings per year.

Alper Yurder: And the reason I said, so I'm going to get your tips, but the reason I reached that was because you weren't saying 1,440 meetings a year, but you were just saying 144, which was really cool for me. So let's hear about that.

Thibaut Souyris: Yeah, so basically that's a simple calculation like doing. It's a very good kind of formula you can use when you're doing a post. It's taking a big number, 144, and dividing it, and showing what it means every day. And so I basically talked about the reply rate you get. So if you assume a 10% reply rate, they're gonna get a specific number. I'm really good at math, so I don't have the numbers here, but 10% reply rate, maybe 20% meeting rate.

and that's basically gonna give you a number of people you have to contact every day. And I stick to 144 because that's what I've done in the past, and if you look at 144 divided by 12, yeah, that's around 12 meetings a month. And so that's a good benchmark I found. If you're a lead generation agency and you book 200 meetings a month for your customers, most likely there's gonna be a good chunk of these meetings that are gonna really suck, and you're incentivized for meetings booked. So you just book meetings

Thibaut Souyris: When you get the janitor, your grandmother, whatever, you know, so that's the thing. 144 meetings is really, for me, it's more if you can have 12 conversations with really interesting people and maybe half of them turn into a qualified opportunity, that's really good. That's much better than having a crazy amount of opportunities generated because what I found is around 20 opportunities is what you can manage in a normal kind of mid-size market or mid-market kind of deal size. It's overwhelming. You can't really, you won't get much more from working so much more. So for me, it's really 12 conversations, that's around three conversations, the new outbound conversations you can have every week, and very often it's enough.

Alper Yurder: Okay, excellent. This one is a bit personal because I write about every Monday. I share my tips on how to do outreach, not to do outreach, to do LinkedIn Connect and not to do. Sometimes I share the not to do and then people are like, okay, but how about what to do? So I'm gonna ask you that one, which everyone was asking me this Monday. How to connect with people on LinkedIn? What are your tips and tricks?

Thibaut Souyris: So this one's very simple. There's a choice in LinkedIn. It's either you connect with words, like a small note, or without. And the rule is simple. If you don't have anything extremely relevant to say, don't say anything. The reason is, most people will look at your connection request on LinkedIn on their phone, and on the phone, and both on the desktop. What you'll see is that LinkedIn has an inherent or an incentive to get people connected together. So you're going to see a small check or X to deny the checkmark is a lot more appealing to you. So you click on the checkmark kind of even without thinking. If there's a note and the note says something like, hey, I hope these emails find you well, or I'd love to expand my network, you immediately go in mode, okay, someone's trying to pitch me, so I'm gonna ignore. So for me, that's the thing is if you send me something and you say, saw your podcast about whatever or something, I will pay attention and click on see more to see what it is about. But if that's really, you need to be a lot better at crafting messages and everything to make sure your connection request is accepted. So for most cases, don't put anything in your connection request.

Alper Yurder: If you're gonna put something, be genuinely curious, like have a look, like give a shit. If not, I think this is the best advice you could ever give, like 500%. If not, just connect, send a request. That's it. If you don't have anything nice to say, interesting to say, don't say anything. Don't put words. i think this is the best advice you could have given, and thank you, and this is going definitely into my next Monday post. I love it. I love it when my guests are doing my LinkedIn content for me. I love that. OK. So next one. That's the goal. So the next one. You talk about a four-step framework for a great called outbound message. Would you be able to walk us through that a little bit?

Thibaut Souyris:  Excellent. That's the goal, that's the goal.

Thibaut Souyris: Sure, so it's an album message I use all the time in versions of it. It's called Trigger, Question, Teaser, Call to Action. So the idea is that you wanna do a short message where, what do you say? Yeah, sure. So it's a four-step framework called Trigger, Question, Teaser, Call to Action.

Thibaut Souyris: So a trigger is basically your excuse for reaching out. So you're using what I call a digital footprint. So if someone likes a post, for example, you have an influencer that posts about how you need to build an ICP matrix and have a clear ideal customer profile. And if you're selling consulting services to build an ICP matrix, you could say, hey, so you like this post from this person. And that's basically your excuse for reaching out. Then you have the question. So instead of saying, I build ICP matrix for people,

how do you prevent or how do you avoid your team from itching out to completely different personas in their outreach. So a very concrete problem.

that you talked about. And if you have a team of 20 reps, maybe there's 15 who don't even know who they're reaching out to, so they blast everyone. So that's the problem you have. And then instead of saying, let's book a call, you say, if you're interested in your teaser, if you're interested, I have a quick resource I can share, or a 7-step checklist on building your first ICP matrix. And then you finish with a call to action, which is interesting, worth a peek, and you want to learn more.

So basically you want to start a conversation like that. And that's something I got a 38% reply rate with because people are really curious and if it's the right problem, they want to know more about what's behind that. I call that the Netflix effect where people kind of want to keep watching because of cliffhangers. That's pretty much the same you're doing here.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, you put them in the rabbit hole. I love it. And that's exactly the same framework that I preach all day, every day, not only works for prospecting, it works for everything. If you're writing content, if you're pitching to an investor, this is a framework that is simple because it has less I in it, more you in it. It's all about you.

Alper Yurder: It's all about you, your problem, how others are solving it. You give a bit of FOMO, you give a bit of stats credibility. You build that appetite to learn more and then a super simple call to action, which doesn't have to be a book meeting. It can just be like, interested as you go, because what you're trying to build is conversation engagement. I love that. Another one, with your success on LinkedIn and how you become the king of the content creator or whatever people. Sometimes I call people influencers and they go cringe. But you've become the person you've become with a LinkedIn journey. What are the do's and don'ts of that journey?

Thibaut Souyris: So I think the do's are just don't expect it to become a success overnight. A lot of people have been becoming successful overnight. And then you like the experience and the scar tissue, you could say, to kind of say, okay, I came here because I did it and stayed consistent for years. And so that's really important consistency. And for me, there's one thing is even though I have 37,000 followers, I still feel like no one's following me. No one's hearing what I'm saying. And that I'm totally irrelevant in what I say. So I just write for myself in the end. I just write, you know, to kind of document what I'm doing and people pay attention and that's great. but it's become a huge part of generating business for me. But I know it's important, but it's really just the consistency that's important. So that's the one thing. And in terms of dues, yeah, it's just being honest and super direct in what you like. Some people are better at videos, so do more videos. Some people are better at writing. Personally, I was not that good at writing and I became better by just doing it. And...

Another thing is templatize, it's just stuff that there's ways people are, you catch the attention of people with hooks, for example, use these kinds of things, try different stuff, but just keep doing it and know that for me, I started three or four years ago. It's a lot harder nowadays to kind of start on LinkedIn because there's so much more of us that are posting. So consistency, if you stay consistent, people will actually start noticing and pay attention.

Alper Yurder:  Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I love it. If you say something that is of interest, you have the right audience, but it's hard with all, with the algorithm also finding your audience, if your content is being shared with the right people, that's always a challenge, but at the end of the day, keep at it. And I love how you again, very honestly share, like sometimes you even feel like no one cares, no one listens, et cetera. I think that those are all very natural feelings we all have. The last two questions would be this. One is you talk about being a simple advice to becoming a better SDR. I think this is the most recent one. What is the advice to become a better SDR?

Thibaut Souyris: So one thing that's very important, what I say is like being successful in sales or in prospecting is around 5% skills, 15% timing and 80% systems. So knowing these timing, you can truly control it, skills you can develop them, but that takes a time. Systems are really fast and easy to do. So one thing is time block. So make sure that every day you have some time dedicated to a ritual of prospecting, which I call the power hour. Where You just prospect every day and you do your follow ups, find new prospects, contact them. What's very important too is make sure that You use problem-centric sequences, so you talk about problems over what you're doing, and then you tease the interest of people. So I talked about it in the framework before, where you really, instead of saying, hey, I got something, here it is, it's more, hey, I've got something, want to see what it is. We're all supernatural as humans, and so using this normal curiosity, super-super-curious as humans, so using this curiosity is really something that works well. So that would be some tips I would give. Maybe there was another one, but I forgot about it.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, I think starting the conversation, people do it a bit better. But then for example, one challenge that I always had with training STRs, et cetera, was how do you keep the tunnel? Like, you know, how do you get to the end of that tunnel? Yes, you put your prospect in a tunnel and you're having a chat. So for example, yesterday I was just, you know, having like three chats with people just because I didn't want to be impolite, but it was just, we were talking about their lives and it wasn't going anywhere. And at some point I stopped like, okay, thank you.

Alper Yurder: in your life I'm sorry I have a job to attend to. How do you get it across the finishing line?

Thibaut Souyris: So for me, once the conversation is started, you wanna really understand if there's a problem. So I like to navigate conversations where what you ask is you share the resource you teased and then that's why I like this approach so much of sharing a specific resource to solve a problem. And then you can ask, okay, so it was a resource useful and if people found the resource useful and tried to solve the problem, often they're like, yeah, that was really great, can we talk? So that's often a very good way of doing this. But sometimes they're not super reactive. So you will say, okay, is the resource good? Or would you be against sitting for 15 minutes so I can walk you through it and tell you a bit more? And that's a very good way of going from total strangers. So you share something, you provide it value, you've been honest with them. And sometimes people will be like, yeah, it's not really the right time. Maybe contact me in three months. And then you know you have an action step for three months from now. And what you do is whenever

you're doing this, you're starting conversations, people know about you, so restarting a conversation when you see them liking a specific post or talking about something you can help with is gonna be so much simpler. So for me it's more your network basically and then you know there's parts of the network that directly come into conversations with you but there's a lot of people who are not directly going to talk with you but at some point they will.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, absolutely. And to end it, let's talk about something practical. Tools and influencers or where you drive inspiration. One is any tools. I know you're an advisor and you're even sponsored sometimes by some stuff, but I have my favorite tools. Do you have your favorite tools that help you in this journey? Can you share a few of them? And the other one is who do you learn from? Where do you get your inspiration from? Any influencers, any books, anything you want to share with our audience?

Thibaut Souyris:  Sure, so in terms of tools, there's a lot of really good tools I tried and I became an advisor for AmpleMarket for this reason. I really like it and for years I've been just using a notion spreadsheet that I use for prospecting and I switched that to AmpleMarket because I love the integration they've done of everything, finding prospects on LinkedIn, prospecting on email, and they keep throwing really good features. So I really love it because it's fully functional and you can really try everything. you want with that. So, lead sourcing, sequencing, messaging, you name it. And in terms of, I would say, productivity tool. So I really like Notion, which has nothing to do with sales, but for me, for running my business and staying structured, I really love it because you can play with it and it has a very good format of showing you the information. And that would be it. And in terms of inspiration, I really like to see the journey of other creators in sales. Lately, I've been really liking Nate Nassralla, for example, . he is sharing really good tactical stuff about sales. multi-threading, so I really love when people share tactical stuff.

Alper Yurder: Excellent. What's your experience with our space digital sales rooms by enablement? Have you tried any of those? Do you have any interest in them?

Thibaut Souyris: So I tried a bunch of them. I find it hard in most cases to see exactly how they kind of, I mean, they can really help in making things more productive. But what I found is that, yeah, sometimes they're a bit hard to get prospects, sorry, to get salespeople to know how to use them. Because they allow, put a video here, then a checklist and whatever, and then they just, if a prospect or if a salesperson is not naturally a good organizer or project manager, that's gonna look like shit, basically.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, I think the very honest thing that I will say about it, like once we started building the tool and it was mostly for complex sales, you know, closing client success collaboration, when you have a deal you want to walk through, et cetera. And then people took it and started using it in their cold outreach. And some had really, some enjoyed it, some not so much, but at the end of the day, it's not an outreach tool. So, I agree with that. Excellent.

Alper Yurder: All right. Well, Thibaut, we're coming to the end of the conversation. And like any good therapist, I have to cut us on time. Thank you very much for joining me today. Any closing remarks?

Thibaut Souyris: No, I just wanted to say thank you. That was a very interesting podcast. Normally it's not as interesting, so that was good.

Alper Yurder: I'm glad you said that and I really enjoyed the conversation too. I think you are very honest, easy to speak to and very enjoyable. We should do more of these. Definitely. And we should, we'll keep following you for practical tips. And I think we want to create a lot of content from these very practical stuff, which people keep asking. So thank you for sharing that very generously, Thibaut. This is the end of this episode of sales therapy. If you enjoy the show, follow us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, we're all over the place. You will have the links and looking forward to the next episode. Thanks for joining. Bye.