The Brutal Truth About Lead Generation | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

In this episode of Stories With Traction, host Matt Zaun sits down with John Welch, a B2B lead generation specialist based in Indianapolis, for a raw, unfiltered conversation about what actually works regarding lead generation and why most companies are playing the game completely wrong.

John brings a decade of sales and marketing experience, including nearly 4 years focused on lead generation. Together, they unpack the uncomfortable truths about rejection, consistency, commissions, and why lead generation is fundamentally a long-term discipline, not a short-term tactic.

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

 

Matt Zaun 

John, welcome to stories of attraction podcast.

 

johnwelch 

Thanks, Matt. I appreciate you having me.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah. And like, I really appreciate your time. I know you're really busy. So I really appreciate you spending time with us today.

I have, I have some questions for you based on what you do. But before we dive into your business, your back

Background. Tell us a little bit about where you are, some of the things you do, where you're located for my audience, just so they can get an idea of who you are and what you're about.

 

johnwelch 

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So I'm based out of Indianapolis, Indiana. I've been here for my whole life. So I actually live in a neighborhood that's across the street from the neighborhood I grew up in.

And so, yeah, I went to school in Ohio. But other than that, I've never been out of the state for residency of any kind and been doing lead generation as my business exclusively for about three and a half years.

But I've been in sales and marketing as an entrepreneur for the past decade. And all of that was in lead generation of some capacity.

So even when I was doing content marketing and stuff, I've always just been interested in the process of starting a new conversation with someone who's not working with you.

And as far as I'm concerned, it's the most important part of business is getting new business. And so I just see it as the most fun and the most challenging game you can play in business.

And that's why I enjoy it.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah. So let me throw this out to you and you can kind of take it however you want. So what I'm Yeah.

I feel like there's a huge emphasis on persuasion, right? So when it comes to sales, saying the right things, presentation, making sure you have incredible delivery.

Like if we were to promote a workshop on how you can persuade people with ease, be unbelievably influential, that is a workshop a lot of people would sign up for.

And then if we were to promote a workshop on lead generation, people that know the importance of lead generation obviously would sign up, but it just doesn't have, I guess, as much pizzazz.

So can you speak to the importance of lead generation as it pertains to like a sales process and how a company might have some really engaging sales reps that they know how to talk, they're smooth talkers, but if they don't understand lead generation, how that whole system might fall apart?

 

johnwelch 

Yeah, it's funny. think you kind of, those two things can't be separated from each other, but at the same time, they're very, very different.

So right.- Thank And the persuasion angle is, I think, what most people think lead generation is. They think that what you're going to do if you're going to go generate leads is you're going to somehow go convince your market or persuade your market that they need to buy from you.

And I think a lot of people think this is what marketing is as well. And what's funny is you can persuade.

There's a thing called persuading somebody, but it doesn't happen the way that most people think that it happens. Persuasion, I would say, is like a consequence or it's what happens when a person comes up against something that has the power to persuade them.

And the power to persuade doesn't come from the place most people think. They think it comes from having the right answers or having some kind of present, like the physical way you interact with it.

It's like, oh, this thing looks great or it sounds great or it's hitting right out of all the right boxes, things like that.

And the reality is it's just authenticity in its deepest sense. It's just that you're up against the real thing.

It's, you know, if you're in a house and somebody is like, oh, this is my new house. I paid $100,000 for my new kitchen.

And then you kind of like tap on one of the cabinets and you're like, is that a veneer? you're like, the key.

You're like, what the heck? This is like a veneer. Like, that's the difference, right? Versus you go in and somebody is like, yeah, I spent.

And you go look at your cabinets, you're like, this is literally all solid hardwood. And it's like, that's the difference.

Like, when someone's up against the real thing, they can't not be persuaded, right? And when they're dealing with a veneer, it's going to take them 10 minutes before they're like, this is not the real thing, and they're not going to be persuaded, right?

So it's kind of one of those things where lead generation is almost a consequence of having what's required to persuade someone, which I would say is evidence that you are good at what you do, you know, some kind of tenure in whatever industry you're in, some period of time that you've been doing it for that signals that you aren't just a fly-by-night or, you know, a brand new person in that industry, right?

These are like real things that someone can hold on to. And what's the problem companies have is that for so long, people have kind of tried to game that, right?

So they've tried to, they've tried to like tap into those things without them being real. So they'll go to a market and say like, they'll say all these things about themselves.

And then when everybody starts saying those things about No one can tell if it's honest or not. And so that's kind of the problem that you have in lead generation that you're really trying to solve is how do I show up in the market in a way that without trying to tell people I'm the real deal, they feel that I'm the real deal.

And that's kind of what separates a performative marketing or a performative sales effort or a performative lead generation effort from the real deal, the thing that actually generates leads.

 

Matt Zaun 

So I spent a lot of time talking to salespeople, marketing people, and there's been a lot of conversation regarding ICP slash C, right?

 

johnwelch 

Ideal client persona and or community.

 

Matt Zaun 

And there's all kinds of breakdowns. I'm sure you've heard this ad nauseum, family situation, generation, highest level of education, primary job responsibilities, you know, where they reside, where they hang out online.

I mean, I'm actually looking at a list right here of breaking down all kinds of questions on what do they read?

What movies do they watch? What podcast do they listen to? How important is all How important are all of these details as it pertains to lead generation?

 

johnwelch 

I'm not going to say that they're completely unimportant, but they're so unimportant as to be pretty much irrelevant to anyone who's trying to do lead generation.

Now, if you're dealing with like ads or if you're with like some kind of marketing effort where you are like adopting some sort of data-driven approach where you are getting like so insanely specific with the ads you're showing, like there are scenarios where companies can be like maybe they sell an incredibly specific product or something like that.

And they're trying to segment an audience that is truly like truly niche maybe. But in the scenario of like the work that's being done, there's basically three main things that matter.

One is do they have a problem? The second one is do you solve the problem that they have? And the third one that no one really wants to admit is do they agree with the way you solve the problem?

If those three things are in place, you have a lead. And all that other information, like, I mean, you and I are both entrepreneurs, right?

The reality is you and I both want to grow a business and there's a world where 50 different companies could reach out to us with the same message.

But there's a really good chance that you and I have almost none of the same things in common that that sheet would point to.

We don't like the same movies. We're not interested. We have different backgrounds, different religions, whatever it may be, right?

And so it's one of those things where lead generation is a game of 80% accuracy or 70% accuracy. Once you get over a certain amount of targeting or a certain amount of firmographic or demographic information, the diminishing returns are kind of so absurd that it's like, why would you do that?

 

Matt Zaun 

It's interesting. So you do a lot of B2B, are there specific B2B companies that you work with? Is there a certain sector of business that is better for you than others?

 

johnwelch 

So I work pretty much exclusively with small to midsize companies, but even the midsize is pretty, like, it's more like just small business owners.

Most of my clients are entrepreneurs, they're solopreneurs, or they're very, very small businesses that don't have, they don't have the, you know, revenue to justify a full-time sales rep, or they've done the game of hiring sales reps for.

And they just never accomplished anything. And they couldn't figure it out. And they've tried to do the trainings. And they're out of time to do it themselves.

That kind of vibe, right? And so I just lost the track. What was the question? Oh, who am I?

Yeah, So industry-wise, it's same. Yeah, industry-wise, it's pretty much anybody in B2B products or services. But there's a couple caveats.

I don't really do anything in hospitality. I don't do anything in restaurants or retail. Healthcare has to be very specific because in some cases, people are targeting in healthcare where there's just no data for it.

So in certain niche industries, manufacturing can be tough because they can sometimes be going after companies that there's just no data for.

So I obviously have to have phone numbers to call. So in scenarios where that's not available, it's not a good fit.

But other than that, pretty much anything in B2B.

 

Matt Zaun

So if I were to hand you a dream client, would it be product or service? Would it be how many people?

Because I want to paint a visual for people once I have an idea of a business in mind. I mean, dream clients, a dream client is actually a mindset, right?

 

johnwelch 

So The reality is lead generation is some, the reason it's so misunderstood and people struggle with it so much is that they're constantly restarting.

So a lot of folks think like, oh, okay, I'm going to give something three months or six months or even a year and like see what happens.

One year in like lead generation terms, it's kind of like the gym, right? One year is like step one, right?

After one year, you might be able to tell me that you have like a little bit of data to like fall back on or to look at.

But a lot of companies, and this is what I deal with, you know, pretty much all the time. They're going to run a couple of months, they're going to run one or two little tests, and they're going to decide it doesn't work, and they're not going to go forward.

And that's why it doesn't work, right? Channel is a little bit relevant, because like right now, especially with LinkedIn or with email, you've just got so many people sending information, and you've got, you know, the AI software is getting really good at blocking.

it's just, there's definitely a lot there from a deliverability standpoint, that's a problem. But ultimately, if you pick a channel, and you do it well, for long enough, you will find success.

The long enough is the thing most people Three years is like, if someone hasn't done a channel for three years, I will not believe a word you say if you're trying to tell me that it doesn't work for you.

If someone's like, oh, we tried cold calling, it doesn't work. If it wasn't three years, month after month for three years, I don't care.

Like, it doesn't matter. You don't have enough feedback or data you didn't try hard enough to tell me that that channel doesn't work for you.

So that's kind of the problem that happens in lead generation is what I'm looking for are clients who understand that this is a time game.

Everyone's like, it's a numbers game. It's not a numbers game. Because numbers don't really, you could talk to one person one time that makes your entire year.

It's a consistency and time game. It's a quality consistency and time is the three things that are going to make up successful lead gen, doing it well, doing it consistently over and over and over again, and doing it for a long time.

And that long time is like a minimum of three years.

 

Matt Zaun 

No, I mean, that would scare a lot of people that are listening right now.

 

johnwelch

Yeah, it's why nobody gets success. Everyone who's listening to this is going to tell you they've tried everything. Well, tried everything for six months.

Sorry, you haven't tried anything.

 

Matt Zaun 

So give me an example. Example of a client that you've worked with that have gotten results, just so people can understand, like, just maybe a specific company that you've worked with.

 

johnwelch 

Yeah, I mean, it varies dramatically depending on, but, you know, I've had some success with some recruiting companies I've worked with.

I've had success with some business brokerage clients I've worked with. But again, the ones that I have success with are the ones that are willing to give it the time of day and also to understand that this is an iterative process, right?

If you're going into lead generation from the perspective that, like, it needs to maintain an instant ROI or that, like, if I spent $1,000, I need to close $10,000.

Like, if that's, like, how you think about lead gen, like, just don't do it. Like, you're never going to have success.

The people who are successful in lead gen are ones where they're looking at this from a 1.5 progress scale, right?

It's like, in one year, if I spent $100,000 and I generated $150,000 in revenue, like, that was successful. Because it is, that is what is successful in lead gen.

When you're trying to grow, when you're trying to force growth, which the reason it's so hard. It's for businesses to understand this is because like you've alluded to, they're all dealing with this organic growth thing or this like word of mouth thing.

And when you don't have to pay a single dollar to generate a client, you get this idea of growth, that it's free, like you get this idea that growth happens without effort.

And then when you look into like lead generation from the social media perspective or you read the authors or whatever, they're all selling you something.

And that idea they're selling you is that lead generation is only successful if it's like beyond belief successful, meaning you spent a dollar and you made 10 and you worked for six months and you tripled your business.

And like, I don't even know if any of these stories are true, but if they are, they're one-offs. They're just weird circumstances.

They're not what's happening to anyone who's actually growing. So the customers who had success with me, I've, you know, I've seen scenarios where, you 20,000 in spend with me turned into 80,000 in revenue in, you know, three months.

Okay. That's awesome. That's cool. That's still like a lot of companies still would like look at that and be like, oh, if I'm spending 20 grand, I need to see way more than that.

And it's like, that's fine. You don't understand. And like, you're never going to grow. This is the challenge you're going to have forever is you're going to think that growth is cheaper than it is.

And it's really a slog. It's really a kind of mind numbing, scary thing that takes a long time and costs a lot of money.

 

Matt Zaun 

So the customers that have success with me are the ones that understand that. And they're just cool with it.

They understand that that money is just getting spent. It's an investment. It's going to the future of the business.

And they're not they're not looking at that that closely. I appreciate you mentioning that. And I appreciate you mentioning recruiting company, because that gives me a visual of a picture.

It's actually funny. I was speaking to a recruiting company. Not too long ago, I came in, I did a strategic storytelling workshop for them.

And it was a smaller recruiting company, right? Now, they've not given me permission to share their name or anything.

So I won't mention that. But I can literally visualize the company because I was I was there, right? Seeing them what they're doing sales wise, you know, they're knocking on doors, they're doing this, they're doing that.

Okay, so now I have a picture. So let's say for example, because I want I just want to understand more about what you do to understand

So others can understand it as well is let's say this recruiting company, let's just say that it has a staff of 15 people, right?

So a smaller company, and they have had so much word of mouth over the last, it could even be decades that they haven't really thought about lead generation at all.

They haven't had to until they do have to, until they're not getting the kind of business that they used to come in because of so much noise in the marketplace right now.

So they turn to you. What is the first thing that you do when they turn to you? Do you set up certain processes and systems?

How are you list building? How does that all come into place? Yeah, it depends on a lot of different scenarios.

 

johnwelch

Most of the companies I'm working with, they're just coming to me for lead generation because that's what I sell, right?

And I sell that because I used to do more of the consultative stuff. And what I found was that most companies just aren't ready for it.

So I basically built a business model that allows companies to vary at the So my pilots are $650. It costs that much money for you to run a pilot with me and to test my process for you.

So in the scenario of that kind of company coming to me, the first thing I'm going to do is run a pilot.

We're going to build a list. We're going to call it, and they're going to see what happens when we call their list.

Now, again, like I said, all I do is cold calling. So if somebody's doing email, that's cool. I don't have a lot of evidence from the work that I've done over the last couple of years that email does a ton.

I know that people have had success with it, and I've even had success in the past. But most of the time, whenever I'm dealing with companies that are doing email, they're doing newsletter stuff.

They're doing big blasts. They don't have a super sophisticated approach, and it's really producing almost nothing. So I'm just calling.

And so the first thing we're doing is basically identifying, is the data quality going to work? Are people going to answer the phones?

Are they going to respond to the messaging in any kind of way? What's it look like? And it's a way for companies to just get a feel for the way I work and understand what they're actually dealing with, because it's really hard to sell something like lead generation.

If you're not throwing absurd claims at people, like I guarantee 20 leads. If you're not doing that, then people are like, well, if you're not doing that, what are you doing?

And it's true. It's hard to tell because even if you hire a direct sales guy, it's like, how do you even know what it is that he's doing?

You're just going to hire him for six months or eight months or nine months and be like, oh, it's not working out.

Well, nobody really knows what happened and what did or didn't work out. So my process is to be very transparent.

I track all my calls. People can see exactly what's going on. And then I'm just basically telling them, hey, I either think that this could work for you or not, and we'll go as long as they've got the stomach to go for.

 

Matt Zaun 

All right. So you mentioned quality. You mentioned quality, consistency, and time. So the quality, when you say quality, are talking about the actual list, the quality of people on that list?

 

johnwelch 

That could be a part of it. But when I say quality, what I mean is the quality of the outreach itself, right?

So if I call you up, Matt, and I say, hey, this is John, you're going to hate me. This is a cold call.

Do you have 20 seconds? I just completely destroyed my own, right? There's no, there's nothing there. You know that some hack is calling you on the phone.

And so quality is what's occurring in the environment itself. How are you reaching out to people? If you get an email that you can clearly tell was written by AI, you're not going to, that's not quality.

You instantly don't care, right? So the first thing people are buying from me is the quality. They're buying the fact that I'm a 10-year sales consultant.

I've been doing this exclusively for my income for three and a half years on the phone. I make, I mean, I'd have to check, but I did close to 100,000 dials last year, worked with over 100 small businesses.

So when I show up on the phone, it doesn't matter if I'm calling a CTO of a billion-dollar organization.

I've called OBGYNs inside of hospitals and booked meetings with them, right? So there's not really anybody on the planet that I haven't called and booked a meeting with.

And when I show up on the phone and I say, hey, Matt, this is John. I'm calling from XYZ.

Did I get you to bad time? You feel something that most people don't feel when they get a call.

And the number one thing I hear when I cold call for my own business is people going, well, I don't know how you've kept me on the phone this long.

And the answer is, I know. It's not because I tried to do anything special. It's because when you heard me speak, you could tell that this was a quality call.

This wasn't from some random dude who has no idea what he's doing. was quality And that's my point when I say like authenticity or whatever that is, you can't fake it.

It doesn't show up in a, you can't do, you can't fake it. It shows up in things that can't be gamed.

You can't gain confidence when, and the confidence isn't like, I know I'm going to get a lead here. The confidence is, I know I can handle the rejection of the phone.

So when I show up and say that I get you to bad time, it's fine with me if you say, go kill yourself.

I'm like, cool, thanks. Have a good day. Literally happens all the time. I hear horrible things on the phone constantly throughout my day, and that's fine.

And you can hear that when I say to get you to bad time, because I'm willing to ask that and I'm willing for you to tell me, you know, to just go pound sand and I'll just get off the phone.

And so that's my point is like quality is something you can't pretend, you can't fake, you can't, you can't do it.

And I even used to have callers that worked for me. And that was kind of the biggest problem I ran into was like, I couldn't, I couldn't transfer it either.

I couldn't, there's no way for you to transfer, you know, being fine with hearing no. One million times in a year.

You can't transfer that to another person, So it's just, these are things that when they show up, you can't deny them.

You can tell that you're experiencing something different.

 

Matt Zaun 

That's quality. Wow. All So let's talk about this a little bit more. So I'm thinking about this recruiting company.

They reached out to you. Again, they've heavily relied on word of mouth. Now they need to figure out how to get some type of leads.

They come to you. You have a list that you've put together. What are you saying on the phone to keep people engaged for the seconds that you need to see if they're even willing to talk to you?

 

johnwelch

Well, that's the funny thing is, again, the things I'm saying, a bunch of people could say them and it wouldn't show up the same way, right?

So the way that I'm saying it is more important. But my scripts are pretty straightforward, right? That's what I'm saying is that there's a couple of key factors to a script.

The first one is what you're doing, who you're doing it for, and how long you've been doing it. So if I show up to you and I say, hey, Matt, this is John.

calling from IAD Growth. I get you a bad time? Oh, well, it's always a bad time, John. What's going on?

He's like, yeah, well, was reaching out because I've been working with founders and CEOs in the US. The past three and a half years, I do cold call lead generation.

That is a different thing than most people ever hear on the phone. And it doesn't really matter whether or not, you know, it's not about whether it convinces someone or not.

The reason why it can work, it won't always work for somebody. But the reason why, you know, probably 80% of my calls, someone will hear me out is because most people can't say that to someone else.

They're too afraid that it's not going to land, right? Most people are afraid that when you start a call that way, someone's just going to hang up on them.

And so that's the weird, like paradox of true professional lead generation is that it actually sounds like a professional.

And a professional is someone who's completely fine with hearing no. So I can't call you and like, you can't hear me if the first part of my call is just like, hey, I was trying to find out if you're dealing with this problem, because you're a human and you don't, you don't respond to someone calling you up, taking time from you without permission, and then trying to find out if you have problems.

That's not how you respond. But that's what most people are doing in lead generation, whether it's email. LinkedIn, doesn't really matter.

And so there's this weird paradox where in order for someone to actually show up professionally, they have to be confident enough in what they do that they're okay with almost everyone telling them no.

Well, that's a weird paradox when your entire livelihood is based off of people saying yes to you. So you have this tension that exists in lead generation and really in sales in general.

And it's really caused by the commission structure that exists that it's impossible for the individual resource to show up in that conversation as a human because they're really not.

They can't be okay. They can't be safe. They're not there professionally. They're there because they need something from you.

And right off the bat, the entire conversation is dead from the very beginning. It doesn't matter whether they ask for 30 seconds.

doesn't matter if they make you laugh. None of it matters because the main point of this conversation is if you don't give me what I need from you, I'm not going to eat.

And that energetic exchange is broken from the first moment the call's answered or the email's sent or whatever it is.

 

Matt Zaun 

So the quality piece makes more sense to me based on what you're saying. Let's dive into the consistency piece, because we live in a world where we want to be validated.

I mean, everything in life is validating us, right? There's algorithms that validate everything we think. I mean, that's how people get in their own little social media bubbles, and they think the world is one way where it might not really be that way, right?

It's these bubbles that we create. I mean, AI is notorious for this. mean, Ask AI, like it validates all of our dreams and wishes, right?

So what you're saying, it sounds like psychopathic tendencies for someone to have so much rejection in life. So I want to talk and unpack a little bit more about your psyche with this, because to go through rejection after rejection after rejection, is there a certain book that you read that positioned you for this?

Is there just you went through so much rejection growing up that you were just your position for this? I mean, about 15 years ago, I read a book called Go For No.

I don't know if you're familiar with it, but basically... You make a game out of hearing no's, right? And I think that, I don't know if you would agree or disagree with that, but there isn't something to be said on gamification in business, right?

Where you get excited about the no's that you're hearing. So how on earth did you get to the point where you can go through so much absurd levels of rejection and keep coming back?

 

johnwelch

Yeah, it's a good question. It definitely is not an inherent trait, right? So my first sales job was doing business brokerage for a company here in Indianapolis.

Not business brokerage, I'm sorry. Office space brokerage, real estate. So I was a commercial real estate broker doing office space sales and leasing.

And I was supposed to cold call people and walk indoors. And it made me sick to my stomach and I quit the job.

And I actually just kind of was like, I don't think sales is for me. And I got into some inside sales jobs and got at some other relationship-based companies where it wasn't nearly as prospecting oriented.

But I had already started a marketing company and I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I knew that selling was something.

I absolutely had to figure out how to do. And so I spend about eight years reading everything I could get my hands on and going through all the stuff.

And what I finally figured out was it's all just a bunch of garbage. Basically, the information is sold to people who are never going to do the work.

So it's all designed to make you feel like you're making progress without ever actually bringing you in touch with reality.

Because what nobody wants to hear is, you know, why are there 600 million, you know, books on the gym, and yet no one exercises, right?

Because no one's writing the book called here's how you get, here's how you get strong. You go to the gym every day, no matter how you feel, and you do it every day till you die.

That's it. That's the story, right? Like the answer to your question, the very blunt answer to your question is, I did it till it didn't make me sick anymore.

It took three years. So I love how real you are with that. Well, I can't, I can't translate that, right?

So nobody else is going to do it, which is that's the problem. The problem is like, you can tell it's like you can tell somebody that but then they're like, Oh, okay, well, I'm not going to do that.

So so how do I really do it? Well, you don't. Like, that's the answer. But there are some things I can give

I'm not going to just cut. I'm not going to just leave it there. I'm just saying the simple answer is you have to be willing to do the work required to get what you want in life.

I wanted freedom. I wanted to have my own business. I wanted all these things. And I'm the kind of person where I'm just not going to take no for an answer.

And I'm not going to in my own. I'm not going to I'm not going to give up on myself.

And at some point, I realized that no matter how much I tried to get into marketing stuff or persuasion tactics or all this different things people want to tell you about how to do marketing and sales.

None of it was working. Every agency I worked at, nothing was working. Every company I worked for, nothing was working.

No salespeople I knew were getting results. Nothing was working and nothing was happening. And there was one place, though, where things were happening and it was on the phone.

And so I had to basically just be like, all right, are you going to just be, you know, are you going to let this thing beat you?

Are you going to let this fear you have and this, you know, this concern and all these emotions? Are you going to let them take your life from you or not?

And my answer was, no, I'm not going to. And so, you know, yeah, it was it was brutal. There were times where I literally like there were times where I just kind of gave up and had to like take a step back and got a job for a bit.

And like, you know, whatever. Whatever that looks like. But no matter what, I just knew I couldn't turn away from that.

And I had to carry it through and see it through. And, you know, so that's, that's, there's some elements there that probably aren't really trainable.

I'm kind of a crazy person. Like I've always just sort of been that kind of go getter. You I'm one of seven kids.

And, you know, my family's always kind of noticed that out of all of the kids, I'm kind of the one who will do the thing nobody else wants to do.

Like I was performing when I was 16, you know, in bands and going to Starbucks and playing in front of strangers.

Like I'm, I've been happy making myself uncomfortable my whole life, but anyone can do it. That's the, that's the thing that I think is a, is important is that there's no special trait that makes this possible for you.

And it's not rejection, right? To suggest that you're being rejected is really strange. I think that's the most important thing for people to get their head around.

If you were to, if you were to go, like, if you go to a doctor's office and you're like, I need help.

And they're like, we're not going to treat you. I would probably say that's rejection. Like this is a scenario where we have a social contract.

in place that like someone who has a doctor's office open, they're kind of letting you know that they help sick people.

And so you as a sick person, you go in and you're like, I'm sick. And he's like, you're too sick for me, buddy.

I'm not going to help you. I would probably say you could call that rejection. We don't have any social contracts in place that suggest that if a stranger calls you and asks for something, you owe them anything.

So the idea that we call it rejection, first of all, is just strange, right? Like I want money. You probably want money too, right, Matt?

Like I want to make money. I want to do work for people and I want a fair exchange, but I want to make money.

So when I call some stranger on the phone, if they were to say, why are you calling me? And the answer in my heart of hearts is anything other than I want you to pay me for work, then I'm a liar because that's why I'm calling them, right?

And so what it really comes down to is most people see it as rejection because they're actually self-rejecting. They're not getting, you can't reject another, like it's really impossible to reject another person, Matt.

But like, if you sent you, you DM me on LinkedIn and you're like, Hey, you want to come on this podcast?

And one of the reasons. The why I said yes was because of the way you worded it, right? When a person reaches out and is like, hey, I don't even know if this is really a good fit, but it looks like some cool stuff is going on.

And I can tell that you actually, even if you have an AI write the thing, you prompted it well.

I don't think you did. I think it was probably a real message. responded immediately when I responded back. And my point is, I knew that if I said to you, nah, no good, you'd be like, cool, no worries, have a good day.

You can tell, right? You can just, you can tell. And it's the same thing. Like if a salesperson calls me up and they say, hey, did I get you to bad time?

I'm to be like, no, what's going on? Because that's exactly what I say to people. And if they, if they share what they do and ask if it's relevant, I'm going to say yes or no, because I can tell that they're at, that they're asking from a, from a true place.

And I can tell they're okay with getting no. So my point is you can't reject someone when there's no reasonable expectation of acceptance.

You can't like, it's not a thing that can happen. So the idea that what I'm doing is calling people up and getting rejected constantly is crazy.

That would be, that makes me a crazy person. If I perceive getting told no on the phone, when I'm calling strangers, if I perceive that as rejection, I'm the one that's.

Not seeing reality, right? And that's kind of the issue we have just in lead gen and sales in general is there's actually this bizarre sense of entitlement on the part of business owners, sales reps, whatever you want to call it, marketing people even.

And a sense of entitlement to another person's mind, eyeballs, wallet share, whatever it is, whatever you want to call it.

It's like for some reason, just because I exist, you like owe me something, which is just very, very bizarre, right?

So step one to like getting through that or learning how to actually generate leads is understanding that no one owes you anything.

And if you show up from that place, you're the problem, not them.

 

Matt Zaun 

Dude, that's all fascinating to me. And I really appreciate the analogy that you mentioned regarding the gym. And it's funny that you mentioned that.

I will never forget. I can literally picture this in my mind. I was in high school. I had just started lifting weights.

I'm standing in line in the grocery store with my father. So like we were putting our food on the conveyor belt and he pointed to a muscle magazine and he said, do you know why muscle magazines still sell?

He said, say the exact same thing. They just make it look more creative with different issues. And that really stuck with me that you're right.

Like sometimes going to the gym is boring. Sometimes waking up earlier before my family gets out of bed, like it sucks, right?

Like I'd much rather hit the snooze. I'd much rather not do it. I'd much rather just naturally be healthy without having to work.

But you have to do it in order to get those results. However, based on the wisdom that my father shared, like there is something he said on putting articles out that are a little bit more creative, right?

And I'll never forget because he was also mentioning there was a specific article that he had pointed to. pulled the magazine up and it was Arnold Schwarzenegger, right?

And he made a big joke about it because in the article, Arnold Schwarzenegger was talking about like something very, very specific and weird that he was doing in this one workout.

And my dad was like, there is no way he consistently does this. They're only putting that in there because.

It's so out of the norm that people are like, wow, right? And the reason why I'm saying this is because there are people listening to this episode, john, where they're trying to motivate their people to do what you do.

They're trying to motivate their people. You mentioned, I appreciate the perspective shift regarding the rejection piece, but they're trying to make it easier to swallow or more creative.

Is the answer just that perspective shift that you shared? Is the answer gamifying this and just- No, from an organizational perspective, it's actually very easy.

 

johnwelch 

You have to stop commissioning salespeople. So I'm going to say something that most people think is crazy, but that's the problem is that they're doing it backwards, right?

So the reason why it's impossible to do is because your outcome is directly tied to whether or not you're going to have your job.

So if organizations want reps to pick up the phone, they have to pay them whether or not it works because the rep has no control over it.

And so that's the issue you have fundamentally is that you have a thing that is not within, like imagine if you're

Like you haven't probably always been an entrepreneur, but give me like, like what, what, what, where'd you start your career?

 

Matt Zaun 

Like what kind of industry were you in? Politics. Okay.

 

johnwelch

Well, okay. That's kind of a lot like sales. Let's just pick another one. Let's say, let's say you're an engineer.

 

Matt Zaun 

Right. Yeah. Let's say you're an engineer.

 

johnwelch 

Right. And let's say that you design something and you follow all the parameters correctly and you can prove your work.

You can prove you did everything exactly as you should. And then when a part gets made that you designed, it goes to the factory, whatever.

And like a year down the road, there's a recall on a part you built because it turns out that some part of it didn't hold up.

And under some kind of, some kind of stress, it broke and a whole bunch of crashes happened, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You're not going to get fired. If, if, if there's a clear chain of this thing was done correctly, like there's no, it's like, oh, I was a weird freak accident.

Like maybe the manufacturing didn't work or maybe the material wasn't used correctly, whatever it is. It's like math was good.

Three people signed off on it. Uh, yeah, no, cool. We're good. Like there's no legal case. Like you can.

It's like, we followed everything correctly, we did it. The problem with sales is that that doesn't exist. So this thing called commissions has destroyed, it's destroyed the sales industry.

And there's a lot of, you can go into a lot of things about this, but basically, in the past, salespeople would have been paid something, and then they would have been commissioned on top of that.

So if you look at sales compensation, salespeople typically got paid way more than other industries, right? So there was a lot that you got for being willing to go do this thing.

But you got typically paid a lot more, like a traveling sales guy, or a sales guy at IBM, that good dude could be doing 200 or $300,000 a year at a time when that was a lot of money, right?

And you're an engineer, maybe you're doing 80. Now, it's the complete opposite. Now what's happened is companies use commission to get you to the same level, an engineer, a mechanical engineer can do 250k at a job right now.

Right? And it's like, if I'm a sales guy, and I'm going to go take this beating all day, every day, why would why would I do that for

Potentially 250 grand. What? Why on earth would I do that? VPs of sales change jobs every 18 months. That's not a career.

That's a nightmare. So the sales industry is completely ruined. It's completely destroyed. And commissions are what did it because companies started basically using commissions as a stick, not a carrot.

And so if you want to commission a guy, fine, but that has to have nothing to do with his performance.

And companies have to stop firing salespeople for things that are 100% outside of their control. When a founder of a company hires a sales rep and thinks that he's going to hire some 30-year-old to come into his business and in one year start generating three or four times what his salary is without any help, that's madness.

That's not like, that's not, there's no one doing that. Unless there's someone like me, in which case I'm not taking a job because I have a company already doing this for people.

So the problem we have is that if you want to motivate your people, you need to actually motivate them.

You need to say, hey, just so you're aware, we're as an organization committing to these actions on the. And we're going to do this work as prospecting work.

So you guys will all be held to whether or not you did the work. You're not going to be held to the results because that's crazy.

By the way, you're also just going to get salaried. So we're not worried about the commissions anymore. We'll do a bonus at the end of the year if we hit our number.

Cool. If companies started doing that, I know right now that most of the sales world would be 100% fine with a decent salary.

Commensurate with anything else. Accountants get paid good money. Engineers get paid good money. You don't have to. You could hire an SDR and pay them $150,000 and then stop commissioning them and stop holding them to weird results quotas that they have no control over.

And if you stopped doing that, they would sit on the phone for you all day long. Just pay well for the work.

And by the way, the company would make a lot more money also.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, I mean, everything that you're saying, the third thing that you mentioned after your quality consistency is that time piece.

mean, what you're mentioning is companies need to be willing to invest that level of time, right? If you said VPs of sales every 18 months, and that doesn't fall along with your three years.

 

johnwelch 

No. No.

 

Matt Zaun

So you have this rotating business, people in, people out, rotating door, revolving door, I should say. And how can companies wrap their brains around that, especially with everything changing so fast?

There needs to be a big wake-up call with companies around the country, well, I guess around the world, but I'm talking more specific to the US, where they say, we need to invest this level of time before we start thinking about results.

 

johnwelch 

Yep, 100%. And it's way longer than anybody wants to. And you're correct. It's a sickness, right? So I mean, you can look at a lot of different things that people want to point to, but this is a fundamental issue that is, it's either going to destroy the sales industry entirely, which I don't think will happen.

I think we'll still keep sales. But I just think what I'm talking about will just have to be a natural conclusion of this.

There's not really anywhere else to go. And also, I think part of it, too, is the generations that are coming, like my generation, maybe, but the ones that's coming after, they're not going.

So like the environment of sales will have to change just because the mental health of the next generations has shifted and they demand a different way of thinking about life, which I agree with completely.

What's funny about it is I stopped working for companies. This is the truth of it. It's less stressful to work 100% for yourself than it is to work as a salesperson.

So if you understand that, then you understand the problem I'm talking about. A hired employee who's a salesperson is at much greater risk financially than I am.

As a completely self-independent entrepreneur. And that shows you the level of insanity we're dealing with.

 

Matt Zaun 

That should not be the case. That is wild.

 

johnwelch 

All right. Well, I appreciate you saying that, John.

 

Matt Zaun 

Hey, I appreciate everything that you've shared in our conversation. I learned a lot from you. I really appreciate all of the value you brought to the table.

I know my audience got a lot out of it as well. There's three things in particular I'm going to remember after this conversation concludes.

I really appreciate you saying one year is step one. really appreciate you. I think that threw a lot of people off hearing that, right?

One year is step one. The second thing was I appreciate this simplistic but very important breakdown, quality, consistency, and time.

And I know it's simplistic, but there's so much wisdom in what you said. I remember hearing a story about Vince Lombardi that after they lost a game, he would hold up a football and say, gentlemen, this is a football, right?

It's simple, but going back to the basics, we have to get really good at the basics. And then the third and final piece is the whole perspective shift that you gave regarding you're not being rejected.

And I really appreciate you mentioning, you know, if a doctor were to reject a patient, clearly that's rejection, but we shouldn't think that we're personally being rejected when we make a call because there's really no social contract whether someone should buy into what we want or not.

I really appreciate you laying that out for us. So, John, again, thank you so much for this conversation. If people want to get more information on what you do, they want to reach out to you for your lead generation services, where's the best place?

 

johnwelch

The best place is just on my LinkedIn, actually. I have a website, but it's very, very low quality. I cold call for my own lead generation, so I don't do much web stuff.

But my LinkedIn is pretty built out. It's linkedin.com slash ian slash johnrwelch. And then you can also just email me at john at iadgrowth.com.

And that's my direct email, so I'll respond.

 

Matt Zaun 

Perfect. I'll include that in the show notes. People could just click and go from there. John, thanks again for your time.

I really appreciate it.

 

johnwelch 

Thank you, Matt. It's been a pleasure.