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get instant accessOne of the things I love about LinkedIn is the ability to connect with incredible people around the globe, and my guest today is someone I probably never would have connected with otherwise.
Today’s guest is Mafalda Johannsen, who is the Business Development Director at Wonderway, a German sales enablement startup. At Wonderway, she reviewed and improved hundreds of onboarding and trainings, hosts and moderates sales webinars, has two sales podcasts, and is now working on a sales book in Portuguese. Apart from that, she’s also a masterclass instructor at SDRs of Germany and the PR and Marketing Manager of a jazz fusion band called Plasticine.
[4:02] – Get to know Mafalda! She shares her background and backstory.
[5:57] – Mafalda never intended to work in sales.
[9:24] – Rejection in sales is challenging to handle sometimes. Mafalda attributes her mindset to her mother and grandmother.
[10:55] – You can learn or laugh.
[13:07] – Not everyone is meant to work this way. And that’s okay. We need everyone’s skills and everyone’s profession.
[15:01] – Mafalda lists the things she has done throughout her career.
[16:44] – Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is crucial. Mafalda knows that one of her obstacles is her distaste for technology tools.
[19:36] – When it comes to having a team, it is unfair to not guide them and set them up for failure.
[20:31] – During onboarding, only give the information that is necessary. Don’t overload your new team member.
[23:47] – Instead of giving practice that isn’t relevant or a quiz for them to perform, have new employees start the tasks they will be doing independently later.
[27:27] – When you begin to build your team, it is important to give up some control.
[29:55] – Prospecting on LinkedIn is great, but you need to engage on posts and post everyday.
[32:06] – You have to have a normal and conversational feel to communicate on LinkedIn.
[35:00] – Even working in an AI company, there is a human touch that is extremely important.
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0:02
Welcome to She Sells Radio one of the things that I love most about LinkedIn
0:07
is just having the ability to connect with Incredible people around the globe who otherwise we might not have the
0:14
chance to connect with and my guest today is someone I probably never would have had the chance to connect with had
0:21
we not been hooked up on LinkedIn which I love so my guest today is Mafalda
0:27
Johansson who is the business development director at wonderway a
0:32
German sales enablement startup and part of what is fun about this and where I love the synchronicity of it all is
0:39
literally just a few days ago I was on a call for the Salesforce influencer
0:45
program and we were all talking about the top AI platforms for sales now I’m listening in on this call while driving
0:51
my three-year-old son to a doctor’s appointment and some of my colleagues
0:56
start like listing off platforms and they say wonder way and I I’m driving my mom is actually in the car with us and I
1:02
was like Mom grab your notepad write down wonder way I need to learn more about it totally not even putting two
1:08
and two together that my father who I’m interviewing today uh is the business
1:13
development director at wonderway so I thought this is very synchronistic and I
1:18
love how it comes together so I’m excited to have that um kind of that connection and be able to talk more about what you’re doing
1:24
there on the show and so at wonderway uh Mafalda reviews and improves hundreds of
1:30
onboarding and training programs does incredible sales webinars she hosts two
1:36
different sales podcasts so we’ll tell you more about those two and where to get plugged in and listen to those and
1:42
she’s also working on a sales book in Portuguese so I love how diverse and
1:47
expansive her interests are and outside of that she’s a master class instructor
1:52
at sdrs of Germany and the pr and marketing manager of a jazz fusion band
1:57
called is it plasticine am I saying that correctly okay awesome awesome Mafalda
2:03
welcome to She Sells Radio with you no I’m so excited thank you
2:09
first of all so much for having me and second for surprising me with that story
2:15
I mean I can’t wait to tell my CEO that you heard about us in the in the sales
2:22
force I mean that means I’m doing my job right oh my gosh no absolutely yeah
2:28
absolutely and so yeah it was a big top of it hopefully I can say this I think I could say this but it was a big topic of
2:34
conversation because as I’m sure you’re aware everyone right now is talking about AI for sales and what are the best
2:40
platforms and tools that I’m getting asked a lot of questions my colleagues in that program are getting asked and when they send wonderway again I just I
2:47
didn’t even put two and two together but I spent part of this this weekend researching wonderway and so I was like
2:53
oh I need to start recommending this to some of my clients too so anyway full circle
2:59
the best way to start this for me at least I love it I love it so we’ll you
3:04
know we’ll talk about what you’re doing there too but I also want to talk about you as a person as an individual
3:10
um we were connecting before we hit record just about you had a fun post on LinkedIn by the way we’ll tell you for
3:15
you listening we’ll tell you where to connect with Mafalda and follow her on LinkedIn because she does a great job of
3:21
posting content and it’s personal and it’s witty and it’s funny and you get to know her better
3:26
um but she had just shared a post recently about being named after a cartoon character so we were talking a
3:31
little bit about that and getting connected on that and I think it would just be fun as we kick off um Mafalda if you want to share a little
3:38
bit of your back story and um you can Loop it Loop us and with your name and that came about if you want and
3:45
and what got you into this path of sales yeah that’s uh that’s I think it’s a
3:50
great way to start so yeah my name is Mafalda my father even though it’s quite a common name in Portugal I’m Portuguese
3:57
um half Portuguese have German um my mother always liked this cartoon from Argentina and
4:05
um and she was like I want you know my daughter to be you know strong independent critical thinking all of
4:12
that and Mafalda is that the cartoon is is that
4:17
um and the only thing that me and that my father we are very different is she doesn’t like soup and I do so
4:26
um so that’s two in Germany right it’s cold a lot you got it yeah exactly exactly and we have a huge subculture in
4:32
Portugal we are very snowy bought soup and coffee for some reason and and yeah and that’s what my mother named me after
4:40
and you know she always made sure I knew and she always gave me the full collection of books for me to read
4:47
um and uh yes so so that’s that for my name and as I said I was born in
4:53
Portugal um I lived in the United States I lived in South Korea I’m now living in in
4:58
Germany and so I’ve been living in three different continents and yeah and I
5:05
started my sales career in the US like everyone else I didn’t plan to work
5:11
in sales I never met the person who said you know what since I was a kid I wanted to work in sales yeah
5:18
um but I I had I wanted to do my masters in in the states and when you study
5:24
there when you have the F1 Visa you can then upgrade for a one year working Visa
5:30
and and I did but I had to find a job also because you know my bills were piling up I really need to pay them my
5:38
rent and Etc but because I didn’t have much work experience and Americans they they worked while studying and they work
5:46
a lot so when they finish studies usually they’re already they have some work experience which doesn’t happen when you come from Portugal
5:53
um so I was like all right I’m on a Visa I’m not a local and I don’t have work
5:58
experience so it was really hard to find a job and uh and the only job that took
6:04
me was a hundred percent sales commission job because I was like guess what number is for them they were not
6:09
paying me a salary anyway if they didn’t sell so there were no answers like you can work
6:15
um and I was like it’s not that I’m interested in working 100 sales commission but I have no other choice at
6:20
the moment so I’m gonna go for it and because I’m Portuguese they’re like you
6:25
can sell to the Latin American market right they’re like well I don’t really speak Spanish ah you learn it
6:32
wow so you got to learn okay so you gotta learn a new language while working
6:37
on a position yes that’s the best that’s the best way for you to learn the language a month later you’re fluent
6:43
because you have no other choice you have to be what were you selling um don’t judge me
6:49
um timeshare I’ve sold so many I sold Yellow Pages my first like quote unquote
6:56
legit sales job out of school I sold Yellow Pages which you may not even know because a lot of people don’t even know that that makes you sound like a
7:02
dinosaur no I know I I still remember I still know okay but yeah I get it yeah
7:08
okay so you would cut your teeth wow learning new language 100 commission
7:13
selling timeshare what was that like I mean that’s Lori the sun it was in the unflex mall so I was like yeah 40
7:20
degrees I don’t know 90 19 Fahrenheit 40 Celsius sun on your face yeah was
7:27
interesting but hey I I was happy because I was making money I was like if
7:32
I had like a normal job being Junior right with my no my library I’ll be
7:37
making less money right so an entry job I was 21. so an entry job
7:44
would I would be making within like a a normal salary I’ll be making less right
7:49
right there it’s like I have no limits so I’m making more like depending on the
7:54
week but you know you cannot see week by week you have to see by the end of the month or by the year how much you made
8:00
right right I’m making more than if I’ll be like a recessionist or something like
8:05
that in Florida so I was like fine and after after that nothing else is scary
8:11
you know when you do 100 Commission you said to yourself for you know a very
8:17
good start because it’s like nothing else is difficult you know how did you so I actually just want to take a moment
8:22
on that because I think I was just talking with a friend of mine about just rejection in sales and how prevalent it
8:29
is and how you have to have such a strong mindset to be able to get past so
8:34
I’m imagining you faced a lot of that in that type of role what was what mindset
8:39
did you develop that helped you be able to look back and say actually this is great I’m making more than I could working as a receptionist or whatever
8:45
like how did you overcome the rejection I I to be honest because I
8:52
I I was always I have to actually thank my my mother and my grandmother for that because both of them are extremely you
8:59
know strong women my grandmother you know in Portugal we had a dictatorship until 1974 and women didn’t have much
9:07
rights by law by then you know we couldn’t have your own passport yeah yeah I could go on with the with the
9:12
horrible things that we didn’t have access to before 1974. but my grandmother she didn’t give to them so I
9:19
was like I don’t care I’m gonna work with with my husband not for with my husband she learned at the time French
9:26
English and a bit of German so she did the negotiations with the construction companies and she’s like I’m gonna do
9:33
that so I was raised like my grandmother like that with my mother and
9:39
I I was like I always took rejection okay even from Young ages because I was like I’m doing what I can I’m doing my
9:45
best some days I win some days I I don’t and we cannot win every day and um and I
9:52
just don’t take it personally so incense was like okay I lost this client or they say they
9:59
don’t understand my very broken Spanish at that time I was just like laugh and move on you know like when something
10:05
doesn’t work out you either learn or you laugh from it doodle yes learn or laugh
10:11
I actually really love that I I think when you train your mindset to be
10:18
that way everything gets so much easier this is a completely random Side Story but yesterday I we have a brand new car
10:24
we bought a couple weeks ago and I was backing out and I didn’t do anything different from what I normally do but I
10:29
scraped the whole front side against this brick wall and I was like the version of me before I had worked on my
10:35
mindset would have been really upset about this but I I honestly just laughed I was like because what’s great
10:41
about when you’re in sales or an entrepreneur is you just there’s always more money like you just go get more
10:47
money take care of it it’s more like an inconvenience but I was like well that was inconvenient I’m gonna move on and laugh right so exactly in sales and
10:54
business right we just I love that and the reason why we make more money when it’s a variable income it’s because it
11:02
takes it’s more risky right yeah it’s the same when you invest right high risk High return low risk low return same
11:09
with salaries the reason why you have like what people have like a like let’s say stable seller rates because there is
11:15
no risk to it right therefore let me quiz yes if you have a variable or a
11:21
commissioning it has to be it has to pay off the risk yeah and people have to
11:27
embrace that mindset and it’s okay if they don’t I have a friend of mine she says I don’t want that I’d rather
11:33
make less money and know what I have in the end of the day and that’s okay we also need these
11:39
people right and you have the others like me like you who are like no I
11:45
prefer to take the risk and make more and I can deal with that and if I can’t
11:51
if that if that takes a toll on my mental health then I should maybe I
11:56
should review my priorities and maybe I should do what my friend does because she started feeling at the time that
12:02
that was taking a toll on her happiness at work so she shouldn’t be doing that and she made enough money with the
12:08
normal salary yeah so it’s okay so you also have to put the things in the balance and say what works for you
12:15
I think that’s so important I was having that conversation with someone the other day like I don’t think I’m curious your
12:21
thoughts on this I think you just shared them like I don’t think everyone is meant to be an entrepreneur
12:26
um and I don’t think everyone is a good fit for sales and that’s okay because everyone was fired the same way it would
12:32
be a very boring world and we did every and we needed every profession we need doctors you need Pilots we need people
12:39
who who clean hotels you know cleaners we need you know we need there are so
12:45
many things we need and so many professions that I don’t have to like be good and and
12:51
liking these lifestyle you know like I remember um my boyfriend from teenage like my
12:56
ex-boyfriend when I was a teenager um at the time he was always very into numbers and Mathematics at school and I
13:03
always liked Arts you know I like literature I like to read I like to write I like music I like theater
13:09
and I remember him saying when he you know when I was studying music or theater he was looking like with like
13:16
despise like oh how can you like this and then he said well I’m so glad people
13:21
like this so I don’t have to do it and I think the same way you know like I’m so
13:27
happy there are people in Academia like my brother he’s doing a PhD in deep learning applied to meteorology I’m so
13:33
happy I don’t want to do a PhD it’s definitely nothing deep learning exactly exactly so the power of knowing yourself
13:40
which I think is also so so important in this process and what works for you yes
13:46
exactly exactly um so tell us about it I know it’s it’s more than we have time for today but
13:51
just high level the journey then from this time share sales job outside in the summer heat commission only to what
13:58
you’re doing now which is business development for a very cool very Cutting Edge sales AI enablement company
14:06
um I will try to summarize so it’s been 10 years in between more or less uh in
14:11
the meantime I’ve worked um for well I in Florida I worked always for uh sales
14:17
in internships and then I’ve worked in Berlin in London and Belgium uh also in
14:23
sales but also in events management I organize a lot of conferences and uh so
14:29
I did also event management I did operations manager so I was operations manager as well with a bit of sales
14:34
because I also trained my teams in sailing and then I went back to sales with SAS uh and then I’ve been there
14:42
um you know ever since and I always say when people say there is no more stressful job than sales like there is
14:48
event management management like I’m sorry but like there
14:54
is for me from every job I did I think the most responsible one was
14:59
events because everything that can go wrong will go wrong and and things that cannot go
15:05
wrong will still go wrong you know and yeah it’s the lack of control is even more it’s bigger than in sales in my
15:13
view so yeah so I um long story short that’s what I’ve been doing the last uh
15:19
10 years I love that I love that and we’re going to get into some of what you help and teach people to do through
15:25
Wonder way shortly but I’m just curious on that Journey for you because I always think it’s so helpful to hear again to
15:31
hear the mindset of someone who has developed a really successful sales career what would you say my father
15:36
what’s the biggest obstacle you faced over the past 10 years on your sales journey and then how did you overcome it
15:43
I would say I have like what One internal mine and
15:49
one external so internal is and I should be ashamed of saying this but there you
15:55
go I’m gonna be very blunt I’m very bad with technology like I don’t like I I
16:01
didn’t have a smartphone until 2019 because I don’t like it yeah um I so I
16:07
have one of my weaknesses as a professional and as a professional sales is I’m not very tax saving of course I
16:13
know how to use myself what are not these people who love
16:18
technology and love to work and free and takes me longer than I would say a person who likes technology to figure
16:24
something out in terms of tools so for me it that’s something that it’s an
16:29
obstacle in my professional because while I’m very fast in other things I’m not fast in you know tool management and
16:38
use and you know tools when they’re really well used they’re your best friends and I know that and when I
16:45
manage them I loved and I was like oh why were you so lazy to get to learn this you know your life is so much you
16:52
know but it’s something that really the process of learning how to use a
16:57
tool in driving for me personally so and that’s something have you found that that like was there a time when that
17:03
slowed you down or you had to get past the mindset with it like yeah I had to really like okay think okay the next two
17:11
hours will be Dreadful you know you’re gonna hate them but you need to do a lot you know so this is something in me that
17:18
I think it’s an obstacle you know to be more efficient as a sales as a professional overall and the second one
17:24
um that I’ve seen in my life and there’s something in it and I think it’s a good way to talk about business development
17:30
and sales in general is most companies then they don’t onboard and train their sales reps
17:37
either at all or properly and you cannot expect good results from it and I
17:44
remember obviously at the beginning I wasn’t good at it because I had no clue
17:49
what I was doing I was even selling in the language it was I didn’t you know speak at the time but even later on when
17:57
I moved to SAS sales it was like the old morning was terrible and I’ve heard these horror stories over
18:04
and over and over again and this is a huge obstacle in everyone’s lives all
18:10
over the world they can not expect your sales reps to perform when you provide them either no training or poor training
18:17
or poor training what’s gonna happen is the proactive ones like I did they will
18:22
self-teach themselves and they go after and it’s not really their job you should
18:27
do that in life but it’s not your responsibility yeah and it’s not
18:34
okay to to to leave people up to chance and up to their proactiveness you know there are people who are more proactive
18:40
than others there are people who are much more self-confident than others so people who are more self-confident they
18:45
trust themself to train themselves go after try and not being afraid to fail but there
18:51
are people who are afraid to fail and when you’re not training them it’s being very very fair to these people you know
18:57
because I don’t mind failing we talked about it I don’t mind being rejected I don’t care right many people do you know
19:04
and that’s not okay to put them in that position so let’s speak to that a little bit and I’m gonna actually take some
19:10
notes while you talk because we have a lot of listeners who are we’ve got our listeners fall between typically either
19:16
someone who’s an entrepreneur or a sales professional then we we have listeners outside of that I would say most of ours
19:22
probably fall in those two categories so I’m just thinking about two for sales managers who are listening in or for
19:28
entrepreneurs who are listening and who maybe they’re hiring their first sales person or they know it’s time to expand
19:34
like what are some of the top things we should be doing to successfully train
19:40
and onboard a new system I love that question first first
19:45
um in the onboarding only give relevant information okay so something something
19:51
that I’ve seen happening and as you said at the beginning I’ve corrected a lot of onboarding paths because it’s one of my
19:57
jobs here at wonderway and I’ve experienced myself as a salesperson being onboarded they love to overload
20:03
you with nice to have information what happens is the Newbie you don’t you you
20:08
still don’t have enough knowledge to prioritize so you’re gonna try you’re gonna try to learn everything with the
20:14
same eagerness but then we have limited storage space space in our brain and
20:22
then maybe you focusing in less important things is the managers or the person who is on boarding your job to
20:28
tell you this is what you need to learn this is where you have to focus your energy it’s not my job two out of 100
20:34
things to say number 20 is the one no so that’s the first failure I see all the
20:41
time so the first two weeks because even the essential information is already a lot
20:46
and people want to prove themselves and they are nervous so you don’t want to overwhelm them the second mistake I see
20:53
a lot is a lot of theory a lot of videos and presentations and no practice
20:59
no exercises so like we especially adult learning we
21:06
need to do no two things why am I learning this because if I don’t know why am I learning this they don’t have
21:13
my buying I’m not going to learn I’m not at school so and second is
21:18
after I understand why I’m learning this I need to apply to remember
21:23
and what happens many times is you have four weeks on boarding full of theory
21:29
no exercises no nothing or very or just lame quizzes here and there and then in
21:35
the end for example on Str all right did you understand all the 10 000 products we have and all the 10 000 technical
21:40
personas we have good luck and please bring results that’s not
21:46
that’s not how it works what we do for example I can give you an example at Wonder way because I also learn and
21:51
train my business development team is and also another another mistake I see
21:57
often is a lot of focus on the product and product features very little on the Persona and as an SDR you better
22:04
understand your persona the product it’s okay we have discount Executives you have sales Engineers we have we have
22:11
technical support yeah you have to understand your persona even more than your product so so what we do for
22:18
example here I can give you a very uh concrete example is I usually teach one Persona one of the many
22:26
the challenges the priorities and which part of my product solves and why and
22:31
what happens with and without our product and then I asked them for example when assessment is write me a prospecting
22:38
email not a quiz not a quiz the kiss doesn’t tell you anything so write me a prospecting email so your exercise is
22:45
your it’s something related to what you’re gonna do in the end of the morning if it’s a good email I even say send it
22:53
yeah if people committing you book in your first or second week which is very motivating as well I’ve had this the
23:00
yard booking for meetings in the second week because we you know we did the exercises we send them let’s see if it
23:06
works yeah yeah and this and this gives them confidence that doesn’t overwhelm them
23:11
on the opposite they’re like excited like all right I booked for a meetings this is not so difficult to explore them
23:19
they will see but you know um or for example if I want them to hear
23:24
if I want to see if they understood a certain product I asked them to record a small video of them speaking about their
23:30
product again not a quiz tell me how you would you pitch it right
23:35
so imagine I’m this Persona I have this trigger how would you pitch in one
23:41
sentence and then they record a video so every single assessment is related to what they’re going to do
23:49
so when they start working they’ve seen they’ve done that without any risk before they know how to do it because
23:56
they’ve done it how long is typically a good sales training and onboarding program
24:03
um it depends a lot but I would say for sdrs I would say two weeks the first
24:10
part of the onboarding meaning just onboarding and then after the two weeks
24:15
you do like uh you already you already working while being trained on extra
24:20
things okay so so and then you and then after that month you can already start
24:26
working with continuous training because another mistake I see is all right here was the onboarding and then see you in a
24:33
year or if you’re not performing let’s do like a performance review or performance plan to you know to make you
24:40
even more nervous about milk right you know not reaching results
24:46
um so that’s also the thing and also like in the first weeks of onboarding personas challenges the basic of the
24:54
tools that you need to use and then you work while you continue
24:59
being on board so we already booking meetings you’re already prospecting but
25:04
then you continue being trained so you can then you can then talk about objection handling why are we talking
25:09
about objection handling in the first week when you’re not handling any objection
25:15
it’s a valid point so kind of try to stack it and again I’m asking these questions because some of our listeners
25:20
are literally thinking about onboarding their first sales person or maybe they’re doing it with you know with with
25:25
quite a few and they’re working in a bigger Corporation and they’ve been doing it for a longer amount of time but you’re saying stack the onboarding and
25:32
training with what they’re actually going to be bumping up against Real exactly exactly yes okay that makes a
25:38
ton exactly and and if you don’t need them to for example work with a certain
25:43
tool up until a month or two later don’t train them on the tool they will forget um
25:49
they will forget so let’s only train them when they will use that that’s a
25:55
great Point how does so if someone’s listening and they’ve been doing founder-led selling and they’ve they and
26:00
I know you probably work with you I’m imagining the organizations you work with are largely more established but
26:06
I’m just curious if you can speak to this for a moment so if somebody has been doing most of the selling
26:11
themselves and they’re bringing on a sales person now for the first time they’re giving up some control they know
26:18
that it’s smart they need to get somebody else in charge of handling this so they can free up
26:25
their time but what does the mindset shift need to be for someone to grow their sales team and to give up that
26:31
control knowing that not everyone is going to sell as well as them at the beginning like what why don’t we how do
26:37
we need to be thinking about that so I think that’s a great question um and it’s definitely very relevant so
26:43
you need to set up your people for success and you need to know you’ve done everything you could to do that so
26:49
like obviously and especially startups I work in a startup many things I have to figure them out right so but like the
26:56
less it can heavier people figure them out themselves the better yeah right so to
27:03
make sure you have to make sure they you give them all the information in the right way and you know they understood
27:11
it and this will go back to what I’ve said how do I know if they know how to write a good email if they’re active
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would emotional assessment right and I can tell you um from all the data we have usually
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people are on board so at new sdrs who are doing who have great assessments
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those who complete their assessments with really high grades usually they are the top performance because it’s related
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right so if you if I give you a five star in an email in an email that you wrote or in a role play that you did
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that you did a really good job I’m assuming this is how you’re gonna perform when it’s real life right but if
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you’re already from the beginning your email is bad why would I think that the remote on our rights to an actual
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Prospect will be good right so you have to assure before you you give your
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accounts and you give your brand and you give that to your
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um newbie you need to make sure they are ready by assessing them in the right way
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because if they do a great assessment if they prove to you in the right way they can do the job then you can be rest
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assured if they deliver to you and they’re like they don’t explain your product well or your branding you don’t
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they don’t communicate in the way you like them to they don’t really understand who is your ICP in the sense
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that you ask them for top 20 accounts if the top 20 are not good ones then you
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know they’re not gonna do a good job but if they are good then why would they screw up when it’s real life yeah that
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makes a ton very unlikely it’s pretty simple actually when you lay it out like that so I love that tell everyone
28:54
because I know we’ve got just a couple more minutes here mofalda I think we can’t have you on without talking
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prospecting and I think LinkedIn in particular because you do such a great job on it what are like one to two of
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the things that you see working best for you right now when it comes to prospecting on LinkedIn yeah
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um so basically um it’s really important and I know a lot of creators say that that you post
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uh you post and you engaged on LinkedIn so before you even start prospecting on
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LinkedIn make sure that you post once a day every day Monday to Friday and that
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you will also engage on people’s posts um so people know you’re face and your
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name so when you reach out to them you’re not such a stranger so actually a
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lot of the LinkedIn prospecting starts before you even reach out to to the to the prospect yeah and then when you do
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um I usually don’t send unless I have something very specific to say I always send invites without any message okay so
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that’s where it seems to work much better unless it’s something specific like Elyse told me to reach out to you
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because right then it works best but if you don’t have nothing to say or if you just want to see if they are interested
30:10
in your solution just don’t say anything the likelihood is much higher for them to upset you and then
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um yeah and then something that I see a lot of sdrs doing even the really good
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ones and is like talk like a normal person like
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like I know it sounds such a weird um and useless advice but it’s not like
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even the best sdrs when I check their emails on their messaging they do
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everything correct they understand the Persona they do the homework they know how to research accounts they do check
30:45
check check check but the user gone that’s like that’s a turn off you know like I remember training my
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in my previous company we were selling like software testing to engineers and quality assurance you know like wait
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that were uh with our solution you can I know something like gibberish and I’ll
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like just say you can find bugs that they wouldn’t because it’s testing in real life
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language yeah I know exactly and that’s some and especially if this is true on
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email in in in LinkedIn it has to be even more because you’re texting so you
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have to give the feeling their prostitute just texting yeah like a normal person and and I think this is
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going to be even more important now with the AI because with AI you will see there is a
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lot of automation already on LinkedIn and on the messaging it’s gonna get worse or better depending I don’t think
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it’s very good from what I’ve been experiencing so far I mean there’s lots of like fail fail fail that I’m going to
31:49
use somewhere somehow in a trade me neither but there will get better eventually this will get better so the
31:54
more robotic you sound when it’s you even right that’s so true you’ll think it’s it’s a robot and it was you after
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all but you just cannot write like a normal person yeah that’s that’s a good
32:06
point so an exercise I recommend doing is okay you wrote your message you wrote your email now imagine if you write
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exactly the same thing to a friend of yours that’s how exactly you should be with formalities obviously maybe don’t
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say bro or dudes to a prospect but you know um that’s a fun exercise and I think you
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will get your messaging much better especially on LinkedIn when it’s texting it’s messages it’s not an email yeah
32:31
okay and send and send voice messages I was just gonna say voice messages are
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huge I’m gold yeah I agree and uh I I can believe that it’s still I never give
32:42
that advice on LinkedIn because I say that’s obvious everyone is saying that he should be doing that I feel like if I
32:48
say that on LinkedIn it’s already old old advice but apparently it’s not um so definitely voice message on
32:54
LinkedIn use them they are good they will get you or either meeting or
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referral or a no faster which is great yes just be be human and do something a
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little bit different and once again please don’t don’t start your voice messages hello I’m from Wonder way the
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living room father of like you know hey how you doing I saw you doing this a lot
33:20
to chat let me know yeah exactly exactly and it’s amazing still to this day how
33:27
many people haven’t received a voice message on LinkedIn I found and they’re like oh that’s so cool I’ve never gotten one of those before so just something
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different
33:39
talk like a normal person yes so send your rehearse page on the on this
33:45
voicemail or voice message on LinkedIn you do that your friends how weird would
33:50
that be hey best friend uh I would like to take you to the best
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restaurant in town like no no one talks like that well I hope at least not my
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friends no I think it’s what’s also refreshing
34:07
is just hearing from your perspective and you’re working you know deep in the trenches of an AI company in the sales
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space but it’s still like that human touch is at the end of the day what is going to help you rise above so exactly
34:22
and and and still a parenthesis there is and that’s what we’ve been advocating in
34:27
in Wonder way like my boss and the CEO and also every time we write articles with webinars like the AI is not here to
34:36
to replace the human in you that that’s exactly where your strength is hey I
34:41
will replace you in admin stuff in things you don’t want to do actually yeah you know filling out your crms you
34:48
know doing all the summaries for emails etc etc so you should use AI
34:55
to save time on stupid tasks or repetitive tasks like I can do it so you
35:01
can spend more time being human like you know yeah yeah I love it thank you so
35:08
much this was so fun and so if somebody’s listening and they want to go connect with you Mafalda on LinkedIn and
35:13
learn more about what you’re doing and what you’re up to tell them where to get in touch with you um maybe mention your podcast let’s
35:19
let’s tell everyone where they can connect further thank you thank you for that so LinkedIn as you see it here
35:25
um yeah don’t you don’t need to write me like a connection message just just send me a connection and I will accept and on
35:33
my podcast so one is a day in the life off so I um I interviewed three heads of
35:40
departments head of data head of engineering head of sales head off and I
35:45
asked them what sales supposed to be asking them so what are your challenges how does your day look like here’s a
35:51
prospecting email what do you think about it so it’s free it’s on YouTube and on Spotify I don’t have to give your
35:57
data to access it so if your buyer person is there I really recommend you
36:02
to listen to to that episode and then the other one is sales training drug listings where I have you at least in
36:08
the future we will um record it in September which is a very short podcast 15 minutes I ask
36:15
three personal questions so you get the speaker to get to know the speaker better and then I asked three sales
36:20
training mistakes and as you can see in the beginning of this podcast I was speaking a lot about the mistakes people
36:26
do on onboarding and we basically tackle three mistakes per episode and per speaker amazing amazing and we’ll link
36:34
all those in the show notes as well um this is so fun and this is the power of what you’re talking about this is how
36:39
we initially connected it was LinkedIn connection request I love that they’ve been built from there and just seeing
36:44
where things go so I think you know one of my mantras for my life and for my clients too is like let it be easy like
36:51
yes let it be easy let it be easy and this is an example of how great things can come from just letting it be easy
36:58
connecting being a real human and um and walking yeah and as I said in the
37:03
beginning without LinkedIn and this power Community we would have never met and I have the feeling with same people
37:08
in the space I actually have I have now a friend or two coming from LinkedIn connections so it can be a great way for
37:16
you know even new friendships so there you go absolutely absolutely which I I will put it out there I think we’re
37:22
going to be great friends and continue to do good things together in the future so this was so fun thank you so much no
37:28
thank you for having me absolutely and uh to you my listener like I said we’re
37:33
going to link all of my father’s information in the show notes but go connect with her she is a woman who is
37:38
doing big things in the sales world and uh and we need more women in sales we do
37:44
we absolutely do so go connect with Mafalda and as always thank you so much
37:49
for tuning in to today’s episode you can head on over to elysearcher.com for all
37:54
sorts of goodies trainings to help you elevate your sales step into a greater level of financial abundance and truly
38:01
transform into the person that you know you are meant to be I hope you enjoyed this episode and I want to encourage you
38:06
to go check out another one of our shoe sales radio episodes right now for continued inspiration see you on our
38:13
next episode bye for now