RHS 088 - Josh Braun Teaches Us How to Dominate Cold Email Prospecting

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Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have another completely gangster episode and it is with Josh Braun.
Now I first came in contact with Josh Braun's work on LinkedIn. I don't know how I ran into him on LinkedIn but I did and I was completely taken by his approach to sales.
Now, Josh is a sales coach. He has a lot of videos.
He puts stuff on LinkedIn all the time, and you're going to hear me say this during the episode. He's an absolute must follow on LinkedIn.
It's J-O-S-H-B-R-A-U-N. Just search for Josh Braun.
Look for a guy who talks about sales. You're going to find him.
This episode is tremendous. We get hyper tactical on cold email.
Now he does talk about cold calling and some of the other ways that you can prospect, but we didn't get into that so much until the very, very end. I really wanted to focus on cold emailing because one, it's something I do a lot of and I get mixed results.
Sometimes I feel dialed in, sometimes I'm not. Josh takes us there.
He has a guide that I bought. It's like 150 bucks.
It is worth every penny. It's the badass B2B growth guide and it gives you scripts for cold calling, scripts for cold outreach, examples, case studies, so much stuff.
It's amazing. I mean, this isn't like an affiliate deal or anything.
I just think you guys would benefit from getting it and you can get out all his stuff at joshbraun.com. J-O-S-H-B-R-A-U-N.com.
You're going to love this episode. Before we get there, huge shout out to today's sponsor, AgencyVA.
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Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I, uh, I don't know how closely you follow.
I know you get a couple hundred likes on your posts, but, um, I cyber stalked the shit out of you on LinkedIn. So I don't know how creepy that is to hear, but I do.
Um, and I mean that in the most positive and non-creepy way, obviously. But no, I haven't seen- Was that you outside my house last night? Were you like looking- Dude, I wish.
That wasn't you. All right.
It's seven degrees and snowy out there. So I wish I was down south.
Right? You live in Florida or something? You live someplace down south. Yeah.
Where are you? Albany, New York, upstate New York. How's it going, man, there? Uh, it it's getting better, uh, slowly, very, very slowly, but, um, you go down to the city.
So I'm about two and a half hours North of the city. Uh, the city is a wasteland.
Um, unfortunately I, it is as bad as, as a lot of the articles you've read. I know there's articles that are like, oh, you know, we're gritty and all this.
And I get that. I get why people want to feel that way.
But versus New York a year and a half ago, it's not even close to the same. I mean, you can walk through Times Square.
You're one of five people. Wow.
I mean, it's brutal. So, so because, because our governor, he changes the rules constantly.
So you can't really leave the state. If you leave the state, you're taking a chance.
And when you come back, you know, you can't do anything for 14 days, 10, 14 days. So, so my wife and I took our kids down there about three months ago, just to get out of here, you know, just to see someplace else.
And, and we love the city, we used to live there. And man, it was weird.
It just was weird, dude, that you know how you've obviously been in New York City before. Sure.
Yeah. So you know how, whether it's getting out of the taxi from the airport or coming up from the subway, or however you get there, that moment where you hit the sidewalk, I don't care how many times you've been there.
Something happens. It's a little bit of electricity just zaps through your body.
You just, I didn't get it first time in my entire life. And I've lived two hours away from the city, my entire life, basically.
First time I ever, ever didn't feel that zap. And it was weird.
And the thing is, you've got people living there that are paying New York City money, but they're not able to experience the New York City. I mean, that's the thing.
I have a good real estate agent friend that's in Florida. There's a lot of people just getting out of there, you know, which I guess if you have, if you have money and you have time, I would imagine it'll work itself out.
Eventually I would think. Yeah.
Like four or five years from now, I would think, or maybe it's never the same. I don't know.
It's hard to, it's, this was supposed to be like, now I'm hearing like, maybe it won't be this year. Maybe it'll be next year.
Like it's like, it keeps getting extended. Yeah.

New York City needs a new mayor.

That's the problem.

Yeah.

As long as what's his de Blasio is their mayor,

they're in trouble because he just has a very,

I mean, I don't want to get political,

but he has a very specific view on what should be done.

And it is to the absolute detriment of all the humans who are living there.

And it's because, do you think it's because he's not really in it? Like it's easy to sit and like from an ivory tower and like do stuff when it really doesn't affect you. That's the thing.
I always had a problem with people again, not to be political, but I can't believe they're not going to keep their, they want to keep their businesses open. And it's, it's so I'm like, yeah, because you don't have to feed your family because you don't have a business, man.
You got a corporate job sitting behind zoom. Like, you know, like you can't relate.
Like, do you think it's because he can't relate? A hundred percent. I think, I think it's that, I think that he is, um, uh, you know, for better or for worse, uh, whatever this, I think he's a, a, a true liberal elite, uh, right.
In the purest sense, I think he does sit on the 42nd floor of, you know, in his mind. And, you know, technically, the, you know, the mayor doesn't, office isn't that high.
But, you know, I think he sits above the clouds. And he looks down and he goes, you're this, this and this, because you want to keep your business open.
And the guy's going, wait a minute, I have two kids and a mortgage. You know, what am I supposed to do? The big issue we're facing now up here.
And it's just really, I mean, this is just interesting stuff. I mean, obviously, it's probably obvious which way my political views have been being a small business owner, but landlords are getting decimated, because no one has to pay rent.
Every political figure in New York state, because if you, the problem with our state is New York drives the state. So where I sit couldn't be more different than the city, right? The city is a completely different thing.
If you're in Westchester County, South out through the Island, your mindset, your goals, your life, it's 180 degrees. We could be Iowa for as much as we're New York, really.
And for that reason, all the rules that apply down there, yeah, I get it. Your rent is $5,000 a month and you just got canned and you have nowhere to go.
I get that some mortgage or some rent relief probably makes sense. You're paying $700 to a guy who, you know, is owned a two family, you know, in Waterville New York.
And basically the only way he pays the mortgage is if you pay your rent, you know, what's he supposed to do? You know, so it's such a tough situation. Yeah.
So there's a lot of, a lot of hard stuff going on, but, um, you know, I think, uh, I think we'll be fine. I think, I think we're going to be all right.
I think everything, you know, everything has a purpose and a time. Yeah.
Uh, you know, I, I, I also, the other side of it is man, you get a lot of amazing stories of people finding ways to pivot, to push through, to reimagine, to be creative. And, and so I do this local podcast.
So it's cause I'm going to, I'm going to, I own an insurance agency. Um, so, uh, and the people, I think I said this when I sent you the email, but everyone who's listening is somewhere in the insurance value chain, 99%.
So, but I have a local podcast that I do just, it's called the Capital Region Business Podcast because Albany calls itself the Capital Region. So, this guy's pizza guy, guy owns five pizza shops.
So from 1996 until 2010, they had him and his family had one pizza shop and he, in his entire family, including his father and, um, mother and two brothers all lived above the pizza shop. and essentially what would be a flat, right? A flat apartment and lived above the pizza shop.
Then they opened a second location, a third location. And by 2020, they have five locations and they're like one of the best pizza shops in the area.
And they really are. They're pretty good.
It's called Paisan's Pizza. He's from Brooklyn and it's this great story.
And then the pandemic hits and he's losing $50,000 a week, 50. You know what he does? He starts hawking Dave Portnoy.
Dave, he, I sent you frozen pizzas, taste my pizzas. He starts, he starts this entire marketing campaign.
Dave Portnoy, the guy from Barstool sports who does the pizza tasting. Okay.
Yeah. So he's like changed entire businesses because he'll go take, he does a one bite challenge.
He takes one bite of your pie and if he likes it. I got it.
Okay. So this guy, his name's Frank Scavio.
He's dying, right? He's watching his business die. Cause no one, this is March.
No, but I mean, March here was literally the zombie apocalypse. Like you didn't even get your car.
You were triple masked in the car or someone was, was, was pulling you over. Right.
So, um, uh, so he sends Dave Portnoy this, you know, it's big, he's got 2 million, 3 million followers, whatever. Sends him these frozen pizzas.
And then his campaign on social, and this is eventually we'll get to what you do for a living, but this is just amazing stuff. So he sends Dave Portnoy this frozen pizza and his entire campaign wasn't, hey man, will you try my pizzas? It was, I can't wait till you try my pizzas.
He just assumed the sale from the get-go. His entire campaign was get ready for Dave to try my pizza.
It was as if it was a foregone conclusion and it was just when, when was he going to release it? Right? Sure as shit. Dave tries the pizzas, gives him a 7.8, which is a pretty good score for him.
Changes the course of his entire business. Now he does as much in frozen pizza sales nationwide as he did in his five pizza locations before.
Maybe I should try this pizza. What's the name of it? Pison's Pizza.
You can order it online. Pison.
Pison's Pizza. All right.
From New York. All right.
I'm going to try that. Yeah.
Yeah. it's good.
I've never had it frozen because I can get it hot. But yeah, just that story.
That to me is a pandemic story on the other side that you love to hear because- Such a great story. Yeah, yeah.
Because you have a lot of people that would not think that they kind of go into this downward spiral. No.
Because how do you even know how to freeze a pizza and ship it? I mean, that's a whole different set of skills. I would imagine anything about pizza, but I would imagine if you've never done that before, it's not like you just put a cook, like there's a, there's a lot that goes into that probably.
Yeah. And that was the thing he had literally, so he, well, I don't want to, I'm telling this entire story and you can go, anyone who actually cares about this story can go listen to the other podcast.
I'll check it out. But it's just funny.
I shouldn't say funny. It is very interesting and intriguing to me that, and this kind of takes us into why I want to talk to you, but it's intriguing to me that some people see things like the pandemic and they turtle up, right? They, you know, the world's out to get me.
You know, I lost my job. It's tough.
I'm stuck home, all these things. And I think probably all of us dealt with those feelings to a certain extent.
And then there are other people who are like, fuck it. I'm going to find a new way to do this.
I'm going to let's try this. Maybe this'll work.
You know, let's push the chips in here. Um, you know, I had another guy on who's, whose restaurant went under by April toast finished 56 years.
That restaurant had existed in Albany by the end of April, it does not exist anymore. He now has one of the top 10 hottest condiment brands in the entire country, hot, crispy oil.
It is one, it's delicious, but this dude just,

he's like, I'm out of business. What am I going to do? I'm going to start a condiment business,

hot crispy oil, which is, which actually is amazing. Check it out.
Yeah. Pizza, pizza and crispy oil.
All right. I already got two things out of this podcast.
If you put the crispy oil

on the pizza, you will drastically increase your cholesterol, but it is also delicious. All right.
I'll give it a try. What the hell? Yeah.
Okay. So let's, let's, let's actually talk, talk about, talk about you.
I apologize for all that because I can obviously go on tangents. So I haven't been intrigued.
So, so to lay the um, what ultimately brought you to me and everyone that's listening, you've heard me mention, uh, some of Josh's stuff before. Um, uh, I, I found you because I went from, um, I was an insurance agent for eight years.
I then kind of was in a situation where there was a ceiling. So I took a job as a chief marketing officer for an insurance technology company for five years um fortunately I had a family member that got sick I was forced to move uh to not travel for that job anymore I had to move back you know kind of not travel from Albany I lived here the whole time and in that transition I decided to take everything I had learned both as a salesman and as a tech, you know, marketing slash technologist and start my own insurance agency, which forced me back into a heavy, you know, kind of retail sales role.
So I was kind of relearning skills that I had, you know, just had gone dormant a little bit from whatever, from the last few years. And I struggle with call reluctance.
I have to like get myself pumped up and I'm getting better. I'm absolutely getting better.
So, but my natural way, I'm just not one of those guys who goes, oh, here's a prospect. Okay.
You know what I mean? I've had to work through it. And, and, and I'm a member of your badass B2B thing, which is freaking awesome.
We're going to plug the shit out of that at the end. You guys, it's like ridiculous value.
I use it all the time. You'd be silly not to get it.
And that's not just like a heavy plug is just on the show. I actually am in there all the time looking at it.
It's a tremendous course and the value is ridiculous. But so I got into that.
then that got me more into your stuff and just your way of repositioning how we speak to our clients is to me the way. And that's my intro.
Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
I would like to play that every morning. If you could send that to me as a wave file, that would be great.
I'll just send it as my alarm clock and it'd be a great positive affirmation for the morning. Makes me feel really good.
Love getting a compliment every once in a while. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, so you deal with, um, you know, I guess, I guess give everyone the broader background, just, just, you know, as much as you want to go, it can be two minutes. It can be 10 minutes, whatever you feel comfortable with, but just kind of set the stage.
And then I have a bunch of places I'd like to go with you. Yeah.
So, so salespeople typically will work with me when they're sending lots of cold emails, but they're getting little to no responses, or they feel like the phone is a cactus or they are picking up the phone and they're hearing, I'm not interested far too many times. and what I help them do is to be a red X and a sea of white circle sales messages so that they can start more conversations with people they want to get in front of, but in a way that actually feels good on the soul and doesn't make prospects feel sold or manipulated.
I love that. That red X thing, when you started talking about that, I was like, that's freaking brilliant.
It just makes so much sense. So, you know, you talk about Chris Voss a lot.
You talk about your approach to cold email. And I use a lot of cold email.
I would say very mixed results. Sometimes I feel like I'm dialed in other times, you know, it feels like you're shouting into the Grand Canyon and wondering why no one's shouting back.
Um, you know, where do you think just as a starting point? So, so salesman, salesperson, saleswoman, whatever comes to you. And, uh, um, and they're struggling with cold email.
There's, you know, are struggling to make

connections or struggling to connect. Um, what is usually the first thing that you see them, you know, what's, what's one of the most glaring things like just, man, nine times out of 10, they're doing this.
And it's just a, it's a big obstacle right at the beginning. Yeah.
So much like building a house, there's some foundation that has to be built before you actually start to build it and paint it. And because it's so easy to step on the gas and send emails and it's fun, people have a tendency to want to paint the house before there's a good foundation.
And so the biggest mistake that I see people make, and it's no fault of their own, is that they've never done the job of the person that they're reaching out to. And so oftentimes they're speaking a completely different language.
By way of example, if you're using words like streamline, optimize, 360 degree view, increase conversion rates, these are all language and phraseology that everyone uses. And because everyone uses it, you're a white circle.
So step one in this process is to understand at a very deep and crispy level, what I call the before version of the infomercial, which has nothing to do with your product. So you can imagine there's somebody in the kitchen and they're trying to make French fries for a family of five with a knife they've got all their rustic potatoes and they're slicing them into half inch pieces they blanch them they put oil on them they put them in the oven they put them on the table but because some are crispy and some are burnt because they were slightly different shapes and sizes half moon end up in a garbage can doesn't make you really.
And on top of that, you have to spend two hours cleaning up the kitchen. And on occasion, you nick your finger with a knife.
Now, when I was telling you that story, you probably visually saw it in your head. You have to visually see that same exact thing when you are reaching out to prospects.
If you can't see that movie clearly, meaning you can't observe it. So I can't observe streamline.
I can't observe optimize. I have to see it.
It has to be specific. They're slicing the potatoes into half inch pieces.
And it has to be language that your customer would actually say over coffee. And usually when I give people this test and I tell them to give me the black and white infomercial, give me the before version, they start launching into what we do is we help people optimize the supply chain.
Your product doesn't have any value until you understand the problem. So the question becomes, well, how do I get closer to my customers to understand their specific black and white version? And the best way to do that is to actually interview customers that recently bought within the last 35 to 40 days using an approach called jobs to be done, which is an interview technique.
The only one that I know that helps you understand the events and circumstances that led people to start to struggle and eventually start shopping because nobody wakes up one day and just buys a product. They will try to get by the best way they know how to get by because of habit and anxiety.
It's hard to glean that information a lot of times from marketing materials because there's a spin to it. And when you're lifting the information from marketing materials and the marketing material says streamline, that language makes it into your emails.
And that's what contributes to you being a white circle. But Josh, insurance is a non-visual sophisticated product that is very highly technical.
So how can I boil this down into words that my clients could actually use? You just don't understand. Our industry is different.
So this has nothing to do with your product. So people don't buy a product.
They buy what the product allows them to do better. Your product is no different than any other product.
People buy any product because they want to move away from something they don't want or they want to move towards something they do want. They want to make progress.
So you have to call your customers that switched. They were not doing nothing before they called you.
They were getting the job done the best way they knew how with their current solution. And then all of a sudden, something wasn't working anymore.
Something changed in their environment. They were not able to solve the problem the same way they were educated on something that was different or new.
And it caused them to say, hmm, I can't make progress anymore. I better start, I better switch.
I want to know how the customer describes that struggle because they'll give you the language that you can use in cold calls and in cold emails. It doesn't matter what product you sell because it has nothing to do with your product.
We're not talking about the color version of the infomercial yet. We're talking about getting to know the problem at a very deep, crispy, specific level.
A lot of people skip this step because it's not as much fun as sending out 10 emails. There's also an opportunity when you understand your audience really crispy, you can be a red X.
I mean, when copywriters like myself get together in a group, we rarely talk about copywriting techniques. We mostly talk about how do we get to know the audience better? What techniques can we use? We go on sites like G2 Crowd where they review, this might not be applicable for your audience, but there's review sites where they're reviewing software.
How do customers describe the before state? Go on Amazon. How are they describing when they buy these books? How do they describe what they liked about the book? What was missing? Customer interviews are great.
Testimonial videos are great. You know, getting closer to your customer.
If there's listeners out there, I highly recommend interviewing five or six customers using jobs to be done and getting that language because you've probably never been in their position before. Yeah.
And you don't have

to make up the language to answer your question. You don't have to make up the language to explain it.
Your customers will. They'll give you that language if you interview them.
And then you will take that language and you'll convert that using some copywriting techniques into cold emails and cold call scripts and voicemails. Yeah.
One of the things that I, one of the largest tactical takeaways that I've gotten from your work and the training is brevity and how powerful mixing what you just described, which is using your prospect slash clients, target market words, their language, language, they understand problems that they actually experience with brevity that, that, you know, obviously using fewer words is not my specialty, if that's not really obvious by this interview already. So working on dialing back, you know, instead of a seven sentence cold email describing everything you do and how amazing you are, you know, I've seen you share some stuff on LinkedIn and guys, Josh, absolute must follow on LinkedIn.
One sentence, one sentence and a simple question, like very, you know, kind of counterintuitive to, I think, how a lot of people use an introductory email. What is the power of brevity? Why, you know, aren't they missing what I really do? And aren't I missing an opportunity to explain myself? Like, you know, why go shorter? What's the power in that? Well, let's go back to a couple things that you said, because there was some big sort of red flags.
And a lot of people make this, they kind of get into this because you're so excited about what you do. Let me tell people how awesome I am.
Let me tell you how great my product is. Nobody cares about how great and awesome your product is.
They want to be more awesome. Nobody cares about what your product does.
They care about what your product can do for them. Those two things might sound very similar, but they are two completely different approaches.
I don't buy braces. What do I buy? Better teeth.
Well, why do I want better teeth? What does a better teeth allow me to do that I can't do now? Look better on camera. I want straight teeth.
So I want the confidence that comes from having straight teeth. Yeah.
Right. So I don't buy a bike.
I buy the wind in my face to use a example that I do when I teach. I don't know if you remember the legend of Zelda.
It's a video game back in the 80s, but there was a point in the game where he, the character Zelda, who purpose of the game was to rescue a princess, walked into a cave and there was an old man in the cave that sold him a sword for five rupees. Luke did not buy the sword because it was made of steel and because it shot energy beams.
He bought the sword so that he could rescue the princess faster. So people don't buy swords.
They buy what the sword allows them to do better. So in your copy, one of the first copywriting principles is, are you talking about swords or superpowers? And so that's principle number one is make sure the language you're using is superpower language.
What is it that this thing can do for me? And the litmus test is, is this what I do or what it allows someone to do? So it's not about your product and its features. With regards to brevity, we'll talk about that now.
You've probably been in this situation where you've opened up your email and you saw a big email long. And you probably, if you're like I am, said, I'll put that one aside for now.
Because of the calories you have to burn to read it, even though it might be a great email, it's just the way it looks. We are used to TikTok, short form videos, 30 seconds, one minute, we are used to SMS messages.
We are used to Facebook messages. We are used to texting.
And yet when we go to work, we see things that are four or five, six paragraphs sometimes from a salesperson that we don't know that has commission breath. We're already starting at a deficit because salespeople are biased.
They have a vested interest. So the approach that I teach

is very much based on emails that look like tweets. They are, as you said, three or four sentences, five at the most, written in a very specific way that will give you the best chance of being able to start a conversation with a prospect, but you can't skip step one, which we talked about at the beginning of the podcast.
Yeah. I, uh, so as you're talking, I, I sent, uh, I sent five cold emails this morning.
Um, as you're talking, I'm, I'm walking through my sentences and I'm saying to myself, I definitely, I feel like I have, well, I know I have work to do. I know I would have said that before we got on the phone or whatever, but just simply by my contact rate.
But I definitely, I definitely am selling swords still a little bit, still selling swords. Yeah, that's interesting.
So, so one of the things, so let me ask you this, this might, and I apologize if we're weaving in and out of tactical and theoretical, and if there's any places you want to go or don't want to go, just let me know. But so one thing that I started doing to try to be a Red X was keeping the text very short, but then I embed a Loom video in, a personalized Loom video, not a, not a like just standardized one, but like, you know, I'm speaking directly to them.
I try to keep it under 90 seconds if I can, if I can get it even under a minute, that's great. Really just as a way to introduce myself and it loom embeds the image of me so they can kind of see the picture.
Um, and I have been surprised at how few people have watched the video. So I'm, um, now I will say I probably sent 20 of these and two have watched 10%, you know, I'm not surprised at all.
You are? Okay. No, because nobody cares about introducing.
Like, I don't want to know who you are. You say, I want to introduce myself.
Well, that's a very selfish reason to send someone a video. Your prospect doesn't want a relationship with you and they certainly don't want to be introduced to you.
Your prospect only cares about two things.

They don't care about you or your product. They don't want a relationship with you.
They want to move away from something that they don't want that can hurt them that they may or may not know about. Or they want to move towards something they desire.
Everybody that you reach out to is getting the job done today. But what they might not know is what they are doing that can hurt them or cost them a lot of money if they stay put.
Those things get attention. And I'll give you an example, just to make this a little more specific.
Yeah. Okay, I'll give you a couple of real life examples.
A few years ago, I was in the mall with my wife. I did not need anything.
I was merely killing time and walked into a store called Fit to Run. If the store associate said to me, what brings you in today? What do you think I would have said? No.
No, I'm good. If she said, can I help you? What do you think I would have said? Nope.
If she wanted to introduce herself to me, do you think I would have been interested? You would have put your headphones back in. Probably, but she didn't do any of those things.
She looked down at my sneakers. She said, are you a runner? I said, yes.
She said, what distance? I said, marathon. She said, have you ever had a running gait test? I said, what's that? Moments later, I'm on a treadmill.
I have video of this. She stops the frame and she says, notice how your feet are pronated.
And did you know that if you run in

sneakers that are not made for pronated feet, you can get injured on long distance runs.

And if you'd like, we could take a look at your sneakers to see if they're made for pronated feet.

And five minutes later, I'm spending $90 on insoles. What's the moral of that story? She sold saving the princess, not sneakers.
There's another moral. Did I have a problem when I walked in there? No.
What did she do? She showed it to you. Right.
That's the superpower.

The superpower is you need to shine a light on a problem that people don't know about

because every one of your prospects is running in their own sneakers today.

I call these illumination questions.

Let me burn it in and I'll give you another example.

I love to wash my car on the weekends.

I buy my car wash supplies from this place called Adam's Car Wash Supplies.

I wash it with a bucket, sponge, soap, just like a normal person would.

I think that's? I'm like, what? It turns out that if you're using a normal bucket with soap and water, if you dip your sponge into the water and there's dirt in the water and you have a dark colored car like I do, you can get swirl marks on their hood. And if you're a car nut like me, that sucks because I have to take it to the body shop and get that buffed out.
It's 800 bucks. On top of that, if I ever get rid of the car, they're going to run a paint thin meter on it.
And I'm going to lose value on the car because they can see it was painted. And Adam sells a new kind of bucket.
It's got a grate on the bottom of it. And you rub your sponge on the grate, the dirt settles to the bottom of the bucket and off your car.
And I bought the bucket. Same exact moral of the story.
They shined a light on a problem I didn't know I had. that can hurt me.
Every one of your prospects is using a bucket to wash their car today. Your value proposition doesn't matter.
If you're saying, we help you wash your car better, I'm already washing my car. I don't care.
What is it that's meaningfully different about what you're selling that can help me be more awesome or can help me move away or get less hurt from something that's around the corner. You have to start with that, not a loom video.
Those are delivery mechanisms. You're already painting the house.
You got to clarify the message first. If you're starting a loom video by introducing yourself, you're already kind of skipping a bunch of steps.
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Let's get back to the episode. So, so, so here I'll tell you where the, where the loom video thing came from.
Cause I think this is an important point, which, what you just said is a delivery mechanism. So one of the ways in which, so, so let's say you called me for home and auto insurance.
See, we're talking and I was going to deliver to you my proposal before we get off the phone, before I deliver that proposal, I say to you, Josh, the next step in this process is once I'm doing my job, I'm going to package everything up and into what I recommend for you. There's three things you're going to get.
One is an email. That email is going to allow you to log in and see my recommendations.
Inside there, you're going to get the ability to download specifics. You're going to get the high level.
And there's going to be a video explaining why I did that. I did that so that you come from a position of power.
When we get on the phone again, we're talking on the same level. I'm not just dropping something on you out of the blue.
I set that expectation at that point. I have gotten 95 plus percent.
People go, holy shit. This is amazing.
I've never seen this before. People just text me back.
I'm sold. Just send me the thing.
We don't even need to talk. It's crazy.
It's increased my close ratio 20%, right? So in my mind, I'm going, wow, moon video seems to, seems to be a, you know, that seems like there's something there maybe. So I tried moving that to the front, to the cold email section.
And as you described, and I think this highlights, I think some of the things that you're saying, and I'm trying to prove a point here. I'm seeing now why moving, why in that part of the process, the Loom video is a differentiator.
In the beginning part of the process, it's an annoyance, or as you said, selfish. And I can see it now.
Well, it's a completely different context. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, one of them, they don't know who you are. There's no trust.
There's no credibility. In the first example, they've been talking to you for a while.
So it's a completely different context. Things like Loom and email and cold calls or voicemails, those are all delivery mechanisms, holograms, whatever the next thing is, delivery mechanisms are going to come and go.
The reason I think you are successful with the first example isn't so much that it's a loom video. It's that it's in line with helping the other person be more awesome.
The thing that never changes is the person in the middle. The person in the middle always wants a better superpower to achieve what they want.
That never changes. Delivery mechanisms come and go.
It's never the delivery mechanisms. I've seen movies that are awesome, movies of delivery mechanism.
I've also seen movies that are terrible. Same thing with videos.
If you're starting with the video and you don't know how to clarify the message, you're not going to have as high a response rates as you can. Again, it's not the delivery mechanism.
And people get asked me all the time, what do you think of Loom? I'm like, what do I think of books? They're great. Some are, some suck.
It's the message, not the mechanism. So at home, and I'm just going to clarify this one more time for everyone listening, because I think this is really, really important.
Because in the insurance industry, and I'm sure this is every industry, but I've operated insurance for 15 years, so it's all I know. Shiny object syndrome is an enormous problem in our industry because the barrier for tech right like things in the copywriting industry that you would take for granted as a as a technology tool just a function uh don't operate well in our space so so the barrier for tech is very low so as soon as something know, we all focus on it.
And, and I think what I hear you saying is it doesn't matter. What matters is, can you define their superpower and, and portray it in a way, show them in a way that connects that, that you, you know, that they even have a problem to begin with and then allow them, allow them to make the connection that you're the, you're the answer.
Is that, am I, am I phrasing that right? You have to understand, it has to start with the following. What sucks about how people are getting the job done today and why does it suck? So let's go through just a simple example.
What sucks about washing your car with a bucket and suds is that you can get dirt on the sponge. That's a problem.
What's the implication of that? Because problems always have implications. The implication is I get swirl marks on my car, got to get it repainted, it's 800 bucks, and my car loses 10% when I sell it.
I call that twisting the knife. What's meaningfully different about Adam's car wash bucket? It's got a grate on the bottom.
Why does that matter? Well, it allows you to get the dirt on the bottom of the bucket and off your car so you don't scratch it. It's not meaningfully different because they sell a purple bucket and I have a white one.
It's not meaningfully different because their bucket is made of Plyotex and mine is made of plastic. That doesn't help me be more awesome.
What helps me be more awesome, why it's meaningfully, meaningfully different, is that the dirt settles to the bottom of the bucket and off the sponge and off your car. I'll give you another example.
I was driving on the freeway several years ago with my wife and I saw a U-Haul. And this will be a question for you, Orion.
So there's a U-Haul. At back of the U-Haul, as it's driving, a line down the middle.
And on the left-hand side, it said, R-loading docks, easy loading docks. And it showed how low they were to the ground.
And then on the right-hand side, it said competitive loading docks. They're about four feet higher.
Now, why is that meaningfully different to me? Why is a loading dock that's lower meaningfully different than one that's higher? How does that make me more awesome, a lower loading dock? Seems like less work. What happens if I have a high loading dock and I try to move my furniture? You got one of those ramp things.
What happens if I try to load stuff and the ramp is higher off the ground? You got to lift it. And if I lift something, what could happen? Get hurt.
Right. So it's not that their competitive trucks are yellow.
It's that the loading ramp is lower, which means it's easier for me to move stuff. So I reduce the chances of me getting injured.
Where most people go wrong is they're like, let's talk about my value proposition. I help you move stuff faster.
I'm already moving stuff. What's meaningfully different relative to how I'm getting the job done today.
So the first question you got to answer is what sucks? Because if nothing sucks, and I mean, really sucks, there's no reason to switch. Give you another example.
I have a TV in my back bedroom and has a pixel out on it. One pixel, two pixels maybe.
It's a problem. But I rarely watch that TV and I barely notice the pixel when I do.
So I'm not switching TVs because I have limited resources. So do you, so do your prospects.
So you have to have a sucky problem that you got to shine a light on. If you don't know what that is, you can't pick up the phone.
You can't send out a video. You can't write an email because who cares? You know, so I have a product called athletic greens.
It's a product of powder that you mix in water and you drink it health drink. Their tagline, which is amazing is this.
What sucks about eating 73 vegetables is is what it's hard to eat 73 vegetables they don't taste good if not into like celery it's hard to digest broccoli it's not enjoyable so athletic greens their tagline is get your 73 get the nutrients from 73 vegetables without having to eat them the without part is the interesting part because I'm getting my greens today, but now I don't have to eat them. What's that? There was a guy, Alex Solo.
He was a rock climbing guy on Netflix. I don't know if you saw this guy climbing rocks, high rocks with no rope.
Like El Capitan. It's high.
Yeah. Free climber, right? Yeah.
Free climber. So if you said, watch this guy climb El Capitan, so what? But it didn't say that.
It said, watch this guy, Alex Klein, El Capitan, the highest peak in this part of the world in Yosemite without ropes. It's the without ropes that makes you want to tune into that.
Yeah what's your without ropes, people listening? Because if you don't have that, really hard to reach out. I mean, I'll give you an example, something commoditized.
This was two nights ago, a pillow. Imagine you sell pillows.
One of the most commoditized things in the world. So this company called Pillow Cube, I see this amazing commercial.
It said, hey, do you sleep on your side? I happen to. So stand up and take a look at the shape between your shoulder and your head.
What shape is that? It's like 90 degrees. I'm like, it's a square.
And so, well, how do you know if you're sleeping on a rounded pillow that you're not messing up your back? And it showed a picture of your head position when you're sleeping on a rounded pillow. And your Russell, it's bad for your back, it can throw your back out of alignment.
So you can now get a good sleep because you're sleeping on a square pillow. But they pointed out a problem with the rounded pillow.
Yeah, I'm interested and I ordered it. I didn't have a problem with a pillow.
I didn't have a pillow problem. But all of a sudden I did because they showed me what's meaningfully different.
And P90X did this really well back in the day. If you don't know what that is, it's a popular workout program.
Their infomercial failed 17 times. They couldn't sell it.
They were talking about how great the workout was. Probably like how you're talking about how great your insurance is until Tony Horton, who created the workout, had this great idea.
He invented two words, muscle confusion. He said, the problem with traditional workouts is you hit a plateau, because you're doing the same workout over and over again.
What you need is muscle confusion. You need to do different workouts to be able to get your muscles to grow.
And notice he's not talking about his product. Eugene Schwartz calls this a delivery, a unique mechanism.
If you buy into muscle confusion, you're buying P90X. So again, this is about creating problems that people didn't know they had.
And that's where it starts. Because if you're the same, if you're selling better insurance, if you're saying we, and you sound like everyone else, you're a white circle.
Yeah. Shit.
I am definitely a white circle. I don't mean to bum you out there.
No, no, this is, well, one, one, I, this is why, this is why you do podcasts, man. Right.
I mean, free consulting. No, I'm kidding.
But the thing about, yeah, man, what's driving me nuts about what you're describing is it feels so obvious when you talk about it. And then I think about what I actually do and what I actually say.
And I'm, and it's, you know, like it just, it's not, not awesome. You know? Well, we could also talk about, there's lots of ways to differentiate.
I mean, I'll tell you a great story guy, the name, his name is Dale Dupree. And this guy came on my radar because I saw that he was the number one copier salesman in the state of Florida for 10 years, stealing copier accounts.
And I couldn't think of a more commoditized thing to sell than copy machines. So I called him up.
Dale, how are you the number one copier salesman? And he said, I'm not a copier salesman. I go, what are you? He goes, I'm a copier warrior.
I go, what? Show me his business card. He's got like a sword, and he fights against jammed up copy machines.
He sends his prospects a brick. It's actually a sponge that looks like a brick with a note on it, and it says, if you've ever wanted to throw a brick at your copy machine, but didn't want to get in trouble or get fired, throw this brick instead.
Here's instructions. Put it in your right arm, aim, fire, and call me.
I'm Dale Dupree, the copier warrior. He's the only copier salesman that made his own commercial.
If you go to copierwarrior.com, you'll see it. So he's differentiated himself just by nature of branding himself as someone that someone's going to see and just feel good.
And when you make people feel good, there's a biological reaction that happens just like you laughed. People like, that's really fun.
That made me feel good. Who is that? I want more of that.
And he wanted a tremendous amount of counts by differentiating himself. He was the differentiator.
He's selling the same copy machines.

But he gets service.

You know, his commercial is phenomenal.

If you go to copierwarrior.com, I wouldn't do it justice by trying to imitate it.

But you'll see what he did. He talked about the problem, but did it in a very funny way.

One of the shots in the video is, have you ever had to wait on hold for a copier support person?

He's got the skeleton in the cubicle, like on the phone.

Thank you. video is, have you ever had to wait on hold for a copy or support person? And he's got the skeleton in the cubicle, like on the phone.
And so you watch this stuff and you're like, who is this guy?

Yeah. And when he cold calls, he doesn't say, hello, my name is Dale Dupree with Acme.
He says,

hey, Bob, this is Dale. I'm the guy who thought it was a good idea to send you a brick in the mail.

And the reaction that he gets is Dale, that was so creative. He's already starting, had a huge advantage because he's making people feel good.
And that's a red X. That's a red X moment.
Yeah. It's funny.
So you bring up that example and then one just hit my head. I was talking to an agent the other day from Indiana, Andrew Darlington and for the folks at home.
And he does bouncy balls, big, like the ones that you give to your kids that are like $2 when you're walking through dicks and you're like, God, I just have to give them something to keep them quiet. And you grab one of those balls and he hand writes and marker on it.
We're having a ball over here, helping contractors with their insurance And he puts the ball in the mail, like just the ball. So you literally get a bouncy ball in the mail.
And he's like, half the time they're smudged. And he goes, it's not the best delivery mechanism.
He goes, but the ones that get through, I've never, they've never not taken my cause. Yeah.
It's the right. The thing to me about the stuff like bouncy balls and cushions and all that to me, to me, for me, the red brick is more clever.

Yes.

Like it's just, it's just, it's clever.

I don't know how else to say it.

It's just clever.

A lot of people will send, you know, Rubik's cubes and with hokey things.

I've seen people, people send one shoe.

I'm just trying to get a foot in the door.

Like those things to me seem lowbrow.

This seems like it, this requires a little more creativity, but you know, it's, it's kind of the, it's the right idea. Yeah.
Yeah. So I want to be respectful of your time.
And there's, I had a couple of questions for you about, I don't know, some amount of time ago in the last year, I saw you start testing and doing some stuff with visual visuals,

simplified visuals like Jack. I think Jack Butcher was the guy that you said you were,

you were learning from and talk a little bit about, I'd love for you to talk about how you've

taken your methodology and mashed it in and worked and refined it around some of these visuals and what you think the impact is? Yeah. So this came from the infomercial example, right? Like the example that we did before, before and after.
And so the question becomes, how can I visually show somebody in an email with a simple graphic, how their life could be better relative to how it is today. And so these visuals that I teach people how to make use very simple graphics that you can mock up in PowerPoint or Keynote to be able to do that.
So by way of example, one company is called Connect and Sell. And let's talk about the problem.
So the problem when salespeople often will call businesses is they'll call for an hour and maybe they'll get to talk to one or two people. They bump into voicemail messages.
They bump into gatekeepers or executive assistants, but they really rarely talk to their prospect. And that's a problem because the fewer people that I talk to, the less opportunity I can create.
So Connect and Sell allows a salesperson to have a conversation with their prospect every six

minutes so the graphic that we did on the left hand side was a bunch of circles saying attempts to call a prospect before connect and sell and on the right hand side said after connect and sell and there were green lights every five or six, you know, dots.

So visually, it said after Connect and Sell. And there were green lights every five or six, you know, dots.
So visually, it's able to show people how many more conversations they were able to have relative to what they were doing before. And again, the reason that matters is because more conversations lead to more opportunity, ultimately more revenue.
So being able to articulate the before and after story and make that graphic, you know, under a hundred K. So it slips through filters is another way to communicate with people.
And the brain loves visual images sometimes even more so than text. And so it's a way to just mix up the messaging a little bit and communicate how you can potentially help someone in a different way, because you have to, you have to do like five or six, seven touches as part of these campaigns.
And so this is just another communication mechanism. How does all this mash into cold calling? So cold calling is another delivery mechanism.
So when you are tasked with reaching out to people you don't know to start conversations with, you have to send a series, you have to start with message clarification. You have to then be strategic in terms of who you're reaching out to, but then you have to send them a series of emails, six to be exact.
You have to make some calls and you have to leave voicemail messages, send LinkedIn if they're on LinkedIn,

images if you'd like,

if you're into video, whatever.

But cold call is one of those,

is a channel.

If your prospect can be reached on a phone,

to me, it's a really good channel because you're actually having a conversation with somebody.

If you in fact know how to make a good cold call,

which I know it was probably a topic for another, another podcast.

Yeah. Yeah.
Which is, you know what? If you're interested in Josh's feelings or not feelings,

just feelings is the wrong word. If you're interested in his thoughts and some of the

things that he does, again, I'm going to put the hard sell on both the LinkedIn follow,

because that's where I first found Josh's work. You put a lot of stuff out there.
You put some snippets of calls. And then I want you to tell, how do people get to, I'm looking, it's academy.joshbraun.com slash badass.
Badass slash badass. Perfect.
I'll have it. So go there directly or if you forget that because you're driving in the car, just go to this episode on my site, RyanHaling.com, and I'll have it linked up as well.
I highly, I'm not just a spokesman. I'm also a client.
I highly recommend the badass B2B, whatever.

First guy.

Full name is because I'm in there all the time. And you wouldn't know it by some of the things that I've said so far, but I promise I am efforting to get better.
Look, man, look, look, the knowledge in doing, look, we're learning how to ski down the mountain for the first time. And so it's a process.
And knowledge and doing aren't the same thing. It feels really good to listen to stuff like this.
Satisfying, it scratches an itch. But it doesn't change outcomes.
It's the doing and the experimenting and the tinkering and getting feedback that's going to change the outcome. So it's like, you know, I do over IQ.
So it's a process, Ryan. Don't, don't be so hard on yourself.
Yeah. Well, so, so what's interesting is you said six emails.
So I, I didn't know that I actually, I thought it was seven, but it doesn't matter. That's, you know, me forgetting you, but I will eventually, you know, one, I am going to cut the loom video out.
Cause I wholly agree with your breakdown of why that's inappropriate at that stage. But I do have in the sequence in my CRM or whatever, with images, with some images that I've created.
And I use Canva, it doesn't matter. It'll be interesting to see.
I do want to clarify one thing that I said earlier, and I just want to make sure I drive it home. It's not images and it's not Loom video.
It's how you're doing it. Yeah, yeah.
The delivery mechanism is not the thing. So it's not that Loom is bad.
And I haven't seen your video. I have no idea.
It's perhaps the message in Loom. I think it's the message to get to the loom.
I've had what I'm missing is out to me via loom and I booked meetings with me. I got it on my podcast.
I've been red X's. I mean, Jason Bay, he's one of recent example guy sent me a loom video and within two minutes I responded because it was so well done.
So it was focused on how he could make my audience, you know, more awesome. Yeah.
I think, you know, if I'm being, if I'm being breaking down my own performance, I think my issue is the text I have leading into the video does not say this is worth watching this video.

Well, you can't, you can't tell people, right.

You can't tell people things are worth watching because they know you're biased. I can't tell you I'm the best salesperson because I'm biased.
Prospects know salespeople are biased because they have a vested interest. So we're going to, we can't get into this on this podcast, but you have to know how to lower the defense mechanism.
It's an anti-persuasion shield that prospects have because they don't want to be sold or manipulated. And so you have to know how to lower that shield so that they're more open to listening to how you might be able to help them.
So telling people you need to watch this because it's the best or I'm the best doesn't work because again, of course, you're going to say that. Yeah.
Of course, you're going to say this car is awesome. You're a car salesman, or salesperson.
Yeah. You've got commission breath.
So the question is, how do you now lower the anti persuasion shield? And the answer to that is really simple. Stop persuading people and let people persuade themselves.
You provide unbiased information. You highlight and illuminate things and let them decide their own reasons for change rather than you giving them your reasons.
And we'll end there. Now you got me reading my damn cold email.
God damn you, Josh. All right.
Hey man, this has been tremendous. Thank you.
I'm going to give another shout out. Joshbrawn.com.
Go check it out. Get on the badass guy thing.
I promise you guys, I do not push you to a lot of things, but this is going to be worth your time. I literally have it.
It's one of my favorites in my menu bar. I'm always back in there.
And you wouldn't know from my performance today, but I am working on it and must follow on LinkedIn. Dude, appreciate you.
Appreciate the time. All the best.
Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate you having me on.
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