Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Welcome victors to this week's Victory show. If this is your first time joining us, I'm Travis Cody, best selling author of 16 books and I've had the privilege of helping hundreds of business owners, founders and entrepreneurs write and publish their own best selling books. And through that journey I've discovered a really fascinating pattern. A lot of businesses hit a revenue plateau, 500,000, a million five employees to 10 employees and they really struggle to break through that. So on this show I sit down with some of the world's most successful CEOs, leaders and business owners to uncover the strategies they use to overcome those platform that those plateaus and scale their businesses to new heights. So if you're looking to learn from the best and get actionable insights that can propel your business forward, you're in the right place. And of course, if you like this episode, please subscribe and turn on the notifications. Today's guest is a master of Lead gen and sales. Since 2015, John Cassant has been working in the lead generation space for various startups that has allowed him to wear multiple hats and see what it takes to really build a startup from the ground up. All of his roles were fully remote and they were in full sales cycle. So he sourced his own contact data, he ran cold email campaigns, he made cold calls, he helped demos, he made sales. And with that experience under his belt, he decided to start Level UP leads in 2021 with the goal of helping small to mid sized companies build a pipeline, schedule meetings and close more deals. He he has been named a top sales influencer on LinkedIn and he's also listed as a lead generation expert by Woodpecker Co. John, welcome to the show. I am happy to have a conversation with you today.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: Thanks for having me on Travis. Appreciate it.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: So I gotta say like every business needs leads and most businesses struggle with leads. So walk me through a little bit of like the lead generation industry and how it works for most businesses and the challenges and then why like you know what LevelUp does to sort of solve that challenge?
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Well first let me just say I'll tell you how we work and then the types of companies we work with, the typical needs they have, companies that aren't ready for, lead gen, companies that we do feel are ready. And so a lot of that happens in the discovery phase. But what Level Up Leads does is we're a sales development and appointment setting agency. So we are going out, we're reaching out to people who have no idea who we are. Essentially our clients who Our clients are. And we're sourcing the data, we're writing the copy, we're managing the campaigns, we implement the team, we implement the tech stack.
And we're actually just booking meetings in our client's calendar so they have more selling opportunities. Sales is specifically a sales development rep is a very high turnover space. It's our high, high turnover position. The tenure is not very good if companies are struggling sales or the sales development representative is typically one of the first people to get let go. So it's a very high stress, high turnover position. And so if companies are trying to do this in house, it can be expensive. Right. It typically takes quite a while to hire, train. You got to pay for all the data, pay for all the tools. And then there's a. Typically a product knowledge and ramp period.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: The onboarding and the training.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And then who's to say that that rep might not work out after a few months? So you got to start the process all over again. And so that's why our companies will hire us is we just. It's lower risk. You don't have to invest in all the tools and the training, and they just can work with a company like ours, and we'll hit the ground running in a few weeks and actually launch campaigns and start booking meetings.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: Wow, that's remarkable. All right, so what I love about this is you have a. What to me is a really fascinating journey into where you're at right now. Because you used to be a tennis coach.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: That's right. Yep.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: So, so how do we make the leap from tennis coach into online marketing and online legion?
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Well, yeah, it's. It's. Well, it's crazy. Like you can spin something that you did in your life into sales in some way. And so that's what I had to do when I got my first job is I had to convince somebody how was teaching tennis actually sales? How does it correlate? And so you have to. Somehow, you have to get new business and you have to get repeat business. Right. You have to understand your client and their needs. And a lot of this correlates to sales. So, for example, with the tennis lesson, typically everyone, like the best tennis lessons have a combination of fun, fitness, and knowledge. But every. Every lesson, like the. The client of mine may have wanted one more than the other. Right. So it's like, about finding that right balance of what was. What was their needs, like, what did they want to get out of the lesson. And I think that's also important in sales is like, when you're Talking to your prospects, do they care about that feature? What's their. Like, what are their pain points? Why are they having that conversation? So you can customize your product or service to their needs rather than talking about your relevant things.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: I love it. And that's true. Right. It's all. And I think you said something really important there, which is most people don't think about is yes, there's the finding the new clients, but it's the repeat business and that's really what drives business growth. And what better way to do that? So, so when you went into your. So what was your first job in the sales space? What exactly what you're. What were you doing?
[00:05:04] Speaker A: We were a lead generation specifically for solar.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: For solar. All right, so walk me through. Like how did you. So you then were you having to like do the appointments and do the selling or were you just setting up, finding the leads and getting appointments on the books?
[00:05:18] Speaker A: Everything I, you know, the, the founders were great. They helped coach me. The.
There was one, one of the founders had led sales but I was also doing it on my own. So he would maybe come in on the big deals, which you would call a whale. But everything else I was self sourcing. Occasionally I'd work some inbound leads which was nice. But doing a lot of cold outbound email, cold calling. This is before a lot of these tools existed. Right. It's one by 1, dialing 1. You know, there was like, you could set up some sequences but it was like very new. I forget the name of the tool, but there was one that we were using. It plugged right into Gmail. You could set up some sequences and.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: You guys were like, this is amazing.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I was like the coolest thing ever. But I learned a lot there. And at the time it felt like a lot of grunt work and I start up wearing lots of hats, not paid very well. Great flexibility. But it actually, you know, I like.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: The pitch stress, not paid very much, doing whatever. There's a lot of flexibility though.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: There was at the time I was working remotely in another country and not many jobs would allow for that. So that was kind of the, the selling point for me. But the experience, I didn't realize it at the time, but the experience was insane. So I got to see the ins and outs of the startup, like what needs to be done, like how to get scrappy. And I had several jobs after that, but that first job was really what gave me the most experience for starting level up leads. Because I got to see it. Yeah. Cause you know Some jobs you have, you don't quite get the exposure.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: You're kind of like in your lane. Yeah.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: You're in your little cubicle and you're. You do your thing. Like this is totally off topic, but just out of curiosity, what's the record for the most amount of cold calls you've ever done in a day?
[00:06:51] Speaker A: Well, I, when I was doing cold calling, it was before the tools were out there. So it's not going to sound very like, like much because now they have tools where you can do in hundreds. I have some people on my team even will do a thousand calls a day with some of the powerful software.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
About like you were like having to punch the number in and do the calls.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: I'm just around, around 100.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: It was a full day of work. It was a lot.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Okay. So somebody who I.
In a. Another lifetime, in another career, I did door to door advertising sales in Los Angeles. So I was going door to door to businesses to do, to do, you know, just trying to sell local advertising to businesses. That was pretty brutal. But you know, when you're going door to door, I can, I can maybe do 30 or 40 businesses in a day just because of the travel time and everything mentally. Like how, what do you. Cause that seemed to be. When I was doing sales, the guys that would flame out really quickly were the ones that just mentally couldn't handle doing a hundred sale calls in a day. And you know, most of them saying no or not being answered. Like what were the strategies you developed for yourself to like to just deal with that, like that part of the job.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: The rejection aspect, just a rejection of.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: The fact that like how many of the calls that you made, like some, you know, wouldn't the people that went to a voicemail. Right. Or didn't pick up. So you're just dialing and dialing and dialing.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: Yeah. The commission, you know, most people, most people are in sales for, for the money. I think most people would be lying to you if they said another answer. Not everybody, but you know, you get it.
Yeah, I think it was just, it's just like the grind of the position and you under, you have to, if you're going to be successful, you have to understand that most people are going to say no. When you're doing sales or doing sales development. Right. It's different. Once you get them on a call, your percentages go up significantly to a close. But cold outbound. Yeah. You're, you know, you reach out to a hundred people, ninety plus are saying no. You know, so it's, it's constant rejection.
And one thing I tell the reps on my team is like, don't be attached to the result. You know, if someone is rude or, you know, that's not on you. You know, you're just doing your job. That's more of a reflection on them. So don't be attached to the result. Like, try not to be too high and too low. Right. Try to be like even keeled. It'll allow you to last much longer in the role.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: So at what point of it was it in your, your career where you finally said, you know what, I really need to go out and launch my own company doing this stuff?
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Well, I was working at a agency previous to mine and so I got experience there and there were start. I started to see shifts. I started to see like the market shifted. This is during COVID This is mid Covid. I switched and started my own company. So there was like lots of shifts. People were so remote agency. So like when Covid hit, a lot of companies fired a lot of people, right? There's just everyone was scared and didn't know what to do. And then they realized, well, still need my business to keep running. I still need sales. Why not outsource it? Right? So then actually our. This is at my old company. Our company tripled during COVID over like.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: A six month period.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Yeah, well, first it dropped off significantly. We were losing clients and then took a little while and a few months later they're like, well, yeah, why not just do this remote? Why not hire an agency? So yeah.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: Wasn't it interesting to see the mindset shift of everyone was just like, no, no, we don't do remote. We don' do remote. We don't do remote to like, oh, we need to do remote to, oh my gosh, we can do this all remote now.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: It's like widely accepted.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And it was such a tiny window of time to make that like, paradigm shift in the, in the industries. I just found it fascinating and not just even in business, right. From people, you know, my mom now, and I'll call her on the phone, she's like, can't we just do zoom? And I'm like, you didn't even know what zoom was two years ago.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's great in that sense. Right. For someone who has been working remote for most of my career, it was, it was great in that sense. It's like now it's not like you don't have to hide that you're at home.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: So I I don't tell anybody that I work from home or Columbia now.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: It's like, you know, there's remote businesses and they're proud of that.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: So yeah, you know, I just talked to a real few episodes ago, we had a real estate investor on and he was talking about the, the one of the fastest growing segments in the real estate industry is RV parks. And, and, and, and the reason I'm sharing this with you, I mean it seems off topic but he was saying that there's 500,000 new RVs sold in North America every year and the average age of the person buying the RV is 35. And out of that it's like 25% of those people are in the tech space. CTOS it guys. And what they're doing is they're putting a little workstation in the RV and getting Starlink and they're just driving around the country and working from.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: It's pretty cool.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Isn't that crazy? I was like, this is such an amazing thing to me that, that like we're getting to that point now where it' you know, not even working remote. You're just like wherever you are that you have the access to do that. So, so okay, so you're, you're. So your company tripled. And was there a point in time there where you said man, I could, I can really make. And one was it was there, I can really make something with this or was there also part of the aspect of like you see how companies have been run and you go, you know, here's some processes that are not super effective that I think I could improve on if I went and did my own, my own thing 100 that you.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Know, I had good relationships with my previous company but I kind of saw like ways we can improve and I didn't see the business like they weren't taking my, and I was kind of running my own business within their business. So I was doing a lot of my own. Like I was doing the sale also the fulfillment side. So it was like a one man show under their umbrella. After a while I was like, I could do this on my own. Yeah. So I spun off and started doing something different. And I wasn't doing exactly what they were doing. But then after a while it was, I was doing a list building basically building up contact lists for, for other companies which is a need. But it also, I quickly realized it was a one time sale. They were happy. They would take the, take their list, they'd work it. But they need time. They wouldn't just like, continue. It'd be like, all right, give us some time, and we'll circle back in a few months. We'll let you know how that list went. And I was like, man, this is hard. It's like, I can't get any repeat business this way. So I quickly shifted and started getting, adding on new services, which was a reoccurring revenue, like a monthly subscription for the delivery. And then ultimately, what people want is, the reason why they want that contact list is because they ultimately want to do the outreach and the appointment. So we just started doing it all ourselves and doing the appointment setting, and then that just started. That's where we started to, like, take off, is we started just doing the entire process itself.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: So how long were you solo before you were to a point where you needed to hire your first employee?
[00:13:17] Speaker A: I started with a few.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: I just like. Yeah, just funded it myself. And it's like, you just. It's hard. Like, we were. We were small, but. And with this type of business is like, we grow as our client count grows. So as we get more clients, we need. Because our. Our service is. Part of the service is people.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's time.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: As we got more clients, I started hiring more people. So luckily I had some relationships built and a little bit of a network on LinkedIn, so it was pretty easy to start getting some people in the front door that were interested.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Oh, that's fantastic. So this is perfect because then we're going to talk about, you know, exactly why this show exists, which is how do. How do you scale over time? So you. It was you and a few employees. What were the challenges as you started to grow? Because. So let's say you started with a few. You got to 10. What, what was it like going from 10 to 20 employees? And what were some of the challenges of kind of scaling through that, not just from a company standpoint, but of like a cultural standpoint and making sure that everybody's on board and trained and happy. Like, what are some of the challenges you faced doing that?
[00:14:14] Speaker A: Some of the challenges are I was doing some. Some of the work myself. And as, as the company grew, you ultimately got maxed out. I did. So you had to hire to fulfill some of that. Some of the work you're doing, training, like, getting that person so you. They have some type of like, sop standard. Standard Operating procedures, something for them to follow. And getting that information out of your head for them to follow is way more challenging than people think. And so you, you're just been so used to doing it that now you need to create a process and a role for somebody, something for.
And it's quite hard. So that was probably the biggest challenge is like, how do I get what the work I'm doing? And it's kind of like on autopilot. How do I break that out and simplify it so someone else can follow that?
[00:14:56] Speaker B: So are there any particular growth moments with the company that really stand out for you in terms of being just excessively challenging? Like when you got to, you know, when you went from 20 to 30 employees or like 30 to 50, were there things inside of there where you went, man, I got, I've got to up my skills now we're at a whole different level. We got, there's other. The things we were doing need to evolve to help us get where we're, where we're heading. Headed towards.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: Yeah. The, where I ultimately maxed out was when I couldn't take on sales. Like couldn't do sales anymore. So we were at roughly 15 clients. I remember exactly. And it was a roughly 50k MRR. And that was my hit. That was my point where I, I was maxed out. I couldn't, I couldn't like do everything. Like I couldn't do the Legion and the sell and then help out on the fulfillment side. But that was the point that I hired somebody to start helping me with sales. But before that it was like, it's very challenging because you're maxed out on all levels. Yeah, you're doing it like average level. You're not excelling in any part.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: So what was the biggest shift you saw? As soon as you brought somebody on to manage the sales and you got them onboarded, like in your world, how did your day to day change at that point?
[00:15:58] Speaker A: So there's a, there's a.
It took the person roughly three or so months to like, like any sales hire. Like, it takes some time to ramp up and get a feel for things. But it was getting a different perspective on things, understanding what the clients were asking for. And then how do we adapt our offer to meet their needs? Right. I think that's one of the best things you can do is like listen to your clients. What build a good relationship. They're going to say, hey, you want to know what I could. If you did this or you had this feature, I could pay you more money for that. I know for sure. And so like you start listening to them, you're like, oh yeah, that'd be great if we started offering that. And so we did. So we started evolving, and one of that, what we started doing a lot more of was, was cold calling. And that's ultimately what took off and helped us grow significantly.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: So now that you cold calling clients, or are you cold calling for clients?
[00:16:45] Speaker A: For clients.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: So they're hiring us to do the cold calling for them in the appointment setting.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: That's remarkable. Is there anything else that is now part of your sort of, you know, standard features for what you do that came out, came about from a client going, I need this particular service. And you went, oh, yeah, we can do that.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: I would say the cold calling was probably the main thing.
As in this space, things evolve. Before email, doing email outreach was really successful. And over time, that's become more and more challenging. I could, I could go into detail as to why, but it's just become a harder channel. Still works a little bit, but not like it like before.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: So doing cold email, you're saying as a channel?
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: All right, let's. Let's talk about that then. What, What. Why? Is it because everybody now is doing more cold emailing, or is it the. The email providers getting more savvy to that type of marketing and are like throttling it?
[00:17:34] Speaker A: So a lot, there's lots of reasons. There's. There's AI. The data is more widely available. You have a lot more data providers that the data is more accessible. Running email outreach is a lot. It's. It's more inexpensive than having to hire somebody to do cold calling. You know, you know, there's a lot of tools, and typically you need to train that person, right? Where email, hey, I could just set that up all on my own. I don't need anybody. I could pay for some tools and I can just launch that all on my own. So there's more people in the market. You can launch it from anywhere in the world. Right. And then you notice, you'll notice a lot of tools now will be added on an email feature. So there'll be like a contact validation tool, and then they'll add on the email, or there'll be a dialer and they'll add on the email. So it's like every tool almost has an email function to it. So the market is very saturated, and I think people started receiving more and more and became more numb to the idea.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Interesting. So you're at 50 employees today, and I mean, that's remarkable growth over just, at this point, just barely four years. What are. So you as a CEO of your company, what is, what is some of the new responsibilities you've had to take on and what are some of the things you've had to let go of to be able to facilitate that, that.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Kind of growth as you get, as you make particular hires, making sure they're in the position to do that role and then like letting go in the sense, like once they give you that confidence that they can do it and not trying to micromanage, that's. That's a challenge.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: And then it's like, be honest, how hard is that?
[00:18:58] Speaker A: It's very hard.
And it's also just like things are always changing. It's. It's not like we're a service and there's always fluctuating things with the people, the clients. It's not like we're a software. It's just like it's a lot more things stick. Right. It's a software and things aren't changing. We're humans. Right. Every person is going to be different and may learn differently or work at different speeds, work at different times. And so, yeah, just I think trying to understand the person and then making sure they have the, the right tools in place, the right training in place. Which again is also on me, which I told you was a challenge to get that training in place. Definitely a weak point of mine. So then they can excel, they have something to refer back to so they can do their job correctly.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: That's fantastic. What type of companies is that? Probably like the one thing they don't want to do.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: So if, if you don't, you don't want to be doing it if you haven't done it yourself or you don't have some type of process in place. Now, we do work with companies that haven't, but you have to be very transparent. Like, how can you hold us to some type of KPI when it's never been done before in your company? Sure. Right. So you have to be very transparent. Like you are hiring us to discover for you what the market's like or what these metrics are like for you. But what's better is if you can hire and work with a company that is established, they have a brand, they have some metrics to work off of and you can go in and kind of like, we're plug and play and you have that to work off of. It's way easier to work with a company that has a name recognition, People have heard of you. It's actually a good solution. It's not like one that blends in with the rest. That makes our job so much easier.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Wow. So what are Some of the big mistakes you see with companies making with their, with their Legion, especially outbound Legion.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Not giving it enough time. So a lot of people when, when they work, when you do cold outreach, you have to expect it's going to take a while. You're reaching out to people who have no idea who you are. But you also need to drum up new business. So it takes a while. People tend to think it's not working right away. They give it one month or two months. That might just mean you, you know, you actually just need to tweak some things. Maybe you're reaching out to the wrong titles, maybe your messaging is off. And so it's, it's constantly evolving. You need to make those tweaks and give it some time. And also one more thing, companies will generate a lead and not work it correctly. So they might even set up a meeting, send one follow up email and never follow up again. So you have to work these people.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: And is that, and that's part of what Level up does. Right? Like people come on board and you, you look at that stuff and go like, hey, in this process we're going to find lead. And then like here's the first, like here's like the eight follow up emails that should go out over a three month period for that person to kind of guide people towards that.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: So we, we will do the like once we set up the meeting, it's essentially a handoff to our client unless the meeting doesn't show. Or occasionally we'll work something out with a client where like if they lose touch, we'll help like put them back into a follow up sequence. But we like if you're a company you should want to have that lead and have control of that, that lead and work them to your sales process.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: Isn't that interesting to people. Generate the lead and only hit them once and then like move on.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: It's crazy. Yeah. So it's not how sales works.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: So if somebody's watching this episode and they're thinking, God, sounds like Level up might be a great, great fit for me. Who's the slam dunk like company for, for you guys and what you do, what's somebody that came to you would be like that's a guy we will be able to just absolutely crush the.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: Results for the main things are, you know, having some type of establishment, establishment in your space. So people would a little bit of a name, a name recognition helps significantly. Not a requirement, but it does help. And then a unique product offering something that stands out. Right. So if, if you are a CRM and then there's 15 other CRMs, plus HubSpot, plus Salesforce, like it's just, it's going to be an uphill battle. And so maybe you have something unique though that those companies don't have. And then that's a, that's where it's like, yeah, yeah. This is why companies are, I mean, people are going to want to switch and use that CRM because they have that unique feature that the others don't. Then that really makes sense because you have a selling point. The other thing I'd say, sorry to jump in is we work with a lot of people in the tech and software space. A lot of our companies are in the IT space. They have some type of software or platform where we have a lot of clients in that space.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: Wow. So if somebody wants to find you, it's levelupleads IO, is that the best place to go?
[00:23:06] Speaker A: Yep. Or my LinkedIn. You can find me at John Carcian and I should be the only one that pops up.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Perfect. So final question here then is, you know, a lot of people that are going to be listening to the show are, you know, technically startups. They haven't quite cracked the million dollar a year revenue mark. So those people that are, you know, scaling towards that and getting ready to break through that. What's, what's a couple of pieces of advice you could give them to get through that.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Do a lot of the small things that you don't think matter. They do. Right. So I'll name a few things. Like your website should look professional and crisp. Your LinkedIn profile should look the same. Like people are going to evaluate you from the outside and against competitors and they want to feel comfortable with their decision. They may be needing approval from their boss and they want to look good with that decision. And you need to look good from the outside a hundred percent. Like there should be no doubts. Like you should have the case studies, the reviews. You need to cover your grounds so they feel comfortable making that decision with you. It'll make sales much easier and then it'll help your company grow.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that is funny. That is the small stuff that people overlook nowadays. It's becoming even easier with AI too, so. All right, John, thank you so much. This has been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate your time.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: Thanks for having me on, Travis.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: Take care.
