Leslie Venetz joins Warren Kucker to discuss More Is Not a Strategy: Selling AI in the Trust Economy. Key takeaways include Most B2B deals are lost to the status quo, not to a competitor, because buyers fear the cost of change and When a champion fears AI will replace their team, lead with the cost of inaction instead of headcount ROI.
More Is Not a Strategy: Selling AI in the Trust Economy
with Leslie Venetz
"More is not a strategy."
About This Episode
Leslie Venetz, founder of the Sales-Led GTM Agency and author of Profit Generating Pipeline, explains why she calls 2026 the year of the trust economy and why most B2B deals are now lost to the status quo rather than to a competitor. She and Warren Kucker discuss selling AI to a champion who fears it will replace their team, leading with the cost of inaction instead of ROI, why more activity is not a strategy, and a live audit of Warren's outbound sequence: segmentation, cadence by seniority, and voicemails that point to another touch instead of asking for a callback.
About the Guest
Leslie Venetz
Leslie Venetz is the founder of the Sales-Led GTM Agency and the author of Profit Generating Pipeline, a USA Today bestseller. She spent 15 years in corporate sales as an individual contributor and as a first, second and third line sales leader, selling to SMBs and Fortune 250 C-suites. She now consults, trains and runs sales kickoffs for founders, CROs and their teams.
Key Takeaways
- ✓ Most B2B deals are lost to the status quo, not to a competitor, because buyers fear the cost of change
- ✓ When a champion fears AI will replace their team, lead with the cost of inaction instead of headcount ROI
- ✓ Use AI for segmentation, research and signals before a sequence goes live, not to send more messages
- ✓ Buyer trust in vendor claims has fallen sharply, so credibility and transparency now separate sellers
- ✓ Shorten sequences for senior buyers and re-engage later with a new reason why now
- ✓ Script voicemails to read well as transcripts and point to another touch instead of asking for a callback
- ✓ Audit your last five cold emails for I, my, we and our language versus outcomes for the buyer
Chapters
Show Notes
A sales career built on range, not repetition
Leslie Venetz is the founder of the Sales-Led GTM Agency and the author of Profit Generating Pipeline, a USA Today bestseller. She spent 15 years in corporate sales, selling everything from four-figure, one-call-close deals to six-figure consultative sales into Fortune 250 C-suites. She worked as an individual contributor and as a first, second and third line sales leader, at large global companies and as employee number one at a bootstrapped startup. Nearly five years ago she turned a side project into her full-time business, and she now consults, trains and runs sales kickoffs for founders, CROs and their teams.
She says she used to feel some shame about that range, because hiring managers wanted candidates who had seen the same movie many times in a row. Her view is that product knowledge can be taught and sales fundamentals are what to hire for. She also warns against the opposite mistake: leaders who drag and drop a playbook from one company into another and watch it fail.
When the champion is afraid the product will replace them
Warren Kucker opens with a problem Leslie hears from sellers in her objection-handling training. Champions are slower to open doors to the rest of the buying group because they worry the AI product being sold will replace them or a large part of their team. Sellers have to find a balance: sell the ROI vision hard enough to win the deal, but not so hard that the champion starts asking whether advocating for the purchase will cost them their job.
Leslie offers two approaches. The first is to lead with the cost of inaction rather than the ROI. ROI conversations tend to sound like "we'll save this much time and eliminate a headcount." A cost-of-inaction conversation asks what competitors will do if the company doesn't move, and what happens when finance reviews the business unit and cuts a role anyway, while the team never built the skills to absorb that change. The second is to frame AI fluency as protection. Some jobs will be replaced, she says, but the more AI acumen a person builds, the less likely it is to be theirs. A seller can offer a champion that increase in acumen.
Warren says his own approach has been to position his work as removing the tasks nobody wants so people can spend more time on strategic work. Leslie agrees with the premise but is blunt about leadership.
I think it would be naive to assume that your executive leadership team is not looking at the bottom line always.
If margin and EBITDA are top concerns, executives are asking where AI can save money, reduce headcount or remove a support function. Resisting AI does not stop those conversations from happening. The choice, in her framing, is whether to be part of the change or to pretend it isn't being discussed behind closed doors.
More is not a strategy
Warren suggests building the business case around work that should be done but isn't, such as reps spending more time on the psychology of their buying committees instead of running from meeting to meeting. Leslie agrees in principle but says she has rarely seen it happen in sales. Productivity tools have been sold on that promise for years. What usually happens is that AI makes things faster, and then expectations rise: more emails, more calls, more meetings, more pipeline.
More is not a strategy.
She does not use any AI tool that writes and sends emails without a human in the loop, and she doesn't recommend it to clients. Where she sees the opportunity is in everything that happens before a sequence goes live: spotting trends across a territory or buying group, finding better signals, segmenting more precisely, and researching personas and account types more deeply. That work gets skipped because sellers feel pressure to reach more people. She calls vague, generic messages sent to a large share of a territory what they are, which is spam, and argues that better sequences for specific segments would remove the need for so much volume. Warren sums it up as "better is better."
2026 as the year of the trust economy
Leslie believes several forces are converging to erode buyer trust. Every vendor claims AI enablement but few can explain what it means. Some companies claiming to use AI turned out not to be. Claims have become so large and so similar that they stop being believable. And buyers who now use LLMs every day have seen them make things up and defend bad assumptions, which has made them more cynical than they were in 2024. The human response, she says, is a desire for more connection, honesty, integrity and transparency.
She cites a longitudinal survey, which she believes is from Salesforce, measuring buyers' trust in vendor capability. The line had held within about five points for years, then fell more than 20 points in a single year. She attributes the drop to big AI claims that seem too good to be true, from vendors buyers have already been burned by. Warren adds his own view: buyers had already started to sour on the SaaS boom, LLMs amplified the problem, and tighter venture funding means software now has to be sold at its true cost.
Deals are being lost to the status quo
Leslie argues that most B2B deals lost today are not lost to a competitor. They are lost to doing nothing. Buyers face too many options and too many uncertain claims, so even when they agree their current state is worse, the cost of change and the fear of a mistake win. She says sellers underestimate the social capital they are asking a buyer to spend.
It's not just we're asking them to sign a check. We're asking them to put their reputation on the line.
She also points to a Harvard Business Review series on AI reporting that burnout is rising in organizations even among employees who are excited about AI, because they take on extra scope. She expects that unnamed fatigue to become part of what sellers have to address.
On whether new vendors can win in this environment, Warren's theory is that buyers are consolidating around brands they already trust, since those vendors can now build missing features quickly. Leslie could not think of a new category created recently. She describes a shift she has seen on TikTok: a few years ago audiences treated brands almost like people, but in the last six months brands leaving comments on viral posts have been told to pay for the exposure. She reads it as part of a broader feeling that companies are overcharging and under-delivering.
Auditing an outbound sequence
Warren puts his own numbers on the table. He used to see about one qualified opportunity for every 300 cold calls. Now it is closer to one in 700 to 900. His sequence runs up to seven calls, four to six emails, and on LinkedIn three engagements with a prospect's posts before a connection request, followed by up to three messages. He targets VPs of RevOps, customer success and sales, plus some below-the-line buyers.
Leslie says the first questions she would ask any client are the average price point and who they are selling to, because those decide how many calls belong in a sequence and where. She then checks for a voicemail strategy, at least three channels, the call opener, and the full funnel from connect rate to conversation rate to conversion. She approves of the LinkedIn approach of commenting before connecting to raise acceptance rates. Her tactical suggestions:
Adjust the sequence by seniority. Twenty steps is fine for a below-the-line buyer. For senior buyers, stack the first touches tightly to build awareness, then space the rest further apart than you would for a coordinator or manager.
Use at least five filters per segment, including at least one demographic filter, and start with title. Writing a separate sequence for CROs and for VPs of sales forces sharper copy, because what matters to a manager of sales enablement is different from what matters to a CRO.
At a $100,000 to $500,000 ACV with long cycles, seven cold calls is too many. She would run shorter sprint sequences, put non-responders on ice for about three months, and come back with a new reason why now is the right time.
Voicemails should point to another touch
Leslie says voicemails are one of the most underused touches in a sequence. They should be scripted, because more people read the transcript than listen to the message, so it should read like a short cold email. Pre-recorded drops are acceptable if segmentation makes the message relevant, but they can miss a chance to convey emotion, which she would A/B test. Above all, she has clients stop asking for a callback and point to another touch instead, such as a LinkedIn connection request or an email. One opening she likes is a triple tap: a handwritten note, then an email that only delivers value, then a call whose voicemail points back to that email.
Warren describes testing personalized live voicemails, a practice recommended by PhoneBurner, since voicemails are often transcribed in real time. Leslie would A/B test it and says it is probably worth it above roughly a $40,000 price point but not for transactional sales. She adds two improvements: mention a deposit in the email, such as a one-pager of insights, and say exactly which address the email came from so the prospect can search their inbox for it.
On Warren's three possibilities, that outbound hasn't changed, that it's harder but his numbers can improve, or that his numbers are the new normal, she lands in the middle. His numbers are jarring, but small changes could bring them back. Outbound is harder in new ways. Since roughly 2011 to 2013, sellers have flooded buyers with calls, connect-and-pitch LinkedIn messages and irrelevant emails, and trained them to ignore outreach.
Earn the right
Leslie's closing advice is an audit anyone can run today. Take your last five cold emails and count how often you use "I," "my," "we" and "our," then compare that with how often you describe outcomes that are personal and relevant to the recipient. Prospects do not know or care about your company or product. They care about what is in it for them, and most messages she reviews never get there.
What have I put in this email that earns me the right to ask for their attention?
Leslie posts daily on LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube, where she recently passed 10,000 followers.
Full Transcript Show Hide
00:10 Warren Kucker: Hey there and welcome to another episode of Selling AI. Today we're talking about what happens to your pipeline when buyers stop believing what vendors tell them. I have Leslie Venetz on the show today. Leslie is the founder of the sales-led Go to Market Agency and the author of Profit Generating Pipeline. Here's what makes this interesting. One, Leslie is a superstar in the world of pipe gen. she has a theory in 2026. She thinks it's the year of the trust economy. And that actually most deals right now aren't being lost to a competitor. They're really being lost to the status quo. In the episode today, Leslie and I talk about how to sell AI to a champion who's a little bit worried it's gonna replace them or their team. Why? More is not a strategy, and honestly, really tactically a voicemail that stops asking for a callback. We also put my own cold calling numbers on the table, kind of embarrassing. And she tells me what to fix. Alright, let's get into it. Hi Leslie, thank you so much for being on the show today.
01:08 Leslie Venetz: It is my pleasure. I am delighted to be here, Warren. Thanks for the invite.
01:12 Warren Kucker: Awesome. Well first let's dive into a little bit of your background, your career arc that got you here today. You personally talked about making two hundred and fifty thousand cold calls. I love that. You've trained others to make millions more. you founded the sales led Go to Market Agency, wrote a USA Today, bestseller and profit generating pipeline. walk us through your career arc and how they brought you to what you're working on these days.
01:34 Leslie Venetz: Yeah, I've been staying busy, huh? career
01:36 Warren Kucker: Yeah. That was a good intro.
01:38 Leslie Venetz: arc, yeah. TLDR is spent 15 years in corporate and and kind of bounced around a lot. I did everything from a you know transactional like four-figure one call clothes sale through to a very consultative like six-figure plus sale, sold to SMB, sold to you know Fortune 250 C-suite. So I I Had the privilege of having visibility into a lot of different types of products and services and sales cycles as an individual contributor and as a first, second, third line sales leader and did that at huge global orgs, and then also made the insane choice at one point to be employee number one at a bootstrap startup. Questionable judgment, but I did, I learned
02:23 Warren Kucker: Ha ha ha.
02:24 Leslie Venetz: a boatload. and so I took that 15 years of experience and almost five years ago now decided to leave corporate. And take what I had been running as like a passion project side hustle, make it my full-time gig, see if I had a taste for entrepreneurship. It turns out I do. It turns out that it is my calling. And so for the last nearly five years, I've been working with sales teams, doing a lot of consulting, like strategic consulting, but also doing training, working with them in like workshops and sales kickoffs. So just being really ingrained with founders and CROs and their teams.
03:04 Warren Kucker: That's awesome. That's a a great career arc. It's helpful to have such a wide span of sales motions and working the entire kind of like full cycle sales cycle as you dive into the work you're doing because the the credibility you have when you bring to a new company of all different shapes and sizes and sales motions, it's gotta be really fantastic. so it's an awesome
03:24 Leslie Venetz: Yeah.
03:25 Warren Kucker: background. Great.
03:26 Leslie Venetz: Yeah, thank you. I actually, for a while like felt some shame about having done so many different things because when I was hired when I was like going through job interviews, hiring managers would be like, You haven't done this seven times
03:39 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm. Hang up.
03:41 Leslie Venetz: in a row, like you haven't seen this movie fifteen times, you don't have ten years of cloud experience. And I was like, Well well no, I don't have deep domain expertise
03:49 Warren Kucker: Ha ha ha.
03:51 Leslie Venetz: because product knowledge is teachable, is learnable, sales foundation. Like that's what if I was hiring, that's what I would hire for first. So it's been super fun. Like thank you for that call. It's been super fun the last few years to get to really take all those skill sets and see them be like cherished and appreciated by clients.
04:10 Warren Kucker: No, it's funny. when especially in sales leadership there's this stigma. whenever you're looking at a role, they wanna know that you've done it several times before they have you do it again. And that's the smart way to look at it. But in the same token, somebody did this the first for the first time, right? So like someone was a VP of sales that took a company from a series B to a series D, and that was their first time. So like at some point you just have to also go on skill set and spec beyond like having to do it. right, yeah. Okay.
04:35 Leslie Venetz: You have to do it the first time. For sure. And one of the biggest issues I see is people being like, I'm gonna take my playbook that I used at this company and just try to drag it and drop it into a new company, and then it fails.
04:48 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
04:49 Leslie Venetz: So there like it, there's always kind of a disconnect too. That's like just because it worked in this company doesn't mean that the same exact thing will work in this new company. I don't know. We could like totally, yes.
04:57 Warren Kucker: Greed. Yeah, which is more prevalent with someone who's done it three times. No, I know, we keep going. Exactly. For example, I've never done a one deal close. I'm jealous. So I've never had an inbound pipe. I've never met anyone
05:04 Leslie Venetz: Ha ha ha
05:06 Warren Kucker: who had a whole bunch of inbound pipe. I've never done a one b a one deal close. And so if those types of roles come up, I have to demure 'cause I have no idea what that's like. so great. Well listen, let's dive into a really recent topic you're hearing from a bunch of sellers that I think dovetails really nicely into a key theme for you in twenty twenty six. First, you were telling me that your sellers are feeling some Apprehension from their champions and giving access to the rest of the decision making team, which is not new, but it's getting harder mainly because something specific that the champions are worried about the solution you're providing replacing their or a big chunk of their team's responsibilities. So there's some apprehension there. give me some more specifics. What are you hearing from sellers in this space? And what are your thoughts on how you kind of overcome maybe an exacerbation of an old problem?
05:55 Leslie Venetz: Mm, yeah. it is A different way of asking about a common objection and objection handling or talking about objection approaches. That's one of the core sales trainings that I do with teams. And so that's where I've been seeing it surface. And one of the things I always try to remind folks is like, yeah, we kind of have this set of common objections, but they're they're common or they're recurring because they are based on the same fears that we are triggering. And so we were talking a lot about trust, we were talking a a lot about, you know, I think i in this context a fear of Finding the right balance between how do I like sing the praises of this product or this service and how it is AI enabled? Like how how do I sell the ROI vision of this product, but not sell it so hard that I then drum up this worry in my champion or in in the team of users, technical users, where they start thinking, should I advocate for this purchase? Or is this going to put me out of a job in a few months?
07:09 Warren Kucker: Yeah, and so maybe I'll reflect personally an approach that I've taken, but I don't think it's I I don't know that it's the right one, is I try to lead with the fact that the solution that I'm offering, sometimes it's like a in a consulting engagement kind of way, sometimes it's a software solution, is supposed to just remove some of the work that nobody wants to do so you spend more time on the strategic work. So I haven't talked about replacing a job or reducing headcount or that type of like ROI in a while. How have you found some like common approaches to kind of like help assuage those fears in your champion legitimately so that they'll kind of like go back to opening those doors to the people in the org that need to help make that decision?
07:50 Leslie Venetz: Yeah, I love that approach. and I love that you call out that it's a legitimate fear or concern because I mean some some of these people are going to lose their jobs if they're doing kind of that like manual root root work.
07:59 Warren Kucker: It is. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
08:03 Leslie Venetz: two things that I come back to. one is a focus on the cost of inaction versus the ROI. So when we're talking about ROI, it's often like, we're gonna save you this much time and we're gonna eliminate a head count. And right? But when we talk about the cost of an action, it's if you don't do this, what are your competitors going to do where they jump ahead of you? If you don't do this, what's going to happen when finance looks at the cost of your business unit? And it doesn't quite add up, and they remove a headcount anyway, but you have
08:45 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
08:45 Leslie Venetz: not built the skills up to be able to absorb that change. So I I think focusing a little bit more on maybe the cost of inaction than focusing on the ROI would would ease some of those fears. And I think another thing that I come back to, and this isn't just true for this question about like, you know, where's the balance between singing the praises of AI and and making Sure, that my champion doesn't think AI is gonna take their job. I I think it's true for all of us that there is a reality that AI will replace some jobs, but the more astute you are with AI, like the more you own AI acumen
09:25 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
09:25 Leslie Venetz: a skill set, the less likely it will be that your job is the one getting replaced. So I think if you're actually talking with a a champion, like an executive, they're they're gonna get some of that. That like part of what I can offer. for them as a seller is an increase in their AI acumen will make them more, not less secure in their job. So I'd I'd come back to those two things.
09:49 Warren Kucker: Interesting. Interesting. I think you're I mean, you're hitting the nail on the head and the hard the hard cell from my standpoint where I f felt like I maybe was starting to get disingenuous was my framing is that honestly like most people are prop there should be very few job losses because of this solution, right? Like we shouldn't there may be a little churn that you don't replace. But in the same token the goal is everyone's extremely busy all day doing a whole bunch of work. Take a little bit of away and spend more time on the stuff that you should be doing, right? Along the way. Like it, but the same token, you have to trust that your leadership like will also view it that way, right? Like, so do you feel like the leadership, let's say the economic buyer, the people actually may signing the bottom line to implement a new solution or software to help efficiency, do you feel like leadership is kind of going that way? Or do you feel like it's like, no, the business case is still around? We're gonna reduce forehead count, the software's cost X, so that's a Y R O I.
10:51 Leslie Venetz: Yeah. you know, at at risk of a potential client listening to this and then being like, ooh, she's I we can't work with her. I think that leadership is often genuinely a bit untrustworthy when it comes to things. Right. Like
11:07 Warren Kucker: Okay. Yeah, right. Agreed.
11:09 Leslie Venetz: I I guess maybe because I've spent so many years working in corporate myself and because I sold predominantly to the enterprise. So like most
11:20 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
11:21 Leslie Venetz: of my clients were enterprise. Now a lot of my clients are enterprise or sell to the enterprise. I think it would be naive to assume that your executive leadership team is not looking at the bottom line always.
11:38 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
11:39 Leslie Venetz: And if if profit margin and EBITDA is a top concern for them, which it is and always will be.
11:45 Warren Kucker: Right.
11:46 Leslie Venetz: They are asking questions like, where can we use AI to save money? Where can we use AI to reduce headcount? Where can we
11:54 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
11:55 Leslie Venetz: use AI to like maybe remove an entire support function because we don't need them anymore? so I mean that that maybe is like hard for people to hear, but I I
12:03 Warren Kucker: Yeah. Yeah.
12:05 Leslie Venetz: think the reality is that just because you might feel scared of AI, or just because you might want to resist AI, that like that doesn't mean that it's not going to happen anyways. So it's like,
12:18 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
12:18 Leslie Venetz: okay, do you want to be part of the change? Do you want to be part of the solution?
12:21 Warren Kucker: Right.
12:22 Leslie Venetz: Or do you want to resist it and like refuse to acknowledge that these are the conversations that your executive leadership team is having behind closed doors without you?
12:32 Warren Kucker: Agreed. I couldn't agree more because it's a hard sell to say, listen, your PE brought me in to have this conversation, let's investigate this business case and your PE isn't really looking to slash jobs. they just wanna get everyone's work is gonna be better, right? It's a hard sell, right? I think what there's some opportunity to do there is potentially lean into I think it's foolish to think that all of the work that's g could be done is getting done now. Right? So there's stuff that's not being done because people are too busy for it. And honestly, in my experience, it's generally a bucket of more strategic, more important work, because that's harder work to do. Right. So a good example is in sales, if you're selling some sort of sales automation. I don't think sales reps are spending enough time thinking about the psychology of buying with their buying groups, what their buyers and their buying committees actually care about from a personal standpoint, what their personal stakes are. I think they're running meeting into meeting. So if like reducing the time it takes to sell s on the admin side should increase the time you spend in this strategic area, I How do you feel about building a business case up with your champion that kind of focuses on the work that should be done that's not being done to help bridge this gap that someone might be experiencing?
13:45 Leslie Venetz: Hmm. well, I I agree with you. and this isn't just AI specific, but like people have been selling productivity and efficiency and time management hacks and software for ages, right? And I I think the premise is always, hey, now that we have more time, now that we have bought time back, we should be using that new time for more strategic work. I have rarely seen that actually be the practice, specific to sales. I can't I can't speak to other business units.
14:16 Warren Kucker: Yeah. In general. Yeah.
14:19 Leslie Venetz: but what I have seen over career and certainly is exacerbated by AI, is that AI is layered on to make things go faster. And then that means that the expectations get raised. So sellers are supposed to be sending more emails and doing more calls and have more meetings set and more pipelines. And one
14:41 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
14:41 Leslie Venetz: of the things I come back to over And over again for for my clients is that more is not a strategy. Like more,
14:48 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
14:49 Leslie Venetz: just that's that is not a strategy. So the premise that we should be replacing this this new time we have with strategic activity instead of busy activity, I agree with it. I I've seen companies struggle to actually do that though. What what have you seen?
15:07 Warren Kucker: Yeah, agreed. No, I it's I think the premise you're going with is more isn't better, right? So like if we were being specific about sales, like do a better job managing your buyer's journey to win more work, but not with a whole bunch of extra activity that needs to happen, right?
15:26 Leslie Venetz: Totally. Yeah.
15:28 Warren Kucker: But so like I actually like it's like more isn't better, like better is better would be a good way to phrase it. But I agree that in a majority of cases this is an unrealistic viewpoint. in a current way that we've structured the enterprise, right? Like it's like great, we could do more work, so I can new use less people to do the work I was doing before is like a a a fact that I think you what you're saying here is in order to build trust with your buyer, a lot of times you just have to steer into that fact, right? Like that like Like delaying this decision or avoiding it isn't the right necessarily the right approach. It's steering into it and being the solution that will help you kind of make the transition to whatever transition's being done.
16:08 Leslie Venetz: Yeah, yeah. I mean one of the things that we were talking about on the pre call is one of the most common questions that I get asked is like, well, you know, what AI tools are you using to just write all of your emails and send all of your emails? And the answer is, I I don't personally use any tool that doesn't still it require a human in the loop element. And I don't recommend that to any of my clients. Like, yeah, AI is amazing and automation is amazing. but What I like to redirect to are so many of the opportunities for us to use AI for all of the things that happen before we hit, you know, publish, hit go on that sequence,
16:54 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
16:54 Leslie Venetz: like surfacing trends between our buying group or in our territory, surfacing better signals or better insights, like better segmentation of our territory, deeper research about who we're talking to so that we understand
17:08 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
17:08 Leslie Venetz: like that persona and that particular account. Count type better. So I think there are so many opportunities that come in the segmentation and the research and in the building of high performing sequences that just kind of get cut or skipped because people
17:26 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
17:26 Leslie Venetz: are so like, I just have to get more emails out and reach more people and do more like. And I get it, I get the pressure. Like, trust me, I've I've been an individual contributor. I've been a frontline manager where I've been feeling that pressure from leadership to pressure my team. Like I I get it. and I know that it is sometimes psychologically, you know, unsafe to push back on that.
17:49 Warren Kucker: Yeah. Right, yeah.
17:51 Leslie Venetz: so so I understanding all of those nuances of the situation that sellers and sales leaders listening to this might find themselves in, I am so confident that if teams just took a little bit more time to do the work to write. better sequences that are more focused on specific segments that we wouldn't need to do so much spamming because a lot of what people are doing now is spamming. They might not call it spamming, but like when you're sending vague generic messages to a huge group of your territory, that is still spam.
18:25 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
18:25 Leslie Venetz: so yes, like the better is better. Like people don't have to do more emails because they could do better emails.
18:32 Warren Kucker: Fantastic. And think we have well I'll probably start with you with some stats on my end that you'll hopefully correct me on towards the like later segment. Let's start with the kind of like the broader view. So you said 2026. You think it's the year of the trust economy? And you had some really interesting stats around Salesforce and buyer trust in a buying process. I'd love to hear. Give me a little bit more about your ethos in this being the year of the trust economy, and then let's dive deeper into kind of how that affects the sales process.
18:59 Leslie Venetz: Yeah, well I think I think a lot of different things are converging. one is that like everybody has AI enablement, but like nobody's totally sure what it means. And then there has been story after story of companies saying that they're using AI, but like they're not really using AI, or worse, it's like humans in sweatshops in third world countries. So there's like an erosion of trust happening there. There's an erosion of trust because so many companies are making these crazy big Claims and they're so big that they don't feel believable, and then like everybody's making kind of a similar claim, so it feels even less believable because it's like okay, if
19:43 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
19:43 Leslie Venetz: everybody's a hundred times in their efficiency, like why doesn't anything seem more efficient?
19:48 Warren Kucker: Better. Yeah, right.
19:50 Leslie Venetz: and then we're I think we're also and we talked a little bit about this in the pre-call too, but we're I think we're sort of at an influx point with AI adoption now. that people are taking their rose-colored glasses off.
20:02 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
20:03 Leslie Venetz: A little bit because people are using LLMs and realizing that the LLMs lie. They just like make stuff up, they use false assumptions, and then even, you know, there's a lot of instances of the LLMs like gaslighting the user to validate the bad assumption that it gave you. So I I think People are are more cynical about
20:27 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
20:27 Leslie Venetz: the claims and about the applications than they were, say, in twenty twenty four. And they've also been burned. So that's like this this extra cyc cynicism and then this trust that's sort of slowly been eroded like cut by cut over the past couple of years. and the response to that is a very normal and human response, which is a yearning for more human connection, more honesty, more integrity, more transparency. And so that's what
20:57 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
20:58 Leslie Venetz: has has really been top of mind for me throughout 2026 when I think about 2026 as the year of the trust economy.
21:05 Warren Kucker: That's interesting. I had I had a CS leader tell me that even let's say before we layered in this new like LLM tech into all software, that there was starting to be a dip in the appetite for the SaaS software selling boom that we had over, let's say, 2013 to 2023. That like people were like, listen, we bought all this software and it doesn't seem that much better for all the effort we put into implementing the software, using it, and the cost, right? Then LLMs come along, explode that problem at kind of like coincidentally. And now you have that double. You have people making grander claims. Honestly, once in a while they're true, but they're still so grand that like it's hard to believe. I've run this into
21:46 Leslie Venetz: Yeah.
21:47 Warren Kucker: myself. I accidentally I did this. I'm like, th this is the math. This is the result you'll get. It was too big. I should have just scaled it down. So you have those like two convergences. On top of it, like V VC stopped funding software so much, and so the cost also rose. So like now it's like great, now we actually have to sell the true cost of the software. So you have this like triple conversions of like how CFOs view software or how execs viewed software, that c created this environment where like maybe there is a major well you're talking about trust and we'll get into the lower levels of the human to human side. A trust that you're gonna deliver the solution, you're saying significantly dropped in the past eighteen months.
22:25 Leslie Venetz: Yeah. I'll find that specific data point so you can link it in the show notes. I'm I'm almost positive, I'm like 99.9% positive it was sales force data because it's like
22:36 Warren Kucker: Okay.
22:36 Leslie Venetz: a longitudinal survey.
22:38 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
22:39 Leslie Venetz: but the drop was crazy. I mean it was like a 20 point plus drop
22:43 Warren Kucker: Really?
22:43 Leslie Venetz: and it had like the line had stayed pretty steady, you know, like plus or minus five points over the course of like many, many years. So to see
22:50 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
22:50 Leslie Venetz: a 20 point plus drop in a single year, very
22:54 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
22:55 Leslie Venetz: much as a result. result of those big AI claims that whether or not they are true, like everybody's making the same claim and they seem too good to be true. And then people
23:03 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
23:04 Leslie Venetz: have been burned at one point. So it makes it even less believable. yeah, I will I will find that data so we can put it in the show notes so people can t can dig deeper.
23:11 Warren Kucker: And in particular, that was the buyer's belief in like how much value that was gonna be what a software could do compared to what it actually did. You said it's it like 70% was a pretty like a bellwether, right? wow. Wow,
23:20 Leslie Venetz: it was buyer's trust in vendor. Yeah, buyer's trust in vendor capability. Yeah.
23:26 Warren Kucker: that's crazy. So they they thought that, yeah, I'm being sold something, 70% of what I'm being sold is probably true, and there's 30% that's exaggerated, and you're saying that's nosedived below 20 points in this case. yeah, that would make sales cycles longer. because the validation's important along the way. How do you think that changes or highlights the human to human interaction? How can sellers do a better job than we have in the past, bridging that gap and building like better trust between the buyer and the vendor?
23:57 Leslie Venetz: Yeah. well, one thing that I I think is important to acknowledge is that the majority of deals that we are losing right now in B2B, we're not losing the deals because somebody decided to go to a competitor. We're losing the deals to the status quo because there were so many options and so many uncertain claims and our buyers are just like so frazzled and overwhelmed and inundated that they just decide to do nothing. And that's
24:22 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
24:22 Leslie Venetz: true, like even when they know and acknowledge that their current their status quo. Is inferior and it could be better, they're still deciding to do nothing because that cost of change and the uncertainty and the fear of messing up, the fear of using their social capital to buy your new AI solution or product that has big claims and then have them not come true, that the cost is just too high.
24:45 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
24:46 Leslie Venetz: So I I think that is extremely important to acknowledge. and I I think in general in sales, the The social capital that we are asking our buyers to expend is something that we don't spend enough time thinking about and caring
25:02 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
25:03 Leslie Venetz: about. Because it's not just we're asking them to sign a check. Like we
25:06 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
25:07 Leslie Venetz: we're asking them to put their reputation on the line for for us for our purchase of of the product or solution. So that's like one thing that I think about a lot. And the other thing I think about a lot, I love Harvard Business Review. Like I love it so much I get the physical magazine to to read.
25:23 Warren Kucker: Nice, yeah.
25:24 Leslie Venetz: and they've been running a bunch of AI series, like five, six article series. And the I'll try to find this article too, so we can put it in the show notes. But the premise was Even when employees are excited about AI, the level of burnout in organizations is increasing. And so I don't I don't know what the answer is, but I do have a sense that for organizations that are forcing AI, that's
25:55 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
25:55 Leslie Venetz: creating burnout, and that's creating probably a sense of like a bit of people being disgruntled. But even when people are excited to use AI, the level of burnout is increasing because they Are proactively taking on like scope creep, job creep responsibilities,
26:11 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
26:12 Leslie Venetz: and they're doing, you know, I do this, I put in a little prompt, and then I walk away, and then I come back, and it's like I'm picking something up. and so I I think when we talk about the human element, we also shouldn't underestimate maybe a growing sense of burnout towards
26:30 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
26:31 Leslie Venetz: AI in general. And maybe they don't even have the name for it yet. It's something they feel but
26:34 Warren Kucker: Yeah. Yeah.
26:36 Leslie Venetz: haven't named. But I I think that that's gonna be part of the question we need to answer in the coming months too.
26:43 Warren Kucker: Yeah. I think those are all like normal problems as a pretty big technology shift occurs, right? We went from Everything being on paper to just digitizing post-it notes to now your computer is generating like information for the first time. It's hard to realize that that's a huge shift, right? Like when you were using your computer, you felt like it was doing things for you, but it was only doing what you told it to do, right? Like and now it's generating some information. What's interesting on the software side, when you're selling software, I think the someone made this kind of equation for me. It's like software used to be like the tofu aisle at the store where there was just like two problems to a solution. But then we like drastically reduce the inputs to generating features and platforms. And so we've turned it into the serial aisle, right? Where there's just like a lot of different options to solve your problem. I I want to dig into this piece of trust because I think that's where companies that win will will end up doing it. You would think that a whole bunch of startups would come and disrupt markets because you could build. What I actually think is people are coalescing around brands that they know and trust because they know even if they don't have this feature now. They could build it faster than they have in the past. And if it's the right feature, they will. Are you seeing the same? Do you feel like the brand trust is like becoming more pivotal in like industry? Do you think it or do you think the startup like new companies are coming in and able to build that trust quickly?
28:09 Leslie Venetz: That is such an interesting question. I think like the first thing when you were when you were walking through that is that I was trying to think what new categories I've seen recently. Like if there are any new brands that are really like creating new categories and
28:28 Warren Kucker: Right.
28:29 Leslie Venetz: like nothing popped into my head. So maybe that's part of the answer to the question.
28:36 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
28:37 Leslie Venetz: something that also popped into my head is there's so I spend a a kind of embarrassing amount of time on TikTok. I love TikTok. Follow me there, Leslie at SalesTips Talk. but
28:48 Warren Kucker: Yeah. Yeah.
28:50 Leslie Venetz: a bunch of brands came onto TikTok about two years ago.
28:55 Warren Kucker: Okay.
28:55 Leslie Venetz: And I like it was a big thing. Maybe it like three years ago now. But I remember being like, Whoa, nobody's doing like real B2B here. And now there's some
29:04 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
29:04 Leslie Venetz: B2B brands and of course more B2C brands. Like it was it was a pivotal time for me as a creator because so many people were still saying, like, it's just kids dancing. And I'm like, Well,
29:13 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
29:13 Leslie Venetz: all of these like billion dollar brands are taking the time to stand up profiles and and create
29:19 Warren Kucker: well.
29:20 Leslie Venetz: audience here. So maybe there's like a missing tick. And so there was I think a little there was like fun. And energy, and maybe the way I would say it is that I I sensed that people were viewing brands, viewing companies as people. Right? So there like
29:38 Warren Kucker: Okay. interesting.
29:40 Leslie Venetz: there was almost a sense that like there, like this brand was like a human. I'm just interacting with a human. And what I have seen this year, it yes, yes. Mm-hmm.
29:46 Warren Kucker: Yeah, it has a personality rather than a logo almost, right? Like yeah.
29:51 Leslie Venetz: And so I think. Like the parasocial connection with brands was building. And I have seen that change so dramatically in the last six months that something that these brands often do is on TikTok they call it aura farming, but they'll go and they'll leave comments on other viral posts. And people are like, get out of my comments. Like if you want to get free advertising on my content, you can pay me. Like people are pissed.
30:23 Warren Kucker: Interesting. Yeah, really.
30:25 Leslie Venetz: And so I think that that kind of speaks to a broader shift of I don't know, people people creating parasocial connections with brands to
30:34 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
30:34 Leslie Venetz: now people being like, You are overcharging me and you're under delivering and everything
30:40 Warren Kucker: Yeah, right.
30:41 Leslie Venetz: works worse than it did before. So I I felt a real shift. and I know
30:46 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
30:46 Leslie Venetz: that doesn't quite answer your question, but like those were a couple of the things as as you were talking through it that popped into my head.
30:50 Warren Kucker: No. Interesting. It's an interesting way to approach it, right? I think Again in in the the parlance of this b trust kind of elevating its way. It's always kinda been there. We we kinda forget, like so as social media, well trust was a big thing, trusting what you were seeing on Facebook. Yelp is like the trust economy in its whole, right? Like how do you make sure
31:13 Leslie Venetz: Yeah.
31:14 Warren Kucker: Yelp started taking down bad posts if you pay? So like great, you erode that trust that Yelp is where good reviews or bad reviews are found, right? so that's always been there, but I think it's gett having its day again in that like what you can do is isn't the biggest selling point anymore. That's almost like that's table stakes. Now why should
31:33 Leslie Venetz: Yeah.
31:34 Warren Kucker: I use you, buy from you, ease of use, trust that it's gonna work. And I think brand really helps in this space, in a way that makes sense.
31:42 Leslie Venetz: Or sure.
31:44 Warren Kucker: Great. Let's let's go back to maybe is the more tactical I I could talk about this all day, but I I'd love for with your experience, some of the audience to get some tactical approaches on outbound. So let's let's talk a little bit about outbound. You talked about great, you're not spamming with cold emails written by AI, not viewed by you. I'll pose a question that maybe will give you some pause and then we'll from there. So I found cold calling has
32:08 Leslie Venetz: Okay.
32:09 Warren Kucker: gotten harder. not harder, it's probably not the right word, less productive. cold calling It's always been hard. It's always been not that productive, but it's always been the star of the show when it came to generating pipeline, in my view. Everything else was supporting the cold call. I found that we went from a shift of about one of every 300 cold calls would get you a qualified opportunity. So they showed up to the meeting and they were qualified and you're proceeding in your deal.
32:35 Leslie Venetz: Mm-hmm.
32:36 Warren Kucker: I've seen that kind of go to one every seven hundred to nine hundred, and I have my own reasons why this might have happened. But when I said this to you, your ears perked up. tell me, like what are you seeing in this space in particular? Where am I wrong? And what could I be doing wrong if I am wrong?
32:52 Leslie Venetz: Yeah. So if a client came to me with this exact question, here's what I would ask them first. I would want to uncover what their average price point is. I would want to uncover who they are selling to, because those those two things right there really make a difference between like how many cold calls should be in your sequence, where they should fall in your sequence, and the and the types of cold calls you should be making and like what your
33:22 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
33:22 Leslie Venetz: voicemail strategy should be. So I think there's there's a lot of nuance just right there. But then I would ask follow-up questions like what is your voicemail strategy? And if you don't have a voicemail strategy, that's something that we would need to build straight away. I would
33:34 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
33:35 Leslie Venetz: want to understand how many channels you're using and if you're not using at least three channels, that's something that we would want to remedy straight away. And I I would definitely want to know obviously like what your call opener is, right? Like we could dig into some of those nuances of like, hey, if you're if like what are your connect rates versus your connect to conversation rates versus your connect to conversation to conversion rates?
34:03 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
34:04 Leslie Venetz: And how do you what what does qualified pipeline mean to you? So I mean I there's like a lot
34:08 Warren Kucker: Yes.
34:09 Leslie Venetz: of the nuanced data we would have to to dig into,
34:11 Warren Kucker: Right.
34:12 Leslie Venetz: but What I would want to uncover first is, are you using cold calls in a way that feels strategic to match the channel of choice needs of your current buyer?
34:31 Warren Kucker: Okay. Give me some more. Yeah.
34:33 Leslie Venetz: How many channels are you using?
34:36 Warren Kucker: Yeah. Take th three with a little bit of a Reddit bolt on if you were talking about that. So LinkedIn, email, cold call, all together,
34:41 Leslie Venetz: Okay, cool, yeah.
34:43 Warren Kucker: lined up and then some Reddit, but that's not really targeted at a prospect, it's a market, right. So I'll pause there. Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah.
34:48 Leslie Venetz: Yeah, different. So not not really in your your sequence so much as like a a yeah an additional. good. The data on three plus channel multi-channel outreach is like absolutely undeniable if you're not using
35:00 Warren Kucker: Okay.
35:01 Leslie Venetz: at least three channels. It's it's just like man, you're gonna be doing a lot of work to get not the level of results that you should. So three plus channels absolutely. how many touches are in your average sequence?
35:15 Warren Kucker: In this scenario, I'm making up to seven cold calls and four to six cold emails. And then on the LinkedIn side, the goal is to have three interactions with posts before a connection request and then three messages, up to three messages there. So if we were looking at that's maybe seven, thirteen, twenty touch points, we'll call it that to make it easy.
35:37 Leslie Venetz: love that LinkedIn strategy that you're doing the comments to increase familiarity so that you can increase the
35:43 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
35:43 Leslie Venetz: the percentage of accepted connect requests. Love that. who is your primary like who who are you reaching out to? Who's the primary title? What's the job title?
35:53 Warren Kucker: So I'd say all through the go to market stack. We'll call it VP of RevOps, VP of CS, mm, VP of sales and and C S, and then below the line buyers peppered in as well.
36:06 Leslie Venetz: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. so a couple of things that I would want to dig into straight away if I had that like superficial information.
36:12 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
36:12 Leslie Venetz: one is I would want to look at that total number of steps and I would want to see how we change it based on seniority. So if we're below the buyer below the line buyer, 20 steps, like no big deal. And above
36:23 Warren Kucker: Okay.
36:24 Leslie Venetz: the line buyer, there is a chance that you're going too hard and that the steps are placed too close together.
36:30 Warren Kucker: Okay, interesting. Yeah. No no just in general. Yeah.
36:31 Leslie Venetz: I don't know that I've not seen your sequences, but like if somebody's looking for some tactical things to kind of look at and audit, my general rule of thumb is for the more senior the buyer, the further I like I'll stack my very initial steps pretty tight because you're like, you know,
36:44 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
36:45 Leslie Venetz: you're stacking, you're trying to increase the the awareness. But after those first touches, I'll space out more than I would space out something for like a coordinator, a manager, et cetera. So that's one thing that I would think at think about. the other is I would really want to look at your segment. This is actually, I just had the opportunity to open for Tony Robbins two weeks ago, and this is what I went through with the Tony Robbins group, is the idea of using at least five filters for every single segment so that you have that level
37:15 Warren Kucker: Interesting.
37:15 Leslie Venetz: of clarity on exactly who you are talking to. And one of the things that we dug in specifically is that for folks that are maybe getting started with that level of rigor around segmentation, to always add one demographic filter and to use title to start with.
37:31 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
37:31 Leslie Venetz: Because just the simple pivot from what we often see in copy, which is like people in the sales space like you, IT executives, right? Like everybody that's listening to this would have
37:39 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm. Right.
37:43 Leslie Venetz: to raise their hand if I asked if they'd sent or received one of those, because every
37:46 Warren Kucker: yeah.
37:46 Leslie Venetz: single one of us has, right? So just the simple simple pivot of instead of being like, you know, sales professionals like you to CROs. And then your next
37:56 Warren Kucker: huh.
37:57 Leslie Venetz: sequence is VPs of sales, and your next sequence is, you know, GT. Yeah, whatever. And you don't even necessarily have to use, or maybe shouldn't even use, the specific title in the copy. Like that's not necessary. But what
38:08 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
38:09 Leslie Venetz: happens is that it requires a higher level of rigor in your copywriting, because what is important to a manager
38:18 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
38:18 Leslie Venetz: of sales enablement is significantly different than what is important to the CRO, even though they are both sales leadership.
38:26 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
38:27 Leslie Venetz: so I would I would wanna dig into that segmentation and how it's specifically translating to your copy. and then I would wanna dig into your voicemail strategy. you said you
38:36 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
38:36 Leslie Venetz: do like seven-ish calls.
38:39 Warren Kucker: Yes.
38:40 Leslie Venetz: How many voicemails do you leave in that sequence?
38:42 Warren Kucker: S so let's say two voicemails, but they until recently were the old drop a voicemail automatically. So they weren't they weren't they weren't personal. So let's dive in. I'd love
38:56 Leslie Venetz: Yeah.
38:57 Warren Kucker: that let's dive into the verse voicemail strategy because I think there's something an interesting shift happening here. And then let me I'm gonna pull it back into the macro view that we you just approached there. So yeah, tell us a little bit more about the voicemail strategy you're talking about.
39:08 Leslie Venetz: you should be scripting your voicemails. So like it's it's not a no to automate them because they should be scripted. And honestly, Warren, if you are doing deep enough segmentation to be like ninety-nine percent sure that your messaging is relevant and it's outcome based.
39:24 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
39:26 Leslie Venetz: Like the same script can go to everybody. So it's so it's not actually a no to do the automated voicemail drops. but there may be a missed opportunity to convey emotion.
39:38 Warren Kucker: Okay.
39:38 Leslie Venetz: And when we think
39:39 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
39:39 Leslie Venetz: about trust and human connection and some of these other themes we've been circling around, like it is that worth A B testing? Like is there a missed opportunity to to really, you know, evoke emotion through that voicemail? and two other things that I'm really serious about when it comes to voicemails. one is that one of the reasons you want it scripted is because it should read in the transcript very clearly because more
40:03 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
40:04 Leslie Venetz: people are gonna be reading the transcripts and actually listening to your voicemails. So you kind Want it to read like a cold email where
40:11 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
40:11 Leslie Venetz: like you're you're getting to the point pretty fast.
40:13 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
40:14 Leslie Venetz: and then the second thing that I always roll out with my clients is to stop asking for a call back and start pointing to another touch. So maybe it
40:23 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
40:23 Leslie Venetz: is that LinkedIn connection request, and that's the voicemail you leave right after your third comment. Or maybe one of the things I love to do at the very beginning of sequences is like triple tap. So I'll do an email. and then like I don't really do in mails that much anymore, but like maybe it's a handwritten note was the very first thing. and then I'm gonna do an email and the email's only gonna be a deposit, and then I'm gonna do a call with a voicemail, and the voicemail points back to the deposit. I'm not asking for anything except the attention to go look at the email. so those are Some nuances that I would look at, like what script are we using? How are we using it? What are we using it to point back to? Where are we using it in the sequence to make sure it's pointing back at the appropriate time? But I
41:14 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
41:14 Leslie Venetz: think that voicemails in general are like a very underutilized touch in the sequence.
41:20 Warren Kucker: Yeah, so I guess validate this too. I find often when I'm engaging and talking to people about what they could do in Outbound, the voicemail no one wants no one's like I I don't I'm not leaving a voicemail. It's honestly the default in like seventy percent of the market. And I'm so listen Some amount of your emails are landing in spam, right? So like if your emails land in spam and you don't leave a voicemail, then they never know you reached out, right? At this point, right? Like your voicemail is letting them know you reached out, right? So like so then so you I'm like, you gotta leave it the voice point of the voicemail, because the reason the objection is they never they're never gonna call me back, right? I'm like, I it's what doesn't matter. It's a touch. It's an anno it's awareness,
41:53 Leslie Venetz: They never answer. They're never gonna call me back and you're like, Okay, yeah. Yeah.
41:58 Warren Kucker: right? So then pull it one step further. I'm leaving these automated drop voicemails, they don't have their name in it. but their personal
42:04 Leslie Venetz: Hmm.
42:05 Warren Kucker: Persona based, right? So every voicemail
42:06 Leslie Venetz: Yeah.
42:06 Warren Kucker: is heavily persona based and it's focused on pointing towards the touch, right? So I agreed. I've actually found recently, and it's early, and I don't know if it's right, but I'm trying it, is actually phone burner, cold calling software that I've used among some others, recommended leaving the voicemail and leaving it in a way because you're oftentimes you're being live transcribed on the phone. So, like, could you personalize it? So, like, hey Leslie, Leslie, it's Warren. I sent you an email earlier. Earlier today, about how win rates have dropped because sales processes have lengthened, because you need access to a broader buying committee that you're getting having a harder time getting through with your champions. I'd love to chat with you about whether this is a problem. I sent you an email earlier today. Feel free to respond if this might be something that you're facing, right? But like really slowly pacing that out and giving them the opportunity to pick up the phone potentially is an edge case. Now, it's not leaving a voicemail. when you're cold calling is heavy work. It takes like dropping it automatically really accelerates like how much or reduces the amount of mental energy I need to use to cold call. So it's a big trade-off. where in the spectrum I'm like do you feel like that like your theory falls? Are we taking it too far with this live voicemail scenario? Do you think that the value ad's not worth it? what are you what are your thoughts there?
43:25 Leslie Venetz: yeah, I would always A B test it.
43:29 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
43:29 Leslie Venetz: Like if you're selling something super transactional, like probably not.
43:33 Warren Kucker: No agreed. Yeah.
43:34 Leslie Venetz: Right. But like if if you're at maybe the forty K plus press point, pr
43:38 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
43:39 Leslie Venetz: probably worth it.
43:41 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
43:41 Leslie Venetz: one thing I would add to your example, I love I love that script. That was great. maybe two things. One is if that is an email where you can make a deposit. So maybe you're like
43:50 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
43:51 Leslie Venetz: and so I also shared a one pager that has four insights from you know, blah blah blah. Maybe you drop some social
43:59 Warren Kucker: Yeah, right.
44:00 Leslie Venetz: proof in on how they're bringing the buying community together. So just wanted to share that with you too. That's an
44:04 Warren Kucker: Interesting. Yeah.
44:05 Leslie Venetz: option. Or what I also love doing that works well is saying exactly where the email is from so they can search it. So you're like, and so that email came from Leslie at
44:12 Warren Kucker: Yeah, right. Yep. Agreed.
44:15 Leslie Venetz: the sales led GTM. So if you want to search sales led GTM that should pop it up. because I'm
44:20 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
44:20 Leslie Venetz: always thinking about like how can I deliver extra value without making them do extra work or how can I remove friction to make it easier for To do the thing I want them to do. So those are two
44:29 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
44:30 Leslie Venetz: things I would add. but yeah, I I think, I mean, that's why the very first question I asked you when we were kind of spitballing this was like, What's what's your ACV? Because I
44:37 Warren Kucker: Yeah. Right.
44:39 Leslie Venetz: I having built so many sales processes at so many different price points for different
44:44 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
44:44 Leslie Venetz: kinds of customers,
44:46 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
44:47 Leslie Venetz: I I just don't think that there is a playbook.
44:50 Warren Kucker: Of course. Right. No, of course. So no, of course. Yeah. Let's talk and I wanna
44:52 Leslie Venetz: We all want the silver bullet playbook, right? But it is so nuanced.
44:58 Warren Kucker: so let me bring it back to the theory, just for the moment, alongside the tactics. So let's pretend it's longer s sales cycle, l higher ACV, hundred K to five hundred K in ACV. So you're di it's a enterprise grade, enterprise buying process. When the earlier I think there's three scenarios when I kinda posited this to you earlier. One, outbound hasn't gotten harder. So that's you're wrong, Warren. It's the same. two, it's gotten harder, but your numbers are still crazy because the shift there's a shift that y like you think can be made in the current environment to get the numbers closer to reality. Or three, no, Warren, you're absolutely right. Those are the new numbers, right? Like that's it's gotten three times harder
45:37 Leslie Venetz: Yeah.
45:38 Warren Kucker: to qualify opportunity outbound. Where where do you think you you kind of fall? and out of those three.
45:44 Leslie Venetz: Yeah.
45:45 Warren Kucker:
45:45 Leslie Venetz: In the middle, I do think your numbers are crazy. but also based on what you've
45:48 Warren Kucker: Good. That's that's helpful.
45:50 Leslie Venetz: already told me, I I think that like small tweaks could help. I think seven cold calls at a a like 500k ACV and long sales cycle is too many. Like what I would do instead is run shorter sequences and then if somebody didn't r respond, I'd put them on ice for maybe like three months. Like I'd I'd rather
46:11 Warren Kucker: Okay, interesting.
46:12 Leslie Venetz: do shorter sprint sequences and find new reasons to re-engage, like find new like why is right now the right time for me to
46:21 Warren Kucker: Interesting. Mm-hmm.
46:22 Leslie Venetz: be reaching out and for for you to give me your attention. so I don't want them to forget me, but like I also you know, don't want them to be like, hey, actually if you could go away and leave me alone and
46:33 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
46:33 Leslie Venetz: like never contact me again because I am like I think I am a bit sensitive about getting Mark to spam or like having
46:41 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
46:42 Leslie Venetz: people unsubscribe or having people block me because then it's like, shoot, but like what happens when I really, really have something important to say and you're no longer listening?
46:51 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
46:55 Leslie Venetz: But so yeah, I think I think the middle, I think those specific cold calling numbers are a bit a bit jarring, but I think small tweaks
47:00 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
47:01 Leslie Venetz: could like br bring them back. but outbound is really hard.
47:10 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
47:10 Leslie Venetz: So like I I think it's important to acknowledge that outbound is really hard. And it's like I don't know if I'd say harder than ever. Like it's it's harder than ever in new ways. Because like you don't think it was hard to outbound when I was a brand new cold caller and I literally cold called off a stack of freaking papers and was
47:28 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
47:29 Leslie Venetz: like trying to like hack internal phone systems. Like we didn't I was a beta user of Zoom info. Beta when it had a a different name, right? So like
47:35 Warren Kucker: Yeah, right. Right. Wow. Yeah.
47:38 Leslie Venetz: there there are new complexities that make it uniquely hard today. And I think
47:44 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
47:44 Leslie Venetz: one of the worst ones is the fact that we have overwhelmed and inundated our prospects with cold calls and with LinkedIn DMs that are not social selling, they're just connect and spam and with irrelevant emails. And so we have slowly, really since maybe like 2011 to 2013, when a lot of this started, like we have slowly trained our buyers to ignore us.
48:11 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
48:11 Leslie Venetz: And I I do think that that is a unique difficulty that is harder to navigate than ever before.
48:19 Warren Kucker: Totally agree. and I actually I I couldn't agree more. That's that's a good way to put it. So maybe just to wrap I could have this conversation for two, three hours. but then our listeners will be like, This is the longest podcast we've heard. maybe I know. And we might have to do a follow up at some point.
48:30 Leslie Venetz: They're getting a lot of gold though. Hopefully they got some good tactical things to go in and like audit their sequences.
48:37 Warren Kucker: Yes, I'm just gonna spam you a couple of emails until you agree to a second podcast. so
48:37 Leslie Venetz:
48:41 Warren Kucker: what's maybe a a mini piece of advice that you would give to either frontline sellers or sales leadership? And then where can people find you? Where can they like grab you, get your content, reach out to you if they want to?
48:54 Leslie Venetz: mini piece of advice. You know, an audit that I love to get people started on, because I also do a lot of work with like found founder groups. They're like incubators. and I find this to be true with all sellers and sales leaders and founders that we're just kind of a self-centered lot. And so the way that often manifests is like, hi, I'm your sales executive from our product, my service, out, right? Like it's just I, my, our, we. It is so
49:25 Warren Kucker: Uh-huh.
49:26 Leslie Venetz: centered on what I sell and what I want. want and what my company does.
49:31 Warren Kucker: Okay.
49:31 Leslie Venetz: And that's so extraordinarily easy to ignore because
49:34 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
49:35 Leslie Venetz: like first of all, your prospect does not give a shit. They do not know you, they do not care about you, they do not care about your company, they do not care about your product. They care about what's in it for them.
49:46 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
49:47 Leslie Venetz: And I audit, you know, thousands of sales messages. And like so, so, so few of them actually get to that answer. Like, what's in it for me? It's just like my
49:55 Warren Kucker: Yeah, right. Yeah.
49:57 Leslie Venetz: feature is, and it'll save you time. And they're like, Yeah, you and all your competitors make that same promise. Like,
50:01 Warren Kucker: Yeah, right.
50:01 Leslie Venetz: what is in it for me? I need this to be about me. So I
50:04 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
50:05 Leslie Venetz: say all of that to say that a really easy audit that anybody listening can do straight away is take the last five cold emails you've said and just look at how often you are using that I, my We our language versus
50:18 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
50:20 Leslie Venetz: how often you are talking about the outcomes
50:23 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
50:24 Leslie Venetz: that actually are personal to and relevant to the person that is is receiving this email. I think often about earn the right. That's my sales philosophy. So it's
50:35 Warren Kucker: Yeah.
50:35 Leslie Venetz: like your your litmus test is what have I put in this email that earns me the right to ask for their attention? And if you're only talking about you, you've you've
50:43 Warren Kucker: Mm-hmm.
50:44 Leslie Venetz: not passed that bar yet.
50:46 Warren Kucker: Good call. It's a really good call. And where can people find you? I'm gonna make sure that everywhere. Everywhere.
50:50 Leslie Venetz: Folks everywhere. I'm on I'm on the social media. LinkedIn, I post daily. so that is my primary social, but I also post daily on TikTok and YouTube. YouTube I'm actually please follow me on YouTube. I am working very hard to grow my YouTube. I recently passed 10,000 followers, which is a huge milestone. so
51:08 Warren Kucker: that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
51:10 Leslie Venetz: at Leslie Venetz is my YouTube. So how about that?
51:12 Warren Kucker: Perfect. Follow you on YouTube. That's the hardest one. So if you can do someone a solid, do that. I love it. So Leslie, it's been a fantastic conversation. I've been watching your content for a long time. and so I appreciate all your insights. and look forward to hearing what twenty twenty seven about. Hopefully we nail the trust economy in twenty twenty six and twenty twenty seven's about a new journey.
51:31 Leslie Venetz: I love that. I vote yes for that. Thanks so much for having me.
About the Host
Selling AI is hosted by Warren Kucker, founder of Topiq. Each week he sits down with revenue leaders, founders, and operators to unpack the strategies, tools, and stories behind selling AI products and using AI to sell smarter.
Warren Kucker
A revenue leader and entrepreneur who founded Basiq.work, focusing on conversational AI for sales teams. Previously served as VP of Sales and CRO at Series B companies, scaling revenue to $2M+ quarterly bookings. His exits include Shelly.ai (ML email automation) and Boxton (digital freight platform). Started his career at Apple managing a $100M shipping efficiency program.
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