Outbound Isn’t Dead, You’re Just Doing It Wrong with Colin Spector

Colin Spector, SVP of Global Sales at Orum, unpacks how a coach-first culture paired with AI-driven workflows can revitalize outbound sales. He argues that people are the ultimate throughput of any company—if you invest in your people, they will invest in your customers. However, traditional coaching often fails because managers stretch themselves too thin, resorting to performative one-on-ones instead of individualized, data-backed tape reviews. To scale an elite sales team, Spector emphasizes using AI to surface the best and worst calls, clean contact lists, and remove the friction of manual task logging. By offloading administrative burdens to technology, managers and reps can focus on their most critical skills: building emotional connections and driving urgency. Despite claims that outbound is dead, Spector believes the iOS screener and other modern hurdles actually provide opportunities to stand out. Reps who clearly state their purpose, follow up relentlessly, and maintain a human touch will continue to break through the noise. Success ultimately boils down to two factors: attitude and activity.

Discussed in this episode

• How investing deeply in your people creates a positive feedback loop that ultimately builds your customer base and company.
• The necessity of customizing coaching to each individual's goals rather than applying a blanket approach to the whole team.
• Why the ideal manager-to-rep ratio is five to seven, and how stretching it further leads to performative one-on-ones.
• Leveraging AI to automatically surface coachable calls and trends instead of relying on reps to cherry-pick their best conversations.
• How AI dialers remove the friction of logging voicemails and unstructured CRM research, letting reps focus purely on live connections.
• Why iOS call screeners actually increase connect rates by acting as an advertising impression and reducing buyer uncertainty.
• The foundational career advice of following up and following through to separate yourself from the majority of B2B sellers.
• The critical rule of validating a champion when evaluating the ultimate viability of a sales opportunity.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — Investing in your people first
2. 2:15 — People as a holistic differentiator
3. 4:30 — What great individualized coaching looks like
4. 6:45 — The danger of spreading coaching too thin
5. 9:10 — The ideal manager-to-rep ratio
6. 12:20 — Using AI to surface coachable moments
7. 16:00 — Automating list prioritization and call blocks
8. 19:40 — Synthesizing unstructured CRM data
9. 22:30 — The power of relentless follow-through
10. 25:40 — Why iOS call screeners increase connect rates
11. 28:15 — Rapid fire and closing thoughts

Key takeaways

• Invest in your people so they invest in your company and customers.
• Avoid performative coaching by keeping manager-to-rep ratios between five and seven.
• Use AI to surface coachable moments rather than letting reps cherry-pick calls.
• Relentless follow-up and follow-through will separate you from the competition.
• iOS call screeners act as mini-billboards to build trust before buyers answer.

Transcript

What makes up a company, right? People. People make up a company. And if you invest in people, your people will invest in the company, right?

We're going to dig into AI assisted dialing, manager habits that actually move pipeline, and what it takes to scale a coach first culture. Sales is an emotional experience. There's a ton of people try to over complicate sales and so much jargon and so many metrics and this and that. Welcome back to another episode of the bridge the back gap, bridge the gap, Man, it's Friday podcast powered by Revenue Reimagine.

Today's guest is Colin Spektor, the SVP of Global sales at Orum, which is the AI powered calling platform that helps revenue teams have more live conversations with the right buyers. Colin's led sales teams from New York to LA, was a top 1% producer, namely and is known for building elite sellers through coaching and clear go-to market systems. We're going to dig into AI assisted dialing, manage your habits that actually move pipeline, and what it takes to scale a coach first culture. I'm super excited for this, Colin.

I followed I've known you for a long time, but your LinkedIn posts, all about coaching and how you actually get your hands dirty and how you actually coach and call with the team, not enough leaders do that. Welcome to the show, man. Thanks for being here. Thanks so much, Adam, Dale, such a pleasure to be here.

Excited to jam with you guys today and uh and just connect with you and the audience and share any insights I can from my perspective and experience, so happy Friday, pleasure to be here. Happy Friday. Colin, thanks for thanks for joining the show. Um, of course.

One of the things that you talk a lot about is coach-first pipeline falls. Like how did you learn that developing people, not just pipeline, is a key way to consistent growth within your GTM strategy. Well, think about like what makes up a company, right? People.

People make up a company. And if you invest in people, your people will invest in the company, right? You build up your people and your people will build up the company. And the more you take care of your people, the more they're going to take care of your customers and your customers are what make the company, uh, and what what what is a company about?

It's about, uh, making money, and how do you get money? From servicing customers. And so you you create this this cycle, right? This life cycle from focusing on people and developing them and their careers and helping them achieve their goals, and, uh, and they're going to reciprocate that, from my experience, and in, uh, into your client base, right?

That that is, you know, a huge part of the ethos, the culture and within the teams that, you know, I've I've led and built and, um, and I I think proof is in the pudding. Like, it it definitely helps. Like, our customers, you know, always cite our people as a holistic differentiator in the market and I think in a time when, you know, software development is happening at such like a rapid pace, uh, you you you need to lean on holistic differentiation, right? Because one week, you know, your competitors come out with something, one week, you come out with something.

Uh, and the buyers, you know, on the surface, when they're buying something one time every, you know, year or two years, they they need to still make decisions on, uh, who they like, who they trust, who's value aligned with them, who's culturally aligned with them. And, uh, and so, uh, and and and so yeah, I I'm a I'm a huge believer that people are the throughput, the consistent throughput, no matter what happens in the tech and in the market, uh, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah. So people people want to buy from people they like.

People want to buy from people they trust is what I hear you saying. People want real human connections. Um, so they don't want to buy from an AI SDR. Um, I have very strong feelings on that.

I I think all of what you're saying is so true. I often talk about what I call the culture of coaching. Um, I think in fact, it's something I say with every client when we're doing our audits is like, tell me what your coaching looks like. And if you don't have a culture of coaching, you're you're going to have a problem.

What is, in your mind, what what is great coaching look like? Just at a high level. I know it's different depending on the role, but overall, what makes a good coach? A good leader.

Yeah, I mean, someone that that connects with the people on their team as individuals and and understands that each individual is unique in the way that they want to be led and coached and what their personal goals are and I think the best leaders can can flex and and ebb and flow to the personalities and spectrum of uh of kind of human emotion and desire of each individual. And, uh, and and help unlock within that person more than that person could achieve on their own, right? At the end of the day, like you are here to develop that person and help them reach heights that without you, they could maybe they could get there, but may it would not be as as accelerated the way that they get there or as efficient the way that they get there, right? Like you like you win as a coach when you really help them achieve those heights and accelerate their learning and their growth.

Uh, in a way that that they really could not get to on their own or without a coach like you. Yeah. Individual individual. That that's key.

Go ahead. Go ahead, Dale. I was going to say the same thing, you take it. Yeah, having doing individual coaching, like I think too many people try to spread the peanut butter so thin and they're like, okay, we're going to try to do everything for everybody at the same way.

And that's just not the way it happens. And I think, unfortunately, today, coaching is a thing that gets left off the last. Like we're doing, like you you we talked to leads all the time. They're like, okay, I got to run the Hubspot report or salesforce report, I got to like get this board deck together for my CEO.

Like, they're doing all this busy work. And it's funny, I I talked to a a friend of mine that I'm going golfing with tomorrow, and I he always says, you're not busy, you have to be productive. Productive. Like if you say you're busy, that's a problem.

I mean, I think it it it the coaching also comes down to career development, which I think is a big part that a lot of people miss when they're hiring, when they're coaching and how long people stay. I mean, hell, you've been at Orum six years, which in startup world is unheard of. Uh, most VPs of sales last what? Twelve months, maybe eighteen if we're really lucky.

Um, but I think, you know, number one, that certainly probably has to do with the revenue that you've helped drive for the company, but that also has to do with the type of leader and the type of coach you are, the type of people that you hire, whether they stay, whether they go, if they go, how they leave. Like, I don't believe we own anyone, right? Like, as a leader, my job is to get you where you want to go. And if that means I have you for eighteen months and you're amazing, and I need to ship you off with a great reference to somewhere else, because that's best in your career.

That that's my job as a leader. But I think when people are developing career development plans, they're they a lot of people do it, Dale, like you said, spread the peanut butter, right? I spoke to a BDR yesterday and everyone says, oh, BDRs they all want to be AEs, they don't ever want to be a BDR. This goes, I have no desire to ever be an AE.

He wants to stay and go to market, but he's using BDRs a stepping stone to in his words, do the hard work first, know the customers, etc, etc. He's like, I don't want to be an AE, I actually want to go to marketing, but I want to cut my teeth getting to know the customers and getting to know how to sell the product. Like, I love that, but as leaders, I think we often make this assumption, well, we know what everyone wants, and we're going to coach everyone the same, every person's going to get coached to cold call the same. Um, so I love how you talk about individual individualizing it.

How do you do that at scale? Yeah, it's it's a great question. So, I think like, you do teach some of the fundamentals. I think a lot of fundamentals are the same from the perspective of like, here's our company messaging, here are our competitors, here are the battle cards against these competitors, and with these personas, here are the the the questions and messaging that resonates, here's the product suite.

Right? Like there are blanket lessons, just like, you know, if you go to if you go to school, right? And you're sitting in a classroom, there are blanket lessons that that you'll be taught. Now, the coaching, the individual coaching is like the the after-class tutoring, right?

Like that's the individualized one-on-one. So, we make a sales coaching operating rhythm, right? Like you think about the rhythm of your your business and your team, you need to establish individual one-on-ones in addition to the team meetings. Now, ideally, you have individual one-on-ones on a weekly basis.

Ideally. Yeah. Ideally more. And some some companies meet on bi-weekly or quarterly or monthly, and it's and a lot of that, what we have seen is happening because the rep-to-manager ratio is starting to get stretched very thin.

I was just going to ask you that question. Like, what's ideal to you? Because I hear it all over the place, and I hear like people managing fifteen people, and I'm like, you're not coaching anybody. Look, like it's at that point, without some serious help, it's it's really your one-on-ones become more performative, meaning it's like you're just kind of showing up and going through the motions.

It's like very difficult to have like a really true individualized focus on on that specific person. In my experience, because of all the other things you mentioned before, the the leader's not only a coach typically. You're also your peer with marketing and rev ops and finance and and you're in all these other internal meetings. And so, for my experience, like, like five to seven is is is great.

Yeah. That's beautiful. I I totally agree. Now, if like, now, thanks to technology, thanks to technology, and for example, like, we drink our own champagne at Orum where an AI coaching and calling platform, as as Adam so eloquently introduced at the beginning, uh, you can get AI insights that synthesize and summarize a lot of the unstructured information that you normally would manually need to prep for ahead of those one-on-ones to like really have a thoughtful one-on-one.

If you think about it, an SDR leader or sales leader, really any people leader, if you're really doing a thoughtful data-driven one-on-one, it's going to take you maybe fifteen minutes of prep for each one-on-one. And that might not sound like a lot, but at like, you know, fifteen reps, twenty reps, that that time compounds, right? And you really start to lose your calendar. And because, you know, if you think about what the utopia or ideal state of a one-on-one is, you're you're doing you're doing call review and tape review.

How do you go and find the best call to review? Well, you know, what most managers default to is like, I don't have time to go dig through like call history and in gong or chorus or or or Voma. I'm going to go, uh, ask the rep to bring their call. What's call are they the rep bringing?

Do you think they're bringing the the call that Bring their best call. Bring their best call. I'm not going to bring the. Of course.

So, thanks to AI though. AI can now surface up in the last week, hey, these are the five calls that could use coaching because we've seen a theme of this rep is running into these objections where others are running into that objection and seeing success. So AI can can score calls, can look for trends in calls, and then compare those trends against peers on the same team calling the same markets, right? And so, this is where AI can help you start to scale that rep-to-manager ratio, uh, and and really make the manager and the rep for that matter, the rep also to be empowered with this data, but the manager can show up to a call with the specific call and moments in the calls that they should review on that one-on-one this week because of the information that happened last week.

So, every one-on-one, you're going to have a set of calls to review, you're going to have of course the the weekly activity numbers, we call them WAN, right? Weekly activity numbers. And and where is the rep, uh, uh, stacking up against those weekly activity numbers for themselves on their own individual path, how are they trending week over week? And against their peers, and against the team goal, that expectation that we have set for those reps.

And so, uh, at minimum, to to really be a a data-driven coach and help hold to account the your people against the plan that we all agreed to when we signed up to go on this mission together up the mountain. Like, we agreed, like, these are the steps we're going to take every day, these are the base camps we're going to hit in order to sum up this mountain, the gear we're going to have, how we're going to check our gear every day, right? We're climbing this mountain together each quarter, we agreed to that upfront at the start of this this arrangement. So, each week, we're checking in, hey, are we on track on the plan that we agreed to at the beginning, you have the information, right?

So, number one, you have to set expectation upfront. Number two, you need to have instrumentation to, uh, be able to measure that you are you are staying on path, you're staying on track to the the flight plan, the climbing plan that you agreed to in the beginning. Uh, and I and you need to be coaching to actual conversations, right? Tape review is a is a must-have ingredient requirement.

And, um, and just recognize that, you know, most teams, by the way, like, this is most teams. They're, you know, cherry-picking calls, they're asking the rep to bring their call, and it makes it hard to know what actually needs to be developed or helped. But these days, thanks to technology, you can get much more insightful and smart about how you approach coaching and that can help you scale the ratio essentially. Yeah, I I totally agree.

I think tape review is a art of coaching that not enough people do. Um, and I think you laid out great, not great reasons, but all the excuses why people don't do it. The best leaders, um, are the ones that do it and do it the right way are intimately involved in the business. I want to piggyback on something.

So you talked about how AI could help like surface the best calls, worst calls, et cetera. Let's talk about AI powered calling, but in the real world, right? So, there's all this fluff around AI SDRs and whether parallel dialers are good or bad and where to use AI and not use AI. Talk to me, you know, as a sales leader at a AI-powered calling solution, where does AI genuinely, like really remove friction and outbound today?

And where do you think it really still falls short that people like, hey, yeah, like, don't do that, dude. Yeah, so AI can help with Plug Orum a little, feel free. Yeah, sure, sure. So, um, so from a calling perspective, AI can help before the call's even even executed, right?

And so, when you start your day, AI can help clean through the list of of people that you're going to call that day and help you prioritize based upon based upon, again, looking at, what AI is really good at or is getting better at, I'd say, like, still leaving more to be desired. But like, today, like, what is working really well to answer that question? AI can look at history and patterns and start to, uh, provide insights and summary. So, I'll give you an example.

Like, AI can look at millions upon millions upon millions of, uh, answer behavior and, uh, and ideal call times and ideal call from numbers and caller ID patterns and connection rates and then smartly, uh, sorts the contact list that you're going to call, uh, even if you're going to dial them with a keypad. It's like, hey, like, these are the people you should call in your call block right now. I don't care how you call them, call them. Just call them.

AI can help you do that. So, that's one very, uh, upfront way before the call's even made. So, kind of automating the prioritization and task list to place calls. People buy from people.

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Then AI can actually help you, uh, place the calls themselves. So, uh, you know, because even though it's the best time to call these people, maybe they all still won't answer. Maybe your you're increasing your likelihood. Uh, but AI will also say, hey, this is the way we recommend you should call them.

Choose this caller ID. And we'll, in fact, the AI will choose the caller ID for you, and which number for that contact is the best number to call. And the AI will actually, like, click the button for you and then it's ringing and you talk to the person when they answer the phone. If they don't answer the phone, the AI can take care of all the manual work there.

Meaning historically, you'd have to log Oh, brutal. Of the call, like, hey, I have to log no answer, uh, or went to voicemail, or if I wanted to Last voicemail. It, right? So, AI can take those those actions for you as an optional, you know, just to keep me rolling through.

And so, as the human in the loop, what I want to focus on are live conversations. Like, I know my account list, I know my contacts. I want the AI just to help me like focus on what I'm best at, which is connecting with people. And so, it's like cleaning the list, it's, uh, it's removing the manual tasks between each live conversation, and then plugging all that data back into your CRM, so I can see, uh, what what, you know, task I've executed today.

And then when I have someone on the phone, when I actually get someone on the phone, the AI, of course, this has been around for a while thanks to Gong and Chorus, can listen to the call and Orum can listen to the call, transcribe the call, and these days, even give live assistance on the call, so you can get help if you need, right? Or to bring up maybe past experience with that specific person and that specific account. So, you have a lot of reference point. So, AI can bring in research about the person, about the account, any past interactions your company has had with an account.

And so, you're really armed with like, typically and by the way, typically, you know, as the account owner, if you inherit a book of business, think about this, you have to go back in the Salesforce or Hubspot. You got to look at all the past AEs or AMs that had that book. I need to go and synthesize the data of like, okay, what are my past interactions with this account? Or what's their usage in the account?

Uh, now AI can take that unstructured data and create a beautiful little summary for you. Um, and I would say like someone that started out doing this really well is Actively AI. This is like kind of where they got their start. Actively AI?

Never. Which is Yeah, actively AI, uh, pulling pulling it up to look at later, but then Dale will tell me I have to minimize it, because I'll start going on this tangent of looking at it. Yeah, no, all good. Give them a plug plug to to them.

They're they're an Orum part great great people over there as well, partner of ours. So, they'll they'll bring in all your unstructured like historical CRM experiences with an account and then create like a nice little like like script you can plug in and, you know, reps use that when they're calling on Orum, for example, right? So, so research on the contacts, thanks to AI, makes that really easy. Uh, and just keeping you more organized and consistent in the way the information shows up too.

Because, yeah, like, the A the AE or AM might have a very specific way that they research an account, but that might be on chicken scratch on a notepad and when you connect So it's like it's missing from the CRM. Whereas now, it's like we can get more consistent because to your point before, Adam, sales people and sales leaders, they turn over every like eighteen months or so or two years. AEs typically stay two years after they've vested a couple years, hit their commissions and move on. A lot of people are inheriting these accounts, right?

You have to think about that. How do you keep the flow and and and information, you know, continuing? So, those are some of the ways, um, and then after the call, after the call, you get all the insights. You get your call scored.

Right? AI can score the calls, uh, and in Orum, you know, we have our own call coaching frameworks that we provide off the shelf. So, you can score leveraging like Orum's call framework. Or if you have your own methodology, right?

If you're subscribing to, you know, the Adam and Dale methodology, you can you can uh, you know, customize your scorecard. You're assuming Dale has a methodology. Yeah, Dale subscribes to the ad methodology. Yeah, or exactly.

We both said the same we both said the same damn thing at the same time. Why not? Why not? Hey, license out your methodology, a little side hustling come here.

So, um, you know, the Bridge the Gap methodology, right? And so, you know, people come to us, maybe they they they've bought or invested in like, you know, challenger sale or Sandler sale or they have very specific methodologies. So, you can bring in those methodologies or you can leverage our own, so batteries are included. And then you can add sections as well.

So, let's say I launched a new product, you know, if I'm in a very large company, and I've launched a new product, how do I know if my people are are actually like sticking to the narrative, right? So like, how's the narrative control and scoring? Is the narrative working? You know, these days, a lot of companies are launching AI narratives, but they don't know if it's working.

Like, how do I know if it's actually resonating and leading to higher win rates? Well, thanks to like AI and scoring calls, you you can. You have that that information. So, um, there you go.

So, you know, before the call, with the list cleaning, on the call, actually placing the call, on the call, after the call, and then getting all that into a nice little performance scorecard on each of your people and your teams. Are my scores up? So, are they down? There you go.

So, let's let's, uh, take a little turn here. So, from SDR to SVP. So, what did you carry forward from your time as an SDR and AE that still guide you as an SVP? Like, as you as you've grown through your career, what did you take to guide you through that?

Urgency, uh, follow up, follow through. I think you want to set yourself apart, especially today. I think it's rare to see someone that consistently drives urgency and follows up and follows through. I I think like you will stand above and beyond the crowd if you just do those three like, following up and follow through.

If you want to pull one thing from this, if you're a sales professional listening out there, following up and following through, you will be known as somebody that's dependable, that is somebody that gets gets stuff done, that uh is is persevering, that is resilient, and just by simply following up and following through, right? And so, like, I I I like, when a lead comes to me, I'm like a boa constrictor. I like grab that lead and I I I I won't let it go. I won't let it go.

Like, if you're qualified and you're in my my view, you're like, we're we're we're in it together. Like, this is not going, like, we're not ending until it's like, you've already signed with someone else and then I'm following up with you at your renewal or until you buy from me completely. It's so funny that you say follow up and follow through. Like, so I I had a parent-teacher conference with my fourteen-year-old this morning.

Um, and su super proud of him. Like, he stood up for himself with a te Like, he it it's his freshman year in high school. And my general rule now in high school is like, I really don't want to be involved with your teachers. Like, you you have to I did that in middle school, you have to do your own stuff.

Um, but he stood up for himself, he, you know, felt that he was wronged by a teacher and he asked for help and said that he would set up the conference. Like, everything we'd want the kid to do, right? And the the key takeaway from that conference call and going back to ninth grade from where we all are now, and we'll be nice and say our forties and fifties. Um, that we walked away with is dude, you got to follow up and you got to follow through.

No one's going to hold your hand, no one's going to baby-sit you, no one's going to give you rewards for just, you know, saying that you're going to do something and not doing it and not following up. So, very timely that it's coming full circle from fourteen to when you were an SDR, to when you were an AE, to all the way as you've moved up, because the amount of people that don't, and listen, we're we're all on the receiving end of sales pitches all day long, right? Many of which are really shitty, but some of which are good. The amount of reps, the amount of VPs, hell, the amount of CEOs that don't follow up and follow through.

I think far out numbers the ones that you do. So, I I love that that is where you started because it's so important and it starts super early in your career and should progress through your entire career. Yeah, no, I I I appreciate that and and you know, hats off to to your your son. Obviously, uh, you know, leading leading teaching a great example and and modeling great great behavior.

And that's that's going to set you yourself apart. I know a lot of like young professionals are are are nervous and scared and I'd say like, just in this in this market we're in, right? I hear it from parents, I hear it from uh, other leaders and and I think, you know, especially people like graduating college, et cetera. I think again, like, getting to like the people connection and being someone that is dependable and being someone that does follow up and does see the job through to the end, right?

Like, you get the garbage out, put the new bag in the the can, you know, just as like a home chore example. Uh, and and the other side of this, right? It's not just about like activity of like taking the action of following up and following through, but it's also your attitude. And the throughput is is a positive attitude.

I have said this from day one, attitude and activity. And in the activity, the sub bucket is following up and following through, right? Yeah. Um, but your attitude is is really sales is an emotional experience.

There's a ton of people try to overcomplicate sales and so much jargon and so many metrics and this and that. Sales is an emotional experience. I'm a a subscriber to Zig Ziglar, like very classic, you know, sales trainer. And, you know, he says, uh, sales is a transference of emotion, right?

You're transferring your excitement for what you're you're you're you have conviction for to someone else. And yes, there are many tactics and tips and strategies to do it. And and following up and following through are part of those tactics and tips and tricks to do it. Uh, and so, um, just just keep that in mind.

And so, the energy that you put out, like, that when that resonates with a buyer, they want to have that spark with you and and they're that's that that gives them the emotional spark to even think about becoming a champion for you. Right? If we're talking about more B2B complex selling. So like, you still have to get the individual spark with the individual through an emotional connection.

So, piggy piggybacking on that, you're you're a hundred percent right. Piggybacking on that, there there's all of these posts, all of these people who are saying, outbound is dead, right? Cold outbound is dead. Your email goes to spam, your call isn't getting answered because Apple's new call intelligence has it going to this, you know, bullshit that you have to say who you are.

LinkedIn DMs don't work, you can't go show up at someone's door. Outbound's dead. The only way you can sell is through your network. I I I don't agree as a whole.

I agree with part of it. But as we look at the next, call it two to four years of outbound, Colin, what's going to define the best outbound teams? How is outbound going to win? Stay human.

And so, let let me let me talk about the uh iOS screener since you brought it up. We are actually seeing higher connect connect rates and higher conversation and meeting rates thanks to the iOS screener. And let me explain why. Yeah, please.

People, you know, what happened was, people were getting so inundated with like crap calls from, you know, robo dialers, right? Robo dialer meaning like a machine that just randomly calls numbers, is blasting out all the car warranty stuff or, you know, free cruises or or or what have you. Vacate, time shares, time shares calls. Time shares, all kinds of things.

Scammers, right? Sending so many scammers, right? Like, and and there's there's a real thing there, right? There's a real people pretending to be like Amazon and stuff.

So, you had to, uh, the the the the cell phone companies, I think, you know, they came up with the screener. But the beautiful part of the screener is like, the the buyer has a chance to see is this a human? Like, so first of all, sales people, if you're on a screener, absolutely, you should say who you are, why you're calling, where you're calling from, and ideally, if you've also been reaching out on LinkedIn or email or other places, mention those other channels so the person can reduce even more uncertainty. Like, hey, hey, Adam, you know, calling from Orum, we just became friends on LinkedIn.

And then you're going to look at your screener, you're it's a it's a push notification to your phone. You're going to see that it's my name, my company. So, there's an impression, by the way, it takes like nine to ten impressions to be persuasive. There's an impression right there.

I've just advertised to you on the device that you have all the time. So, even if you don't accept my screening call, you know it's me and why I'm calling, and then maybe you reply to me on the email still. Maybe you reply to me on LinkedIn if that's where you like to reply. Or you're like, you know what?

It's a human. This guy's been reaching out. And maybe you feel this like need to reciprocate my effort. Right?

For whatever reason, people are answering those calls more. I think a lot of it is due to that psychology of reciprocity and the fact that it's a pattern interrupt that a human is calling you. And you know it's not a scammer. It's like, hey, like, oh, this is a real person.

I've seen the picture on LinkedIn. I've seen this. I've seen their emails. I've seen the case studies.

I've seen them liking my content. So, it's in the holistic outbound approach. So, under the question you asked is outbound dead? I think you need to be on the channel.

I think you need to keep it human. Uh, I think that you should respond to screeners, you should leave voicemails. Any opportunity you can you can to humanize yourself, which is through your voice. And that's you can use LinkedIn notes, you can use video.

Um, so, yeah, I think outbound is very much thriving and alive for the people that are putting in the effort and are trying. I think those that were trying to completely automate their way to like the path, uh, you know, you can pick up on the AI emails. You can pick up on uh, you know, robo calls, right? I think if you it's you and it and you're actually putting in the effort.

Now, some of your steps might be automated. Some of your steps might be a template email, et cetera. And that's okay. But you need to sprinkle in some of your authentic approach, in my in my opinion.

That's what's still working today. Yeah. I love that. I I agree.

We totally agree. Yeah. We totally agree. Okay, Colin, as we wrap this up, let's do a little bit of rapid fire.

See if we can get uh, a couple of questions in really quickly and see what you think. Um, one outbound method you wish that would die forever. One outbound method that I think wish would die forever. Um, gosh, I I think just the the the the LinkedIn AI bot connectors.

I I just I I'm so sick of them. Uh, I it's it's so hard to tell is it a is it an AI profile or is it a human profile on LinkedIn? I I love LinkedIn, right? So it's like, gosh, don't kill this platform for me.

Um, and there's just a lot of pitch sloppy connections on on LinkedIn that I can just tell it's AI slop. Um, that that's the one I would pick. Absolutely. Colin, what's your favorite question to ask in a call review?

In a call review, I always put it back on the rep. Like, how how do you think you did? Any areas that that you'd improve. How do you think that went overall?

I started with them, hey, before I before I said, how do you think it went overall? Any areas that you'd try again or improve? The more self, you know, reflecting the rep is, the more self-aware they are, the better they get. The most in the best reps, like, they know the answer right away.

They know their own answers. Yeah. What's a what's one deal-saving habit every rep should learn early? Following up and following through.

I I I I I knew that one was coming. What's the clearest signal, uh, I was going to say the clearest signal of a top performer in an interview, but you're going to say, I'm going to guess you're going to go following up and following through. Well, I I'll plug in champion. No champion, no deal, right?

Like that would be the other the other question. It's like, look, you can follow up and follow through, but you need to follow up with the right people. That's the key. Yeah.

You need to follow up and follow through for the right people because you might have an amazing coach, an amazing coach with high influence, um, but uh, you need to follow up and follow through, um, um, for um, yeah, for for the right person, and that's going to be your champion, the person with authority. All right, Dale. I know I know which one you're going to ask last. That's the last one.

Dream vacation destination, Colin. Dream vacation destination. I feel like I've been everywhere. Um, but my wife and I have been talking about, uh, so by the way, we're we're expecting our our, uh, our third and fourth, uh, babies.

Congratulations. Yeah. It's so exciting. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, and so we've been talking about doing like a wellness retreat for like a month in Bali, like after we go through this journey. Um, never been, but just do like a whole like holistic healing wellness wellness retreat there. So, um, that would be awesome.

I've never been. But, uh, yeah, I I love the surf and love, you know, just meditation and yoga and all those things. So, if I just like dedicate like a month-long like healing journey, that would be incredible. So.

That sounds awesome. Bali sounds great. Colin Spektor, thank you so much for joining the show, for sharing your insights, um, about all things outbound and how to stay relevant in today's day of, uh, overused AI. Thank you both, Adam, Dale, such a pleasure.

Thank you to the audience and, uh, connect with me on LinkedIn everyone. Have a a great rest of your day. Talk soon.