Networking to Make Your Next Big Deal - Outside Sales Talk with Drew Sechrist

Drew is the Co-Founder and CEO of Connect the Dots, a company that helps map professional relationships in order to find the strongest connections possible. He previously played an important role in the rise of Salesforce, helping them grow from $0 to over $1B in revenue, as employee #36. During that time, he was both the #1 sales manager (globally), and the #1 account executive (globally).

In this episode, Drew and Steve discuss how to leverage networking to secure big deals.

Here are some of the topics covered in this episode:

• Why you should always be networking
• How to effectively approach networking
• Ways to leverage your relationships
• How to find the right people to connect with
• The importance of in-person connection

More From the Guest:

Connect The Dots Website - https://www.ctd.ai/

Email - drew@ctd.ai

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Transcript - Networking to Make Your Next Big Deal with Drew Sechrist

Introduction to Networking and Sales Success

Steve: This is Outside Sales Talk, the best podcast for outside salespeople. I'm your host, Steve Benson, and we're here to chat with the world's top sales experts so that you can get their best sales tactics to level up your game. Welcome back to Outside Sales Talk. I've got Drew Sechrist with me, and he's going to teach us about networking to make your next big deal. Drew, welcome to the show.

Drew: Thanks for having me.

Steve: Absolutely. And just by way of introduction, Drew is the co-founder and CEO of Connect the Dots. It's a company that helps map professional relationships in order to find the strongest connections possible. He previously played an important role in the rise of Salesforce, helping them grow from $0 to over a billion in revenue. And he was employee number 36. During that time, he was both the number one sales manager globally and the number one account executive globally. So quite a track record.

Drew: It was a fun ride. Super lucky to be given the opportunity.

Steve: Absolutely. Such a great company. So let's talk about networking. Networking can be so awkward, intimidating, and daunting for people. Tell us a bit about how you started out at Salesforce and what gave you the courage to reach out to them and network your way in there?

Drew: So the irony of my story with Salesforce is that it all started with a cold email. A cold email I sent to Mark Benioff back in 1999. And the reason that's ironic is because my new company, Connect the Dots, is all about making it so that you don't have to send cold emails anymore. Making it so that you can see who in your network knows the people you're trying to get to, so you can actually go in warm. You don't have to do this. But back in 1999, no such technology existed. So I'll rewind just a little bit so you understand the backstory. I grew up on the East Coast, went to school in North Carolina. After school, I ended up working for a couple of companies in North Carolina. One was a value-added reseller (VAR) of Salesforce automation products and business intelligence products. We dealt with things like SalesLogix, Goldmine, Seagate Crystal Info. These are all old products that have either been consumed by some larger organization or just kind of gone away at this point. But back then, companies like ours on the East Coast would resell these products and then implement them for other companies. For example, in North Carolina, we had Volvo Trucking as one of our big customers. We would sell them a SalesLogix implementation with Seagate Crystal Info as their business intelligence tool on top of it. We would integrate the whole thing and roll it out to their team. That was our business. I had this idea that we should probably move towards the internet, which now sounds like a no-brainer. But back in 1999, we didn't use the internet that much. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about this guy named Mark Benioff, who was leaving Oracle, where he had been an executive, and he had taken $2 million in investment from Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, to start this thing called Salesforce.com. He was going to rewrite Salesforce automation software from the ground up to be delivered as a web application, literally inside of a web browser. Your entire application would be in the web browser. My head almost exploded. I thought, that's the future. That's exactly what should happen. So I cold emailed Mark in 1999 and said, "Hi Mark, my name's Drew. I work for this company here on the East Coast. We resell products like yours, all client-server products, not web-native products like the one you're building. When it's ready to go to market, I'd be interested in talking to you about reselling it." Mark Benioff, to his credit, was super fast on email. I don't know if he still is this incredibly fast, but back then, he was. He wrote back to me almost immediately and said, "Sorry, we're not going through a reseller network. We're going to have a direct sales team." I wrote back to him and said, "Let's talk about some other ways I could get involved." He invited me to fly out to San Francisco, and we talked. So I did. I flew out to San Francisco and met with Mark. The company was probably about a dozen people in a little office in San Francisco down on Mission Street, I think. I told him my story about why I was interested in reselling his product. I said, "Look, I'm selling all these other products that will be your competitors once you come to market. I see all the problems with them. The fundamental problem is that they are client-server software. They need to be installed on everyone’s computer and then networked back to a server. There are synchronization servers in the middle. It's a really messy architecture, and things break all the time." I said, "You're going to solve this by just having a web browser as the interface for your customers while you handle all the complexity behind it. It makes perfect sense to me." I guess I made a compelling case because he said, "Great, I want you to come sell for us." He offered me a job on the spot. It was a quadrupling of my salary from what I was making in North Carolina, and the job would move me to San Francisco, which is the big leagues when it comes to technology. I thought, this is a great opportunity. I can't pass this up. So that's the origin story. How did I muster up the courage to network my way in? It felt natural at that point. It was my job to find products to resell and make those connections. It was clear to me that there was a huge technology change coming, and I wanted to figure out the right horse to bet on. I saw Salesforce and thought, this is it. So I don't know if it took courage, it just seemed like a no-brainer to me to send a cold email to Mark Benioff. What's the downside? What's he going to do? Not reply to me?

The Importance of Proactive Networking

Steve: That's exactly the right attitude to have, I think. A lot of people who are considered naturals in sales have the right attitudes, but I think anyone can learn these attitudes effectively if they wrap their heads around it and practice a bit. What are the foundational skills that you think you have, or that everyone needs, to be successful and a great networker?

Drew: Well, you know, one of our customers, Nick Mehta, CEO of a great company in Silicon Valley, Gainsight, which is a SaaS company that many other SaaS companies use, was on another podcast I listened to a little while ago. Someone asked him, "When's the best time to network?" And he said, "Well, I'll tell you when the worst time to network is, and that's when you need a job." That's the worst time, but you probably do it anyway. He said the best time to network is always. You should always be doing it. I thought that was really great advice. Networking shouldn't be thought of as this transactional thing where you go to a Rotary Club meeting and exchange business cards. Those networking events are often dreaded by many because they feel unnatural or transactional. Some people really enjoy them, and nothing against those events—they should exist and people should do them. But what I took from Nick Mehta's guidance is that, when you're living your life, you're networking. We are social animals, constantly interacting with each other. If you're naturally gregarious, interested in other people, and able to overcome any fear of talking to people, you will be successful in networking. What's the worst that can happen? Probably nothing too terrible. Another thing is to have a lot of curiosity about other people—really wanting to understand what makes them tick and what they're trying to accomplish in their lives. You might not be able to help them right now, but you can file it away in your personal database of people you could potentially tap into or help in the future. If you take a proactive approach to knowing people and helping them when you can, you're not only a great networker, but you're also living a great life.

Steve: I read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell at some point in the last 20 years, whenever it came out. Have you ever read that?

Drew: Way back in the day. It's been a while.

Steve: I think that was required reading in business school.

Drew: Yeah, it should be. Business school is all about building bonds with people who will go on to do interesting things, and you want to be able to tap into that network going forward. That's one of the biggest benefits of going to business school. I remember reading the chapter on connectors—does that sound right to you?

Steve: Yeah, the people who go out of their way to connect others.

Drew: Exactly. I read that and thought, "That's me to a T." I totally do that. If we were talking about yoga today and you said, "Yeah, I'm thinking about going to Bali in the next couple of months to do a yoga teacher training," my brain would immediately think, "Wait, I just talked to someone who did that!" They raved about it, so I should probably tell Steve about that and connect you two so you can get some local input before you book anything. I don't do that for a commission or because I think you'll tip me 50 bucks for the insight. I do it because I hope everyone does that—because it makes the world a better place. If we can short-circuit knowledge or connections that will make your life better, then I'm all about it. I want to help. When you put that out into the world, it comes back to you in spades. That's been my experience. So yeah, that's kind of a meandering way to talk about networking, but hopefully, there are a few nuggets in there.

Steve: No, absolutely. I think there's a lot to learn from that. You create value for others, and that builds relationships. I think that's one of the big challenges for people with networking in general. On one end, you've got the transactional side, like, "Well, we've exchanged business cards, now we can email each other and pitch each other after a networking event." On the other end, it's real long-term relationships where everybody benefits from the relationship. I think one way, after you establish an initial connection as a salesperson, to maintain strong relationships and deepen them over time is by being useful. I think that's kind of your strategy.

Drew: Yeah. I mean, in sales and also just in life, help where you can.

Steve: And so often the lessons from sales apply to all of life, right? Sales is part of life. It's being the lubricant between two organizations doing business, two groups of people, or even an individual consumer and someone who needs help buying something. I've heard this plenty, and I think it's true—you're always selling. You're always selling your ideas, yourself, or maybe an actual product or service. Whatever you're doing, you're enrolling others in the way you see the world and where the world ought to go, and that’s sales. If you're only helping people who you think will lead to a sale, you're missing the point of networking. A lot of networking is paying forward favors without expecting them to come back to you. But they often do, randomly, from different sources.

Building Relationships for Long-Term Success

Drew: Yeah, you have to think that maybe 0.1% of this will come back in a monetary way. The other 99.9% is just about being a useful member of society. That's your network. Most of it won’t directly result in money or customers, but if you have a great network, you'll have people to help you reach those who do need your product. If you've been useful, helpful, honorable, and fun to be around, you bring value wherever you can. Then you're able to tap into that network, and all of you win.

Steve: Right. That makes a ton of sense. It's a great attitude. I've always thought that for whatever value you create in the world, about 10% of it comes back to you. In a lot of sales jobs, that's exactly the number—it’s 5%, 10%, 20%, depending on the industry. In life in general, I think that’s the proxy. If you create a billion dollars in value, you probably have 100 million. If you create a million dollars in value, you probably have 100,000. There’s some ratio around there—some places better, some worse—but it’s around there. You mentioned tapping into your team, your network around you, to boost your networking numbers and impact. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Drew: Well, maybe I should talk a bit about what I’ve been focusing on, company-wise, for the past four years now.

Steve: Yeah, I'm putting the ball on the tee here.

Drew: I appreciate that. As the company here to sell something, it’s nice to have it teed up so cleanly. So, I'll go back a bit and tell the story of what we’re doing and how we got here. I took that job at Salesforce and stayed there for 10 years. I was with the company from pre-revenue to over a billion dollars in revenue when I left a decade later. I learned a lot. One thing I learned was almost like a cheat code. How do you grow a company from zero to a billion dollars in a decade? It’s very different, very hard. Very few people have done that.

Steve: Yeah, very.

Leveraging Relationships in Sales

Drew: It has happened a few times, but it’s not common, for sure. You need some cheat codes to make it work. My favorite cheat code the whole time was finding a good relationship that could be leveraged to skip straight to third base. Rather than doing all the hard work to get on first base, then second base, and striking out a bunch of times, if you can find the right relationship, it’s like waking up on third base. You’re already there. The problem is finding those relationships. If you're a smaller company and your network isn't big, those relationships can be harder to find. As companies get more networked and bigger, and you have more senior executives, you have more people on your team. Your team isn’t just employees—it’s anyone you can leverage through relationships. It's like, everyone in the company wants the company to succeed. So, like at Badger Maps, you all are going to succeed or fail together, right? So, everybody should be bringing everything they can to make the team win. Your team consists of your employees, but it should also include your investors, advisors, and your customers who love you because you're doing a good job. The number one thing you should do is acquire customers and make them successful. When they are successful, they should become your friends at that point. They should say, "Thank you, we appreciate you making us successful." They should be part of your team. Then you've got family, friends, and your extended network—that’s your team. Your team can be pretty big. Even if you're a small company, it can be large when you add all those components. One thing I learned at Salesforce was that, even when we were small, we had a pretty big and impressive team. Mark Benioff, even when there were fewer than 50 of us, knew a lot of people. He knew Larry Ellison and a bunch of other founders and VCs. I think he even knew the king of Jordan at that point for some reason. He had a really good network. If we could figure out who Mark knew that was useful at the right moment, Mark would absolutely make the introduction or get a call together so we could further our agenda, which was selling Salesforce.com at that time. We called this cheat code "Connect the Dots." It meant figuring out who knows who so you could leverage relationships to get to the power in the company you’re selling to. This term was coined by one of our legendary sales leaders, David Nitsche, who trained the company on his success methodology. His team was wildly successful, and he had this acronym: S-U-C-C-E-S-S. Each letter stood for something you were supposed to do to follow his formula. One of the "C"s was "Connect the Dots"—figure out who knows who in the account and use that to get to the power. If you can do that, you wake up on third base. You could be talking to the CFO, CRO, or CEO of a company instead of struggling to get a manager in the department to open your cold email and reply. Now, some of that was going in cold, trying to send a cold email to the right person and doing enough research to get their attention. But the hit rate on that was low, though it does happen. My origin story with Salesforce is based on that. I cold emailed Mark Benioff and got the job. So, it’s not like it never happens, but 1999 was a different era. Today, in 2023, the volume of cold emails is a lot higher, and the sophistication of cold emails has increased. It’s become an arms race. Now, there are automated sequences and cadences of cold emails going out, and generative AI makes them look pretty good. There’s a lot going on, so if you’re a decision-maker in 2023, you’re getting hammered with cold emails and outreach. The number one filter you use to check your inbox is, "Do I know who this is from?" If I don’t recognize the name, then it’s just another cold email, and I’ll probably delete it. There aren’t enough hours in the day to contemplate every cold email I get. The stakes have gone up in trying to generate pipeline and get into accounts, to get to the decision-makers you want. It’s very hard if you don’t have an existing relationship. The cool thing is, you probably have more relationship paths available to you than you realize—you just need to shine a light on those pathways. That’s what we are dedicating our lives to at Connect the Dots—helping you build your company’s "super graph." It’s a graph of all the relationships with the people we talked about: your coworkers, investors, friends, customers, and everyone on your extended team. The graph makes those relationships visible to you and your team in a way that’s really actionable, so you can see who really knows who. Then you can ask the right person at the right time for an introduction to the CFO, CRO, or CEO of the company you’re targeting. You’re asking the right person, who actually knows that person, to make the introduction. They do it, and the next thing you know, you’re in a meeting with the decision-maker instead of banging your head against the wall trying to get into the account.

Steve: Makes a ton of sense. Frankly, that’s what LinkedIn was doing for me in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Back then, people only had their actual friends on there. Now, I have 25,000 friends on LinkedIn, and I don’t know them all. My Facebook is much more accurate, with only about 1,000 friends, but I don’t know all of them either. Still, it’s not the same as my professional network. I'm super curious about how you're approaching this and what the backbone is for figuring out what are close relationships and what aren't.

Drew: Yeah, and as we were getting to know each other for a few minutes before starting this podcast, you accurately observed that back in the early 2000s, LinkedIn was probably better for showing whether you really knew someone and who knew who. Back then, the culture on LinkedIn was to only connect with people you truly knew, and LinkedIn reinforced that idea. There was a lot of messaging around only linking with people you had met in real life. Over time, that has eroded. Now, you might be connected with someone you met 15 years ago, and neither of you would remember each other. You'd be like, "Did we talk about something? Were we at a dinner? John's birthday dinner 15 years ago?" It’s hard. We've all been linking with people on our phones for years, and now, for many, it’s become meaningless.

Drew: You know Dunbar's number?

Steve: Yeah, where you can have five close friends, maybe 15 people you really know, and 150 to 250 people whose names you remember. Beyond that, it's just a sea of blankness.

Drew: Exactly. I remember hitting that barrier at Salesforce. I was employee number 36, so at the beginning, we all knew each other really well. We were all in one room together. But gradually, we grew past 100, then 150, and that’s where it starts to break down. At that point, I remember seeing people walking around the office that I didn’t know. I’d think, "They appear to work here, they’re colleagues of mine, but I have no idea who they are." Up until that point, we all knew each other. If someone new came in, you'd introduce yourself. But after that, it becomes impossible to keep track.

Steve: I’ve probably had 600 or 700 people work at Badger Maps over the years. I knew a lot of them, especially the higher-ups, but now, the names and faces of people who worked here seven or twelve years ago are getting blurry. It happens, even with people you're working closely with, especially in large organizations.

The Role of Technology in Networking

Drew: So, as a salesperson, when you're using LinkedIn to try and figure out how to get to someone, you know the frustration. It goes like this: "Hey, Steve, I see you’re connected with Adam Johnson. Do you know him well enough to make an introduction for me?" And then you’re like, "Adam Johnson... let me check." You look him up and realize, "Sorry, Drew, I don’t really know Adam." And over time, as your LinkedIn contacts grow to 25,000, that happens most of the time. You don’t really know the person. It’s frustrating for everyone because it takes time out of your day, and I’m asking for a favor that you can’t do. You’d probably either like to help or prefer that I didn’t ask. That’s where we’ve landed with LinkedIn. We used to do that all the time. There was a button where you could ask a friend to introduce you to someone, and they could agree or not. Now, I’d feel weird reaching out unless I knew the person well, asking if they could introduce me to someone. You just can’t tell if they know them or not. On Facebook, maybe you could tell, but even then, it’s hard. I have the same problem on Facebook, honestly. I’ve stopped adding Facebook friends because it’s fallen out of fashion. I don’t get many requests anymore, but I do have a lot of Facebook friends, and I don’t know the majority of them either. It’s not just a LinkedIn problem.

Steve: My problem on Facebook is one-twenty-fifth the problem on LinkedIn.

Drew: And you and I, as CEOs of software companies, probably find LinkedIn a more important social network than Facebook at this point in our lives. We proactively build our networks there.

Steve: Wait, Drew, are you implying that you don’t like selfies on Instagram all day?

Drew: For some reason, I have a checklist of things that I need to check on a daily and weekly basis, or I’ll completely forget about them. Instagram is one of them. I don’t know, it’s just me, but I literally have a checklist: "Check your Instagram to see if there’s any message from a friend you need to respond to." But yeah, I’m not doing a ton of selfies on Instagram. I think I’ve posted a total of like 15 photos in my entire life. That’s it.

Steve: I’ve never used it except when my marketing team used it for me for a while, and that was pretty funny because it looked like I was doing a lot on the gram, but I’ve really never used it.

Drew: You might actually turn me into a user now because I’m curious to see what your profile looks like from your marketing department.

Steve: I hid a lot of those. I’ve got my personal one and my business one now. SteveBensonSF if you want to see. And SteveBenson5 if you want to see cute pictures of my baby—that’s where I keep those.

Drew: SteveBensonSF and then what? SteveBenson5, is that right?

Steve: I think that’s what they are, yeah. SteveBensonSF for sure, but I’m not totally sure about my personal one. Maybe that’s what it is.

Drew: Maybe you’ll convert me. Maybe I will become an Instagram regular.

Steve: I mean, she’s a really cute baby. She really is.

Drew: And I bet the setting is amazing in Granada, with her wandering around the plazas of Granada. Probably some really magnificent photo ops.

Steve: Since I just moved here, for people that don’t know, I just moved to Granada, Spain, where Badger has its largest office. One of the reasons was it’s such a great place to have a little kid. It’s a small town in Spain, and they can just run around the plazas. It’s a very social place, which is great for kids. We’re having a lot of fun so far.

Drew: I think you’ve chosen very wisely. I think that’s an amazing place to raise a little girl. So, where were we?

Steve: We were talking about Instagram.

Drew: I know what it was.

Steve: I think your company really... We got into social media while understanding how your company works and how it allows you to leverage your team to sell more and generate more warm introductions.

Creating a Super Graph of Connections

Drew: Yeah, let me jump to the punchline here. How do we help you in this sea of relationships where you can’t really tell who knows who? How do we help you solve that problem? At Connect the Dots, we let you create an account as an individual and keep it for life, similar to LinkedIn. You create an account and carry it with you through different jobs. As a company, you can also create a Connect the Dots account for the entire company. Every employee gets an account, and they can merge their personal and work accounts to have a unified view of their entire network. The really interesting thing we do is let you ingest all your LinkedIn contacts. I don’t have 25,000 like you, but I have a lot—about 5,200. We have a Chrome extension that synchronizes those contacts into your Connect the Dots account. Then it gets really interesting. You can connect your work email account, your personal email account, and any other email accounts you have. Connect the Dots uses technology that analyzes the header data from every email you’ve ever sent or received, including the "from," "to," and "cc" fields, and the date field. By analyzing those email addresses and combining it with data we’ve ingested from the web, we give you a near-perfect and evergreen list of all the people you’ve ever communicated with in your life. We also score those relationships by strength. To give you some rough numbers, I’m 49 years old and have had a Gmail account for 20 years, a work account here at Connect the Dots for four and a half years, and a couple of other email accounts. I also synchronized my LinkedIn account. Across all those data sources, I have about 28,000 contacts—people I’ve communicated with. For most of them, I have their name, title, and current company, along with their work history, and any email addresses I’ve communicated with them on. All of that is organized neatly into one person record. So, for example, I might have had a friend who worked at Merrill Lynch, then Morgan Stanley, then Oracle, and now Amazon. And let’s say her name was Sally Johnson. I’d have one record for Sally Johnson with all of my email communication history across all those different companies and her various email accounts. Out of the 29,000 contacts I have, my relationship with each one is scored. We use three dots to indicate how well I know that person: one dot for a weak relationship, two dots for a familiar relationship, and three dots for a strong relationship. It’s based on how much we’ve communicated over time and how recently we’ve communicated. It’s a relatively straightforward algorithm. What it does is take those 29,000 contacts, which is a gargantuan amount, and categorize them by relationship strength: weak, familiar, and strong. So, if I want to build a list of the people I know best, it’s already done automatically. It organizes my universe, which is amazing. If I want to create a holiday card list, I can go straight to Connect the Dots, see who should be on the list, and start writing it down. It’s great for that. Just don’t forget about grandma, even if you don’t email with her.

Steve: Well, sadly, I don’t have a living grandmother anymore. But I did get her an email account—grandmabenson@gmail.com, if I recall. I’m not sure she ever used it, but I did show her Facebook, and she was very impressed with it. That was probably 10 years ago. She loved pictures.

Drew: Yeah, pictures. Turns out it’s not just for grandmas—lots of people like pictures! It worked well for Facebook and then later for Instagram. The first step is getting your own house in order, and we do that automatically for you. We organize your contacts neatly. You can search by name, title, company, geography—it's really amazing. Such a revelation when you see all your contacts neatly organized forever, automatically. Where it becomes crazy powerful, especially in a selling organization, is when you turn it on for your team. Everyone on your team has this, and you can invite external stakeholders like customers, friends, investors, and advisors. When you invite them to join, you get a "super graph," sharing visibility into each other’s networks. This grows exponentially. So instead of 29,000 contacts, I can now see around one and a half million people I can get to through strong relationship paths. For example, I can see that a colleague knows a CMO at another company, and that CMO knows a CMO at a target company we’re selling to. I can see all the strong relationship paths the whole way there. This is a very leverageable relationship path. We make it super easy to click a button and ask your colleague to ask their friend, the CMO, for an introduction to the CMO at the target company. It’s all very simple. And it’s not wasting anyone’s time because you can actually see that these people know each other well. It’s not a shot in the dark—it’s a sniper shot. You know it’s going to work. You ask, and they’ll make the request.

Steve: I totally get it. I did something similar with LinkedIn back when everyone only had 300 connections—actual friends.

Drew: Exactly.

Steve: When I started Badger, one of the first things I did was reach out to my business school classmates and friends when I saw they were connected to people in the industries and companies we were targeting. It was very much a by-hand process, but you couldn’t do it today. I just checked LinkedIn, and you and I share 72 connections, and a few of them are close connections of mine. But good luck guessing which two, right?

Drew: Well, I can guess. I looked at Connect the Dots and saw that Lars Leckie is in there. I’m guessing you two are relatively close—you both went to GSB together.

Steve: That’s one of the two, yeah! I was just at his house a couple of months ago.

Drew: He’s got a cool house in San Francisco.

Steve: He does, very cool. The warming chairs on his roof deck are fun.

Drew: Lars is actually one of our investors. I’ve never been in his house, but I’ve gone by it with him several times en route to other places. It looks cool from the outside. Next time I’m in San Francisco in a couple of weeks, I’ll ask him, as one of his investments, to invite me up to his warming chairs on the roof!

Steve: I mean, it's always a good time to have a warming chair on your roof in San Francisco, in my experience. There's no season where you wouldn’t want a heated bench. I’d never seen anything like it before.

Drew: Part of the reason I moved from San Francisco to Miami Beach in the past couple of years. Only part of the reason.

Steve: That’s a good reason. Well, I guess your product worked. That was a live demonstration of connecting the dots, wasn’t it?

Drew: Yes, it truly is a revelation when you see it. All these connections light up, and you think, "Wow, I didn’t know that person knew that person." It makes your life a lot easier, and it’s really fun to be able to connect the dots. It’s a cheat code.

Steve: Very cool. I’ll have to ask Lars about this stuff the next time I chat with him. On the topic of networking, how can people use networking in the industries they sell into to better understand market trends and connect with their prospects?

In-Person Networking vs. Online Networking

Drew: Yeah, well, here’s where I’ll actually give a shout-out to LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is amazing for seeing what’s going on in your industry and tapping into it. Follow the right people and companies, and you’ll get a lot of helpful content pushed to you. You’ll also see thought leaders in the industry, and you can build relationships with them. We focus on one specific thing—knowing who knows who—but I have to give LinkedIn credit for helping people build industry knowledge and grow their networks. You know, earlier I mentioned the Rotary Club meeting as an example of networking that some people don’t love. While not everyone is a fan of those events, I think live, in-person events are great for meeting people and building relationships. Do you go to SaaStr?

Steve: I’ve been a bunch of times, early on, but not recently since I’ve been living in different places. It’s a great conference.

Drew: Yeah, it is. If you’re in the SaaS business like we are, it’s very useful to attend. I was just at the one in London about a month ago, and last year the European one was in Barcelona, which would have been convenient for you. But this year it was in London. I think events like that are still valuable. Meeting people in person should not be a thing of the past. We had to figure out how to survive during COVID, and Zoom became the norm, with everyone working online 8 to 10 hours a day. There are some amazing things that have come from that, like the fact that you can live in Granada and still run your company while traveling back to the States when needed. That’s awesome. I’m in a similar situation. I’m in Belgrade, Serbia right now, and as long as I have Zoom and an internet connection, I can do a lot. But if you want to build real relationships, there’s something magical about being together in person. Meeting the people you’re selling to, building relationships through lunches or dinners—that’s still important. I’m not a golfer, but I know the magic of golf for networking with customers. I’m more of a cyclist, so I go on bike rides with people I’m close to, personally and professionally. Some of my best meetings have been on six-hour bike rides in Northern California. You cover a lot of ground with someone during that time. There’s real value in human presence. Pick the right trade shows and events that draw people from your industry, and attend those. There are even social events that are great for networking. I recently went to an event over New Year’s called Renaissance Weekend. It’s not a Renaissance fair with jousting and jesters—it’s more like an ideas festival, with interesting people from all over the world. Everyone has to participate, so you get pulled into topic sessions where you have to present.

Drew: You meet such amazing and interesting people, and you build friendships really fast because you're spending three days together during New Year's. That kind of event is incredible for networking. If you’re in sales and want to be a connector, your network should be part of the value you bring to the world. You’ve got to seek out those events where you're stimulated by the topics and people, and then meet a lot of people, kind of like speed dating. You figure out who you click with, and those are the relationships you nurture moving forward. And as you get older, you don’t mind as much because you have these wonderful relationships you’ve nurtured over time. They’ve grown and brought you and them a lot of joy. This is my personal positive self-talk as I’m about to turn 50 in a month and a half.

The Value of Relationships in Life and Sales

Steve: A lot of people would agree with you. There’s been a lot of research showing that close relationships—family, friends, your network—are key drivers of happiness and satisfaction in life. Networking isn’t just for sales; it’s for happiness.

Drew: Exactly. Why are we selling? Ultimately, we want to be happy and make the people around us happy. We want a great life for ourselves and those around us. If I were a traveling salesperson, one of the biggest challenges I’d face daily would be, "What do I do today? Where do I focus my energy?" That’s what Badger Maps solves—the number one problem for traveling salespeople is how to route themselves efficiently.

Steve: Exactly, and depending on the industry, it can be intense. For some people, it takes 15 minutes a day to figure it out; for others, it can take two hours. It depends on the complexity of the territory, who they need to visit, and various constraints like whether they can visit a customer anytime or only on certain days. There are a lot of data points to juggle depending on the situation.

Drew: We’re not changing the world, but we save people an average of 30 minutes a day on selling tasks.

Steve: That’s changing the world for them!

Drew: Well, I hope so—that’s the goal! Change the world, just like I say on TV.

Practical Tips For Sales Success

Steve: Next section: Sales in 60 Seconds. Quick questions, quick answers. First question: What do you think is the biggest mistake salespeople make while networking?

Drew: Probably being too transactional—focusing on the short game instead of the long game. Networking is 99.9% about playing the long game. Take an interest in people, be proactive in helping them, and let the universe provide. It will.

Steve: What are the pros and cons of face-to-face networking versus online networking?

Drew: Disease transmission is a big con I wouldn’t have thought much about before COVID. As for online networking, I’m still not sure what it really is. I guess you and I are doing it right now while recording this podcast. I’ve gotten to know you better over the course of this conversation, so it’s good in that way. I feel comfortable enough now to say we’re at a familiar level, two dots in Connect the Dots. If I were in Granada, I’d definitely look you up, and if you were passing through Belgrade, I’d hope you’d do the same. But I still think the best networking happens in person. There’s just something more real about it. It’s also more enjoyable. Like, if we were sitting down over a glass of Spanish wine and some tapas, we could probably keep chatting for hours without checking the clock. It’s a different quality of interaction.

Steve: Totally. And for listeners of this podcast, most of whom are in outside sales, you’re probably preaching to the choir.

Drew: Yeah, they’re already converted. But it’s still interesting to think about why face-to-face connections feel more genuine than online ones. I don’t feel like people truly connect on social media. Maybe social media helps maintain existing relationships, but building new, meaningful relationships online is hard. I know it happens, but maybe it’s harder for me with the gray in my beard. Maybe for someone younger, it’s different, but for me, building a new relationship with someone I just met online doesn’t come naturally.

Steve: I agree. Online platforms can form communities or introduce people, but those relationships need to be taken into reality to fully develop.

Drew: Exactly. A lot of tech companies seem to be trying to pull us away from reality, with virtual reality and augmented reality—almost like playing pretend. I’m not a Luddite about it. I’m happy we’re moving in that direction. I think VR and AR look incredible, and I’m excited about them. But we haven’t reached the point where in-person human interaction isn’t important. It’s still super important. As a company, we’re spread across nine time zones from Belgrade to San Francisco. I’ve noticed that if you don’t see someone in person for a while, there’s a degradation in how you perceive them. You start to see them less as a person and more as an API—input and output. It’s like, "I need this from you," and they deliver it, but the humanity fades a little bit. When you see them again in person, it’s a breath of fresh air. You’re reminded they’re a full, three-dimensional person, not just an API. This happens even with people you know well, so imagine trying to build new relationships purely online without in-person interaction. It’s tough.

Steve: Maybe when Apple’s vision goggles come out with full sensory integration, it’ll be different.

Drew: Maybe. But even then, I doubt people will sit down with goggles on, across an empty table, pretending to have dinner with someone.

Steve: You’re probably right, but I guarantee some people will do that. Whether it’s sad and creepy, we’ll see.

Drew: Well, it’s different when it’s someone you’re close to. Like, I use FaceTime so my baby can spend time with her grandma. It works because the relationship is close, and my baby recognizes her grandma on the screen. That’s meaningful.

Steve: I agree. During the first few months of COVID, there was a lot of online networking. People were having virtual happy hours with 12 people chatting after work. But after three or four months, it died off because people realized it wasn’t the same.

Drew: Yeah, as soon as real-life connection became an option again, people jumped at the chance. We crave real, in-person interaction because we’re social animals.

Steve: I love what you're doing. It’s not just for business; it’s for everything. I’ve tried using platforms to figure out who I know in certain cities when I’m traveling, but unless people constantly update where they are, it’s hard.

Drew: We’ve got you covered. You’re going to love it. I’ll send you an invite now. And you’ll be able to do that when you get to London. You’ll just type in "London," hit enter, and see your entire network that you can tap into.

Steve: I’m going to London on Friday, so let’s do this.

Drew: Coming your way right now.

Steve: Awesome.

Steve: Well, let me try to summarize what we’ve talked about today since a lot of people listen to this while driving and aren’t taking notes. First of all, you should always be networking. It’s not something you only do when you’re looking for a job. Take an interest in other people, what they’re doing, and what’s important to them. Be curious about what makes them tick. To be successful at networking, take a proactive approach to helping people. You want to connect people with others in ways that bring value—not just to you but to everyone. Great relationships with connectors—people who know a lot of others—are often the ones that help you leap forward. In the end, it’s about creating value. Whether it’s 1% or 10% of the value you create that you keep, it’s some fraction. If you focus on being a good person and creating as much value as you can, it tends to work out. Your team can help introduce you to people, and your network can be big, even if your company is small. Your team includes coworkers, investors, family, and friends. You can use that extended network to meet people who could become deals for your company. Figure out who knows who, and use that to get to the decision-makers quickly. Today, reaching decision-makers is harder. It’s a noisy world—people get a lot of emails and don’t answer their phones. So, real relationships with the right people are more important than ever. That’s how you get real introductions. We also talked about Drew’s company, Connect the Dots, which helps you see who you’re most connected with, who they know, and who your team knows. It scores those relationships, making it easier to network your way into another organization. You can see the contact’s name, email, work history, and more. The value of networking—and of Connect the Dots—is amplified when your entire team is on the platform, and you can tap into everyone’s strong relationships. Another piece of advice from Drew: Seek out interesting in-person events. In-person connection is still super important for building real, long-term relationships—not just transactional ones.

Steve: Drew, you’ve taught our listeners so many valuable things, and your company sounds super cool. Where can listeners read more about your work, and how can they reach out to you?

Drew: I have to say, that summary was incredible. Be honest—did you use ChatGPT to summarize that?

Steve: No.

Drew: No? You did that yourself?

Steve: Just notes.

Drew: Incredible. Humans can still beat the machine. That was a great summary. I’ve played around with ChatGPT, but I’m not sure it could do that. Maybe it can, but I distrust its conclusions sometimes. When you’ve got summarization skills like that, you don’t need ChatGPT. Stick with what you’ve got. The best way to find us is at our website, ctd.ai—like Connect the Dots, ctd.ai. You can reach me directly at drew@ctd.ai. If you cold email me, though, it better be good! Or find someone who knows me and get a warm introduction—that’s easier.

Steve: If only there were a tool for that, right?

Drew: Yeah, if only.

Steve: Well, this has been a great episode of Outside Sales Talk. If you work in field sales, you’ll love Badger Maps, the number one route planner that helps you sell 20% more and drive 20% less. You can get a free trial at badgermapping.com today. And if you know any sales reps who would benefit from Drew’s insights, definitely share the love and forward this episode to them. Drew, I really appreciate your time.

Drew: That was a lot of fun, Steve. Thanks for having me.

Steve: Take care, and until next time, everybody.