If Nobody Shows Up To Interviews What Now

We share a real-world update on shifting from trying to hire sales reps to testing an AI agent for cold outreach and sales prospecting. We walk through what we have set up so far, what is already working, and what still feels messy as we try to scale follow-up without sounding like a robot. 
• why hiring sales reps stalls when applicants ghost interviews 
• using Apollo AI to run consistent cold email sequences 
• early outreach results, replies, and open-rate expectations 
• integrating automated outreach with our proprietary CRM 
• finding warm leads outside Metro Detroit using online signals 
• staying under spam thresholds with sensible daily volume 
• adding phone calls, LinkedIn touches, and the “six to seven touches” idea 
• risks and cautions around cold texting and compliance 
• spotting AI-script “voice” and keeping messages human 
Feel free to reach out and I’ll give you my, you know, two cents on it or whatever how I feel 

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Transcript

Welcome, Sponsors, And Audio Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the trading post. I am your host, of course, Trader Stew, and a quick shout out to my sponsors, of course, the Michigan Renaissance Festival, Metro Trading Association, and PressX to play games. Appreciate your uh help and support here. And real quick, if the audio sounds funny, it's because I forgot my phone at home and I generally record these through Garage Band and using a DJ DJI mic. And I'm using my much more expensive microphone setup, but it's wired and I don't like it. I never record with this thing, and I guess I should, but I mean that's it's a also it's a it's a podcast setup. I mean, I got the foam and everything like that, and the AT220 plus microphone condenser mic, it's probably gonna sound awesome, but I I don't know. I like the freedom of having the mic just clipped on me and go from there, but we'll see what happens. It even has a pop filter on this thing, so I've used it before. It's just I feel like locked down, more podcasty than I am just like kind of sitting in my office and BSing with y'all. Anyway, I want to give you guys a quick update on what's going on. I think it's been a week since I've uploaded. I've been busy. In fact, so busy, in fact, that I forgot my phone at home. As like I said, I my mind is not in anything else right now, except for trying to spool up this Apollo AI agent thing that I bought. Actually, I should say that the company bought and I'm using. So I I don't know if you remember, but I actually was trying to hire seven sales reps. Actually, ideally 14, because I would like two in each area, and I have resulted in exactly zero. Zero. I've had two, I think three applications, two interviews, and that's it. They ghosted no callback, no show, no follow-up, no nothing, right? This is the same response I get from all the business owners that I work with in the Metro Trade. The idea, the nice thing with being in this company is that I get to know all the business owners in the area, and they all get to I get to hear all the complaints about how it is working out out there. And uh they all say the same thing. Nobody wants to work, nobody wants to show up for interviews. People are just applying, I think, for unemployment because you have to apply. I think it's two or three per week. I think you get to prove or something like that. With in our case, Michigan Works, because I'm in Michigan, and so Michigan Works makes

Hiring Frustration And Ghosted Interviews

SPEAKER_00 2:25

you prove that you applied to so many places to keep your unemployment rolling, and you don't get that much unemployment. I mean, not that long, I think a year, anyway. I can't imagine what all these people are doing like out there for money, or I don't understand it. I just anyway, I digress. It's it everyone wants flexibility, and I I provide it like with the the program that I thought I had set up perfect for it, but you know, no, whatever. I'm not I'm not complaining. I I am, but I'm not. I I would prefer to have some some help with uh all the things that I have to do around here and uh get more members in in and the areas that I don't live in. But at the same time, it also pushed me to try this this AI agent thing. And although it's a lonelier game because I don't get to have office parties and Monday morning meetings and donuts and loud music, because that's what I used to do back when I had a bunch of sales reps that worked for us back in 2013 and 2015 timeframe. Instead, I get to ramp up an AI agent and become the root of allegedly the issue of America. And after utilizing this, and I'll probably put on a list somewhere, I'm sure I'm on a list already, but I'm definitely on the list now with this being out there. But I don't think that this whole layoff thing has anything to do with AI. I say that because it's a lot, it's a lot of ramp up, it's a lot of training. And I know that of course there's companies that are which I mean, we're small, real small business, but it's obviously much bigger than us, and it's just not that user-friendly, man. It's not, I don't know. It's it's we'll see how it goes. I'm in week one,

Switching From Reps To AI

SPEAKER_00 4:09

and already I'm I'm pretty impressed with the replies and responses that I've had with my email campaigns. One thing that we've never done, other than me doing it manually, are email campaigns. And I am, of course, aware of how powerful they are. Uh, I signed up for them on Facebook, let's just say, I to this morning. I'm I'm a I'm a believer in it because I I signed up to be a pledge on a was that Kickstarter on that survival list board game that is they hit the internet pretty hard there with marketing, and I bought it. I bought the VIP early package thing for $89 with all the add-ons and got the promo deal and this and that and the extra thing. And uh, I'm excited for it to get it. You know, hope I get it because uh I've also done uh another one as a Kickstarter. It was an old credit card that you scan your credit cards

Early Wins With Email Campaigns

SPEAKER_00 5:03

into it, and then you can choose which credit card you want to use on the credit card itself, like on a button, you push a button, and the L C D would show up and tell you what credit card you're using. Uh and fortunately, it was a little it was too late to the game because everyone by that point in time had it on their cell phones, so it was obsolete. But anyway, I did end up getting it and I did get to use it, and but you know, too little too late. Anyway, this is a board game, much different than technology, unfortunately. So, or fortunately, I guess for me this time. Anyway, I am now uploading or uh doing all this stuff for the AI, working with the developer of ours, and we have a CRM that's proprietary to us. We don't use Zoho or Salesforce or you know any of those that I've I've used in the past, actually. And the big one that Apollo integrates with is HubSpot and Salesforce are the two big dogs that I guess they play with the best. And so, anyway, I told the guy who runs our CRM what I'm doing, and he's on board, and we're helping each other get this launched up in our system, and that way other trading associations around the world that use his software can integrate their agents into it as well. So it talks to each other very user-friendly in a way. So, because what it does is it sends out the campaign, and then it sends out a sequence of three emails, and then it'll update the CRM on

Connecting Apollo To A Custom CRM

SPEAKER_00 6:28

the emails that it's sent and copy and paste them in the notes section, and then also code it, you know, cold, warm, not interested, or whatever. And I say that because the big problem with with sales prospecting, and I myself included here, I do better than most according to what I've been told, but I don't do the email campaign. I think I stop at two or three, and then that's it, you know, and it takes they say six or seven touches. So Apollo is gonna help me out with that. So I I set up the emails in a way that I would talk. And so it is me. It's just it customizes the email to the name or the andor the business that it's sending the email to. It's pretty nice. And then it'll do an intro and then wait, I think, two or three days and then come back with a kind of like the sales pitch, and then wait two or three days and then send a follow-up, like, okay, thanks for playing. Guess it's not for you, and that's it. And it wraps

Why Follow-Up Touches Matter

SPEAKER_00 7:33

it up. But you can also have it set up to go to LinkedIn and a couple other things. And the other thing is with this is that generally the reason why I get so many sales in my area that I can't get the same results for in other areas that we are in and territory. So I'm in uh Southeast Michigan, so I'm in Metro Detroit, east side, right by the water, right by right on Lake of St. Clair. And but I get a lot of sales around here because I get all the coupons, I get all the business cards on the cork boards and you know, whatever, all the campaigns that people put out, they're looking for business. Well, it's they're they're a candidate to be in our group and our business-to-business barter, right? So, what I don't get is that same input that into let's just say Flint or Toledo, which are the two other areas that we're really big in, that I can't get new members in that much because I'm not I don't live there. So, what I the reason why I got Apollo is so

Finding Warm Leads In New Cities

SPEAKER_00 8:34

that it'll comb for those warm leads and see who's looking for maybe chambers of commerce B and I's or LBNs, uh, event brights. It can look for all of that stuff that people look for, right? And it'll say, Hey, you know, I see that you've been looking for whatever insert, you know, in the chamber or you know, lineable LinkedIn, and you're looking for my business, you should check us out because this is what we do. And then, you know, you do uh hopefully they go to the website, of course, and apply. And and so far, I've only this is the first week I've actually got my there's a lot of boot up, like I said, to this thing. And once the email was all onboarded, I already got one reply out of 20. And if you know anything about that kind of a game, that's one out of five, right? No, one out of twenty. Yeah, no, and then I got four open, so that's why I was thinking one out of five. Anyway, that's good. That's good for an email campaign. So, you know, it's gonna do once it ramps up 40 a day, which I found 40 is kind of the sweet spot to where well I've I've always made 40 phone calls a day or tried to with sales, that's a lot. But with 40 a day that keeps you in the good boy program with Google and not getting uh spammed and notifications that you're a spammer. So you just keep it reasonable. You know, 40 a day is a lot, that's 200 a week, uh obviously. Well, actually, I guess this plays seven days a week, so it's more than that, it's 200 or 280. I mean, so and it sends

Open Rates, Replies, And Sending Limits

SPEAKER_00 10:07

all three without hiccup and on time on schedule, you know, without delay. So like I said, it takes 10 days to really try it because it waits two or three days between each email. So it's too early to tell how this is going, but really I think it's very worth it. And you know, a couple of things I wanted to like kind of get into if you're looking at doing something like this. And by the way, feel free. I don't I don't sell this program, it's called Apollo. But if you have any questions, like go ahead and feel free to reach out and I'll give you my you know, two cents or on it or whatever how I feel, and we'll go from there. But let's see where else I wanted to go with this one. So the one thing that business-to-business issues occur with is the follow-up, like I said. So with this, it can also prompt you to make a phone call. I'm still setting that part up yet. I don't know how to do that. And I think that might be an add-on. But if it's not, because it's an expensive add-on, the phone phone call part is pretty expensive. I think that alone is $150 a month. But if I can have it pimp me to make a phone call based upon the lead, that would be powerful. They say that, you know, of course, phone call is the most powerful thing you can do, and just follow up with the emails like, hey, do you get my email? You know, blah, blah, blah. We could really use somebody like you, this and that, and just do that something like that. I mean, but that would narrow me down to where I'm not smoking 40 phone calls a day. I'm making maybe one or two a day, which is far more sustainable uh to do, you know,

Phone Calls, Texting, And Spam Risk

SPEAKER_00 11:42

as a living, than 40, 40 hits a day, it's a lot. So, and I would try and break that up too with business card follow-up, you know, just emails. Most people ask you to email them anyways, and then follow up or not even a phone call or text, right? So that's the other thing I was talking to you about is texting. And uh, I haven't gotten into that game yet. Like cold texting, that's a bit different. That's unless it's a business line, you can get yourself in a lot of trouble with spamming or cold cold calling personal numbers, from what I've heard. So that's one thing you gotta watch out for with texting, I think, anyways. I'm not, and of course, I'm not aggressive. Like, hey, do you want to try this or not? Like, okay, cool. I'll there's 300 other plumbers in your zip code, I'll get one of them to sign up. Because we only do like one per area, anyways, you know what I mean? So I'm a very low, low risk, you know, low and entrance to enter the game or low price. So it's a it's a not a hard sell. That's what I'm trying to say. So I'm very different, I think, than maybe most people utilizing this program, which is making me very optimistic and hoping that this is like gonna work out great for me. All right. So let's see what else we can say about this. I'm gonna say I made some notes here, but I'm kind of all over the place as I generally am, and I don't uh talk in sequential order. And even my notes, and by the way, when I'm noticing how many of my YouTubers are just reading from an AI script because I've been generally using AI to help you know make me some bullet points or a script, but the way it talks is just so obvious that you know that reading it, you know, right from a script. Let's I'll give you a verbatim. Here we go. So I'm gonna read this one paragraph, and then you tell me that it sounds like AI, right? So say today's episode is about something that's either helping you make more money right now or you're ignoring it and falling behind, and that's AI, specifically using AI for cold outreach and sales prospecting. I'm going to keep this real simple and practical. No hype, no tech talk, just how you can actually use this book,

Keeping Outreach Human With AI

SPEAKER_00 14:03

use this to book more meetings and close more deals. So, you know, it's like it's weird because the folks at the White House are talking like this now, like, look, follow the science or look. They say look a lot, look, look, look. Or they'll it'll be like this real simple and practical, period. No hype, period, no tech talk, period. Just how, and they'll say just how you can. I don't know. It's just it's funny how AI talks, and uh, I can recognize it and when people are talking off of an AI script. Now, if I sound like I'm talking, like I got earphones in. I don't usually use their phones either, so I can hear myself loud and clear. So I feel like I'm kind of late night radio talk show host right now. All right, let's go on. Call prep 60 seconds. Okay, and then yo, yeah. So what I need to do is uh they say six or seven touches, right? So three, and then you can do a LinkedIn that's four, maybe a phone call, it's five. Maybe put them in a newsletter, which I don't do. We have mail, mail chimp, but we don't use it no more, and that's I'll be six, and then I don't know what seven would be. Maybe another one more one last follow-up with an email. I don't know. But it's pretty much it. Like so far, so good. Like I said, I just want to give you an update on it and let you know how it's going. It's still going, and I have not gotten the sale yet. I did get an online sign up and it was like cool. And then I realized that it was just because they used to work for a company that was with Metro Trading, and then he got his own company and just did it. So, which is cool. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited for that, but it's

Touch Plan And Quick Wrap-Up

SPEAKER_00 15:48

not because of this program. So, but that's it for now. Uh, just want to give you an update real quick, and it's been a minute since I talked to y'all. And until next week, be good or be good at it.