What If Your Next Sales Rep Is Software

I’m trying to stop the endless cycle of hiring, training, and turnover by leaning into AI-driven outreach instead of adding another sales rep. I walk through what I’m testing with Apollo.io, what went wrong on my first run, and how I’m rebuilding my lead list and email sequence to reach real local decision makers. 
• why staffing flakiness makes owners do every job at once 
• choosing automation over hiring for trade and barter education-heavy sales 
• what Apollo.io does well and where it fails for hyperlocal businesses 
• pulling local leads with ReferenceUSA and filtering for the right companies 
• uploading CSVs, running enrichment, and avoiding wasted credits 
• building a three-email sequence that boosts legitimacy with a local ad and podcast 
• early results after fixing the setup and targeting decision makers 
Hit me up if you’d like some tickets here soon when they when they open up. 
You can just apply yourself online if you want to. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, welcome back to the Trading Post. I'm your host, of course, Trader Stu, and want to talk about a few things this week. I guess some updates and perhaps save yourself some research or money, maybe, and say, yeah, money and time. Sure, why not? We'll talk about all that. So, first of all, thanks again for the Michigan Renaissance Festival for sponsoring the show. They are sending me tickets soon. I'll be handing those out for the local folks in the area. And uh hit me up if you'd like some tickets here soon when they when they open up. All right, so let's get after it. Apollo Apollo. Apollo.io, which is a AI program that I'm utilizing since I am having a hard time or issues hiring. I am attending some job fairs this year, but unfortunately, I don't know if it's like a 1099

Welcome And Quick Updates

SPEAKER_00 0:56

thing scares people, like commission only situation or what. But I am hearing the same issues, of course, from all the other, like I said, you know, business business owners that are trying to hire and they just can't hire anybody, or if they do hire, they don't keep anybody. I was over

Sponsor Shoutout And Ticket Giveaway

SPEAKER_00 1:15

at somebody, I'll just keep it, you know, no name and no business name to it, but they I was just saying they were running around like a head chicken with their head cut off, and because they had somebody that wanted to go to what was that? What's that festival on Lake St. Clair?

Why Hiring Feels Impossible Right Now

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Not Billy Bowlegs, it's called it's not it's by Muskemoot Bay. Jobby Nooner. You want to go to Jobby Nooner, which if you don't know what that is, around here in Michigan, there's a once a year, everyone was supposed to they cut off work and then they go out on their boat and they tie up and they just have a party and drink all day out at Lank St. Clair at like one of the sandbars, you know. And one of the girls wanted to go to that, so she just didn't go to she she called out. And the other girl just no showed, no call, no show, just whatever. And I think he said the third girl just was like, Yeah, I'm sick, which is bull crap because it's you know it's July, but whatever. So he was the drive-thru, the owner, you know, the cook, the barista, and the cashier, and doing all of it, you know, he's the owner of multiple locations of this business, and it's just the same old story over and over and over again. So, what we're trying to do is not hire. I don't want to hire because I don't want to deal with that and high turnover. And this job, being in trade or barter is hard to learn and hard to explain. And, you know, if you are been following the show at any time, once you get past the education segment of it all, you're like, okay, well, it makes sense. You know, I'll try it. At least try it. But to get people through that wall, that door, that wall break, it can be challenging. So to keep perpetually training people, you know, and I was gonna do the whole, you know, college folk and then summer job and stuff like that. And it's just it didn't work, it didn't happen anyway. So I was like, well, I gotta do is just have something to email for me and you know, see how it works. So if this is you because you found this podcast due to one of my emails or

Turning To Apollo.io Instead Of Reps

SPEAKER_00 3:29

one of our ads we have placed around the area, welcome. So, what I'm doing is right now is I pulled the I we're advertising in the Ferndale Friends, which is a circular that goes out, right? So it's got Ferndale, Hazel Park, and Pleasant Ridge are the three towns that it goes to. So I'm trying something where I had to go in. So by the way, if you're a hyper local business like I am, Apollo's not for you. I found out. After some back and forth, Apollo finally admitted their Archer, the AI program, said, Yeah, we don't really pull, I don't have data for small businesses like that. I have data for I don't know what I'm gonna say fortune 500 or 100 companies, but it was kind of along the lines of that. Like I had the contacts and the emails for that, but not local like businesses, like small businesses. I might well create. So I've already got a ton of time and and you know, 100 bucks wrapped up into

Hyperlocal Lead Lists And Data Limits

SPEAKER_00 4:28

this of the company's money, so I might as well keep playing it out and see what happens. It's already trained, it already knows me, and you know, I put all that into it, right? So I had my my perplexity to train their AI on me, and then I also had to go to like what used to be called reference USA and have it pull leads. So I was able to go down a hyperloco like that, and you go down to a map-based area, and you just pull. I don't know if you know about this yet, if you're you know trying to pull leads, but that's a great program. I did it even when I was in ADT sale uh sales. I used a reference USA. Anyway, you go into it, pull the pull the businesses, then you gotta filter it down, you know, by small business and employees under 100 and blah blah blah. So you did that, and then you gotta download the CSV file, then you upload it to the Apollo program for CSV. Then you have to enrich it. So then your enrichment means that you it finds the business name and then it finds the owner's name and then it finds the email. And then if you

CSV Upload And Contact Enrichment Steps

SPEAKER_00 5:33

want to spend even more credits, you can get a phone number, which is stupid, I guess to me, because I can easily just find the phone number by myself for free on Google or you know, on maps, so whatever. So I don't I don't call off of it, I just do the cold emails, and I have us send out a three email enrichment program. So today, what I did was or yesterday, you send out an email before the ad goes out, right? Said, hey, check out our ad coming out, Inferndale Friends. So that goes along with having a podcast. So now it creates more of like I'm not just a flyby night, you know, telemarketer or whatever from some other country that's just spamming you. I'm local, I'm in Rochester Hills, Michigan. I am putting a name or a face to my name because I have a podcast and I'm all, you know, and then probably I didn't want to do this, but get a YouTube channel. Probably should. I just don't want to deal with the video editing. Maybe I'll do a no-face YouTube channel, but whatever, I digress. And then also check out our ad and the Fernandale Friends coming up. So now if you're doing an out email outreach, that's stronger

Building A Low Pressure Email Sequence

SPEAKER_00 6:42

for you because you're not asking for a sale, you're not trying to get a cold call sale off of an email or whatever. You're just like, hey, check out our ad, you know, keep an eye out. So if you do that and you put your name, logo, or business name, and then they flip through that circular, then hopefully that's it pops out to them, right? Now it creates another legitimized touch that hopefully, you know, I'm trying to invite new members in the area in that area to be a member of Metro Trade. So then I have it go one more time or two more times, one more, like, hey, you know what? Try us out, blah blah blah. Here's the fees. And then I think a few days later it does a close. It's just like, you know what? If you haven't haven't heard from you yet, that's cool. No hard feelings, whatever, no big deal. Keep us in mind. If you find out later that's something for you, you can just apply yourself online if you want to. You can gotta talk to me. I don't care. I'm not here to like be a fast talking, you know, closer because I can't close you on this. Either you want to do it or you don't. I mean, it's it's your business, it's your money. I'm not gonna it, you know, one of those it's one of those things where I can only do maybe one or two plumbers per town, right? So if there's a hundred plumbers, then I mean, just by the law of averages, I'll get more than a couple interested. So I don't care if you don't want to do it, I'll find the next plumber, you know, one of those things. So super low pressure, no big deal. So I don't know. I'm hoping that this works out for me. I found out that the last month I did when I did my sequence, it's called a sequence, was sent out to like 751 folks. And it was the email warm-up program, anyways. And then I found out later that the people that were in there weren't even like decision makers, it was the wrong kind of businesses. I just kind of let the AI program do its thing because I was like overwhelmed. Then I had perplexity, do it for me, because you can do that, and then I just kind of got out of, I was just like, whatever, let it run and let it use up my credits because I don't want to use my credits. Anyway, if you are gonna try an email program because you know you want to get more outreach, you don't want to hire outside sales rep and you need to drum up drum up some business, something to look into, perhaps Apollo. They have a good training program, they have one-on-one, they give you a call if you when you're on your schedule. I think I get three

Early Results Lessons And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_00 9:02

more. And yeah, so I didn't want to keep it too long. Just want to give you an update on how the Apollo program is running for me. I don't really know yet because I didn't use it right last month, and now I'm using it right, and already I'm noticing a difference in the numbers, and that was just on the first day yesterday. So, you know, let's say they say if you at first you don't succeed, try try again. And yeah, we'll go from there. I'll see you in the next week, next Thursday. And yeah, I think that's all I wanted to do. All right, that's it. Be good or be good at it. Bye bye.