Richard Lane (00:35) 
Welcome to The Insiders by durhamlane, an industry podcast that connects the worlds of sales and marketing, one guest at a time. I’m your host, Richard Lane. I’m Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of durhamlane. We’re an outsourced SDR service based here in the UK, but operating around the globe. 

Today, I’m thrilled to be joined by Justin Michael. Justin’s a veteran sales leader, executive coach, and creator of the Justin Michael Method – a system that’s helped countless teams drive tech-powered sales at scale. So we’re going to hear a lot more about that as we go through today’s podcast. 

Richard Lane (01:09) 
Justin’s soon-to-be-released book, Cold Call Algo, is a bold playbook for modern sales pros navigating this AI world we find ourselves in – a book about reviving and reinventing cold calling in the age of automation. Justin, great to have you on the show. Thanks so much for being with us. 

Justin Michael (01:27) 
Well, thank you so much. I’m excited to talk with you today. Demand gen and appointment setting are near and dear to my heart. I did that full-time for a couple of years, with about a hundred different start-ups at once. So I know the three-ring flying circus that can be. A lot of the material I continue to write comes out of the very unique and distinct problems of trying to scale up top of funnel. 

Richard Lane (01:50) 
Excellent. Well, look – great to have you on as our guest, appreciate it. As I mentioned, you’ve got a book coming out. Do you want to just give us a quick overview? I guess you’ve already mentioned the genesis of it, but yeah, give us a quick plug and tell us what to look out for. 

Justin Michael (02:07) 
Definitely. I’ve been in sales since 2001 – so going on 24 years now – and in my mid-thirties, I saw a gap in the market as I was introduced to things like Sandler, Challenger, and SPIN, and what I realised was: there are rigorous methodologies for once you have a fish on the line – essentially to progress, negotiate and close deals – that bow-tie framework, if you will. But at the very top of the funnel, up here, the main systems didn’t… there wasn’t much of a rigorous or sophisticated system for TOFU – for top of funnel. 

Richard Lane (02:33) 
Yeah. 

Justin Michael (02:44) 
So I set out to build that. And in 2021, I wrote a book with Tony Hughes. I was the case study prior for something called combo prospecting. That book was called Tech-Powered Sales. It was actually first called Sales Tech, but I don’t think HarperCollins knew about Sales Hacker and Max Altschuler. So we took a poll, and went with Tech-Powered Sales. 

We predicted ChatGPT in that book and we predicted the future of the sales industry through to 2035. So it’s still very relevant – it’s still selling very well, in fact. 

Richard Lane (03:08) 
OK. 

Justin Michael (03:10) 
One of my audience members was in Kuala Lumpur two days ago and sent me a photo of a shrink-wrapped copy of Tech-Powered Sales – so it’s out there. It’s selling, right? Might be these books that are pushing it. 

But essentially, we looked at automating 70% of the top of funnel. And two things have happened. One, LinkedIn has refused to open its API. You can scrape publicly available LinkedIn data – I don’t know how long that ruling will hold – but they lost a ruling, and that allows a lot of companies to look at that publicly available data. But you can’t actually get in there and access the true data of LinkedIn. So they have that as their moat – their walled garden. That’s fine. 

Justin Michael (03:44) 
Number two, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last year declared that digital twins are illegal for AI voice. So I can make a perfect model of Justin Michael as a voice AI – it can look like me, sound like me – but the FCC said no way. Australia said no. The EU, with GDPR, of course, said no. 

So if we can’t automate LinkedIn for real, and we can’t have AI synthesise the voice, we cannot automate 100% of the top of funnel. These companies that say they’re “AI SDR” or “100% outbound automation” – that’s illegal. $150,000 fine. 

Justin Michael (04:16) 
So enter Cold Call Algo. I’ve advised over 200 start-ups in the past five years, and the number one channel remains the phone. 

There are systemic problems with it though. One – the list is the strategy. 40% of the data is bad from the major providers. So you end up buying multiple providers and creating a data lake – very difficult. You might try a VA operation – very difficult. 

Using AI for algorithmic scraping and verification to get a pure list is key. We talk about the targeting in the book. But essentially, there’s never been an enterprise-grade cold calling book. The only guy who’s done it is Art Sobczak, with a book called Smart Calling. 

I love Art, because in that book he talks about not using permission-based openers. He talks about status – and a lot of those Oren Klaff elements of pitching VCs. 

Justin Michael (05:00) 
A lot of the phone techniques we see now are from the ’90s. “Hey Rich, can I get 30 seconds of your time?” “It’s a cold call – want to roll the dice?” It’s gimmicky. It’s transactional. B2C-style. 

This book is about enterprise C-level psychology – power, status, frame control, speaking C-level, gravitas, swagger. How do we do this on the phone? If you’re 22 and you’re new – terrified – what do you do? How do we train them up? 

Justin Michael (05:26) 
The second piece is: how do we take the phone and make it AI-powered – or AI-empowered? 

We can’t automate the call itself. We still need a human. So what are all the tools we can think of? How do we find the right triggers, prioritise? How do we do the research and the point of view? 

Richard Lane (05:39) 
Yeah. 

Justin Michael [5:45] 
Hold the calls, analyse the calls, follow up after the calls—and then all the tech stacks around it. So in many ways, it’s the heir apparent and the offspring of Tech-Powered Sales. It’s the way I endeavoured to write the sequel to Predictable Revenue, and Aaron Ross wrote the foreword for Tech-Powered Sales. Mark Roberge blessed it and left a great recommendation. 

Richard Lane [5:53] 
Yeah. 

Justin Michael [6:05] 
This is now the current situation—between 2025 and 2035. I was compelled to write the book because my name wasn’t on Combo Prospecting and I was the case study. And for 20 years, I’ve made my living with my voice—as you can tell, that’s what I do. I speak and I write. I’ve written eight books, and it’s a disease. 

Richard Lane [6:26] 
Very good. I mean, what I loved about the book—reading it through—was how you go into a lot of detail about the tech stacks for the different plays. Just putting it all together for people. I think let’s come back to that, but maybe to get us started… 

 At durhamlane, we have our 10 sales mantras. Mantra #1 is business fit, business value—developing long-term relationships. I think that comes through in your book as well. But maybe just to get us started—and I know you talk quite aggressively actually at the beginning of the book about how the world has changed— 
 
What’s the first outdated sales habit you’d outlaw tomorrow if you were king? 

Justin Michael [7:18] 
There are 10 million tech sales reps. A lot of them work for other people—they don’t work for themselves. So the advantage you have as an agency is you can go out and get five domains and three emails per domain. You can spin up 15 or 30 email addresses, put them through Clay, build Clay tables, and work at very high scales. 

The average rep in a SaaS company—from AE to VP to even CRO—gets one Gmail address. I have one for my corporate C Corp. 

Richard Lane [7:42] 
Yeah, yeah. 

Justin Michael [7:46] 
Send 75 emails and it shuts off. So you have a super-throttled email. Email is now about one in a thousand for hitting. 

Since Tech-Powered Sales, the second channel is now LinkedIn. Phone is first, LinkedIn is second, and email is third—it’s the tertiary channel. 

The only way to hack into email is to get lots of domains, and we’re not seeing companies get sophisticated with that yet. Companies have gone gangbusters finally for dialers—power dialers and parallel-assisted dialers—but that also doesn’t work if you have 40% dirty data. If you pump that into a 4 to 10X dialer— Then you’re just spamming the TAM. 

I was really excited to see that Orum, for example, has a power dialer and a parallel-assisted dialer. If you have clean phone numbers and you know they pick up—priority one, you dial them with a power dialer. Say I have your cell phone. Priority two—if it’s murky—we throw those through the parallel-assisted dialer. So there’s different tech you’re using for different elements. This is the most sophisticated, surgical approach. 
 
That’s what’s really changed. The holy grail of my last books was: find the cell phones and blast them all through our unparalleled dialers. 

The other cool thing is Orum has Boost Connect and Connect & Sell. You can impute the time of day you’re most likely to respond. 
 
We can use AI to understand when you’ll respond and by what channel. So that’s powerful. 

You have to look at your list in a much different way now. Companies like titanx.io or cloudlead.co can go in and verify and validate phone numbers. Imagine giving a rep 50 numbers to call—and they all pick up. 

What really tipped me off to this new reality was ConnectAndSell research. They looked at 100 million phone numbers and then 10 million more recently. 50% of meetings that were held were fully navigated dials. That means phone trees and IVRs—because in the pandemic, you call the switchboard, dial 362 and it routes to their cell phone. 

Justin Michael [10:03] 
So there’s this crazy merge of that. In the main data sets, only 7–10% are cell phone data. What’s coming up in the data is that 20% of humans pick up ever. I mean, I don’t have a voice mail. 

My 75-year-old mother can’t reach me now—it’s awesome. Finally pulled the plug. 

I’m a huge proponent of leaving lots of voicemails—that works well. That’s the combo technique we talk about in the book: a mysterious 90% callback voicemail. 

This book is about the psychology of who to call, how to build the list, what tech to use, and then how to go at it with different priorities and approaches. 

Justin Michael [10:31] 
I pioneered that on email. I always said email is like a triangle—the higher up you go, the slower and more hyper-personalised, the lower down, the more automated. That’s been key. But now we can apply that nuanced approach to the phone. 

I’m curious how you do it in your agency, actually. 

Richard Lane [10:42] 
Yeah. 

Richard Lane [10:50] 
I mean, we’re phone-first. We’re omnichannel, but we know that phone is more successful. We’re trying lots of different tools and techniques. Titan X is one that’s really working for us at the moment—I know Charles works with it. 

We’ve been doing some great work with it, and it’s taken our connect rates to a new level. 

Richard Lane [11:16] 
I think you cover this really nicely in the book, Justin, which is— 

Richard Lane [11:20] 
You still need to be a skilled sales pro, right? Technology has made people think, “Because we have technology, we don’t need to empower or skill up people.” 

But actually, what really is the truth and comes through in your book is that: you need more skill than ever, but it’s how do you reach the people that you need to be speaking with? 

Richard Lane [11:46] 
But what you’re saying is that now there’s so much opportunity with the technology we have available to amplify yourself—so that your at-bats are more frequent. Would that be fair? 

Justin Michael [11:58] 
I’d say the at-bats were far greater 10 years ago. Most people won’t get these technologies unless they get Cloudlead or Titan X. Cognism has Diamond Leads now. I think ZoomInfo is doing it too. The data vendors will have to step up their game. 

It’s harder than ever now to reach someone. You do 100 dials and maybe get three executive assistants. 

Richard Lane [12:22] 
Yeah. 

Justin Michael [12:23] 
The book first gets you on the phone with the right people by fixing your tech stack. Now you can get higher connect rates—like 25%. Most people are talking to five decision-makers a week. They’re dialling for an hour or two a day—or not at all. 

So they give up. They’re digital-first. Silent sales floor. 

From the perspective you just shared—confidence, swagger, acumen—okay, you’ve got a VP on the phone, or a CxO. 

Justin Michael [12:56] 
Is the best opener really: Can I get 27 seconds of your time? 

Well, actually yes—if you use the right tone. 

Justin Michael [13:01] 
The book unifies permission-based openers and non-permission-based openers. That’s what ALGO is. It’s an algorithm, but it stands for Ask, Level, Glitch, Offer—and it’s an ASK-based opener. 

The biggest shift is to open with, “Hey, the reason for my call…” instead of talking over people—which makes them feel waterboarded. 

I had this framework called Route, Ruin, Multiply—which was about asking an open question. 

We now nest RRM into the ALGO framework. And then there’s this GRIP framework— 

Justin Michael [13:39] 
It helps change the polarity of the first call so they want to meet with you. 

Justin Michael [13:46] 
You leverage the phone and AI to get in front of powerful people, relate to them extremely quickly, and have them feel like you’re at equal business status. The goal is: they want to meet with you and bring their colleagues. 

That’s the Holy Grail. 

But how do you do it now? Most techniques and books are about first impressions. You walk in and say, 

Justin Michael [14:04] 
“Oh hey, Richard, you’re going to hate me—this is a cold call. I’m sorry.” 

Richard Lane [14:08]: 
Or maybe you’re going to offer me a voucher to speak to you. 

Justin Michael [14:11]: 
I will, you know, I’ll give you a gift card if you meet with me. It’s very Casper milk-toast, which is a way back—throwback. But all you have to do, essentially, is just think of dating and everything and all these bugs. Oren Klaff and I always laugh about this. But you would never say, “Well, how’s the date going? Would you go on another one?” right here. Or did you do an upfront contract? You know, “I’m going to sit with you, and we’re going to eat dinner. If you think I’m charming and amazing, let’s do it. We’re going to meet again.” Or, “Let’s get married.” Like, it’s just also backwards. So we do LinkedIn wrong that way too. We pitched that, but… 

Justin Michael [14:41]: 
The whole modality of using a phone is like… 

Justin Michael [14:43]: 
It’s very passive — calling low, being timid, being polite because, you know, when you call powerful people and you ask for permission for things, they really appreciate the respect. No, it’s like… they’re sparkling. They don’t mistreat you, but they don’t take you seriously when you’re bold and you lead with insight and you ask an interesting open question. If you do a pattern interrupt—the book has 25 different openers that no one’s seen. It’s got, you know, the first-ever opening framework. I think that’s different. That’s acronymic. So this is sort of like… 

Justin Michael [15:14]: 
A gap or a spin or a challenger for the top of funnel. It’s going to organise reps and give them stuff that works. I shared it with… 

Justin Michael [15:23]: 
A rep that I’m coaching down in Brisbane and he was getting like, you know, six callbacks on ten voicemails. He’s been having tremendous success using the techniques. I’ve got reps at ZoomInfo running this stuff, and so far the testing has been amazing. 

Richard Lane [15:38]: 
And you used earlier the word “gravitas,” which I think is such a key part of getting someone’s attention. So, you know, how do you get gravitas? Well, you need to be knowledgeable, you need to understand, you need to be putting your feet in their shoes. You need to be looking to solve challenges that you’ve understood possibly exist out there. 

Richard Lane [16:03]: 
Our mantra three — I always talk about our mantras — it’s: be interested to be interesting. 

Richard Lane [16:10]: 
So the more interested we are in other people, the more interesting we become to them, which is the way things tend to work. But again, when you, you know, you should be excited that someone has actually picked up the phone to you, because they should be excited that you’re on their end of the phone to them, because you’re going to help them and create, you know, create a better world for them hopefully. 

Justin Michael [16:29]: 
It’s true, and it is a paradox, ’cause you act excited and it comes across as salesy. You’re nervous. So acting neutral, calm, and in control is really important. Doing research before every call is wildly inefficient, because if you use ask-based openers, they tell you the insider baseball. For example, you read their LinkedIn, the first pages of four pages of Google, the 10-K, the 10-Q, the DEF 14, proxy statements—everything you got, all chat, CPT, Perplexity. You’re ready to go and you go on the phone with them like, “So you know what’s going on.” 

Justin Michael [16:58]: 
You know, inside the company, like, “Well, the CMO just left, we just switched off Marketo. We were on his cost-cutting thing. We’re trying to…” like all this stuff that’s not inside a treaty but insider baseball, really information. So when you’re doing enterprise sales and everything’s sort of like that now—nothing’s transactional, usually 11 stakeholders—your best bet is to call in and around and all over and gain intel and then bring it in. And, you know, I’ve seen that concept a lot. 

Justin Michael [17:24]: 
The founder of SalesLoft, Kyle Porter, who likes this, where you, you know, call around and gain real data and then take that decision, goes, “Hey, I was talking to the sales team. I was talking to the engineering team,” and he developed a POV. And my friend Jamal Rhymer has developed software called Wiser that uses… 

Justin Michael [17:42]: 
AI and ML. You should check that out: app.wyzer. 

Richard Lane [17:45]: 
Had Jamal on this podcast a couple of years ago? Yeah, that’s right. 

Justin Michael [17:48]: 
Yeah. So, yeah, he has an app now, WYZER, app.wiser.com. It uses these cool decision trees and it forms an enterprise point of view. So if you have time to do that at account level and then go in and go like, “Hey, I see your EBITDA’s down, or there’s a profitability issue, or your tariffs are affecting you, or there’s a chip shortage.” Like, if you have some kind of macro or micro trend that you can bring, that is powerful. But yeah, I’ve been most effective like you said, being curious… 

Justin Michael [18:15]: 
Asking open-ended questions. 

Justin Michael [18:18]: 
Listening, effective. 

Justin Michael [18:19]: 
Throwing the spotlight right over to them using pattern interrupts, coming in with weird angles — even saying, “I have a weird question for you,” using intrigue and curiosity like calling and leaving a voicemail is like, “I wanna run one thing by you. OK, here’s my number.” And then they’re like, “Wait, what is it?” And curiosity kills the cat. And I think that all does go back to Sandler and don’t spill your candy in the lobby. I mean, you always want to leave one extra slide as the Netflix cliffhanger model. So I’ve talked about a lot of these formats, but… 

Justin Michael [18:46]: 
I wanted to teach people what I did for 20 years on phones to set world records. I broke into Fortune 10 — I mean, I’m not going to name the companies for NDA reasons — but they’re the biggest companies in the world I’ve opened and closed business with. I used to meet with a startup CEO. First day I said, “OK, give me the most impossible account you want to get into,” and then using the phone I would get in and close that deal in the first quarter, often. 

Richard Lane [19:10]: 
So how’s — can you help our listeners? Obviously, when they buy your book, then they’ll be able to get all the details. But in the meantime, Justin, could you share: if you could only have a small set of tools for your outbound prospecting, what would you put together? 

Justin Michael [19:37]: 
Yeah. So that was the other huge lesson: if you’re running a team, you double down and invest in tech stacks, training, enablement. Right now everyone’s just getting random patchworks of AI. The thing is, I wanted to create the MacGyver approach. So for me, I just built a simple Excel or Google shared spreadsheet. I have this thing called the Account-Based Sales Development process, which is modelled off Lars Nelson who took Cloudera stratospherically and also Snowflake’s STR team. 

Justin Michael [20:07]: 
It’s a stack-ranking tracker mechanism. You can build it in Monday.com the way that you do the tracking, memorise the switchboards and keep it up so you can get 5 to 12 touches. Now I’m the honey badger. I’m known for, much like Jeb Blount, leaving 40–50 voicemails, just calling people incessantly, patiently, persistently with finesse. So you need Google Sheets, cell phone, and LinkedIn Navigator. That’s it. So that technique is a silver lining in the book. You’ll buy the book, you’ll crush it that way. You can use the codex and my other work.  

If you do have some budget and you can get something like tightenextio or cloudlead or cloudlead Co or data from task minions—like you either have a human VA or team, or you have some kind of API calling or scraping mechanism or algorithmic priority cleaning, enriching—that would be the most powerful. And if you’re a sales leader listening to this, the list is the strategy. Try to get your data over 85% clean. 

Justin Michael [21:04]: 
Because then the connect rates go to, you know, over 20%. 

Justin Michael [21:07]: 
And it’s like 2007 again and you’re having this experience, Richard, you know. 

Richard Lane [21:08]: 
Yeah. 

Richard Lane [21:11]: 
And that—and that seems— that seemed my sort of where I’m coming to or from all of the investigation I’m doing is that it’s very quickly coming back to your data, you know. And I think people out there are investing huge amounts of money in shiny tech still, without sorting the data. And if your data isn’t right then— 

Richard Lane [21:34]: 
It’s really hard work. 

Justin Michael [21:36]: 
All the problems are upstream on RevOps. Same with email, right? You gotta have healthy domains that are warm for six weeks and they’re clean. I’ve had a situation where clients are sending, you know, 200 emails a day. I said, “Use your personal Gmail.” Boom. They send and then leaders are like, “What’s the right subject line and how should we personalise?” I don’t think they’re right. I’m like, none of your emails are getting through. And then I start doing some dialing and it’s like, oh, you know, someone dialed for four hours yesterday and got one person. 

Richard Lane [21:43]: 
Yeah. 

Justin Michael [22:02]: 
It’s—it’s like, you know, hopeless. So I’m from the old school where I would sit and call switchboards for four hours every day. 

Justin Michael (22:10) 
So this also speeds you up — and even if you’re an Account Executive or VP, everybody prospects. I had this awesome CCO, Ryan Buma. He worked for Mark Hurd at Oracle, and he always said, “Everyone prospects.” He even prospected as a Chief Customer Officer, running an $80 million run-rate company. 

But this book is going to be a shot in the arm. One, it’s going to expose you to what the lead enterprise sellers do. 

Justin Michael (22:37) 
if you sell something else, everything is political. Nothing is transactional anymore. I remember I did a $10,000 deal with the president of this sunglasses company — very famous — and he came in to stamp it. And I was shocked. It was 10 grand! But because of Sarbanes-Oxley and all the oversight, the C-levels are crawling around a lot of these accounts. So I wouldn’t assume you can just call one person — unless you’re doing like Groupon offers. 

This book talks about power, multithreading, persuasion, reverse psychology — and the entire thing is quick. It’s a 35,000-word book. It reads like The Terminal List or Jack Ryan. It’s like a Navy SEAL book. 

Justin Michael (23:12) 
Kilman. Well, it’s like a Jocko Willink, David Goggins-type vibe. I’ve never written anything quite so thrilling. It quickens your pulse — it gives you that feeling of when you do connect with the C-level, and you’re like… you’re there. 

Richard Lane (23:14) 
Yeah. 

Justin Michael (23:24) 
And so it’s a thrill to read. Read it many times — you’ll find lots of Easter eggs. All 13 or 14 chapters have an AI Power Play. So we’ve got prompt engineering in there — what to do with Clay, if you’re into that. If you’re not, there are still a bunch of different giveaways. 

If you go to coldcallalgo.com, there’s a few different things you can do — some hidden training, a math-of-sales calculator, all that good stuff. 

Richard Lane (23:49) 
Excellent. A couple of things that I really liked — the “sales physics” I think you’ve got in there, which I thought was cool. 

So your Cold Call Algorithm — exponential growth reach as a seller. It’s still so important to be a great seller, and now you’ve got the opportunity to supercharge your reach and your activity through the use of technology. 

Rather than being a slave to technology, you make the technology work for you. I think that’s it — a key time. 

Richard Lane (24:19) 
A new time is upon us. That felt quite Terminator-like… but yeah. 

Justin Michael (24:25) 
Yeah. Well, Charles is an amazing operator. He’s been involved in editing a lot of my books, and it’s great to do this one with him, as Tony did books with me. You sort of pass the torch. 

But the key thing here is that we are living in a brand-new era. He came from Wall Street, so he’s really good with calculations and math. And my grandfather’s a nuclear physicist. So I definitely punch above my weight — my brother’s at Google. 

Justin Michael (24:51) 
But this book is actually extremely simple. There are probably 50 million GTM people, 10 million sellers — there are about 750,000 SDRs. I think that’s going to double. 

I think we’re going to see about 2 million people sitting at the top of the funnel. It’s not going to be called SDR necessarily — so the red herring thinking is going away. 

Justin Michael (25:05) 
But the workflows, as Matt Millen and Reggie talked about — it’s just getting so difficult to instrument all these disparate solutions. We may have agents doing it. So the top of the funnel’s going to get noisier, and you’re going to need better approaches. 

And I think this is the book. I’ve read every other single book, I’ve tried every method, I’ve spent 20,000 hours on the phone for 20 years — and I’m just really excited and confident about it. I think it’s going to really help a lot of people. 

Richard Lane (25:33) 
Yeah, 100%. You talked about it — cold calling in the age of AI isn’t about effort, it’s about orchestration. And I think that’s what you’re saying — it’s around: 

How do I use the tools and technologies available to orchestrate my go-to-market? And still have me as the person that brings the gravitas, brings the knowledge, brings the interest — doing all of the things that great sales pros should be doing. 

Richard Lane (26:00) 
But at scale, I think. 

Justin Michael (26:03) 
Yeah. We need to free up the human. 

Justin Michael (26:07) 
And there’s really — I take this from Jim Holden, and it’s not really in the book, but I put it in some takeaway as a strategic selling Easter egg — you see, the whole industry is built by technical people who write software, like my brother. They’re engineers. 

So they figure: products → features → feature-function-benefit. And if they just get that right, they’re going to win. 

No. That’s level one. Level two — it’s going to be the Holden four stages. It’s compete. Or: if I just show the differentiator… 

Well, everything’s a commodity now. 

Justin Michael (26:32) 
So the only thing that can differentiate as a seller… is how you sell. 
 
Justin Michael [26:36]: 
That’s why Jeb Blount’s People Buy You is so interesting as a concept. When they go to Gartner and CEB, they look at the data: “The seller didn’t understand my business” or “I bought from the more expensive one ‘cause I just related to the seller.” So the human factor is massive from a neuroscience level. The third level is political selling—understand their internal politics and your own. And the fourth is trusted advisor—we’re on the same side of the table. So here’s the thing: 80% of sellers service existing demand but 20% create demand. So this whole CEB challenger thing of where 70% [are] through the buying process— 

Justin Michael [27:08]: 
No amazing salespeople can, you know, it’s the chat homes. Period. Pyramid, 3% of the market; another 7% are entertaining; but up to 40% you can—you can turn. So you can use this book to reach out to 100 people and have a fighting chance with 40. 

Richard Lane [27:18]: 
Yeah. 

Justin Michael [27:24]: 
Based on the way you craft the message, the way you trigger them emotionally, and using reverse psychology techniques, you can trigger latent pain and buyers buy—and buyers buy more. So it’s really interesting. I’ve been able to, over the years, over the last 20 years, go after— 

Justin Michael [27:42]: 
Like the Dream 100 or Dream 200 and unlock 20% of that list, which goes back to Scott Britton, who did a company called Troops. 

Justin Michael [27:51]: 
It’s just a great story that you got, you know, 20% of his counts unlocked. So yeah, I’ve been writing books since 2016. I’m almost 10 years into the journey on three different publishers. So this is all my learnings from also writing books and adult pedagogy. 

Richard Lane [28:08]: 
Well, well, it’s a—it’s a great read, Justin. And as I said at the top of the call, I love the way that you’re blending in the, you know, the people, the people from people, but powered by technology. And at durhamlane, we look at people, process, technology, and data and try and blend those together. So I’ll be going through— 

Richard Lane [28:34]: 
Your book with a fine tooth comb. And as I say, we’re using some of the tech that you mentioned, certainly for sure at the moment and others that we’ll be investigating. 

Richard Lane [28:44]: 
Any final words before we wrap? I’m conscious of time. So we’ve gone on the journey, been great to get the background and understanding of the book and your books. 

Justin Michael [28:55]: 
Yeah, just hit me up on LinkedIn and I’ll get you 17 codecs guides if you haven’t gotten those. Would love to hear how it’s working for you. 

Richard Lane [29:05]: 
Brilliant. Well, look, really appreciate you coming on the podcast, Justin. I’m sure the listeners will have really enjoyed the conversation. We’ll put the link to the book in the notes when we release it, and all the best with the launch in the next couple of weeks. 

Justin Michael [29:20]: 
Thank you so much. Thanks, Rich. 

Richard Lane [29:22]: 
Thank you.