CODEX XII

Booking More Meetings

With Strategic
Unconventionality

Codex XII discord.gg/hypcccycl | salesborgs.ai

"If Everyone Else Is Zigging, Zag”
Look out across the messaging being pitched for cold calls and emails. Notice a
pattern? A lot of it looks the same. Vanilla. Blase. Run of the mill. Par for the course.
Try the same strategies in war over and over and you'll lose. Again and again. So
how can you differentiate yourself and stand out?
Using a combination of first principles thinking and tried and true pattern interrupts
honed over 20,000 hours of cold calls (and hundrends of thousands of emails), I've
learned what cuts through the clutter - and separates the signal from the noise.
Welcome to unconventional communication.
If at any point you feel uncomfortable reading these approaches...
...they're working.

Principles
1st Principle Thinking
To stand out, you need to break down complicated problems into basic elements
and then reassemble them from the ground up. This concept is called “first
principles.”
Elon Musk inspires us all to think about this practice. He looks at a rocket and thinks
along these lines: “The model is broken, so what if I deconstruct it into its simplest
elements and start at the beginning?”. Then came cars and solar panels. So how do
we break down sales?
Sales — in its simplest form — is akin to warfare.

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Like a castle under siege, we're trying to break through to the right person. If sales is
war, then how do we view our prospecting through that lens? Looking at the most
effective strategies, we see metaphors arising in the form of guerilla warfare and
asymmetric warfare.
Classically, these methods of waging war are inherently disruptive.
Hit-and-run, attacking from different fronts, angles, and through varying methods
have allowed conquerors throughout history to win.
How then, do we develop disruptive messaging and win that account?

Interrupt
Pattern Interrupts
The Purple Cow by marketing guru Seth Godin is a simple application of the neuro-
linguistic programming technique we call “‘pattern interrupt.”
Write something so bizarre that most are unlikely to forget.
This concept influences every word of my prospecting messages, concepts in
branding, and sales approaches.
Stu Heinecke applies this approach to contact marketing in his magnum opus,

How To Get A Meeting With Anyone. He explains how he was getting a 100%

response rate and setting meetings with impossibly unavailable executives by

sending original cartoons via courier, inked by him on posterboards or etched

into wooden planks.

If everyone is igging, zag.
z

If all the brands are blue, go red.

Codex XII discord.gg/hypcccycl | salesborgs.ai

Application
Outbound Emails + Cold Calls
Studying the most common email templates in widespread circulation, it makes me
uncomfortable to think about how similar they are.
Even just a simple thought experiment scaling the proposed 3-paragraph
“personalize, value prop, social proof, personalize, CTA” format to the point where
everyone leverages the concept makes you wonder why anyone thought it was a
good idea.
Same with the popular phone scripts du jour.
My techniques prove effective because short-form messaging is processed in 3

seconds whereas 3 paragraph emails take 13 seconds. We process images 60,000

times faster than text. As a kicker, it’s also out of the ordinary to open a Venn
Diagram or explainer GIF (use getcloudapp.com) as a reply bump to the 3 sentence
sales email that cuts straight to the point. Anything other than self-worshipping
product marketing language would make you double take.
Shawn Sease used to put 4 blue dot emojis in his subject lines and eventually
pointed out that Best Buy started using the technique. Did Best Buy catch the wave
from Shawn?
As homosapiens, our complex language skills allow for a wide range of pattern
interrupts, so here are some specific and fun examples I use because I’ve seen them
convert empirically:

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Examples
Time-Tested Tactics
Remove pleasantry — no need to say “hope you’re doing well,” or “in these
uncertain times” - we need a 10 year moratorium on these phrases
Lack of formality — “Hey Jane,” vs. “Hi” or “Dear Sir or Madame” — generally
speaking, colloquial speech works better
Drop expected formatting — No first name, no CTA, no formatting, no
capitalization (Aaron Ross classic!), no salutation, no sign off
Grammar funk — Don’t even write in complete sentences, make it look choppy
like business poetry — humanize and desterilize your language
Just a picture with “thoughts?” — also a pattern interrupt because it’s a one-
word reply email (Venn Diagrams with competitors on the outside, you in the
middle work great)
Hyperbole — “Would it be a crime against humanity if I asked you to spend 7
minutes with me?” This is Voss negative labeling coupled with the fact you’re not
asking for 7 instead of 15 minutes. I once asked for 13 minutes and the prospect
responded, “I’ll give you 12!”
Humor — ”Before I start checking milk cartons, think we could hop on a zoom?”
Take a risk to be funny, it converts. You can never make everyone happy but
should also avoid self limiting beliefs. Talk to Jon Selig about how to write jokes
in a B2B context, he had some classes going in 2020. Keep it classy San Diego
GIFs — Embedding a GIF into an email in a world where everyone else is
hyperlinking. Spongebob converts; just ask Stephen Chase, the Sales Weasel
Facetime drop — can you imagine jumping in via this most personal and typically
stranger-free medium
Hyper-personalization — this is the kind where you synthesize multiple insights
combining both deep industry insight and references customized for the

Codex XII discord.gg/hypcccycl | salesborgs.ai

 individual. Things like quoting and timestamping something from a recent
podcast they were on, a previous article they were mentioned in, and tying it
together with relevancy. Avoid hacky and forced personalization like, “I noticed
you went to BU, go Terriers! BTW you wanna buy something?”

Venns
A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words
Sending a Venn is something that marketing probably won't recommend. Which is
exactly why you should send one: it's disruptive. I usually send them as the third part
of my sequence. The core idea is to show your product as the all-in-one solution
relative to a variety of companies offering single, disparate features. It shows that
your company is the solution for your target's problems.
Here's how to make them:
Open Google Sheets > Insert > Drawin
In the Drawing sandbox, click the Shapes button and add 3 - 6 circles in a
concentric pattern. You can adjust the circle transparency by clicking "Custom" on
the color picker
Place a title next to each circle representing a feature that your solution offers.
For example, Business Analytics. And then place the logos of companies offering
just that feature in your space
Use custom Google Image searches to find HD PNG company logos to place in
those feature circles. Include the word "png" in your search and click "Tools" and
then select "Large" to get a hi-res logo. You can also pull quick templates from
Lucidchart and overlay the logos (no need to draw the circles).
I've included below some examples of Venns I've used in the past.

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Codex XII discord.gg/hypcccycl | salesborgs.ai
Outcomes
Meetings, Meetings, Meetings
On first email, set a meeting with CDO McDonald's, on first send VP of Mobile,

F100 called back cell phone in signature and said, "Pitch me!"
Unconventional messaging works if you work it.
Implement these pattern interrupts and Venns and you'll see your metrics

improve drastically.

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