David J.P. Fisher

Sales Manager

I work with our sales leadership to create best-in-class resources for our salespeople and customer-facing team members to leverage social media and social networking platforms.  My goal is to help them create more effective relationships through engagement and authentic conversations.  

To do that, I'm responsible for creating a strategic roadmap for our social selling program and then executing upon it.  That ranges from building and delivering training and coaching programs to helping to craft the assets our team needs to communicate the SAS story.

Principal Sales Enablement Program Manager - Global Social Selling Lead

Sr. Sales Enablement Program Manager - Global Social Selling Lead

RockStar Consulting

I started RockStar to support people with their personal and professional development.  I've worked with thousands of sales professionals, entrepreneurs, and small business owners to develop foundational sales skills and digital acumen.  Currently my work focuses on helping sales and marketing leaders leverage digital tools and LinkedIn to improve their online presence and build more and stronger relationships with existing and potential customers.

I work principally as a lead consultant and trainer, helping to develop messaging and content while also delivering trainings and coaching to our clients.

I've written over 400 articles and 12 books, including the best-sellers Hyper-Connected Selling, Networking in the 21st Century on LinkedIn, and Networking in the 21st Century: Why Your Network Sucks and What to Do About It.

RockStar Consulting is a professional development consultancy focus on providing LinkedIn coaching and messaging support, social selling training, and fractional sales coaching/management services.  

We help people become RockStars in our home of Chicago and around the world.

President

The Sales Sherpa™ Path

I deliver keynotes and workshops for associations, conferences, financial service firms, sales teams, and entrepreneur groups around the country and world.  My work helps professionals walk the Sales Sherpa™ Path, a sales approach that focuses on the convergence of social selling, networking, and old-school sales skills.  The goal is to position yourself as a trusted resource even before your buyers become prospects.  

My most popular topics include:

Being the Sales Sherpa: Winning More Business by Leveraging Digital Influence and Creating Human Connection
Networking in the 21st Century: Finding Sales Success Through Connection
The Social Sales Leader: Engaging and Enabling Your Team on Social
Sales Skills 7.0: Creating Opportunities by Integrating the Online and Offline World

Keynote Speaker, Author, & Trainer

The Beer, Beats, & Business Podcast

A semi-regular podcast featuring interviews with entrepreneurs, experts, authors, and artists. All 7 seasons  are available on the major podcast apps.  I was the host on the microphone and also ran the production side.

Podcast Host and Producer

The C-Suite Network

C-Suite Network Advisors are select industry thought leaders who provide services for C-Suite executives and enterprise businesses. These business experts and thought leaders consist of a mix of consultants, speakers, authors, podcasters, TV contributors, trainers and coaches.

C-Suite Network Advisor

Ajax Workforce Marketing

Ajax was a branding agency that specialized in Workforce Marketing, and was the only official partner of LinkedIn for branding and training in North America.  My particular focus was internal and external training and development.  I developed training programs so that the employees of our client companies could make LinkedIn and social media an integral part of their daily business life (one that makes their jobs easier and more effective).

Focus Areas: LinkedIn training, social media strategy, sales, networking, business development, training programs, communication skills

Director of Training

Brinks Home Security

I managed the Chicago sales force for one of the most recognized brands in the world.  I interviewed and trained new hires as well as managed a team of sales reps (including three of the top 20 reps in the company).  I facilitated the communication between our sales team and all aspects of product delivery to make sure we delivered what we promised.

Focus Areas: sales management, training, recruiting, interviewing, territory management, sales, marketing, security systems

Cutco/Vector

As a district manager for Vector Marketing, I had the opportunity to run all aspects of a half a million dollar a year sales company.  From P&L budgeting to marketing, business planning to training, I did it all.  During my career there I trained and coached over 1,500 sales representatives, and spoke in front of groups from 5-500 over 20 hours every week.  It gave me the opportunity to hone my coaching and speaking skills on a massive scale.

Focus Areas: sales, training and development, marketing, entrepreneurship, business planning, recruiting, staff development, sales meetings

District Manager

I was one of the college kids selling Cutco knives in people's homes to help put myself through school.  I would eventually do thousands of presentations (strictly through referral) at kitchen tables around Chicagoland, selling almost a quarter of a million dollars in cutlery - becoming one of their top salespeople and eventually a National Top 10 scholarsip winner.   It was an amazing opportunity for a young professional, and I learned the value of a product you can stand behind, a solid sales presentation, and engaging with your customers with questions to find the needs you can solve.

Focus Areas: sales, lead generation, referrals, direct sales, customer service, cutlery

Field Sales Manager

The modern seller needs to effectively mix digital literacy and traditional human-to-human interaction to be successful.  I work with our sales leadership, marketing, and sales enablement teams to bring the best training, content, and assets available to our front line sales and customer-facing team members.

I want to help them build digital influence and create stronger personal connections that create results.  To be success with social selling, you need to be both "social" and "selling".

In all of my work, my goal is to teach professionals how to be Sales Sherpas™.   When they walk the Sales Sherpa Path they harness the power of relationships to uncover new opportunities and make existing business easier.

I have written 12 books including the best-sellers “Hyper-Connected Selling” and "Networking in the 21st Century".  I am also the host of "Beer, Beats, and Business", a podcast that shares my casual conversations with leaders in sales, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

And if you were curious about my nickname, I played the drums in a band for many years.  Though I don't play as much anymore, everyone still uses the nickname I earned back then. So the next time we chat, feel free to call me D. Fish.

If you are looking to leverage LinkedIn, social networking, and traditional human-to-human interaction to win more business, reach out and connect.

Global Social Selling Lead - Sr. Sales Enablement Program Manager 

I'll cold call for you.

Try me out for £1,000.

30-50 conversations with your target market.

I'll provide the list, mobile numbers, and reporting.

All I need to know is the problems you solve, who you solve them for, and why they'd be motivated to solve them.

If it goes well, we keep working together.

If not, you walk away.

Mark Bangs

“Just pick up the phone to grow your business.”

It’s ok advice, but it misses most of what actually makes outbound work.

Before a single dial happens, you need to:

- Build a quality list without Sales Nav sprinkling in Yoga Instructors and Chemistry Professors

- Find reliable data that isn't full of wrong numbers

- Set up a CRM so you can stay on top of tasks

- Choose and configure a dialler so you're not manually calling everything

- Write and refine messaging that doesn't make you sound like a call centre in Bangalore

- Track follow ups (it takes us 4.2 dial attempts on avg to get a conversation with someone)

- Work the list consistently

That’s a big ask for a founder who’s already wearing five hats.

What usually happens is this:

A few good sessions, a few missed ones, and that non-negotiable “prospecting time” ends up being quietly removed from the calendar.

At that point, most revert back to relying on referrals or inbound,  neither of which are scaleable or consistent.

The truth is, cold calling works.

But it only works when it’s done systematically, every day, at volume, by people who live and breathe it.

That’s why founders outsource it.

Not because they can’t do it but because it's a ballache.

I book qualified meetings for founders and MDs 📞

Spoke with a company recently who said they don’t cold call as they know everyone in their market. 

Yet I routinely see their MD twerking on every teenager's post to get their super secret AI prompt or n8n workflow for lead gen.

Maybe he just didn't like me.

Or he’d spoken with Céan.

That’s more likely.

🚨 Comment "BRO" to boost my reach. 🚨

If your outbound sales efforts aren’t landing, it might not be your pitch or your people.

It might be your list.

If you’re calling people who don’t feel the pain you solve, or who aren’t motivated to fix it, you’re probably wasting time and money.

Before you invest in outsourcing or hiring salespeople, make sure you know your target market inside and out.

If you don’t, that’s fine.

Just recognise that your goal shifts from selling to learning.

Use outbound to validate your assumptions.

Every “no,” “maybe,” and “tell me more” gives you clues about your market.

The wrong list makes sales impossible.

The right list allows you to learn exactly what matters to your ICP, what questions/objections they're likely to raise, and ultimately what will motivate them to spend money with you.

LinkedIn engagement ≠ quality service

Instead of paying someone to do your outbound sales because their posts get loads of likes and comments, think about:

1. What are their clients saying about them?
(If anything)

2. How many will actually vouch for them?
(We can point to several)

3. What is their overall retention rate?
(Ours is 92.3%)

The "fractional SDR" space is getting more popular as people realise they can just post selfies on LinkedIn and work for themselves.

It's important to vet these people and ask what kind of results their clients are seeing.

If you've got monkeys dialling for you, don't be surprised if it ends up being a banana skin for your business (yeah I know, terrible...)

🙈

The list is the foundation of any outbound campaign.

If the list isn't right, everything else falls apart.

You can have great messaging delivered expertly, but it's all for nought you’re not speaking to the right people.

By “the right people,” I mean those who actually have the problem you solve, and who are motivated to solve it.

This is why clarity on your ICP isn’t optional.

If you’re not clear on who you help and why, you’re probably not ready to hire an outsourced sales agency.

And hiring internally could be disastrous.

That said, outbound can still play a role in finding that clarity.

If you have a working hypothesis of who your ICP is and what your value proposition might be, cold calling is the fastest way to test it.

Every conversation is a data point.

Every objection, question, or nugget of feedback helps you refine your message and/or targeting

By having live conversations you’ll very quickly know whether to pivot or double down.

I'd never do "brand partnership" posts.

Mainly cos I never get asked.

Researching prospects before cold calling can be a waste of time.

Hypothetical A:

+ 6 hours of dialling time
+ 5 mins of research per call
+ 2 min avg. call duration
= 51 dials (assuming you don't eat, drink, or pee)

15% connect rate = 8 connects
80% connect to conversation rate = 6 conversations

Hypothetical B:

+ 6 hours of dialling time
+ 2 min avg. call duration
= 180 dials

15% connect rate = 27 connects
65% connect to conversation rate = 18 conversations

So for all you hyper-personalisation "warm call" advocates, a genuine question:

Is the quality of your 6 conversations higher enough than my 18 conversations to justify having 1/3 as many?

Could it make more sense to build a list and go after it with a relevant message?

taplio

The Battle

David J.P. Fisher

Mark Bangs

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taplio

The Battle

David J.P. Fisher

Mark Bangs

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Mark Bangs's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

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