Play the King & Win the Day!
The Play the King & Win the Day podcast features discussions on business, technology, strategy, and the psychology of success, with insights from professionals, leaders, and entrepreneurs.
*Sponsored by omi.co
Play the King & Win the Day!
Episode 2 - The Tip of the Spear - Sales Development Scouting from the Front-Line!
In this episode we talk with Ben, an experienced SDR, who shares best practices on scouting and initiating conversations with qualified leads.
Podcast Sponsored by OMI "We Make CRM Work!"
This artifact was commissioned by OMI the company that makes CRM work! I'm George your host. And in this episode, I spoke with Ben, a leading SDR, Ben, and I discussed some best practices for scouting and initiating conversations with qualified leads. And he shared some advice for people who want to up their game. All right, Ben, thanks for joining me today. Thanks for having me. All right. So how would you explain what a sales development representative is to the average person who may not be familiar with the title or to tech sales in general
Speaker 2:SDRs are the tip of the spear when it comes to reaching out to prospective clients and introducing them to the solution, SDRs try, you know, to start the initial conversations with these prospects are calling, emailing and connecting through social networks. And then we're also compensated based on how many of these conversations, we're able to start.
Speaker 1:So what's your day to day process? Like when you're reaching out to prospective prospective clients?
Speaker 2:My process is very email and LinkedIn heavy. I search LinkedIn for people's whose titles and job descriptions seem relevant for my solution. Then reach out through LinkedIn and email and briefly explain my initial interest in chatting with them and how a conversation could be valuable to them. And then seeing if they'd be interested in taking a call to learn more.
Speaker 1:Tell me about the tools you use to meet your quotas and stay on task. And, you know, if you have some other ones that help you, find prospective clients, ustomers and reach out to them, add those too
Speaker 2:LinkedIn and email are the two most necessary tools because they directly help you accomplish the goal of both connecting with prospects and attaining your quota and or your meetings quota. So I use Google calendar to stay on task and make time for prospecting, admin and meetings. And then LinkedIn is my primary research tool, but if I need to find a compelling reason to meet with a prospect, I'll do a quick Google search to see if there is any recent news. I can tie into my email pitch. My company also uses outreach.io As an emailing and calling tool.
Speaker 1:All right. So w tell me about some of the best practices that you found, work for you when reaching out to prospects and how do you find the balance between quality and quantity when you're contacting and engaging those prospects?
Speaker 2:I personally focus more on quality than quantity, when reaching out to prospects, decision makers at enterprise companies who get hundreds of emails a day from SDRs marketers and other people just vying for their limited time. So i'm doing three minutes of research and writing an email that is specific to that d ecision-maker is something that has helped me be successful in the role and stand out in a crowded field of sort of sea level inboxes. That said quantity is also important. I set attainable goals for myself to accomplish every day, around the number of people I connect with! I email the number of accounts I h ave, targeted and obviously the number of meetings I have set, then having these goals in place helps me stay on task and work more efficiently.
Speaker 1:All right. So now take me through the soft skills, the hard skills, that you've developed in your role as an SDR that you think have helped you become successful.
Speaker 2:As far as my hard skills go, I've become better at writing catchy emails. The SDR role is mostly about talking to people and understanding what motivates them to do things. So most of the skills I've developed are soft. In the SDR role, I've gotten better at learning what motivates people to change course, and how to exit or expedite the motivation, how to handle objections, how to talk to important people in a business setting, and then how to create urgency!
Speaker 1:Talk about outside experiences beyond the tech industry, ie. Other, other sales roles you might've had, what have you learned from those roles, those experiences, and how can you transfer those experiences and what you learned from them into your current role?
Speaker 2:Hmm. yeah, I worked as a paralegal at a design patent law firm that worked with Nike for one year and a half the most valuable lessons I learned, w ere how to talk to important people in a business setting and how to organize my calendar and work when juggling, 20 plus patent applications at a time. Both of those skills ha ve t ransferred really well into the SDR position/role.
Speaker 1:Okay. And so if I could ask you to, tell me the best advice you've received in your current role, what would you tell me,
Speaker 2:Make the outreach about the prospect and how your solution will solve their specific problem? Don't just explain, what your solution does and not tie it back to them at all.
Speaker 1:Okay. And then in terms of advice from your own personal experience! What would you be willing to share with someone else who,might want to transition their career into sales, particularly as an SDR, what would you tell them?
Speaker 2:It's fun and interesting as you choose to make it, you can just send boring emails all day, or, you know, miserably cold called and do this job, but you would sort of quickly burn out. Stay competitive about the quality of your messaging and the prospect research you're doing, the number of meetings you set, and the number of opportunities you cl ose, i s what makes the job fun? So like most jobs, anyone can do the job and be successful if they're willing to put in, the thought and the time to master the SDR role.
Speaker 1:Okay. So life has changed during COVID-19, and I imagine that your job, or at least your approach to your job has changed a little bit since you were initially onboarded and trained, t alk about that. What, what has changed for you in the SDR role?
Speaker 2:Yeah, since COVID-19, um, things have become more urgent! So the target for what can get a prospect's attention has shrunk, but also become more impactful. Sending people the right message at the right time is becoming the only way to get meetings. So the quantity method has really, stopped working as well as it once did!
Speaker 1:For the past few months, account executives have been asked to prospect their own customers. And so I'm wondering what tips would you share with AEs who are now spending more of their time doing this?
Speaker 2:Rely on your experience selling to craft salient messaging. I think it's really finding relevant use cases that you've seen in the past, and then just make sure those messages are personalized. Keep it short, have a strong call to action at the end of each email. I think this will increase your likelihood to meet. Awesome. All right, Ben, thanks a lot for the time, man. Thanks. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Okay.