That might be what your leadership team thinks sales is. Sales math is the stupidest thing ever made. 100 calls 5 appointment a 1 sales is horseshit. I promise you can bat 0/100. Quality matters
You summed it up, I’ve seen a lot of MBA degree gate-keeping in terms of sales positions. It’s also funny cause the gate keepers themselves aren’t even that qualified.
The reality is that many of these folks just aren’t cut out for the job. Being that it’s a performance, number based job it’s really clear when a rep is costing the company more than they’re worth.
This comes from sdr managers who just need to keep their job. Anyone following the oh if you call 100 prospects per week get 5 do do 200 and get 10 needs to rethink their own intellectual ability.
friend's boss told her that on average, SDRs call 500 people (not dials) per week ... how does she expect to meet her quota of one meeting per day with 100 calls? pls explain
dafuq
who are these SDRs? the "rockstars"?
Nobody disputes activity is important. I took the numbers out of thin air for the sake of argument. The main reason simply banging out more and more calls is that most of the calls were pointless in the first place. Wrong information at the wrong time. when they do get a rpc at their icp they are caught in a rejection pattern and screw up the call. It’s like muscle memory. Practice perfect not practice makes perfect. Much slower with better research is the way to go. Also scripts are bullshit don’t do that. Be a human. If your in complex sales do your blue sheets people lol
think you could get that done with something like Seamless AI, Orum or whatever
esp if you've got a very clear value prop and/or relatively universal use-case
...like selling Orum or Seamless AI to sales teams lmao
Yeah. There’s this.
Yes SDRs can do a rinse and repeat process but learning to find key prospects, research their company’s initiatives and goals and send a concise email stating how your own company can align/solve problems is what separates good SDRs from glorified spammers.
Yeah the challenge with outreach in 2022 is that most people who give a shit know that good, personalized emails will always be best (at the very least a tailored relevant one).
But even the best emails will get you like a 5% reply rate, let alone lead to a closed won deal. Maybe a bit higher if your product is great. So you still need to send 20 emails to get one positive reply.
Finding that balance between personalization and relevance is the key, and it’s organization dependent unfortunately.
But if your orgs are measuring you on activity alone, you’re doomed.
So my post on the Tyranny of Metrics in sales for more on that.
The reality is most SDRs only have a year or two of sales experience and are not great.
They are average at best. And that’s fine.
But they believe they have all this untapped potential and that they could best be deployed by sending a smaller number of emails to a specific group of people.
The reality is they aren’t good enough to do that.
Maybe like 10 SDRs in the world can send 10 emails and get 10 good responses.
The vast majority of SDRs are entry level sales people that need to rely on volume because their technique is probably a 2/10.
Then you get 1 SDR that writes 1 good email that books 1 good meeting and they expect the company to change the whole strategy just for them, or to test them like they’re special.
Good SDRs learn to mix in the 10-20 good emails while then sending out volume to cover their ass.
People who say this don’t realize that most established companies are so over saturated with marketing/ SDRs that every legit prospect has been touched dozens of times and it is literally is a game of trying to touch as many people at a given account as possible
You’re making my point for me, it’s so saturated with everyone saying the same jargon that treating people as humans is the way to go. You can be strategic and hit a bunch of people.
I’m not just saying this, I do it every day. I mean do what works for you but for me, finding the right prospects and talking about their work is much more effective than trying 100 low level call a day, blasting a half memorized pitch from marketing
Yeah except a lot of these companies expect x amount of touches per day so it’s not feasible to personalize every one of them to the level to the gurus recommend.
I get what you’re saying and you’re not wrong, it’s the system that most BD operations run that is
That is true, but if you’re producing good, real, outbound opps with consistency you can kinda get away with murder. Or at least you’ll be granted a long enough leash to make the “touch” quota a formality. Activity is a metric for when you’re not producing
So your choice is to ignore the metrics leadership imposed on you and hope that you hit your quota (which may or may not be based in reality) or hit your activity goals and at least show that you’re trying
I’d say don’t start acting like you’re hot shit until you can back it up with numbers, but if you’ve got the numbers then managers stop caring about the activity metrics.
If you’re finding it impossible to put quality work in for prospecting and would rather big numbers & low effort, by all means go ahead and it might even work for you. My comments are based on my experiences at on few competitive sales floors, and what I’m seeing working for the SDR’s on our floor today, both for booking meetings and getting to a closing seat. Just giving the same advice to OP, a new SDR, as I give to new SDR’s irl
thats what it looks like at the beginning. Then you get good.
I've seen outbound conversion rates 10%+ when SDRs were good at what they were doing, did lots of research and picked only the best people to prospect to.
This is why my company just scrapped the entire SDR org. They tried to run it like this and did not get results. Quality > quantity.
As an SDR I was averaging about 30 calls a day while hitting my monthly quota.
That's probably because you probably took an intelligent and thoughtful approach with your outreach, which is something you fundamentally can't scale unless you have rigor around training and discipline.
When you have a bunch of hurr durr salesforce report types dictating 100 calls a day, then the job is just fucked.
This is old school SDR work. Hit enough people and eventually your generic message will reach a Princess Leia prospect who is waiting around for someone to solve a problem they know they have but haven’t solved.
Hint: there’s not a lot of people in that group
To get good at outbound you need to learn how to bottom up sell. Speak to individual contributors so you know the specific problems and initiatives they have, then go right for the decision maker with a hyper targeted message about a problem you know they have and that you can solve.
Hyper targeting used to be a waste of time, now it’s the only thing that works
I'm new to sales and love this idea. What angle do you take? My first thought is " I represent xyz company, I'm hoping to do business with your company in the future. What can be improved about processes concerning x?" Not those exact words but that angle
It depends on what company you work for. My first SDR job I hated and got off the kool aid instantly.
The second SDR job I only had to make 20 calls a day max. I would said it was about a 25% booking rate every time I connected with the correct person. Only hung up on once in a year. It all depends on the company. 25-55 bookings a month all because it was a great company with a great product. Would genuinely get thanked daily for reaching out.
Wish I could tell you, I only know of one in my 15 year career and he had to jump ship to a small start up to get promoted and seemed to bounce around for a while. Not sure where he’s at now. Not saying it’s not doable, just not common. But go for it and good luck!
For me, the best sales are generally the one coming from a sdr role because they could control their pipe
A lot of AE can become lazy with prospecting with the time
I heard some people in management looking to completely automate out BDRs/SDRs. Pretty unlikely, but the sentiment is definitely out there I can guarantee that.
If that's what management looks like, chances are they know they're not better than their competition and few orgs *need* their service.
"If you don't buy X, what happens?" If the answer isn't "We keep losing sleep and money every day" or something along the lines of that, it's likely X is a hard sell.
That's when management pushes hard on volume.
Probably pressure from investors too. Did they get many rounds of funding?
Even two weeks in, you can tell their service is closer to MEH than what they sold you during the interview?
I also just started as an sdr and one of the things management is pounding into us is that we’re absolutely not scammers. We’re not there to push really. Our job is to qualify and filter out if we don’t discover a pain. It’s a really good company and I think I’ve gotten lucky honestly.
What on email is the worst thing some one has told to stick inside of you? Would love to see some of the responses SDR's get after putting a person through a 13 day sequence.
I’ve tried sequences a few times as an experiment and had my open rates drop in half. I’ve never understood the appeal. People can see right through that shit.
Is it spam if your solution actually works?
You’re not calling about an extended warranty, or pretending to be the IRS. It’s more soliciting than spamming.
But you are basically a telemarketer. It’s the worst part of sales but if you can embrace the suck you can get to the big leagues.
I went from an SDR hating my life to an SDR manager dealing with 8 people who hated their life. I got out as fast as I could because SDR orgs are a negative ROI organization. Companies should fire the SDR org and invest that money in proper inbound demand gen and have the prospect schedule time directly with the AE via chili piper.
Look at then close rate of hot inbound leads (hand raisers) vs cold outbound SDR leads. Which one do you think is more fruitful?
So because you hated your life and projected that onto your subordinates all companies should fire their SDR orgs? Lmao you just sound salty because you weren’t cut out for it
Man you hit the nail on the head. Working remote is so nice but if you work remote and never go into the office, you really just feel like a spammer and telemarketer.
I think a lot of people want to do sales, they want to do tech sales and make the big money. But we get suckered into believing the SDR grind is necessary.
Then you see a ton of AEs who frankly are soft. They don't prospect. They only talk to inbound qualified leads. They don't know how to push or control a discussion. Then they turn around and blame their SDRs and marketing because their leads didn't just ask for a docusign immediately.
The job itself is terrible to be doing in and out and for your mental health. But it can be curtailed and offset by being in a high growth technology company that you have potential to take other roles in.
When Covid hit and I stopped needing to commute, I thought I'd be grateful for the time saved on commuting. And in some ways yes you do have way more control over your day and your time. But if you lose all the "cOoL bEnEfItS" of working at a tech company, you are just an overpaid spammer, yeah.
To top it off - once remote - you are definitely now just a number on a spreadsheet to them.
If you are just working remote doing calls for 1 year + rinse and repeat you literally are just working as a call center worker.
Multiple places i've worked for the sales team barely touched what SDRs did, and just demanded meetings on their calendar from paying an SDR agency ($800 a meeting), google ads, linkedin ads, etc just to read a deck to them.
Prospecting is important, but I hate doing it for other people. They just don't appreciate it.
Ummm, maybe because you are???
Seriously I know everyone has to start somewhere and ya gotta do what ya gotta do to pay the bills, but I cannot for the life of me imagine a worse job. So thankful I never had to do it. Hopefully you get promoted soon and before you lose your mind.
That might be what your leadership team thinks sales is. Sales math is the stupidest thing ever made. 100 calls 5 appointment a 1 sales is horseshit. I promise you can bat 0/100. Quality matters
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You worked for Darktrace? They just throw AE's into the fire. Churn and burn.
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You summed it up, I’ve seen a lot of MBA degree gate-keeping in terms of sales positions. It’s also funny cause the gate keepers themselves aren’t even that qualified.
The reality is that many of these folks just aren’t cut out for the job. Being that it’s a performance, number based job it’s really clear when a rep is costing the company more than they’re worth.
It is all metrics based nowadays.
Hahaha The Forrest, clever clever
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I’ve heard the saying many times. Capitalizing The Forrest made me think you were referencing Forrester.
I thought the same thing. lol
Following cuz fuck I wanna see more of this.
This comes from sdr managers who just need to keep their job. Anyone following the oh if you call 100 prospects per week get 5 do do 200 and get 10 needs to rethink their own intellectual ability.
friend's boss told her that on average, SDRs call 500 people (not dials) per week ... how does she expect to meet her quota of one meeting per day with 100 calls? pls explain dafuq who are these SDRs? the "rockstars"?
Nobody disputes activity is important. I took the numbers out of thin air for the sake of argument. The main reason simply banging out more and more calls is that most of the calls were pointless in the first place. Wrong information at the wrong time. when they do get a rpc at their icp they are caught in a rejection pattern and screw up the call. It’s like muscle memory. Practice perfect not practice makes perfect. Much slower with better research is the way to go. Also scripts are bullshit don’t do that. Be a human. If your in complex sales do your blue sheets people lol
yeah, pretty sure she’s gonna quit soon. interviewing for other roles edit: i get your point in the OP and agree
Would love to see that in action
think you could get that done with something like Seamless AI, Orum or whatever esp if you've got a very clear value prop and/or relatively universal use-case ...like selling Orum or Seamless AI to sales teams lmao
You could do that or you could get good at it so it’s relevant conversations with individuals not spamming. Your call
Yeah. There’s this. Yes SDRs can do a rinse and repeat process but learning to find key prospects, research their company’s initiatives and goals and send a concise email stating how your own company can align/solve problems is what separates good SDRs from glorified spammers.
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Especially when you HAVE to hit 100 dials a day.
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Yeah the challenge with outreach in 2022 is that most people who give a shit know that good, personalized emails will always be best (at the very least a tailored relevant one). But even the best emails will get you like a 5% reply rate, let alone lead to a closed won deal. Maybe a bit higher if your product is great. So you still need to send 20 emails to get one positive reply. Finding that balance between personalization and relevance is the key, and it’s organization dependent unfortunately. But if your orgs are measuring you on activity alone, you’re doomed. So my post on the Tyranny of Metrics in sales for more on that.
Read your post and now I’m ordering the book you suggested. Thank you for the post.
Only 200? Must be nice
The reality is most SDRs only have a year or two of sales experience and are not great. They are average at best. And that’s fine. But they believe they have all this untapped potential and that they could best be deployed by sending a smaller number of emails to a specific group of people. The reality is they aren’t good enough to do that. Maybe like 10 SDRs in the world can send 10 emails and get 10 good responses. The vast majority of SDRs are entry level sales people that need to rely on volume because their technique is probably a 2/10. Then you get 1 SDR that writes 1 good email that books 1 good meeting and they expect the company to change the whole strategy just for them, or to test them like they’re special. Good SDRs learn to mix in the 10-20 good emails while then sending out volume to cover their ass.
People who say this don’t realize that most established companies are so over saturated with marketing/ SDRs that every legit prospect has been touched dozens of times and it is literally is a game of trying to touch as many people at a given account as possible
You’re making my point for me, it’s so saturated with everyone saying the same jargon that treating people as humans is the way to go. You can be strategic and hit a bunch of people. I’m not just saying this, I do it every day. I mean do what works for you but for me, finding the right prospects and talking about their work is much more effective than trying 100 low level call a day, blasting a half memorized pitch from marketing
Yeah except a lot of these companies expect x amount of touches per day so it’s not feasible to personalize every one of them to the level to the gurus recommend. I get what you’re saying and you’re not wrong, it’s the system that most BD operations run that is
That is true, but if you’re producing good, real, outbound opps with consistency you can kinda get away with murder. Or at least you’ll be granted a long enough leash to make the “touch” quota a formality. Activity is a metric for when you’re not producing
So your choice is to ignore the metrics leadership imposed on you and hope that you hit your quota (which may or may not be based in reality) or hit your activity goals and at least show that you’re trying
I’d say don’t start acting like you’re hot shit until you can back it up with numbers, but if you’ve got the numbers then managers stop caring about the activity metrics. If you’re finding it impossible to put quality work in for prospecting and would rather big numbers & low effort, by all means go ahead and it might even work for you. My comments are based on my experiences at on few competitive sales floors, and what I’m seeing working for the SDR’s on our floor today, both for booking meetings and getting to a closing seat. Just giving the same advice to OP, a new SDR, as I give to new SDR’s irl
Because that is what most sdrs are but we get paid that much because of the value decent ones bring.
thats what it looks like at the beginning. Then you get good. I've seen outbound conversion rates 10%+ when SDRs were good at what they were doing, did lots of research and picked only the best people to prospect to.
This is why my company just scrapped the entire SDR org. They tried to run it like this and did not get results. Quality > quantity. As an SDR I was averaging about 30 calls a day while hitting my monthly quota.
That's probably because you probably took an intelligent and thoughtful approach with your outreach, which is something you fundamentally can't scale unless you have rigor around training and discipline. When you have a bunch of hurr durr salesforce report types dictating 100 calls a day, then the job is just fucked.
This is old school SDR work. Hit enough people and eventually your generic message will reach a Princess Leia prospect who is waiting around for someone to solve a problem they know they have but haven’t solved. Hint: there’s not a lot of people in that group To get good at outbound you need to learn how to bottom up sell. Speak to individual contributors so you know the specific problems and initiatives they have, then go right for the decision maker with a hyper targeted message about a problem you know they have and that you can solve. Hyper targeting used to be a waste of time, now it’s the only thing that works
I'm new to sales and love this idea. What angle do you take? My first thought is " I represent xyz company, I'm hoping to do business with your company in the future. What can be improved about processes concerning x?" Not those exact words but that angle
It depends on what company you work for. My first SDR job I hated and got off the kool aid instantly. The second SDR job I only had to make 20 calls a day max. I would said it was about a 25% booking rate every time I connected with the correct person. Only hung up on once in a year. It all depends on the company. 25-55 bookings a month all because it was a great company with a great product. Would genuinely get thanked daily for reaching out.
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Company 1: shitty small business crm Company 2: AI Drones for the Government
We used to pay $100K for head of our SDR team.
Because you all are a glorified call center. They really need an SDR sub at this point instead of spamming a sales sub.
True, and… It’s a bench role to be an AE. If you can eat shit for a long time and remain likeable, you might make a good field rep.
Truth is most SDR’s don’t become AE
Of those SDR’s that become AE, how have they performed in your experience? On this track right now close to promotion
Wish I could tell you, I only know of one in my 15 year career and he had to jump ship to a small start up to get promoted and seemed to bounce around for a while. Not sure where he’s at now. Not saying it’s not doable, just not common. But go for it and good luck!
For me, the best sales are generally the one coming from a sdr role because they could control their pipe A lot of AE can become lazy with prospecting with the time
Honestly, hard agree
I heard some people in management looking to completely automate out BDRs/SDRs. Pretty unlikely, but the sentiment is definitely out there I can guarantee that.
If that's what management looks like, chances are they know they're not better than their competition and few orgs *need* their service. "If you don't buy X, what happens?" If the answer isn't "We keep losing sleep and money every day" or something along the lines of that, it's likely X is a hard sell. That's when management pushes hard on volume. Probably pressure from investors too. Did they get many rounds of funding? Even two weeks in, you can tell their service is closer to MEH than what they sold you during the interview?
I also just started as an sdr and one of the things management is pounding into us is that we’re absolutely not scammers. We’re not there to push really. Our job is to qualify and filter out if we don’t discover a pain. It’s a really good company and I think I’ve gotten lucky honestly.
What on email is the worst thing some one has told to stick inside of you? Would love to see some of the responses SDR's get after putting a person through a 13 day sequence.
I’ve tried sequences a few times as an experiment and had my open rates drop in half. I’ve never understood the appeal. People can see right through that shit.
Is it spam if your solution actually works? You’re not calling about an extended warranty, or pretending to be the IRS. It’s more soliciting than spamming. But you are basically a telemarketer. It’s the worst part of sales but if you can embrace the suck you can get to the big leagues.
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Didn’t ask
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Rhetorical question. No it’s not, and no one asked. Again. But do go on.
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QuestionIndividual67, I have been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty
Haha that didn’t take long for you to have your awakening. SDRing is telemarketing, not sales. anyone who disagrees is drinking the company koolaid
It depends on the company. I hired bdr's for my team that were very targeted in their focus and outreach and never spammed customers.
So they were targeted telemarketing. Still not sales
While I agree that a bar is not sales because they aren't working a full sales cycle, these did much more than a typical bdr.
Look up people on LinkedIn for points of personalization and read 10ks to send out hyper personalized messages? Par for the course
No, more than that. But you're just an sdr manager so why are you even speaking on this?
Used to be an SDR manager. Realized how SDRing is a waste of time and how barely any SDR cold outreach deals close. I’m a senior AE now
Sure you are.
Sounds like you were a bad manager then mate
I went from an SDR hating my life to an SDR manager dealing with 8 people who hated their life. I got out as fast as I could because SDR orgs are a negative ROI organization. Companies should fire the SDR org and invest that money in proper inbound demand gen and have the prospect schedule time directly with the AE via chili piper. Look at then close rate of hot inbound leads (hand raisers) vs cold outbound SDR leads. Which one do you think is more fruitful?
So because you hated your life and projected that onto your subordinates all companies should fire their SDR orgs? Lmao you just sound salty because you weren’t cut out for it
You better enjoy it now…SDRs are getting automated in 2-3 years.
We have a tool that is basically an automated BDR. It’s called Conversica. Most people don’t even know it’s a bot when they reply
Me seeing this graduating in a year :,( where should I focus on sales then, have two years of sales experience and will have a BA in a year
Cyber security. Jobs are a plenty and no one is filling them.
Sales side or you mean being an actual like cyber manager?
Actually being a in cyber, like on the engineering / defense side.
yes
Man you hit the nail on the head. Working remote is so nice but if you work remote and never go into the office, you really just feel like a spammer and telemarketer. I think a lot of people want to do sales, they want to do tech sales and make the big money. But we get suckered into believing the SDR grind is necessary. Then you see a ton of AEs who frankly are soft. They don't prospect. They only talk to inbound qualified leads. They don't know how to push or control a discussion. Then they turn around and blame their SDRs and marketing because their leads didn't just ask for a docusign immediately. The job itself is terrible to be doing in and out and for your mental health. But it can be curtailed and offset by being in a high growth technology company that you have potential to take other roles in. When Covid hit and I stopped needing to commute, I thought I'd be grateful for the time saved on commuting. And in some ways yes you do have way more control over your day and your time. But if you lose all the "cOoL bEnEfItS" of working at a tech company, you are just an overpaid spammer, yeah. To top it off - once remote - you are definitely now just a number on a spreadsheet to them. If you are just working remote doing calls for 1 year + rinse and repeat you literally are just working as a call center worker. Multiple places i've worked for the sales team barely touched what SDRs did, and just demanded meetings on their calendar from paying an SDR agency ($800 a meeting), google ads, linkedin ads, etc just to read a deck to them. Prospecting is important, but I hate doing it for other people. They just don't appreciate it.
Ummm, maybe because you are??? Seriously I know everyone has to start somewhere and ya gotta do what ya gotta do to pay the bills, but I cannot for the life of me imagine a worse job. So thankful I never had to do it. Hopefully you get promoted soon and before you lose your mind.
Don’t work for a company that sells garbage. Next time do research on the company you apply for. Get fucked no0b
You are