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Welcome to The Hiring Enablement podcast, hosted by Solutions Driven. On this podcast you'll find a mix of interviews from CEO's & Founders, to Talent Acquisition Leaders and employees playing a key role in their company shaping the conversation around diversity and inclusion, talent management, culture, and career growth.
Alan Mcfadden: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome along to episode. 26 0f the talent tells you. Podcast My name is Alan Faden, and I'm delighted to have with me today, Ethan Parker, who is the vp of sales over at the outbound squad.
Alan Mcfadden: Hey, Allen, I'm doing well, man. Thanks for having me on. I'm absolutely delighted to have you on, Ethan. As I said, I've been a massive fan of that Point squad for a long time. I love your slogan, the turning complete strangers into paying customers. That's what drew me towards the podcast in the first place.
Alan Mcfadden: But i'm super excited to talk to you about me with a few requests. Now, about SDR teams, what's good, what's bad? How do we build the team?
For people who don't know The Outbound Squad, could you give us a little bit of your background in sales? And then what brought you to the Outbound Squad.
Ethan Parker: Yeah, I have only been in sales. My entire life. I was going to college. I was going to be a corporate lawyer, when I thought I just want to do when I was a kid, because of what I saw on TV, and you know, lawyers and strategizing and making the deals, and then going around and convincing an influence. And then I was like, oh, that looks really fun. That seems like something I would like to do. And then I realize what they actually do. You know it's why I've gotten to sales. So you know, my first sales job was door to door. I sold a Cut Code Knives. It was very big in the US. I don't know if it's it is over there where you're at, but very, very expensive, high end cutlery, and I made, you know, like 25 grand or so in the first summer that I was doing that - 17 years old, and that's just entirely too much money to give a 17 year old kid in a 3 month period, and
Ethan Parker: I developed some bad financial habits that I didn't figure out until much later in life. But you know it gave me a taste for what was possible, and I really liked being in control of my own income and your own destiny, so to speak, and I moved into kinda bigger B 2 b sales within the fitness space initially, so I I have a back. I used to own some gyms. I was tech sales within that space, and then that brought me into Sas. So been in enterprise sales for you about the last 10 years now, and I left my last role as a VP of revenue to come on board with that, with Jason over at outbound squad. Full time in August of last year. So fairly, you know, fairly recently.
Ethan Parker: and you know what we do with outbound squad is, you know it's our missions to help folks turn, you know, complete strangers into paying customers. So we focus on outbound sales training from, you know, top to bottom of funnel, and I specifically head up our individual coaching program. S0 0utbound squad for individuals. So this are reps that we can level up their outbound skill set.
Ethan Parker: and, you know, makes more money. Do what we do, and and make make that a little bit less stressful, too. There's a lot of things we can do to.
Ethan Parker: You know. It's sales - always gonna be a certain level of stress. There's things we can put in place to kind of, you know lower that a bit, and kind of make sure we still enjoy life, enjoy what we're doing, and make that you know a little bit easier on the day to day. So
That's you know a little bit about me. That's what I do at Outbound Squad. I've built numerous SDR and sales teams, and I'm, you know, looking forward to chat about some of this with you.
Alan McFadde: I think, Ethan, that's what really attracted me to ask you on as a guest. You’ve got a really similar background to me. Get into the recruitment sales to be honest with you, fell into it. Realize just how again probably similar to you, a little bit too money and made some mistakes. But again, it's that whole intrigue of being able to sell for sustain money, you know, be able to make money that it gives you options, and I love that about it. The reason I reached out to you was, is I get a lot of people still, this is now my third SDR team, similar to you. I join Solutions Driven in August, but it's now the 13 that I grew in scaled, and I get asked a lot, especially on this channel.
Ethan Parker: What do you do with an underperforming SDR team, or what do you do with an SDR team that we're looking to build? And it always starts with skill set. And to me does a lot before that, You know there's a lot of
Alan Mcfadden: starting right at the stop we should off to get your opinion on is, I feel a lot of business because Don't necessarily understand what they want from their S. They are team.
Alan Mcfadden: you know, and that can be a problem for Usds coming into a business. Some things I feel it's like the old fashioned gives the system we use. Here's the people we go after, away you go. You know it's not really understanding what they want to achieve. Do you find that a lot? I know you speak to a lot of people, and you've done it in the past. But you feel is all getting a methodology and identity for a SDR team is really important, really. Early on
Ethan Parker: Yeah, I mean, you. You nailed it. We could talk about skill set, and what makes a good SDR: but I mean, if those folks that you bring in aren't set up for success. You're gonna run into a lot of lot of challenges that could have been, you know it
Ethan Parker: to zoom out a little bit. If this is a kind of a new motion, it's so standing up like you are no doubt going to run into some challenges and have to pivot, learn and iterate and continue like you know, that everyone like that's part of it. But
Ethan Parker: before you know, you go worrying about the perfect SDR. You know the biggest thing that I see reps struggle with that come through, you know, an outbound squad, and then reps I've worked with in the past. Is
Ethan Parker: It's kinda just like they look to hire somebody that's got the right attitude. They have a good background. They have success records, and they just say, like you said, here you go, get after it, and it's kinda all on them.
Ethan Parker: And sometimes those folks do really well, the problem is, it's very incconsistent. If you hire 5 people and do that, you might have one that crushes it, and 3 that are really struggling, and one that's kind of somewhere in the middle, and there's no there's no common language. There's no repeatable success in place, and ultimately that ends up getting, you know, VPs fired, and the CEO's fire and things of that nature, and it's quite high stakes. So yeah, I I see it. I think the more important thing to to talk about, maybe in terms of preventing that is what needs to be in place.
Ethan Parker: You even look to bring on an SDR. I know that answers your question. That's what I think about what I see most.
Alan Mcfadden: I also feel that business owners some things when, as it working don't take it back to that early conversations. You know I speak to numerous and owners who said to me, "we want our SDR team to be creating leads” right. I get that. But how they get there?
When I go to events, I want people to know the SDR teams that we reach now are a Solution Driven SDR Team. What's the message? How is it consistent? How I know we speak about nowadays research and personalization.
Alan Mcfadden: How do you actually coaching? Explain to an SDR why they do that? I think that's really really important. And as we go forward, especially with teams. I think training plans and coaching plans going forward is something we get asked about a lot here when it comes to building new teams and taking it back to start
Alan Mcfadden: I always give advice there needs to be a training program in place, at least to be training before you get people list on the phone and your perspective prospects, etc.
Alan Mcfadden: But do you have a do you have any advice you would give people who are looking to when you take it back to the start. Really start training teams. Obviously, I know you do that there, so be nice to know what the best advice is you could give business owners that look into training coach for teams.
Ethan Parker: Yeah, I think there's this: I have a 2 part answer here Alan. So the biggest problem with coaching and training a team is that you don't have a baseline off of which you're coaching and training.
Ethan Parker: So I get some product training. You might get some use case training. You might get some objection and objection handling training, you know, email personalization, tips and hacks and all these things like this. It's usually very AD hoc on their prospect. And then they get some really inconsistent feedback here or there, you know, depending on the rep, the reps, the variable here, because there is really good reps to know how to ask for help, and they send in stuff to their manager and help them help them better, which they should you should be doing If you're replicating this, and you won't, help them, go, ask for it.
Ethan Parker: That's the typical cycle, and, like you know, the Rain Group is a big study. 85 to 90% of sales training, internal and external has no lasting impact after 120 days
A common language, some sort of framework that is the baseline of what expectations are, what type of messaging we're saying, what type of framework or flow to our call scripts look like.
Ethan Parker: Even if reps have some personality and autonomy and flair within, that we need a framework to operate from.
And what that does is it allows the manager to be able to coach consistently, because we’re not just okay. Well, let's look at. Let's listen to 3 calls this week, and they'll send me some emails to review, like. I guess that's better than nothing, but it just doesn't drive the result. But if we have from top to bottom a playbook figured out even if it's a hypothesis, it needs to be validated. If we have this framework, we're following. It makes the coaching and training much easier.
Ethan Parker: so that's number one, and that's the piece that 99 of even big companies are missing with what they have. They paid somebody like Force Management to come in at 100 grand, and they have a 100 page Pdf. With personas over here and use cases over here, and ICP stuff over here, and how the hell do I take this and put in a cold email right? The pull through isn't there.
Ethan Parker: It needs to be a very simplified step by step playbook that maps that out, and folks is more on less about all this information, and more about tactically. How you put this in the email, how you put this in a top track.
Ethan Parker: How do we, as a company handle objections, etc. So common language, common framework. That folks have some flexibility within that needs to be in place that makes your life as a manager easier to coach and train.
Ethan Parker: And then, like. The next thing is oftentimes folks put way too much focus on the individual rep. Not that they don't need to be coach and trained. But then a manager, or you know, if it's earlier stage, a director or a VP - whoever that's over these folks don't get any training on how to train them, and being a coach is not easy, and not everyone's just built for it. And a lot of times what happens is you have a seller that did a really good job. They have a good track record. They moved into a manager, and now they're in a VP role, but they know how to do things, how they do things, and they don't necessarily know how to coach and train around.
Ethan Parker: You know other people's, tendencies, personalities, etc. So I think more emphasis on the people that are doing the coaching and training and enabling them that starts with that playbook. But you know that's a big ball that's dropped oftentimes on, you know, continued success. So
Alan Mcfadden: You’ve gone through a lot out there just now, there go a 1 million different directions. But those are the top 2 things I say, a methodology and identity. I talked to our team about 4 pillars of success. So what makes the for skill set. I can coach you.
This is the baseline of what we expect to be excellent, and then from there it makes it easier for me when I do like you, said Coach is not for everybody. I genuinely enjoy it. I always set the guys past the training, which is initially a framework where I always give them at least a minimum of one to one time. And then also, I always do group sessions. I feel that good sessions with people who are doing the same job.
Alan Mcfadden: You pick a topic, and then we walk on it together. I’ve done it over the last 3 years. That's probably something I took his advice from a couple of coaches. My team get a lot from it. So I think the point you make on framework, it's absolutely spot on. I think the thing even more so is the part you said about how people think about training their managers and that's something that gets missed a lot. I feel business owners I speak to never once ask “who would you recommend I get my managers to speak to?” It’s always “how do you recommend I fix the team?” How do we know the manager isn’t the problem?
I thinkthe second part of that question. That kind of leads me to something. I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on. You've been in sales probably the same amount of time as I have been even now, and technologies came on so much. You guys speak to some great technology leaders inside your business. I believe technology for our teams are failing
It needs to be thought out and strategized really well, because I think technology.
Alan Mcfadden: when it enables your team to do well is fantastic. But I've also seen some teams recently who are using too much technology and a lot of automation a lot of the time, now that it's causing them a lot more damage. So I always speak to people about it, being your best friend, or being your biggest enemy. I don't know your feelings on that. What do you think about technology into this market?
Ethan Parker: Yeah, I think there's some variables here around deal size and that sort of thing. So you know, for example, if you know you sell our product, that's $5,000 a year that probably does need to be more automated. If you're selling a product that's 30,000 plus. you know, that probably needs to be more personalized. So you know, I think with technology. Now, I think about it, this is how Jason and I run our business as well, andyou have to think. I think when people get in trouble with, is they think, so far down the line in terms of scale.
Ethan Parker: Why, don't, we just like, go from A to B before we try to jump from A to B. So, you know, for example, if you have 10 reps. 15 reps Salesloft and Outreach are probably, you know, the absolute best options for you in terms of sales engagement platform. But if you have 2 reps like that's kind of a lot to go through and set up and like try to deal with it's not built for small teams, and, like Apollo is right. Not that Apollo can't work at a large scale, it's very user-friendly. Easy to set up, and you know much, more, much more like available to users. So, anyway, core tech that, I think is required as you need. You need a sales engagement platform. The number of companies that don't give their SDRs or Aes a sales engagement platform, it blows my mind like sequencing cadence, seeing whatever platform you using does not equal automation of the activity in that. It keeps you on track, and you can automate some things like bump emails and things like that. That that can be. It. It just simply allows you to say, organize and like organize people by person, and you know a whole. The list goes on. We could talk about why sales and get to. Platforms are great for hours, but you need a sales and gated platform. If your sellers don't have one I'd recommend Apollo I/O if you're a small team. It's a big team, check out sales after outreach.
Ethan Parker: And then, you know, we need a data tool. We need a place that we're getting the information from.
Ethan Parker: And this is super important. The better quality of data that you get, the more your anybody have. Better connect rates. You're gonna, you know, run into less people. You can't find emails, phone numbers for, etc. And most of the teams are doing a really good job. I see, have 2 data tools or more.
Ethan Parker: So Zoom info is, you know, perfect. In my opinion they're gonna be more expensive sometimes for very early stage companies. It's a hard pill for them to swallow. But it is certainly a good data source.
Ethan Parker: And then Apollo has a data tool. I'm a fan of, I use that for me personally.
Ethan Parker: There's Lucia lead IQ data tool.
Ethan Parker: I'm not a big fan of parallel dialers, but power dialer, you know. That is, I don't think it’s a necessity. I think that people get really infatuated about dialers. But for me I'm not looking at how many dials can I make? I'm looking at how many conversations can I have? And I'm going to optimize for that. So if you have to make 400 dials to have 6 conversations that you have different problem. you know. Like, then, just like needing to make more dials. So that's an example to me of tech that you wouldn’t necessarily build out the gate.
And this is not really tech, but it's super inexpensive, and if most like what we what we did when I was at all these sales, and I've seen other organisations do. This is a researcher for their SDRs. They have a team of like researchers that they're the ones that go in, and they map accounts. They do some high level research based on what criteria you want. They load those people into sequences for you. They pull the contact data, all that kind of stuff i'm not even talking about. But just you know, you can pay folks in the Philippines and that area 7 10 bucks an hour, which is like good pay there and they're happy to do that and they can eliminate so much extra work for the SDR. So if I’m starting a team from scratch today, I want a sales engagement platform, 2 data tools and a research team that is streamlining the process.
And I think that's kind of your MVP to get going.
Alan McFadden: Do you feel as though that's quite important for SDRs nowadays that they see marketing and see a lot of companies do this really?
Ethan Parker: Yeah, I mean a good marketing function is always valuable. I'm built a bit differently. I've been a startup guy my whole career. So I've never ever seen where I've had MQLs's or leads coming in. It's been a 100% go find it. I did I have one company that I did get leads in, but I honestly felt like the quality wasn't good, and I would prefer to just go after the account that I want it to.
So I'm wired a little bit differently, but absolutely a strong marketing motion that generates quality and Ql's. I have a lot of folks in Outbound Squad. They get a lot of meetings that way. I think people like really fuck up that process a lot, and take an MQL for granted like. “Oh, because I downloaded the white paper. They must want to chat” like no like you still be quality messaging. You still need to be part and offering insights, etc., to get those people on a call.
Ethan Parker: So you know there's a difference in the MQL and the contact me if I'm going to reach out to these folks. We start a conversation at open opportunity, and maybe a 2 weeks later, end up close lost in it. Bad timing, whatever those are perfect, so it should be sent over to marketing to put in a persona specific drip campaigns.
And at some point I'm going to re-engage, or if they reach a certain scoring, as you mentioned in that content it should trigger that rep to reach back out again
A rep that does not have that going for you. You can make your own and your sales engagement tool. You can create a sequence of, you know, one email every 4 weeks. It's just content. You're sending out plain written share or articles or this, that, and the other - it doesn't have to be anything fancy, just stay top of mind.
Alan Mcfadden: Yes, nurturing leads, and getting content and valuable insights in front of potential prospects is always valuable. Yeah, I agree, agree, and it kind of leads me on to like a last point that I would like to talk to you, and it's something that you could speak about all day, I generally believe. But KPIs is something that I feel businesses get wrong. You said a few things today about data. I feel some people just plot numbers from there, or they will think they don't really understand KPIs. So what would be the best bit of advice? What would be the first thing you'd be thinking about?
Ethan Parker: Yeah, I mean, I would think about kind of the 3 key pillars to start with. So you know, email. And with an email we have open rates and reply Rates, like positive reply rates is what I want to track. I can actually share.
I have a have a benchmarking guide we do from Outbound Squad for these metrics, so I'll show that you can have it in the show notes, but you know, with open rates, before you have any internal data just for some benchmarks, right like you should have kind of a red, yellow, green, and that like, hey? If it's below this number you need to work on this. If it's yellow, it's like, okay, maybe it's not the highest priority, but it's not fantastic. Let's look at some of the other metrics, and the green is like, if we're here, we don't touch it. It's doing fantastic right? Like if it aint broken, don’t fix it.
So, email open rates positive reply to rates with phone. You know, we want to measure 2 key things, and that's, pick up rates, and then conversion rates.
Ethan Parker: If you want to take your conversion rate a step further, you can break down your call on the segments. So, what we teach for a cold call top track is, you know, your opener and then the middle. And then the middle is question stacking, which we call the hook.
And then you have the close to what we're going to leverage. We're going to summarize what we heard. We're going to leverage a customer story and book the meeting. So if you segment your call this positions in that way, you can actually start to gather meaningful data around, like where, in the cold call people are dropping off to, and then that's even deeper in size of what you can coach on. But as like day, one just simply connect right and one is conversion rate. So how many
meetings to conversations had again red, yellow, green there. The effectiveness of a sequence, I think, is sometimes missed. And so, you know we should be looking at like per sequence. How many folks you book in there versus put in there versus how many meetings you booked?
Alan Mcfadden: I think again, I've got my own belief in coaching strategies using KPIs. I always think the problem people have is understanding what you're looking to achieve from it. Some things get bogged down in KPIs that don't mean anything.
Alan Mcfadden: But you said to me, sometimes somebody can do 100 dials, no problem. But if i'm not getting any meetings it doesn't mean anything, you know. I think the needs to be set strategy for Kpis, and if you can give the documents to me that'd be great, it'd be good for me to be able to put for the listeners as well.
Alan Mcfadden: Everything you spoke about today is what I believe is the core foundations of setting up a successful SDR team. My guys here on you into this experience with me over the last 6 months. But the feedback I get from a lot of the things you're saying today, and from what I put them to reading your squad is they never had the coaching like that.
They've never had the set goal or what happens, and I think that's where for me it's just refreshing to you. A podcast like that bound squad to just constantly get value, and that's the key part. So anybody hasn't listen to this show definitely get a listen.
You and Jason are both really engaging. And honestly, I’m a big fan of the show and so thank you for taking the time to speak to me today. But lastly, Ethan, I always ask everybody for a bit of fun at the end of my podcast. If you go back, you’ve clearly had an interesting career. What advice would you give to yourself if you could go back.
Ethan Parker: I think something that's been really a big focus of mine in the last couple of years in my career is to like reduce multitasking and, like, say, hyper focused on specific things through.
You know a time period. So I am someone that have always been very much Jack of all trades. I learned things very fast. I can you just pretty easily get to the top 10 of any category with a reduced amount of time. So I just learn very fast. That’s great but it becomes distracting.
So I I think, what advice I would give my younger self is to not multitask as much. To iinstead batch out, you know, batch out the focus and the work that you're doing really break down tasks int if it’s research – how can that be broken down even more? And then twofold is delegating the things that you’re not really good at or you hate. I’ve had a virtual assistant now for a while nad it’s like hands down the biggest difference maker in my productivity and just my mental bandwidth on a daily basis.
You can find virtual assistance on up work on, wherever that are very inexpensive to us here that Are you over there in the Uk. For like 400 bucks a month you can pay for your own research team and that will 100% pay you back. More than what you’re spending on that. So I think just investing in yourself, delegate what you’re not good at and stop multitasking as much.
That's what I would tell myself if I could go back in time.
Alan Mcfadden: Ethan. Thank you so much for your time today. I really really appreciate it. Check out the Outbound Squad podcast, and as a business I can't recommend it more. I will post the information into the episode today. Thanks very much.