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What else can I be doing to drive revenue? How do I optimize our go-to-market strategies to ensure effectiveness and ROI? If questions like these keep you up at night and occupy your thoughts by day, have we got a podcast for you.
Welcome to Market Mastery presented by The Bridge Group, the podcast where sales professionals learn to advance their careers. Join host and revenue expert Kyle Smith as he talks to elite B2B sales and revenue experts about the strategies they're using to win in the market.
From cultivating a killer company culture to navigating compensation questions, we'll provide you with the insights, education, and strategies you need to thrive.
For more from The Bridge Group, visit www.bridgegroupinc.com.
Transcription
THE BRIDGE GROUP | MARKET MASTERY | NICOLE WASILNAK
Episode Transcript
This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:00:00]:
It's unrealistic to think you're going to have somebody show up ready to buy just that level of qualification from a cold call. It's there, but it's not the normal. And so you definitely have to learn to sell to somebody who is colder, who is the right person with the right company you want to go after and be able to sell in that direction. And it's definitely different. But I think if you're a good AE, I think you start to realize the value that really does come out of those meals.
Kyle Smith [00:00:27]:
Welcome to Market Mastery, the podcast dedicated to uncovering revenue driving strategies for sales leaders in B2B tech. All right. On today's episode, I am joined by the COO of Alleyoop, Nicole Wasilnak. Nicole, how's it going?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:00:43]:
Good, how are you? Thank you so much for having me.
Kyle Smith [00:00:46]:
Absolutely doing good. So to kick things off, for those who aren't aware, what is alley oop and then specifically what's your role for the organization? And then we'll drill in and start getting into the meaty stuff.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:00:57]:
Sounds good. My name is Nicole. I am the COO here at Alleyoop. Head up our operations division. Really work behind the scenes, making sure everything from client side of the house and sales all works together and everything flows properly for our clients, Alleyoop. For those who do not know, we call it the ultimate assist. And we are a lead generation firm. So companies partner with us that are looking for top of funnel leads.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:01:23]:
We go out, we cold call, we send cold emails, we reach out via LinkedIn, creating full prospecting programs for companies, either one, who have never done this before and need us to build it out, or two, have already done it, but need more manpower behind it and need our reps to jump in. So that's what we've been doing for just over 15 years now. And I'm really excited to be here today and dive into more.
Kyle Smith [00:01:44]:
Yeah. And funny enough, this is how we find a lot of our more valuable and trusted partners. But we had a client who two years ago, who was already using you when they engaged with us. They had nothing but good things to say. And since then worked with a few more so bridge group clients who have had an amazing experience. And so I come from the outsourced world. It's near and dear to my heart. I love outsource legion.
Kyle Smith [00:02:09]:
I think that it's hugely beneficial when put in the right spot, but when you're thinking about needing to support 5100 different clients, different technologies, actual things that they're hoping to accomplish? What are some of the main things that you need to be able to, as a vendor, quickly ramp and get actually going and productive for your clients?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:02:32]:
Yeah, it's a great question. So when we go through our onboarding process, it's usually anywhere from two to three weeks with the client. So from the point in which they sign the agreement, they're ready to get started. Our reps are live on the phones. We say three weeks from that point in time. During that time, what we're doing is really week one is learning about that client. So what is the market that you want to target? Who do you want to go after? Who do you believe your buyer Personas to be? Because a lot of the times we have to create different messaging and targeting around that, and then looking at competitive landscape, who are your competitors in this space? What do you do that's better? So that when we get somebody on the phone who says, I already have something in place, we know that we can say, okay, totally understand, but we're going to go down this route with the conversation. I think the biggest things for us is when you come to us and are starting up, is looking at do you know who you're going to be targeting? Have you really figured that out yet? Or do you need us to figure it out? Because sometimes that happens as well as we think this is the space, but it may be somewhere else.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:03:30]:
Industries. You want to target the buyer Personas and then really understanding that program itself and what they offer so that we can create playbooks and scripts and, objection, handling guides so that our reps can then be trained. So then week two is training, getting the reps up on the phones, getting them through role plays and different things like that, so that once they go live, they're really ready to go. And then, of course, messaging and everything adjusts every time that we go through these programs because we learn as we go of what works and what doesn't.
Kyle Smith [00:04:01]:
Yeah. And if I were going to summarize and oversimplify, basically, if somebody comes to you and they knew who they want meetings booked with or who they want as customers and what their value is to those individuals, you can get your team ramped to be productive.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:04:18]:
Yes, exactly. Yeah. Those are two huge check marks that if you at least have a starting point for both of those, we can definitely work with you and figure it out.
Kyle Smith [00:04:26]:
Yeah. Do you find that it's more often that the clients that either your sales team is bringing into the funnel or people who are reaching out to you directly, they're more likely to overcomplicate or are they more likely to come with you with nothing? And they're like, we don't know really anything. Can you help us figure this out? Which scenario do you run into more often?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:04:47]:
Sometimes I think it's almost over complicating.
Kyle Smith [00:04:50]:
Because for me, definitely, yeah.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:04:52]:
If you've never done it before, it's like, oh my gosh, I have all this and I think I need this, this and this, and I think this is what we want to do. And it sometimes just adds a lot to it. So I think it's more the overcomplicating, but if you just break it down of who do you want to go after? What is your messaging for these people? If we can simplify those two things, train the reps, get them up and running, and then let them go, and we'll learn so much from just one week of calling what they hear, and then we can come back to you and say, hey, this is our feedback. This is what the market is telling us. Do you want to adjust this way or that way and then continuously go from there?
Kyle Smith [00:05:28]:
So that iterative process, so you mentioned, like listening to what are we hearing from prospects, what is the rep telling us that they're actually experiencing? So what is the process for iterating on messaging or refining the approach?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:05:40]:
Yeah. So in an ideal world, which doesn't always happen, as you know, we would like two to three weeks of solid data and call results to make a decision and to change messaging because a lot of times, you know, it could be twelve to 15 touch points before you even get somebody on the phone and really get them into a true conversation. So to pivot sooner than two to three weeks, it's not the most recommended, but if we had two to three weeks worth of data to prove out, this is really what we believe that we need to change. Then on our weekly call sync with the client, we would say, hey, over the last three weeks, this is the trend we've seen, this is what we've heard. Based on our recommendation, we would recommend changing this. And this of course gets the client's approval on it, and then we would implement it right away from there.
Kyle Smith [00:06:27]:
Yeah, I was just trying to do math, as you were saying, that I always say, and I picked this number out of thin air, but I would say I want to hear 50 prospect conversations. But if I'm thinking about it and it's like three weeks, 15 business days, three to four conversations per day put you at 45 up to, you know. Yeah, yeah, right. In that same ballpark. Yeah. So it's similar. And really what you're looking for is just volume of data so that you're nothing overcorrecting on a really small sample size and some weird outlier prospects. So that makes sense.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:07:00]:
Yeah, exactly. And that could be one outlier from the prospects to, you know, you have reps. Oh, I'm hearing this. But when you really dive into the data, are they really hearing that or is that just one conversation that really stuck with them and they felt that pain more? So really just analyzing the data. But to your point, like 50 solid conversations that you could make an educated decision off of, I think is really a great place to start.
Kyle Smith [00:07:24]:
Okay. And then what's the actual, the nature, the makeup of your customer base? So we play in B2B tech. That's exclusively where we are. So that's how I know you. But is that indicative of your customer base?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:07:35]:
Yeah. So not so much anymore. Five to ten years ago, yes, it was only B2B SaaS companies, technology companies. But the market has changed. Like sdrs are in so many different industries now that we realize with the market, if somebody needs an SDR and they know their value proposition and there's the data to support it, why can't we spin up a program for that? So as I've come on board, I would say over these last three years, we have staffing companies that are working with us. A huge market for us is especially in like nurse staffing of agencies who offer placements for the openings. That's been a huge market for us. So we have.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:08:15]:
Redline is a client of ours. They are a youth athletic facility across the US. They have about 60 locations. And parents submit a lead that they want their kid to come in for agility classes. And our reps get the lead, call it and book them to come into the facility and take a class.
Kyle Smith [00:08:30]:
Interesting.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:08:31]:
Which, who would have thought Alleyooplas are going to be doing things like that? But it opened us up to so many different markets of there's definitely different avenues and different industries that we can support. And so I would say SaaS is still a huge portion. It's probably 40% to 50% of our business, but the other half of it is really scattered across many different industries.
Kyle Smith [00:08:51]:
So you said five to ten years ago, primarily SaaS. How did you start to bridge over into some of the other industries? Were you or were other members of the leadership team really intentional about saying we need to expand beyond SaaS because of some of the unique pressures that SAS has faced over the last few years, did it happen more organically? Were people coming to you saying, yeah, we're not a software company, but we've heard about sales development in the way that software companies utilize it, and we want it too. Which way did it happen?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:09:18]:
Yeah. So a lot of times we follow the trends of what companies are posting for sales development reps, and I'm sure every agency does that. So they go out and say, who's looking for this? Right? And that's your a one list to go after and target. And that's really where we started to see the trend is, wow. It was popping up for many different companies that weren't falling in our traditional ICP. And so that's when we said, you know what, let's take a shot at it. Let's give them a call, see if it works. And we ran a whole campaign that was outside of that with our own sdrs calling, going after it, booking for our sales team.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:09:54]:
And that's where we got a couple meetings booked, brought on some clients, was successful. And so we said it, really, whoever needs a rep, the Dan is there, they know their messaging, we can definitely be a successful partner.
Kyle Smith [00:10:07]:
So because you boiled it down to this simple formula, which is tell us who you want to target, what they care about, and how you help them solve those challenges, and then let's make sure we have the data to actually execute on that. Because you were able to mechanize that simple formula, it was easy to point it from a cybersecurity company to an agility company or whatever.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:10:27]:
Exactly.
Kyle Smith [00:10:28]:
Okay, that makes sense. Any major differences you notice, especially knowing that you're on the client side. So more like management of the reps facing with customers versus prospects. Any major differences that you notice working with tech versus non tech clients?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:10:44]:
I would say the biggest thing is just the background of the SDR world, because I think SaaS and tech companies are so used to what it should yield and the results that you can expect out of it and what a lead looks like when it's cold from a cold call. Right. Versus somebody who's now come to you. I think when we take on clients that are outside of that world, who most of them, I would say, are in the bucket of never having done this before, it's a learning curve in the up front of, you know, it is, may have a longer buyer cycle, you know, there may be more education behind it. So I would say that is the biggest difference where it's tech and SaaS, they realize if I have this amount of meetings, this percentage becomes an opportunity, this percentage comes a close. The rest stays in my pipeline and I nurture it until it becomes there. Where companies that aren't as familiar with the SDR world, I think it's that transition of this isn't just an inbound lead that's completely hot, ready to go. We do have to qualify them.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:11:41]:
We do have to get them into our buyer cycle because they are somebody who was not expecting this call. And as said, you know what? Yeah, I would like to learn more and go from there. So I would say that's the biggest difference is just the process afterwards of what we're doing is making sure that they're educated on that standpoint.
Kyle Smith [00:11:58]:
I don't know if you've had these conversations with the clients or not, but do you think that it is for non tech clients continued survival? Or are they similar to SaaS where it's been like, this is a awesome growth lever? If we add sales development, we can grow faster without negatively impacting cocktail tv for sassy and economics. But which do you think it is for the non tech?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:12:22]:
I think it's similar to tech. I think they really do see it as a division to help ramp and keep going. I don't, I don't think a lot of times it's that, like, we're desperate. This is really our last shot to make it work. It is very similar in the SaaS market. And I would say, you know, if we look at my sales team, when they take all these different demos, they don't run a separate demo, whether you're SaaS or not, it's, here's our offering. This is what we do. Does this make sense? Let's get you into a strategy session and then go from there.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:12:50]:
So I think in that aspect, it is very similar.
Kyle Smith [00:12:53]:
Okay. And so one of the things that I also wanted to talk about that I remember from my time as a outsourced SDR was the handoff. So the thing that you're basically delivering to your clients. So what do they think that they're buying from you first?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:13:11]:
I guess from the whole standpoint, it's lead generation. So we bucking out our lead generation. When we go to the market, we say, okay, here's your tam of who we're going to target. Right. We build everything out, and then our reps are focusing on four different things. It's one, it's a hot lead, which is, I'm ready to go. I want to meet with your team within two weeks. I'm qualified and ready.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:13:32]:
Then we have warm leads which are going to be more of along the lines of, yes, I'm the right person. Yes, I may be interested, but right now is not the time. But within two months, we believe we are ready to move forward. And what's different about us is we actually share that information with the client. So we say, hey, here's your warm leads. And these are people that are active prospects. They are the right Persona, they've been qualified, but they're not ready to take a meeting within two weeks. So if you want to run marketing campaigns to these leads, if your AE's want to go after them as well, that's okay, too.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:14:04]:
So we partner up with you on that and then you have your nurturing bucket and you're disqualified. So we really focus on those four buckets in our program and then deliver on that every single week to the client saying, we've made this amount of calls, this amount of emails, here's our connect rates, our conversation rates, here's how things are going compared to your industry. And then same thing with our emails. And then, of course, what it's yielding out of those four buckets for you as a client.
Kyle Smith [00:14:29]:
Yeah, that warm bucket I usually call SDR pipeline. I know it sounds goofy because it's not actually in the pipeline. It's not an opportunity, but it's a pre opportunity funnel. Essentially. It's the SDR's pipeline. Yeah. In the late stage for sdrs, but on the hot ones, your SDR is scheduling an actual call for the clients. Let's call it an account executive.
Kyle Smith [00:14:53]:
Is the context of that. Like, hey, you're going to have a more in depth conversation with my account executive counterpart and basically teeing up a discovery call. How is that meeting set up?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:15:05]:
So it depends. I would say some of our clients, it really what they're looking for. So do you want a 15 minutes introductory call where you're going to go through with the client and with the prospect and learn more and ask questions and dive in or do you want a 30 minutes demo? And I know the language can be different for companies. Some say we don't run a demo really it is more discovery, but we would want the 30 so we can be flexible. It's completely up to you of what you want. And now we just gear our conversation and our questioning for that as introductory calls that are 15 minutes don't always need to be as qualified versus if they going into a full demo, then we may want to qualify that a little bit further.
Kyle Smith [00:15:43]:
Okay. And then I remember that that was like the number one point of contention on every single client call, and even for our clients now, like, I've been on those conversations, and that's really the sticking point. It's, this meeting was junk. It's not going anywhere. This prospect wasn't good enough. Whatever. It's this never any back and forth. And like one out of 100 is actually like, oh, yeah, this was great.
Kyle Smith [00:16:06]:
Do you experience the same thing? One and then two? Why do you think that is?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:16:10]:
Yes, we definitely do. I think if any sales agents development agency tells you that they don't experience that, I think that would be a lie. But with that said, so, qualifying questions are huge for us. So we say to a client, hey, can you give us five qualifying questions that in theory, if the prospect on the other end of line answered these questions with the right answers, we would consider them qualified. So we asked that up front. If a rep can get two to three of those questions answered with the right answer, we would consider that qualified on our end. Now, again, it's not perfect, and we practice what we preach. I have internal sdrs, our home team, that books for my sales team themselves.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:16:49]:
And there are times where a prospect shows up and says, I have no idea why I'm here. I don't even know what you do. But the rep was really great and I enjoyed talking to them and so I showed up. Now for Al Youth, that's great because we can say, well, you just saw our product live, this is what we do for clients. So, yes, it is a little bit different where someone base showing up not knowing why there is not a qualified meeting. And you may be, you know, as an AE, not wanting that or whatnot, but if we can ask those questions up front and get those to the point of the meeting and pass them, that usually does really help with the quality of it. And then working with your team, week over, week of radar meetings, we always say graded on a one to ten, what was good, what was bad, what could we have done better? Here's the call recording that supported this, so that we learn over time to make the most quality out of the meetings that we set.
Kyle Smith [00:17:39]:
Yeah. And whether you like it or not, unfortunately, you're going to be evaluated based on how well those meetings ultimately converted. And so is there anything that you do to optimize likelihood of conversion? Outside of just answering more of the questions like or going deeper on qualifications, is there anything else that you do or help the clients with?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:17:59]:
Yeah, so a lot of the things that we do upfront is even just getting them to the meeting. Right. So once someone says, yes, I'll take a meeting, we send out the invite, we send over a meeting synopsis form to the client of here's all the details, here's the notes we took on this client, here's the call recording itself so that the AE is prepared to go into the call. Our rep will then send a personalized email to the prospect introducing the AE. And then from there we do ask our AE to respond to it saying, excited to meet with you. I'm going to do my research up front. You know, looking forward to it. That does help with the stickiness because now the prospect knows, okay, this person is diving in, they are doing research.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:18:39]:
I shouldn't no show them. So that's helped with the no shows.
Kyle Smith [00:18:42]:
Well, and clean information exchange really helps just optimize the customer experience, period. You show up assuming you get to have a evolution or an advancement of your first conversation. The first three minutes of the discovery call is not going to be the three minutes of the qualification call that you had before, which always just irritates everyone. You're like, I just answered these questions. Yeah. So that nice clean information exchange you just outlined makes sense.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:19:07]:
Yeah. And I, I think too, that gives the AE the time to do their research and find out, like, oh yeah, this was a great call. This is a great prospect. I'm excited to go into this conversation and can help with the quality. And we've had times where the AE's that, hey, I took a look at this. I took this company, they actually wouldn't be a fit for us. Could you reach back out and just let them know we don't want to waste their time and our reps happy to do that as well. So I think just the upfront process is if we can give as much information to the client and the AE going into it as possible, that really does help us with the quality.
Kyle Smith [00:19:41]:
Yeah, I think one of the other things is just context. Train the AE appropriately. It's just because you didn't book this meeting for yourself, somebody else booked it for you. It doesn't mean you're about to jump on the phone with somebody who has like, pen virtually heading towards paper. Or it's like you get to just sit there and send over an order form or whatever. It's still a sales process. And so to me, it all really does go back to what you said is a requirement to be successful on your campaigns, which is who's the ICP, who are the buyer Personas? What are their challenges? How do we help them? And to me, like, if I'm an AE, I realized that a little bit of abnormal profile, but, like, just get me somebody who works at the companies that I want to sell to and has even a halfway decent title. I don't need a perfect title.
Kyle Smith [00:20:29]:
That is a great meeting for me. A hundred times out of a hundred, that's all I want. Yeah.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:20:35]:
Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I sometimes I think AE's compare it to an inbound lead that they may have received, and it's not the same, but it's unrealistic to think you're going to have somebody show up ready to buy just that level of qualification from a cold call. It's there, but it's not the normal. And so you definitely have to learn to sell to somebody who is colder, who is the right person with the right company you want to go after and be able to sell in that direction, and it's definitely different. But I think if you're a good AE, I think you start to realize the value that really does come out of those meetings.
Kyle Smith [00:21:10]:
Yeah, I feel like it's some type of weighted combo score where it's, like, level of qualification hit on Persona, like, how perfect is the Persona? And most of the time, like, company size or industry like. So if you're talking small company, low level title, minimal qualification, I don't really feel like it. Low qualification, perfect company, mid level title, you're like, give it to me. Give it to me. So I think there is, like, to be fair to the AE's, there is some type of, like, gut feel formula that indicates how good of a use of my time is this actually going to be?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:21:50]:
Yeah, I'm sure. And even show rates. I mean, I've been an AE before, and one of my companies that I was at, I had two sdrs tagged to me. One had a very high no show rate, but just drove for a meeting. There was no getting off of that set, the highest on the team. There was no getting off the head call without it, but there was no qualification going on. And then I had another who sat last, but really good quality meetings, and I took both. Now, will I say, when I saw a meeting come through from SDRA, was I like, oh, here we go.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:22:23]:
And I never know what I'm walking into here. But still, great conversations did come out of those. It wasn't just dead in the water, but so I get it. I get, as an AE, you'd be like, oh, there's another one. That came through. And again, though, I still took it because a lot of deals did come from it. So it's really just converting out of it. But I do get the predisposition of, oh, here we go, or what that might be, depending on the results of the meetings that have already been set for your team.
Kyle Smith [00:22:50]:
I think you just did touch on something super important, though. I think the no show rate is really why that happens. Even if the meeting's mediocre, it's somebody super early in their buying process. It's somebody slightly outside the ICP. The title's not perfect, but they show up and you can turn it into maybe a decent conversation, something that at least can get put into a nurture bucket. You're not going to have this massive aversion to a SDR invite hitting your inbox versus if you sit there, how many times are you going to do 15 minutes of prep, eight minutes on a zoom where nobody joins you? How many times are you gonna do that before you're like, I don't feel like doing this. I would rather make a cold call than attend a meeting where nobody's gonna join. That's not a good place to be.
Kyle Smith [00:23:32]:
And so it is a tricky balancing act. I wanna shift gears on you. So you're a C level and obviously didn't start there. And one of the things that I get asked about constantly by our clients, and especially, like, below our clients, our clients are largely VPN, C level, but ultimately, through the course of our engagement, we're working with managers and directors, and they're always asking about or even reps, and it's always like, well, how do I get to the next year or the next year? And how do I move up from either an individual contributor or a frontline manager up to mid level management and executive leadership? And I just wondered if there was anything specific about your experience that you could share about how to move up within organizations.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:24:14]:
Absolutely. So my CEO, Gabe, I actually worked for him at our last company. That's where I met him. He was at Alleyoop for, I think, twelve years, left for a period of time, and then came back at the last company. Where he went for a period of time is where I met him. And he really became a huge mentor for me. And one thing that he taught me, and it was probably my second or third week working for him, is he said, do the role that you want to do and you achieve to be in before you actually are in that role, and then you will have success at attaining that role. And so essentially, it's, you know, if I want to move up into that next tier, what can I start doing now that's actually doing that role to prove that I know how to do it and that I can take on these level of responsibilities.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:25:02]:
And then by proving that out and in time, that role really will, should fall into your plate if all things align right. And so it was something that stuck with me, and it's something that I, I think I did very early on, but once it was really said to me, it really was something I focused on, is when I wanted to become the head of sales, you know, what can I do to achieve that role, right? What are things that I can add onto my plate now that prove that I know how to do what I'm doing? My steps in my career, I think, have really come from that. As I started taking on responsibilities when I shifted from sales to operations, I was doing so many operational things that they came to me and they said, your title doesn't really make sense anymore. You're doing all of these operations things. You're not really selling. And, you know, yes, you're heading up our sales division, but you're really focused on operations, and we really need you to be in that role. Is that something you would be interested in? And so that, I think, is one piece of advice that I was given that I always say, you know, I've said it to my brother and my sister, you know, if you want to move up, do things on top of your current role that prove that you have the ability and the skills to do that role, and in time, the right people will notice that and it will be a natural progression for you.
Kyle Smith [00:26:18]:
How do you know what to do? So you were the head of sales. You want to be coo. How do you know what a coo does?
Nicole Wasilnak [00:26:24]:
Yeah, no, it's just a question. It's definitely a learning curve. I'm definitely no perfect. Just do what I do when it works. It's definitely, I'm still learning myself. I think a lot of it has come from finding gaps of things that aren't happening, that could be happening in a better way or a more efficient way. And I think those are the things that I've picked up that have gotten me into different spaces of. I think if we were doing this this way and this was the process behind it, just based on what I'm experiencing, I think this would be a huge lift for the team.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:26:58]:
And then we implement it and try it, and it worked. And then I continued on from there. So I think, for me, it was always just finding gaps and things that could make things better or easier for our team that have really stood out and have helped me just work my way through into different roles.
Kyle Smith [00:27:14]:
Yeah, it sounds. That piece of it sounds very familiar to something that my very first boss in a sales role said to me. He's like, don't ever come to me with problems. Come to me with a solution. At least then, yeah, okay.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:27:28]:
Yeah, I have heard that as well. Yep. And it's true. And I think you even find the leaders underneath you with that is I have had people who've started as SDRs moved all the way up into program director roles now. And when they started us with SDR two years ago, it was always, hey, this is what am I experiencing? I think we should try this. And all of a sudden, you're like, wow, like, this SCR is taking time. They're not just sitting there focused on themselves. They're saying, wow, you know what? I'm seeing this, this and this, and with my team, and I think this would help us.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:27:57]:
And here's the solution of how we can do it and just things like that. All of a sudden, now, that person's a team caption. And then they were a manager, and now they're director level. So I really do think not only for yourselves, but your team underneath you is like, look for that in your team. Members of who takes that an extra initiative and who comes to, here's the problem. But here's an idea of a solution. And I think that really does help.
Kyle Smith [00:28:19]:
Yeah, I think I was really naive and had a really incorrect assumption about what that meant when it was told to me. It was just like, oh, well, you just don't want to help me or like, I have to be self sufficient or like, I have to do everything on my own. And that's really not what anyone who says that is saying, because I've asked people, well, okay, well, what would you do to solve that problem? Like, even if they do come to you with a problem, you want to force the thought exercise or thought experiment to say, well, how would they approach it, whether it's right or wrong? Like, I might already know, like, how I would want to solve that problem, and that's what we're going to do anyways. But going through that exercise of thinking, like, okay, well, I did identify this problem. Here's what I think might work to solve it. If you do that enough times, you do elevate your thinking. You become machine strategic thinker. You can prepare yourself for that next role.
Kyle Smith [00:29:08]:
So that same thing. It does a lot of what you're talking about, which is prepare you for the next role.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:29:12]:
Absolutely. Yeah. And even my CEO today, we know, obviously we work very closely together. There's times where he said to me multiple times, are you looking for my approval on this? Are you looking for my opinion on it? Or are you just looking for a solution? Because those are three different things of where I need. But really, from my standpoint, I should be coming to him to say, hey, this is what I want to do. Just need your final stamp of approval on it. Or, hey, I think this is what we should do. But just want to temp check it and to make sure I'm not going crazy here.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:29:42]:
And those are really, if you can gear yourselves into those two buckets when you're going to management of, here's my problem, here's my solution. This is really what I'm looking for. You, I think that helps as well, of gear their mind into it, your mind, and then not just like, hey, this is my problem. I don't know what to do here. If you can really come with those solutions, it helps.
Kyle Smith [00:30:00]:
Yeah. Lori who? You know, Lori Page, she's been with us 23 years. I call it pressure testing. I'll call her when I want to pressure test an idea. And basically it's me presenting a solution either for a client or for our business. And I want her to find every reason why that won't work. And so to me, it tells me how defensible and solid is what I'm thinking. I do it all the time.
Kyle Smith [00:30:25]:
To her, I was like, hey, I want to pressure test something. And then I get ready for it and I have to weave together whatever my thought is and just get ready for her to just be like, well, what about this? What about that? What about this other thing? And just pick apart whatever it is.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:30:36]:
It's great. It's such a good exercise. And I laugh because we do the same thing here. And it usually always ends with games saying to me, why are you getting so defensive? And I'm like, I feel like I'm a lawyer right now going into this. And then we always joke about it and he laughs. Once I've gotten to the point where you're that fired up about it, I know that this is the right decision and that's where we should move forward. It's great to have a manager that you can lean on in that way to help with those things.
Kyle Smith [00:31:02]:
Yeah. And in the short term, if you don't like, start with a peer. Just get into the habit of constantly testing ideas, strategies. It's the only way to change the thought process from daily execution, make calls, book meetings, close deals, to how would a manager actually approach problems. Love it. All right, Nicole, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. We'll catch up soon.
Nicole Wasilnak [00:31:27]:
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. This has been great.
Kyle Smith [00:31:30]:
See ya. Thanks for listening to this episode of Market Mastery brought to you by the bridge group. If you're a revenue leader in the B2B sales space or know someone who is, connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget to subscribe to stay updated on future episodes.
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