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The secret sauce to your sales success? It’s what happens before the sale. It’s the planning, the strategy, the leadership. And it’s more than demo automation. It’s the thoughtful work that connects people, processes, and performance. If you want strong revenue, high retention, and shorter sales cycles, the pre-work—centered around the human—still makes the dream work. But you already know that.
The Unexpected Lever is your partner in growing revenue by doing what great sales leaders do best. Combining vision with execution. Brought to you by Vivun, this show highlights the people and peers behind the brands who understand what it takes to build and lead high-performing sales teams. You’re not just preparing for the sale—you’re unlocking potential.
Join us as we share stories of sales leaders who make a difference, their challenges, their wins, and the human connections that drive results, one solution at a time.
Jarod Greene (00:00):
Welcome to V5 where we spend exactly five minutes getting on our soapbox with some of the hottest takes and topics in all of B2B go-to-market. I know I say it every time, but this is going to be a fun one. I have Kate VanLue, co-founder of AudiencePlus, one of my favorite companies and platforms in the world. She's got a spicy take, I'm going to let her tell it. Kate, what's on your mind?
Kate VanLue (00:24):
So I'd say the thing that I spend far too much time wrestling with and fighting about internally, publicly, and with my team, anyone that wants to listen is just surrounding the SDR role generally. I've kind of got two sides to the coin on this one. On the one hand, I've been selling for, I don't know, 15, 20 years. I think the BDR role from an experience like an employee experience perspective is like where everyone should start. Everyone should be in the trenches, make the phone calls, do the hard role, and understand what it takes to win business regardless of what seat you end up holding at a company. I think that AEs and I am one, I love it all day. I love what I do have become so unbelievably spoiled by the SDR role. I think when we know that, I don't know, a deal is like 80% plus more likely to convert to close one revenue from a meeting if the AE was the originator of that meeting in the first place.
(01:30):
I think the fact that this environment is as noisy as it is today now with everything AI and that honestly the SDR role has become even harder. Booking a meeting relies very heavily on relationship face-to-face in person. There's a reason that all those things are ramping up so much for there to be a role that does nothing but that kind of volume outreach and cold call is just bonkers to me. An AE should own meeting booked to revenue. One with the asterisk of like if it's an enterprise and you've got an 18-24 month sales cycle, forget that. But for a lot of us, especially that are tech selling to tech all day, no team should have an SDR role. And it took me a while to get there and to just feel that and say that out loud. But it's better for the AE, it's better for the AE's relationship. The SDR role has turned into just volume outreach and units and metrics and it's not actually a value add to the AE in many cases or to the future customer prospect, et cetera. It's like the old fashioned venture. We're going to raise this huge amount of money and so now we have to hire this huge sales team and we have to fill the room with all these bodies and we have to have this big team that's going to run the show. It just doesn't need to exist anymore.
Jarod Greene (03:04):
We say the quiet part out loud. It is funny. We had Blue Bowen on from G2, a couple clicks back. He gave a hot take around the AI SDR may not make a ton of sense to folks, but it makes a ton of sense for inbound. If something comes inbound, you need that SDR automation to process that inbound in a way that does what you said gets them to the AE as fast as possible. But the outbound use case, that's the one where candidly us at Vivun have explored to say, I don't think we need SDRs to do this kind of volume outbound and then pay 'em for every meeting they book and then pay 'em for every inbound request that they put on a calendar. The math don't math. And so I think a lot of people feel what you are saying, including the person on the other side of this call.
Kate VanLue (03:51):
To have AEs handling different segments of business. And then you've got people that you do have a bench of AE players that are fielding certain types of calls. But I think again, sales compensation and the way that comp plans are oriented is the most powerful tool that there could possibly be to grow revenue for your business. And it's a bit of an art form in addition to the science of it. And that's a whole 'nother thing. But there is such a missed opportunity in so many organizations to not have a massive amount of comp for the sales reps coming from meetings booked and following meetings all the way through the funnel, more business and it's less heads. And again, I hate, there's parts of that that I hate, but turn your SDRs into AEs.
Jarod Greene (04:40):
Yeah. Again, that's same play. We had an SDR who became an AE and he's thriving. Where does your enterprise sales farm system come from? Because that used to be the bench. And so if I don't have SDRs, where am I going to get that college graduate or early in the workforce role at the high performing young professional to kind of come into my business? I didn't say the word cheap. That wasn't, wasn't me, but where do I find lower cost labor from the folks who are entering the workforce if they're not the SDR?
Kate VanLue (05:13):
I think that's where AI has actually opened up a lot of opportunity. There's still some missing pieces for go-to-market teams when it comes to what we're doing with the signals that we're ingesting. A combination of the noise and then the go-to-market kind of engineering role. And I think that's become a label for a lot of different things. It can mean AI and agentic workflows and things that are more sophisticated with the tech stack, but it can also just mean a human putting the pieces together. And the thing is, I think we have to strike a better balance. My inbox and LinkedIn is insane now. I used to pride myself on responding. I used to respond to most sales emails and say, no thank you, or whatever, and even try to take sales calls. Nine out of 10 times the person I'm getting email from doesn't exist anymore.
(06:09):
I will look them up. I will try to find, and most of the time it's not a real person. Fine. I think there's a time and a place it works for some. Whatever helps your business grow, go for it. I would bet that it's not those emails that's doing it for you, however. So I think the missing piece there is the human being is still the face. I think there's still a place for that. Then entry level workforce, I'm just not sure. It's the volume outreach game then that's replacing it. I mean, I think the event industry is doing incredibly well. I think people with their salon dinners and their face-to-face and all of those things, I mean, I think that that's where getting more faces and more people out to be the face of your brand and building those relationships is what the differentiator is. The cost of that acquisition cost isn't necessarily all created equal, but I think there's still a place for that role. But it can't just be volume email anymore. And if it is, you better have your face on your email with your LinkedIn profile link. Most of the time I just assume it's not a real person anymore
Jarod Greene (07:18):
Anyway. Yeah, trust underpins every buying decision.
Kate VanLue (07:22):
A hundred percent.
Jarod Greene (07:23):
A hundred percent. So Kate, this has been great. I knew we go over, but this is what we do. It's a great conversation to have. What if folks wanted to have this conversation with you directly? Where can folks find you?
Kate VanLue (07:33):
Yeah, so LinkedIn, I do try to sift through all of those the best that I can, but I do get a lot of messages. But email is good. I mean kate@audienceplus.com, it's a good place to find me, if not LinkedIn.
Jarod Greene (07:45):
Awesome. Kate, thank you for spending some time with us today. We really appreciate it.
Kate VanLue (07:48):
You bet. Thanks for having me.
Jarod Greene (07:50):
Thanks.