Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
#103: In this episode, JR Butler joins Outbound Sales Lift to discuss how companies can recruit top sales talent. He discusses factors like sales process, unique IP, and equity that can help incoming SDRs get excited about an opportunity.
However, JR explains that companies should consider taking their recruiting efforts a step further by targeting entry-level sales reps who are focused on getting better and want to grow in their role versus those who are solely focused on a paycheck.
Lastly, JR shares his tips for closing a deal and ensuring that the top sales talent will thrive at your company.
Explore the human side of sales and business with host Tyler Lindley. Leaders in their field share a dose of inspiration through stories about life and business. Sales professionals provide tactical tips you can put into practice today. It all comes together to help you chart your path forward.
Achieve your goals on your terms — get inspired by stories from extraordinary people, elevate your performance with the latest outbound tactics, and find the lift you need to take your career to the next level.
Outbound Sales Lift
Episode #103
Recruiting Top Sales Talent with JR Butler
Hosted by: Tyler Lindley
===
[00:00:00] Tyler Lindley: Hey y'all. I'm Tyler, and this is Outbound Sales Lift where you can elevate your SDR team and transform your sales development efforts. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy today's show, please consider dropping us a rating. It really helps others find us. And you can also subscribe, hit subscribe wherever.
Get in this podcast to get each episode delivered to you on Tuesdays, right when they're released. On today's episode, we're gonna be covering how to position your company for top SDR talent. And I've got the pleasure being joined by JR Butler. JR, welcome to the show.
[00:00:40] JR Butler: How you doing? I'm good, Tyler. Thank you for having
[00:00:42] Tyler Lindley: me.
Yeah, thanks so much for joining. JR is the founder and CEO of the Shift Group where he does a lot of sales recruiting and training for athletes transitioning into tech sales, and yeah, like I mentioned, we're gonna be talking about how the heck do you position your company for this top SDR talent, JR.
What are you seeing in the market right now, companies that are doing this well, what are they actually doing? How are they positioning themselves so that this top SDR talent, this top sales talent, want to actually work for 'em? So I think
[00:01:13] JR Butler: a lot of companies get the easy part, right, is how I would describe it, Tyler, and, and the easy part is positioning the opportunity.
Obviously a players want to go to winning teams, so being able to talk. , you know, the size of the opportunity that your company's going after the, the unique IP that your company has, the ROI that it drives for customers, how quickly it drives that value. You know, the fact that you have a focus. Sales process in terms of who you're targeting, you know, your deal size compared to the the quota achievement.
Yep. And then like, you know, the easy one of like, Hey, this is, you're coming in early. Here's the entry value of your, your potential equity. Here's the, you know, if you sell the TAM well enough, then you know, hey, here's the potential outcome that we can drive together at this organization. Right. So, They do a, a lot of companies do a really good job of like getting people excited about the company, right?
Yep. Um, and I think if you have a big tam and you have unique IP and you drive value for your customers, then you can do that, right? The challenge that I see when you do that too well is you get missionaries instead of Merc mercenaries. And what I mean by that is, You know, when, when it's like hired guns, it's like, Hey, I can come in here, I can make a ton of money.
Um, I can potentially have a really good outcome, but the second times get tough. Right. And they always get tough. Right. Especially in early stage companies. Yep. It's like, it's like a rollercoaster. Those mission, those missionaries are gonna be gone where the mercenary type of person, they, they, they're not there just for that reason.
They companies have done a, a better job of selling these other things that we're gonna talk about. Mm. So they're gonna stick it out and they're gonna get through those hard times. And right now a lot of companies are feeling the pain of hiring a whole bunch of mis missionaries at the beginning of this year, I think.
[00:03:14] Tyler Lindley: Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. So what does a missionary kind of employee look like? I guess let's dig in deeper there. Like what are the key differences between this missionary and this mercenary, uh, type of employee? So
[00:03:28] JR Butler: like missionaries, there's two pieces to it. One is like all about the the outcome, right?
Like that's the only thing they care about is like, what's my, what's my W2 look like at the end
[00:03:39] Tyler Lindley: of the year, right? And what's my, how much money did I make? Did I hit quota? Like, what's in this, what's in it for me? Almost? Correct.
[00:03:45] JR Butler: Correct. Like, what's the e, what's the equity outcome gonna be? Like, those types of things.
Um, the other thing that like I would tie into missionaries, When the, when the job market was like super competitive at the beginning of this year. Mm-hmm. , I saw a lot of companies overselling like, Hey, we're a remote company, you know, we, you can have work-life balance. Um, you know, we have a fun culture.
And what happens is if, if you're selling, if all you're selling is work-life balance, remote work, funny hat day on Zoom, on Fridays, , and, and like, you're gonna make hundreds of thousands of dollars, that's, that's gonna attract a very certain person versus like, You know, the type of person that I like when I think of a players, I think of, of course, like they excel at their role, right?
Yep. And you, and you could get like a, like a lone wolf that is gonna hit their quota and like be a high achiever, but you know, you're gonna miss out on these kids that. , um, or these sales reps that are like focused on getting better. Mm-hmm. and to me that's what an A player is. An A player is never satisfied with where they're at.
And there's not enough companies talking about how they make their salespeople better. Yeah. And that's the difference between a missionary and a mercenary.
[00:05:04] Tyler Lindley: It's interesting you bring up work-life balance and remote because. What I, what I'm hearing from reps is that, you know, that's a, that's a key factor, but it sounds like you almost think that it's oversold by the company as, as what maybe the only factor or the most important factor when in your mind it should just be one of the many factors
[00:05:25] JR Butler: maybe.
Exactly, and, and, and I want to be really clear, like I'm talking very specifically about the entry level role, right? Yeah. Like the, the bdr, the BDR SD R function, right? Like enterprise AEs. In my opinion, the reason you get into sales is to get to that type of role where you are an individual, a high achieving individual contributor.
That's when you earn the right to have work-life balance, go to your kids' baseball practices. Yep. You know, uh, be, be present with your family. I think that like, and I wanted that when I got into sales, but like I also understood inherently because of my background. . That's what I have to go earn. But so many people
[00:06:10] Tyler Lindley: don't want to do what you just said.
You just said they want to. You have to go earn it. Some people just want, I think especially kind of some of the younger generations coming up now, it's almost like they expect that from day one. Right. It's cool
[00:06:22] JR Butler: now, right? It's cool now to be in B2B tech sales because of. Oh, I get to work from home. I get to get my hair cut on Tuesday at
[00:06:30] Tyler Lindley: 11:00 AM I can work from anywhere.
I could go travel and be in anywhere for a month and do anything. Yeah, it almost, it almost is like all the non-work stuff is what's cool, right? Everything outside of the work. But at the end of the day, it sounds like what the point you're trying to make is that, The work really matters. The company really matters, and that's maybe that key difference between that missionary who's a little bit fleeting, who's out, maybe has one foot on the out, out the door at all times versus the mercenary.
Yeah. Who's in a com. Completely different mindset it sounds like. Yeah. It's
[00:07:02] JR Butler: the work matters. The, the company matters, but what, what actually, like the, especially the early stage career person, . Mm-hmm. , that person should really, really care about like, how is this company gonna make me an expert so that I can be that enterprise seller that consistently goes into large organizations, creates urgency and need and does, you know, seven figure deals.
Right? We all wanna get there. Yeah. Right. But I hate, like I tell the, the kids that we work with, I'm like, listen, you can get there, but you're gonna. It's gonna take a a long time. Yep. And you're gonna have to put in a lot of hours. Right. The reason that technology salespeople later in their career can w2 hundreds of thousands of dollars consistently is cuz it's really, really hard.
right? Like, like going in and selling seven figures of software to companies is not easy. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of talent. Um, and I don't think people really appreciate what it takes to get there. If you're going into a B D R. because you want work-life balance and you want to shut down and start up every day when you want to.
You're probably never, you're never gonna, most likely never gonna get to that enterprise AE role. And if it, if you do, it's gonna take a lot of time and a lot of luck. Yeah. If you're putting in 30 hours a week. Right,
[00:08:26] Tyler Lindley: right. you mentioned, you mentioned make me an expert, which I, when I hear that, I'm thinking professional development.
I'm thinking personal development. I'm thinking training, coaching, like pouring into these folks. How can a company position themselves that they are going to do those things? How can you show that? Because sometimes I think that can be hard to show like in an interview process or like on your company's website, you know that you care about those things.
What does that look like? What does good look like there?
[00:08:55] JR Butler: Yeah, I think so. If, if I were, if I were recruiting like an entry level sales organization, and the way that I would want to attract the type of people that I want to talk about is I would be talking about how, how competitive our culture is. It's like, you know, every, it's, it's like you're being measured quarterly, uh, monthly, quarterly, and yearly on your quota.
But every single week we're where, We're giving you the skills. We, we we're showing you a, these skills, these habits, and these processes are what it takes to be wildly successful in selling software. And we are, we are testing you on it and we're com we're internally competing on, on the development of those skills every single week in the organization.
So we're not only showing you what good looks. , but we are giving you the content that supports why those are the things that are important, and then we're testing you against those. So like competitive culture is super important. I think selling this idea that your organization is a continuous improvement, continuous development type of organization.
And that goes top down, right? Yeah. Like when I was at a company, we went from a million dollars to $200 million in seven years. and we would have weekly demo competitions for the BDRs that the C E O sat in the c e o of this company
[00:10:20] Tyler Lindley: would sit. And the, and the BDRs probably weren't even doing demos themselves, were they just learning how to do them?
They were learning
[00:10:27] JR Butler: so they could become an account executive
[00:10:28] Tyler Lindley: and doing, right. Right. So they were doing BDR to a e development with the C E O. Correct , that's pretty intense. Like that's what should be on the website, right? ? Yes. Well,
[00:10:40] JR Butler: literally that's what like, because if you compare,
[00:10:42] Tyler Lindley: I don't, I mean I've never heard another company doing that.
But if you were to, like, if you were to show that and tell reps like, Hey, this is what you're gonna be doing in a few months. That's a key differentiator. That's like, wow. They are, they're showing it. That's that continuous development you're talking about . Yeah. And
guess
[00:10:57] JR Butler: who that's gonna scare away? It's gonna scare away the kid who's only getting into technology sales cuz they want to get a
[00:11:02] Tyler Lindley: haircut on Tuesday.
And . Well, yeah. It's gonna build that competitive culture. So it sounds like when you think about missionaries versus mercenaries, , you're thinking about competition, which I know for the shift group, y'all also focus a lot on like, uh, people with athletic backgrounds, right? Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about that.
Like, does that have an impact too? When you're thinking about how to position yourself as a company, should you be thinking about, well, where am I pulling this entry level talent from? And if so, how does that play into like your positioning of, of your recruiting
[00:11:32] JR Butler: effort? Yeah, I mean, I, I think, you know, I don't wanna over-rotate on like, you know, talking about obviously athletes have that inherent com competitive nature.
Right, right. Um, that's one of the reasons that we focus on that, that part of the population. But I don't think you need to be an athlete. To be the type of person that hates to lose, right? Like that's kind of how I define comp. How I define competition is like everybody loves to win. You're never gonna talk to somebody on the street and go, you know, Hey, do you like losing?
Nobody likes to lose . You know? Nobody, yeah, nobody. But there's certain types of human beings out there that like, , they really hate to lose. Right. Um,
[00:12:09] Tyler Lindley: how do you find that out though? Do you simply just ask them, like, Jr um, you know, interested in you for this role now? I'm curious, like, do you hate to lose?
Like do you just straight up ask them? Or is there other ways you can find that out?
[00:12:22] JR Butler: Yeah, it's, it's, so any anybody in an interview is gonna go Yeah, of course. It's like, it's like, I like, it's like we coach our kids. It's like, Hey, you need to find a company where development is important. And it's like, well, how do I find that OJ.
you ask the hiring manager, give me an example where you've coached a rep up. Ooh, right? Like, like somebody you've taken who's, who was weak on a skill. How did you make them better at that skill? So the same idea goes to the interviewer, which is, Hey, give me an example of mm-hmm. , where you've shown how competitive you are.
Right? Like I, I grew up in a. My father was a ho hockey coach, and I'm the oldest of three boys. Both my brothers played division one hockey. One of my brothers, my middle brother, played in the NHL and played in the Olympics, and wow. , this kid, like he's one of the best in the world at what my father loves the most.
So I always tell people, I'm like, literally I spent my entire childhood losing to my little brother . So like we would sit, we would sit at breakfast and I would, I would race him to like finish my orange juice faster just so I could beat him in something. Something. Right. . Exactly. So,
[00:13:30] Tyler Lindley: That's, but it doesn't have to be necessarily sports, right?
No, I mean like you think about No, it's funny that you bring up like sibling rivalries cuz that's like an early way to kind of see that if you have sibling rivalries and you want to, you want to try to win and that hating to lose, cuz losing to your sibling is the worst. Right? Yeah. I mean that's almost the worst type of losing.
Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. But how, back to like, when companies are trying to position themselves, it sounds like you need to have those examples ready. Do you think it's as enough to say to. Have those examples ready? Or should companies be communicating that in even like their outreach process or in their, in their job descriptions?
Like where should companies be taking advantage of like those stories and how should they be positioning them to even like attract the right talent to even have an interview?
[00:14:13] JR Butler: I think you, you, you have to do it in your, in your value statement. Right? Okay. Like, like in your values as an organization, because a good, a good a player sales candidate is, is talking about your values in the interview.
And so they're looking those things up. They're saying, all right, what does this company care about? And then I, you know, I never thought of it, but like including it in the job description of a bdr. , you know, we did have in our BDR job description, like, Hey, weekly competitions against the skills and habits that are gonna make you a successful seller.
Yeah, that's a great place to have it. Like if, hey, this is gonna be part of your job is gonna be getting better at what's gonna make you great someday. Mm-hmm. , um, an A player's gonna like light up when they see that in a job description. A hundred
[00:14:55] Tyler Lindley: percent. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And maybe I'm going even further, but if you had like a video of it happening, I'm going back to that example of the BDRs doing the demo.
If you made a quick 32nd. Little snippet of like, what that actually looks like in real life. Make it real life for them. Maybe that helps to tell that story even better. So in addition to, uh, talking about a lot of great ideas, you know, these missionaries versus these mercenaries, you know, what else should companies be thinking about?
Uh, because I've heard you mention the word a player a lot. Yeah. And it sounds like, do you think just separating the a from the non-A players is. , is that a big part of this positioning? Um, and if so, like what does that actually
[00:15:35] JR Butler: look like? Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I think obviously the, the competition piece is important, but I also think about, you know, getting to the point where, um, you know, you are, you are g like there's a, there's a playbook, right?
So, you know, great organizations. We, and going back to like selling work-life balance, part of that is autonomy, right? Like, hey, you have autonomy here and you had a lot of companies over rotate on autonomy. I can tell you from my, you know, decade and a half of being a sales leader, My best, my best people.
They wanted autonomy, but they also wanted me to tell them like, Hey, how do I execute here? Yep. Right. Like what, what do I need to do from to get from point A to point B? And I think that's the oth, that's the way you can measure whether someone's an A player is like, as an organization, you, you do have to understand what good looks like.
And I That's hard, that's hard in, uh, in early stage companies cuz you're figuring that out a lot. Um, but when you, when you do have like a, a process that works Yep. Is like measuring, measuring your, your candidates are like, they executing the playbook. Right. Because like, going back to that mercenary or missionary, excuse me, a missionary can come.
because of pure talent and maybe Rolodex and they can go do deals. But are they do, is it, is it repeatable? Is it scalable? Can you point to that person and go, this is how this person closed this deal, and now you can go and repeat this at 10 other companies? Mm-hmm. Chances are no with the lone wolf. Yeah.
Whereas like with an A, with an A player. , they can look at every deal and they, they've followed the playbook. They've always followed the process. Yeah. And that's why they can execute, forecast and scalably every single quarter is cuz they're just, they're repeating really good habits. Right. From a sales process perspective, that's a really good way to go.
All right. Who are my real A players and who got lucky this quarter? Right? Right.
[00:17:38] Tyler Lindley: Well, and it sounds like also it's another key way that companies can position themselves in the interview process. What if you were to show some of that playbook? What if you were to talk about some of that process? And that's probably a question for both sides, right?
Candidates should be asking the companies, what is your playbook and process? Companies better have one. Right. If you don't have one, that's probably a key. The A players might, well, they don't really have things figured out. I don't know if I see a path here to success. I don't know if this is the place where I'm gonna get that continuous development.
Maybe I'll try the next company.
[00:18:11] JR Butler: Right. Exactly. And, and, and even if you're a category creating software, Tyler, you still have, you still have competition. You go up against, and it's typically business as usual, right. You're going in and creating a need that a customer doesn't know they have. Yep. But that, but there needs to be, okay, what's our playbook for business as usual, right?
You should be able to answer in an interview process. If somebody's asks you the question, who's your biggest competitor? And how do you beat them consistently? Whatever this is, whatever the biggest competitor is, you gotta have an answer. This is our biggest competitor and this is how we beat them consistently.
If you don't have a good answer for that, and I'm a a player seller. I'm, I'm like, uh, these guys haven't figured out how to beat their biggest competition yet consistently. That's scary.
[00:18:55] Tyler Lindley: Yeah. Yeah. That is scary. That is scary. Um, I want to, and once you find, okay, now you've identified these A players in the interview process, a players likely are gonna have multiple opportunities.
Right. They're likely gonna have multiple job offers. Um, you know, I see it all the time. How do you. Close the deal. As a company, how do you make sure the A player ends up on your team? Whenever you've identified them, you've hopefully showed them some of those differences, but now we're at the end, right?
We're at the end and we're trying to close the deal and get this a player on our team, not the, not the other team. What do we do to close '
[00:19:32] JR Butler: em? The way that we, we a, we've always done it. The way I've always done it is, is I have my other A players as part of my interview process, right? I have my, my, my folks that are w tooling the most money.
that are bought into the, the mission, the, the, the Titus, and they're part of the interview process. So they're talking to a like-minded person who's, you know, what we think of when we think of high A, uh, uh, a players hardworking. Yep. High intellect, accountable. People that, you know, have like a, I call it a give a shit muscle.
Sorry to swear, but like, no, that's good. People that really care about getting better and like achieving a clear. . I have people that are like them talking to them during the interview process. Now they feel like, oh my God, I'm gonna be, you know, a players I think want to be, they understand the concept that like you're the average of the, the five people you spend the most time with, they didn't like if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.
Right. Um, so a player putting an A player with an A player during that peer-to-peer step in your interview process. , they're walking away going, man, I, I can get better if I work with that person. And clearly like, I'm just like them and they're, they're overachieving at this company now I want to go be part of that now.
Yeah, that's the way we've always done it.
[00:20:50] Tyler Lindley: I like that a lot. Do they necessarily have to be in the same role? Like let's say you're hiring maybe SDS for the first time. Could it be the top AE on the team? Could it be somebody in a different part of the company As long as they have? Do you think that it factor that a player.
[00:21:03] JR Butler: Absolutely. For the BDR side, what I would be doing is I'd be grabbing the an AE on my team that was a BDR who's crushing it as an ae. Yep. And that's the, that's the person I'm putting in front of all my A BDR candidates to go, this could be you in nine to 12 months.
[00:21:20] Tyler Lindley: You know what? Correct what I mean?
Yeah. Do you want to end up here? Kind of like you were talking about with the enter. AE kind of path, but showing it, I think showing it with a human is so much better. You know, I was just, I was talking to some SD R z, they're, they were ping me. Hey, just, just became an AE and they were celebrating, Hey, thanks for the help, right?
Of all the coaching and training that I did with them, but like that path showing perspective. Candidates. That is so powerful, especially when you've got a human being like showing the story. It's not us just saying like, oh yeah, we develop our reps. A lot of people become AEs. Oh no. Uh, you know, Rebecca did this.
She started here eight months ago. She's crushed it now. She's an ae. Bigger base salary. Bigger, bigger responsibility. She's on a path to leadership. You know that's way different.
[00:22:08] JR Butler: Yeah. It's like, it's like why do companies do customer testimonials? It's so that a customer reads this and goes, this some, this is someone just like me.
Here's a, here's a real story. Yep. You need to do the same thing in the interview process on both sides. Hey, I'm really coachable. Here's an example of me improving a skill that I was bad at. Hey, we do really good at coaching. Here's an example of how we've coached a kid before. Yep. You know, we promote a PDRs to AEs.
Here's three examples that we've done in the last six months. Yep. Like as a salesperson, you need to hear the stories. You need the real examples. It can't just be a broad statement that we would never sell that way. To a customer. We can't sell that way to people we want to hire.
[00:22:48] Tyler Lindley: Yep. No, I totally agree.
JR any parting words of advice for companies out there, you know, trying to position themselves for that top sst r talent that we haven't touched on yet?
[00:22:58] JR Butler: Yeah. This, this won't be a popular opinion, but I'm gonna speak very honest. I'm a, I'm a, I'm from Boston, so it's, there's, there's no gray area. Black and white.
Like, don't be lazy. , you know, like it's easy to, to, it's easy to talk about work-life balance and a fun culture and you know, being. And you're gonna, you're gonna get a lot of people that will submit, you know, submit their, their resume to your website and you can go brag at the, at the management meeting that, you know, we got 500 resumes.
But if you got 500 resumes, cuz that's how you're selling the company, your conversion rate is, is gonna be low or you're gonna hire the wrong people. Yeah. So it's okay. It's okay to make it harder on yourself by not overselling that you're gonna, you might have to work a little harder, but you're gonna get the right person and you're gonna thank.
In a year when you're not, when you're not having a ton of attrition. So don't be lazy, . Cause I guess
[00:23:50] Tyler Lindley: my advice hundred percent. Don't be lazy. I love it. JR thanks so much for the great conversation today. If you wanna check out, uh, more about JR, go to the shift, uh, shiftgroup.io, shiftgroup.io and you can learn more about uh, what he's got going on there. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Outbound Sales Lift. If you need help elevating your SDR team, please visit our website at thesaleslift.com to learn more. Also, make sure to hit subscribe wherever you get podcasts. Check out next week's episode filled with more great ideas on transforming your sales development efforts.
Thanks again for listening, and remember, no sale starts until you book that meeting. See ya.