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Nobody taught you how to handle it when a prospect hangs up mid-pitch. Or when your biggest deal goes dark on a Thursday. Or when you're one call away from quota and your stomach won't stop turning because you don’t know what to do next.
That's the stuff we’re here to talk about. Josh and Eric, two former athletes turned sellers, break down what it actually takes to compete in sales right now. The plays that work, the ones that don't, and the embarrassing stories in between.
No suit-and-tie energy here. We want to help you get your head in the game and make you the hero of your own sales story.
It’s time to get game-day ready. You in?
Josh Rasmussen (00:00):
Tools could look exactly the same, demo the same, probably function the same if you actually piloted them. 100% of the time I'm buying from the person I enjoy talking with more than the other person. And it literally is because it feels more like a friendly relationship and less like I'm thrown in a random sales cycle.
(00:23):
Welcome to Game Shape. Today we're doing something different.
Eric Salvo (00:26):
We're calling this one sales pet peeves. Josh and I have done our homework before, come up with a list of our starting five of the worst things people do in sales, and then also our big three of the best things people do in sales. We're looking forward to this one. I think this will be a good episode for us.
Josh Rasmussen (00:43):
We're going to balance it out. We want to be a little petty and complain a little bit, but we promise we'll be productive as well. So let's get into it. Sales, pet peeves, starting five. Eric, I'm going to let you go first with the first round draft pick.
Eric Salvo (00:55):
Being an SDR for three years, I would say my biggest pet peeve is when I would send over a hot lead over, or in my opinion, was a decent lead over to a rep, and they would just show up and be like, "So what do you guys do?" And then have no idea of who this prospect is, what they actually care about. Now to say that, I have not had those sort of reps at other companies. I certainly have, but that is easily my number one draft pick. Super frustrating as an SDRE putting in all that work. I know your rep just come up and fumble the bag and then not advanced the deal forward with a lead that looks pretty good on paper. And also if you have metrics that are tied to that, that is my number one draft pick and my starting small sword if I had to say anything.
Josh Rasmussen (01:36):
I didn't even have that one on my list, but that one's actually so fire and it unfortunately happens way too often. It is a grind, especially in some of those good accounts where it is you feel like it is a really warm fire contact and then the AE treatment, it's just another meeting on a Wednesday afternoon. It's like, all right dude, you literally just fumbled the bag for both of us and put a dagger in my chest. That's a great first pick. My first overall pick, I have a little bit of bias with this, but it's when people are mean to SDRs. It's like they forgot where they came from. I understand being a little pushy and shit happens sometimes, but you go out of your way to be rude and disrespectful. Not only do an SDR, but just to a person in general is crazy to me, especially when it's coming from a sales leader or somebody who's been there and done that.
(02:25):
To be rude is like, that shit really grinds my gears.
Eric Salvo (02:29):
It's kind of insane. Not only people in sales do that, but also anyone in marketing, operations. A lot of people in go-to-market leadership typically startups and SDR. Even CEOs have come from SDR up to CEO somewhere, founders somewhere else. They still treat them kind of crappy. And it's quite surprising on my side here too. It's a great number two pick. Josh, I think maybe doing a snake draft here would be great. So if you want to go back to that. I get
Josh Rasmussen (02:53):
Back to three.
Eric Salvo (02:54):
Yeah. In the spirit of fantasy football being upon us in the next month here, I think snake draft makes a lot of sense for us. So if you want to kick us
Josh Rasmussen (03:02):
Off - Well, I appreciate that. And I got my number two pick here is pushing too far past no. And what I mean by that -
Eric Salvo (03:11):
Explain it. Yeah, explain that for me.
Josh Rasmussen (03:13):
What I mean by that is this is something that I've had happen to me recently that just kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. But having asked some other people their opinions as well, this is something that came up. But if I give you a legit objection that is not like me giving you any fluff or beating around the bush, it's like, Hey, this is something that's very real. If you keep trying to push me somewhere else and think that it's going to change my perspective or thought process, one, you're already hurting my thought on you as a rep. But then the worst thing is not take pushing past me. And this is an example that honestly, it happened a month ago. But I told somebody, I was like, "Hey, I love your tool. We don't have budget for it right now. We bought something else.
(04:00):
Contact me at the beginning of the year and we can have a conversation. I think your tool is fantastic." They pushed back on me like, "Hey, let's talk." I was like, "First of all, I've seen a demo. I've talked to another rep. I know what your tool does. Here's the situation." So then they went around me to our CEO and asked them what's going on. And now it's like then the first thing the CEO does comes straight to the person who's the buyer, which is me. And guess what? Now that makes me look bad, makes you look bad, and you possibly burned a bridge because I gave you a true and honest objection. And now we're sitting here where it's like, would I ever buy from you again? From you, the rep? Probably not. Now it hurts your company too because if I go somewhere else and I buy your tool, now I still have bad taste in my mouth.
(04:48):
There's some objections, we talked about this in a previous episode, how do you overcome objections? Very, very critical skill in sales. But in this case, if somebody gives you a legit and honest objection, take it, follow up when they ask you to, and be like a quality sales rep. Don't be the guy who's pushing a little bit too hard than somebody that's just trying to hit their quota at the end of the quarter.
Eric Salvo (05:10):
Couldn't have said it any better. And I totally hear what you mean now. I think there's a difference between a objection with no substance versus one where you said, "Hey, I know who you are. I understand your product. I actually like it a lot. I legitimately cannot buy anything right now." That as an SDR should be, okay, guards are off. Us and Josh, we're going to become friends now and I'm going to keep on top of you so that in nine months or six months or whenever that time comes, we're going to start talking again. Awesome. That's complete difference than what you just talked about because I think there have been actually tools here at Vivin where we've actually run into that sort of scenario and therefore have now burned those bridges, not us personally, but external vendors that have done that. And it's quite crazy.
(05:49):
So sorry to hear that happen, man. That's not a
Josh Rasmussen (05:53):
Great question. Not bad for me, but bad for that sales rep and their sales team because they could have just lost a valuable customer. Like I said, I love the tool. And now it's like you're putting a bad taste in my mouth. No, I don't want to come back for more. But now it's back to you for your second round break. What do we
Eric Salvo (06:09):
Got? No-show demos. I'm very much living in SDR like hell right now. If someone doesn't show up to a call, I can't say how frustrating that is. And you can feel that too as an SDR, former SDR yourself, an SDR reader now. It hurts quota. It makes you look bad. And especially when you feel like you had a pretty solid conversation and there's no message, no callback, no text, no LinkedIn saying, "Hey, let's reschedule." It really is super easy to hit yes or no on a calendar invite. Or also send a quick email and say, "Hey, I'm not ready for this time. Next Tuesday at 4:00 PM works perfect. I'm really not asking for much." And so just flat out not show up to a call. That's one of the worst in my opinion for my sales pet peeves. Any reaction to that before I go to my next one?
Josh Rasmussen (06:52):
That obviously sucks because like you said, one, it sucks for the SDR because if it's a first week, it sucks for them because we talked about oftentimes that's correlated to their quota. But especially as an AE, it's like you've taken the time to prepare for that conversation. It's like you have so much other things going on that this takes priority over that and for that to interrupt your flow can really impact the rest of your day. But I think it's honestly a little bit disrespectful as well. If this is something you agreed to and everybody did their job to confirm that this is happening, and then all of a sudden you just don't show up. Like you said, all it takes is honestly you could click one button and decline it and you would know beforehand, but to show up and be on a Zoom for five to 10 minutes and then not show up is in my mind disrespectful.
(07:40):
There are things you send the email, say no, do something beforehand, but don't be the person that's showing up or not showing up 15 minutes into the call with no context.
Eric Salvo (07:49):
It's kind of like a slap in the face. My time's more important than yours, which at the end of the day, maybe it is and make more money than me per hour. But at the end of the day, we're looking to be humans here and actually try and help people. So yeah, I couldn't agree. I think that's a tough one for me, but that's my number two pick, my supporting player there. My number three pick for me, number five overall is tech win, but no deal. So this has happened to me once or twice before where you get stuck in procurement, you get stuck in legal, or competitor comes in with just an insane discount and you end up losing the deal, but you actually are the better sex it. I think it's 85% of all tech wins result in deals. So we're talking about a very finute amount of deals that actually happen here, but I can't say how frustrating that is because you're like, "Hey, we've won over their business.
(08:37):
We're in the final stages." Then all of a sudden I'm not buying the boat, but I'm getting excited that I'm going to have a nice commission check on it and all of a sudden nothing. It's pretty frustrating to say the least. That's definitely my top three.
Josh Rasmussen (08:50):
Yeah. I can't even imagine what that's like because especially as you go through longer sales cycles, it's like you've spent so much time and effort in bringing other people into the conversation. I feel like you can correct me if I'm wrong, but oftentimes it's not the person who you've built the strongest relationship with. Again, it comes down to legal or IT, or it's the person who actually owns the budget who's like, "Well, X competitor literally just cut your price in half. Why would we not buy this?" Which is just like, what do you do about that?
Eric Salvo (09:20):
X buddy who I used to work has landed at a competitor Y. Yeah, so they're going to give us a nice home or discount. That can be more frustrating. So yeah, been through those in the past and they really, really burned. But I got my top three rounded out. Josh, you've got picked three and four on your side for who's next top for you?
Josh Rasmussen (09:41):
It comes back to the discovery call piece, but it's how's the weather rapport? I cannot stand when people ask like, so how's the weather? Be creative and be fun. I remember when I was coaching SDR as my last role, we were the ones running those first discovery calls and it was a common theme of that's the only thing they would ask like, "Oh, hey Eric, where are you calling in from? Oh, cool. How is the weather out in Boston?" It's like, dude, be a little bit creative. It's summertime. Ask anything other than the weather. Did they do anything fun during summer vacation? Do they have any plans coming up? It's Friday. What are you doing this weekend? Be a little bit more authentic. One, I'm coaching my rep to not do that. It's immediate coaching point. But two, I'm also turned off because it's like, dude, I don't know, if you saw where I lived, do you know what the weather looks like?
Eric Salvo (10:32):
If you did your research, you know exactly where I am. So it's so frustrating.
(10:37):
I can't believe people still do that today. I know a rep I've worked with in the past who will do anything and everything to find one very niche thing in someone's background. And sometimes I would find it cringey, but every once in a while, I would say about 40% of the time, even if it was like, hey, I visited there for three days, that person lit up and they'd be like, holy shit, did you do this? Do you this? Yeah. And then this whole conversation sparks. Granted, more often than not, it kind of came off a little weird, but there was certain points where it really worked. And when it did, you could really see the course I'm building right there. And again, that's something you reference in follow-up email and you have a personal connection. These are starting to really build the rapport they assess through there in sales, which is probably one of the biggest things that people like to buy from people they like.
(11:22):
So if you're able to establish that early.
Josh Rasmussen (11:24):
Yeah, people like to buy from people they like, and this is something I've started to notice more as I've been when it's involved in more decisions with our tech stack is almost 100% of the time tools could look exactly the same, demo the same, probably function the same if you actually piloted them. 100% of the time I'm buying from the person I enjoy talking with more than the other person. And it literally is because it feels more like a friendly relationship and less like I'm thrown in a random sales cycle.
Eric Salvo (11:54):
Clip
Josh Rasmussen (11:54):
It.
Eric Salvo (11:55):
Clip
Josh Rasmussen (11:56):
It. How's the weather? It was like 10 minutes in the conversation, we're not chatting about something random and unrelated, but it made it feel like it was more of a personal connection as opposed to you're trying to get something from me, which is really, really key.
Eric Salvo (12:09):
Anyway, clip that. I just flew the cons are there. Yeah, throw it on socials. We need LinkedIn, need everything.
Josh Rasmussen (12:16):
I'm up again with my fourth pick and it kind of bounces off the last one in a different vein, but it's the no research outreach. It could show up in a discovery call when you're trying to build the rapport. But I more ferment this as if you're sending me an email or a LinkedIn message and clearly this is just a copy and pasted template that you've sent to hundreds and thousands of people, first of all, why would I even care? But the biggest example of this is I've been getting horrible, horrible emails from companies who are trying to sell me software that overlaps for my own tool. Just did one quick Google search as to what my company does. You would realize we are not a good customer for you, but you still decided to throw me in a sequence, send me an email, send me a LinkedIn message.
(13:02):
And it's like the biggest waste of your time. I shouldn't be mad about this. You should be mad that you're wasting your time and not finding the right people to prospect. And so as someone who's coaching and managing SDRs, if I knew that they were sending emails and prospecting companies where there wasn't a fit, I'd be like, "What are you doing? It's a waste of time." So the no research, again, it bleeds into the, did you show up on a discovery call and ask, how's the weather? But also, are you reaching out to the right people and trying to spend a little bit of time doing some type of research on that first initial outreach? But now you're up fifth pick, you get to bring us home.
Eric Salvo (13:36):
Yeah, to round out the starting five for me. my shooting guard is going to be a rep who complains about outbound, leads coming from SDRs, but not actually doing any themselves. Listen, now there's a very clear difference between a rep who is far too busy to do outbound, which to be honest, no rep is ever that busy when they can't do outbound. And a rep who I look at their calendar and there's six hours of free block on their day who's getting upset about leads that are coming in. Brother, you need to get on the phones. You got to put some work in to help fuel the funnel and not rely on your, in some cases, entry level SDR who just graduated from college or university recently, who is to help feed you. You need to go in and do the hunt yourself. And at one point in time, again, the best reps I've ever seen are the ones that came from an SDR route, kept those skills, continued to develop them, and then eventually became an AE, not the ones that have just been as closer their entire career and moved on in that direction.
(14:34):
So my opinion, you can't get upset about something, especially you have the ability to outtrol the situation too. That is the easy one for me. I'm assuming you feel pretty strongly about that too. Yeah,
Josh Rasmussen (14:43):
That's awesome. And if only more AEs felt that way, the world would probably be a better place. I think lower segment AEs still understand it and it's like they have to be a little bit more defined leads. And they're still in that transition period where it's like, I've done this most recently, so I feel more comfortable. As you get a little bit deeper in tenure, then that's when the fingers start pointing a little bit more at the expectation that I shouldn't have to make calls or send emails or do anything. It's always on my meeting setter who, again, we both know there's good months and bad months, and sometimes it's just like it's hard to get meetings on the calendar. And so you can't just point fingers at somebody else if the outcomes that you want aren't available, especially I've seen your calendar, so I know you don't have time to do a lot of this right now.
Eric Salvo (15:34):
As of late, no, no shot. Yeah.
Josh Rasmussen (15:36):
But if you had three or four hours a day and you're like, dude, I need more meetings, you got to be willing to pick up the phone and go.
Eric Salvo (15:41):
Yeah. You got to look to the mirror and make a hard decision or are my hands too glossy for this or can I get down in the dark and make it happen? So that's a big one. I think that's a huge, huge pet peeve for me, especially. Not that I've run into it, but I know of other SDRs who are hearing about this as of late and it's like, well, do they have any deals in pipeline? They've got nothing in the pipeline. Man, I'm asking for one or two leads a week. I'm not doing, just go get something. Yeah.
Josh Rasmussen (16:06):
I hear this from a lot of my AE friends all the time, and it goes back to being mean to SDRs. Did you forget where you came from? Get your hands dirty, pick up the phone and make some calls and try to book a meeting. It doesn't have to be that hard. What else are you doing with your time anyways?
Eric Salvo (16:21):
No, the other day you're a sales rep. That encompasses starting and closing deals, and most importantly, starting them. So yeah, get out there, make some calls. I could always do a better job at that. But yeah, I will never sit here and complain about the ability to go and actually do it myself. Big difference, big difference there. To round out my starting five, for me, it's forecasting the same deal over and over. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a forecast call and I listen to this rep talk about a deal. Either when I was an SDR or an A, it doesn't matter, hearing a rep talk about the same deal over and over and knowing it's going nowhere, but there's no real pressure coming from anyone. Let's just open it up. Let's just talk about it. And if it's real or not, if it's real, yes, we can keep it going.
(17:05):
But if it's not real, let's squash it, let's move on. Because I can't say how much I hate going to that motion of, "Oh, well, AcleCorp has been looking great." And it's like, "They've been looking great for six months, dude. What's actually happening here?" Are we making progress or not? So granted, I think I like that leadership style a little bit better. Maybe some people disagree with me, but that's a pet peeve I have in mine. I
Josh Rasmussen (17:27):
Agree with that one as well. I've been on more forecasting calls now in my new role, and there's definitely some ones that were there in the same status for quite some time and never moved. And then we though it was going to be close. And then a couple of weeks later, for some reason, something fell through for one reason or another. But it's like why over-promise and under-deliver? The more accurate forecast you can provide, it's better for you.
Eric Salvo (17:54):
The better. Absolutely. There's a certain point when the game stops generally game and you got to just actually put up or shut up. And I was a little bit of a victim to that early on, but I can surely say that I'm not some of the over-promises on that. Yeah. Well,
Josh Rasmussen (18:07):
I feel like forecasting is a skill, right? It is not something you learn. We could try to teach it to you as an SDR and it's something I try to do. How many meetings do you have for next month? What do we need to get? But in terms of actually forecasting a deal that you have in pipeline, it's something you have to learn to do in some of those signals that you have to be aware of. And if you're ignoring the signals and still just showing a front that something's moving forward faster, more quickly than what it actually is, it's not a great look for you as a rep, which isn't something you definitely don't want when you're presenting in front of sales leadership.
Eric Salvo (18:40):
There's a certain element you talked about of painting the picture, making things look real good. But then it's another element of, well, the moment that paint starts happening, when it dries and falls off the wall, what's behind it? We got to figure that one out. But anyway, man, last pick onto you. Our 10th overall pick in the first round. Who is it? Who do we got?
Josh Rasmussen (19:00):
Yeah, right now, it's a relevant topic for me, but my last number five sales pet peeves is AI SDRs. Maybe it's a hot topic. I don't think that it is. I just think the word AI is thrown around in basically every single prospecting message that I get now. There's so many different tools that fit into the AI space. But the one that annoys me the most, and I feel like I get so much AI slop, and it kind of bleeds into the last one I said too with the no outreach. But it's like they have hundreds of thousands of people just in a random sequence that are sending the exact same message to every single person. They promise you that it's going to be personalized, tailored outreach. It sucks. It's not great. And the biggest prover behind that is Anthropic is the biggest AI company in the world, and they're still hiring human SDRs to go do the job the correct way.
(19:50):
I'm completely tired of hearing about how great AI SDRs are. And these companies that are trying to sell us on more meetings being booked with AI, they're sure use AI tools to help you book meetings. But AI SDRs as a tool, not for me. Hopefully it's not a hot topic, but I've been completely oversaturated with the amount of people reaching out to me as a SDR manager on trying to replace the people on my team. I'm not a fifth.
Eric Salvo (20:20):
Not a fan of that at all. Especially when you see open-headed talent, you're like, "Hey, I see you're hiring for an SDR. Why don't you pay an AI one? I want a human. I want an active human that can sit there, pick up the phone, and actually leverage the tools in front of them." And not only that, someone that's not only going to be a minor leaguer for us, but eventually a major league player for us in a year's time or two years' time, whatever it ends up being. So I think you talked about it too. A lot of those, well, you didn't mention it, but I'm going to say it. A lot of those AI SDR companies aren't necessarily smoking out of the water right now. So I think a lot of people would agree with you that it is not a hot take.
(20:54):
AI SDRs are an absolute red flag and a pet peeve, I think on both of us and anywhere in the sales community. And I can't remember which company it is, but one of them just got a sponsorship from Jordan Belfort. And I think that was a pretty big red flag and a pet peeve. So I think everyone kind of realized who these companies are at the end of
Josh Rasmussen (21:10):
The day. Yeah, I think it just makes it harder for everybody else too, because all they're doing is putting so much volume in the world of they are cool. They can send 500 emails a day and do all this LinkedIn automation, which is awesome. Congrats. Volume is fantastic, but what you're doing is making it really, really hard for people to stand out because there's so much volume. And even if you send a really quality email or quality LinkedIn message, people are just tired of selecting a hundred emails in their inbox, knowing all of them look the exact same, and then they don't even get the chance to look and find a diamond in the rough. So it's just made it really, really tough. Not that being this job wasn't hard before, but because there's so much volume and so much noise, standing out is even more hard.
(21:58):
Not a fan of all these AI SDRs trying to take over the world.
Eric Salvo (22:03):
Couldn't agree more, man. Couldn't agree more. Stop hiring humans, right? That's the push, right? Supposedly. Let's get positive here. Since I had the first pick in the pet peeves, we're going to do some green flags now. Actually, real quick, before we go, let's run through our starting five on each side. I'll go first. My starting five, my top five sales pet peeves. A rep not doing any prepping before a disco call. Ghosting in any form, whether that's early stage, late stage, we're primarily talking about the early stage year. Tech win, but no deal. Can' tell you how frustrating that is. A rep complaining about outbound, but not doing anything themselves to then correct the situation. And then my last one is forecast and the same deal over and over, week over week, month over a month. And everyone on that call knows it isn't actually happening.
(22:53):
Those are my starting five for my sales pet peeves. Josh, you want to take it away?
Josh Rasmussen (22:58):
Yep. And my starting five at the point guard position, being mean to SDR. If you're doing that, you have a bad place in my life. Pushing path, no. So not taking the objection as truth, especially when it is a true and honest objection. If you're trying to navigate past it a little too hard, that's the used car salesman energy that we don't want. Number three, how's the weather rapport? Super lazy, no effort, not going to build a strong relationship with the person you want to build a strong relationship with. Number four, the no research outreach. Did you take five minutes to look at who I am, where I work, what I do, and cater your message to that? If the answer's no. Yeah, shame on you. Don't love it. And last one, number five, we just talked about it. AI SDRs, trying to replace humans, not a fan.
(23:48):
So I think you might've got me. If we played a seven-game series, you might've won this game.
Eric Salvo (23:54):
Made it to game seven. Honestly, what we should do is do a combination here of our green flags, put our big three alongside this starting five. Maybe we'll push some guys to the venture or something like that. But love it, man. That's our top 10 for our sales pet peeves. And I think we just talked about, let's actually make a transition now over our sales green flags, our big three. I started last time with our sales pet peeves. You want to kick us off to the green flags? Be my guest.
Josh Rasmussen (24:22):
Yeah, this one, believe it or not, my green flag is the inverse of some of my sales pet peeves. But my first one is show me that you know me. If it's in prospecting or if it's in the first discovery call that you talked about, anytime I've purchased software, I've always bought from the person who I had a better relationship with. Products look the same, feel the same, relatively the same price head-to-head. I'm going to pick the person that I enjoyed buying from more frequently than the person that wasn't. And I think a couple good examples of this, I'm evaluating software right now in a conversation. The first discovery call I had with this AE, and shout out to this guy, but I think we spent a little too long with record building, but it was 15 minutes, looked at my LinkedIn and just hammered me with a couple personal questions.
(25:09):
And that honestly helped to move things forward more quickly because I was more receptive, he added value, he knew exactly what I cared about. And it honestly allowed me to be a little bit more open probably too with some of the answers I was giving him. It builds a little bit more trust. So I think even if it is only five minutes, if you show me that you know me and you actually want to be here and care about this process, green flag number one all the way.
Eric Salvo (25:34):
Knocks the wall down, which is a big thing. It makes it a lot easier. It builds a rapport. And like you said earlier, you're going to buy it from people that you like at the end of the day. That's what 50% sales I would say, if not more. So love it, man. That's a great way to kick us off. I have a couple too that are inverse. I think actually more inverse of the ones you talked about as well. So my number one here is a rep in SDR. They're actually in lockstep in their outreach and pipeline development. Probably a lost art in today's day and age. If you are not consistently communicating with your AE at the same level you're communicating with your BDR manager, just from an SDR point of view, I feel like it'll be very difficult for you as an SDR to get promoted and actually reach the goals that you want to achieve because your AE needs to be one of your biggest supporters in making the push for you to become an AE or a CSM or whatever it is you want to step into next.
(26:26):
Because when you're in lockstep, you got to secure more meetings, your AE's going to look better, the pipeline's going to look better for them, which in turn makes you look better as an SDR and continues to push on those skills. And you probably actually in turn learn more AE skills being an SDR that's so attached to your AE and being almost annoying at the point that they want to stop balking you. That's ideally the point you want to get to here. That's probably one of the biggest green flags for me and something that I tried to do very early on in my SDR days just from seeing people like Kyle Coleman and other LinkedIn influencers out there talk about it so much. You really want to be in touch with your AE and know everything that's going on in their world and make sure you can help support them in any way you can.
Josh Rasmussen (27:06):
Yeah, that one's super elite and I definitely think an underrated skill. You've not been on both sides of the fence for this, but in your dream scenario, what does good actually look like in terms of communication with your AE? Because I think some people are, I'm afraid of being too over communicative and meeting too much of their time. And there's people who they only see their AE and hear from them when they join meetings together. It's like what in your world, what does good look like in terms of an AE/BDR communication?
Eric Salvo (27:35):
I think it's good, but I think it's standard. Standard is you need to meet at least once a week. Good is you're probably chatting, not face-to-face, but via Slack, probably every day. Hey, I need help with this message or, Hey, just heard about this. I got some new information on this account. Who do you know there? Is there anything else you can help me with out here? Those are two tips in terms of just communication. Great is, and again, this probably should be standard, but for some reps, this is considered good or great, is every single meeting that comes through, there is a note that says what the meeting's about, who they're in contact with, who else you may be spoken to at that account. Constant communication about which accounts are highest priority, and then also deselecting and reselecting other accounts based on that. So a lot of what great looks like is just greater strategy than more communication with a rep.
(28:24):
That's purely what it boils down to. We could probably do a little episode on what that should look like. But for me, there needs to be this constant communication. I should be hearing from my BDR every day at the very least every other day, what's going well, what's not going well? Hey, can I get feedback on this cold call? Two minutes. I'm more than happy to listen to that all day. And Josh, obviously your reps are sending that to you here too, but as I mentioned, I'm always here to help just being from that role. That's what great it looks like, I think, from my point of view.
Josh Rasmussen (28:50):
Love it. Yeah, I think great feedback. Like you said, you could probably spend a whole episode talking about that. So I'll let you jump your number two pick.
Eric Salvo (28:57):
Yeah. Oh yeah, back to back. That's right, that's right. We do a little snake stale. Let's see. So it's actually, funny enough, it is an inverse of what we talked about earlier, but it's a go-to-market leader who actually still understands how valuable an SDR is and doesn't treat them like a piece of shit. So someone who actually takes meetings and takes cold calls, and I know we talked about it earlier, it is super messy right now out there for AEs. AI SDR, that is a completely tough space and for any SDR to compete with those AI SWAT machines. I feel for you. But at the end of the day, go-to-market leaders that can actually step up, take a call, or actually listen to a good piece of outreach, respect you. I get how tough your job is. I get it's not a part of your job, but you are understanding what it means to be an SDR and be an early career sales rep.
(29:46):
Those people, major green flag from me.
Josh Rasmussen (29:49):
Yeah. Shout out to those people for real. They don't even have to take the meeting. I think those are the people that -
Eric Salvo (29:54):
Not always. Yeah.
Josh Rasmussen (29:55):
Even if what I love is oftentimes, and again, this goes back to one of my end versus as well, but if you took the time to craft up a really quality piece of content in an email or a LinkedIn message or you crushed a cold call, if you are a go-to-market leader who takes the time to be like, "Hey, great job, give me feedback, but still give me the honest objection," then it is what it is. That's the second best case scenario behind getting a meeting, that's best case. But if they give you real honest feedback and give you the honest objection and are respectful, there's literally nothing more that you could ask for. Those people will make your day better than what it was.
Eric Salvo (30:38):
Luckily, selling to go to market leaders for the past three years and specifically sales leaders last year and a half, one of my favorite things selling to them is you actually get a decent amount of confidence that you wouldn't get if you were selling into cybersecurity or HR or InfoSec, whatever it might be. A lot of them will tell you, "Hey, you're doing a great job in the scholar. Hey, we're not hiring right now, but let me know when you're looking." Yeah, that sort of feedback is really key there. And I'm not expecting anyone that is in those other industries to then say that back to a salesperson, but it is quite rewarding when someone who's a seasoned professional gives you that feedback and gives you the positive reinforcement like, "Hey, you're good at your job. Keep doing, keep getting better." It's kind of like an adjacent win, I guess, to selling to go-to-market leaders, but also someone who takes the time to respond to a good outreach and take a meeting and give feedback.
(31:29):
So yeah, big shout out there. But Josh, I've got two picks down, you've got one, so you're due for two more here. What do you got?
Josh Rasmussen (31:36):
My number two pick for green flags and my big three is a little bit of adjacent to what we just talked about, but it's the non-robotic sales motion. If I feel like I'm just thrown in another copy and paste sales cycle, it feels really weird. Those are the people that I don't want to buy from, but the people who are really good at making me feel like I'm in charge and I'm in lead of how this process is going and just allowing the deal to move forward at my pace. They almost push and have urgency and do all the things they're supposed to do. But again, it feels like there's a true relationship in how we're going about the conversations, what are we doing in discovery, what do they need for me? Nothing feels forced, but there's been times that I've been on conversation and it feels like AE is reading off a script and they're asking the canned questions.
(32:26):
They're not listening to anything I've said. It's just like they took, yep, for sure, next question. And then it just feels really weird and awkward. And then it's like, I'm turned off. So I think AEs are really good at quarterbacking deals and bringing in other people when they need to or asking for assistance. Or even if again, if it just feels natural and very conversational and easy, that is the ultimate green flag. And again, I've only bought software from people that I enjoyed buying from. It never came down to, well, this tool is better. In most cases, again, they were pretty similar, but I bought from the person who I enjoyed working with more.
Eric Salvo (33:07):
Yeah, knocked a lot off the more G2 reviews, which are important. Don't get me wrong, those are important. But at the end of the day, like you said, it is very much the mindset of who I like better. And we can actually treat them like a human being. That's crazy though. I mean, I have talks about this with a buddy of mine who's BR started to be AE year soon. It's crazy how bad some reps are out there, man. It's kind of amazing.
Josh Rasmussen (33:30):
It honestly blows my mind so much. And I try to provide this research to my team, but it is so insane how bad some people are. Honestly, most of the time it's not their fault. There's so many - Bad
Eric Salvo (33:42):
Training, whatever.
Josh Rasmussen (33:43):
Yeah.
(33:44):
Bad training, bad support. Maybe they don't have coaching. There's so many things that could be at fault, but I am blown away by some of how poor some salespeople are. Granted, some people are earlier in their career, it's early, they're probably just getting started. But there has been times where I've got some tenured sales reps who maybe just lost the itch and they're just not as pumped about being in sales processes. There's a lot of bad, which I think creates room for the things that you mentioned with, it doesn't have to be a perfect process, but if you do well and make the person feel like you ran a good process, the chance of you getting good and quality feedback, you're like, "Hey, we might not buy your software, but you did a really good job in this process," feels really, really rewarding. And unfortunately, there's a lot of bad out there, so it makes the good look and feel that much better.
Eric Salvo (34:33):
Yeah, everyone makes for used car salesmen. Not to bad those guys, but
Josh Rasmussen (34:37):
There's bad sales reps everywhere, but I think it's just when you can be professional, authentic, and just let the deal run its course the way that the buyer wants it to without being too pushy, green, green flag all the way.
Eric Salvo (34:51):
Yeah. Oh, last thing I'll say on that too is I actually made a comment sometimes it's the old dogs that can't learn new tricks that are the ones that really are struggling. I've actually seen in my own experience, that be actually the case for the bad rep because it's been 15 years since they've had real training, 10 years since they gave a shit, five years since they sent a cool email. It's been a while, and so they really just kind of rock up and don't really care. If you're one of those ups out there, please, they're probably not listening to this podcast, but if you are, just put a little effort in for another five and 10 years. Just please try again. Anyway, Dan, you got your last pick here.
Josh Rasmussen (35:27):
I got my last pick. I got this acronym from a new person in my network at an event, but it's called BAMFAM. And it's book a meeting from a meeting. It's something that I've started to recognize. It's something I've noticed you do really well on a lot of the calls that we're on together. If you're booking the next meeting while you're on the call, massive, massive green flag because there's nothing. It's really hard to book a meeting just like let's connect over email, send times. It's really hard to get something on the calendar initially, but once it's on the calendar, it's really easy to reschedule, move around as needed. It shows up. So again, as long as you're having that constant communication, but if you're booking meetings from a meeting, that is the ultimate green flag. That's something you get compliments on all the time.
(36:10):
We were on a call a couple of weeks ago and the CRO is nice, you asked for the meeting. For whatever reason, some people struggle to ask that last question of, cool, we're still here, let's get it on the calendar. Even if you're overtime, get it on the calendar now. So booking a meeting from a meeting, ultimate green flag, that's my big star, is the BAMFAM.
Eric Salvo (36:30):
That honestly probably should be way higher on both our lists. And I'm pissed I didn't think about that. I'm really excited I didn't think about that. I've got two comments on that. So the first one is I thought when you said book a meeting for a meeting, I though you were in the direction of, hey, if you booked a meeting, then reach back out to that person after they had a meeting and say, who else in your network do you think could benefit from this? That's hardly a good adjacent thing we talk about. The second thing to say about that is that it feels like when you do that, and that CRO said it to me exactly. Actually on the next call we had, he told my VP, my boss, he's like, "Hey, by the way, Eric's running a good process. You're running a good process.
(37:07):
You're showing you actually give a shit. You're showing you care about their cycle, and you're running what effectively is hopefully going to lead to an interventional deal." And that kind of reinforced some of our earlier statements about running a good process and being a good rep and showing you care and action, they actually matter in that deal. So yeah, that's a great overall pick.
Josh Rasmussen (37:26):
I appreciate that. Maybe my best pick of the day, honestly.
Eric Salvo (37:29):
My third pick for me, and I don't love this one. I feel like I could have come a little bit better here, but it's someone who can handle objections pretty flawlessly. And I know that kind of reverts back to a negative statement we talked about at the beginning of the show where, hey, there's an objection, a substance it after, don't chase it. But if you are a well-traded SDR preparing to become an AE and you can't handle the 10 simple objections very clearly, you're not going to be a rep in the other day. And then also you need to start to do that. I've seen my own skills develop 10X after I become an AE and how different objections actually sound live during a discovery call or a demo call versus a cold call. But someone that can go in there and actually smoosh those left and right and not sound like they are a Wolf of Wall Street or car salesman or whatever B2C sales out there, that is I think a super underrated skill and one that's incredibly important for a rep to be a green flag at the end of the day.
(38:23):
My top three, I'll run it back for us too, is rep and SDR and lockstep and outreach pipeline development, go to market leader who actually takes cold calls or any leader for that matter. I don't even care for another industry, but if you're a CISO or whatever it might be, and you can actually treat human beings like human beings, especially early career ones. That's a huge dream flag for me. My last one, kind of weak. Some of the gain of objections flawlessly, but I don't love it. The Josh, I did lead you on this section.
Josh Rasmussen (38:49):
Yeah, I don't think objection handling is super weak. I think it's a really critical skill and sometimes fun to watch. It's like watching an artist paint. If you can watch an AE handle objections flawlessly, you're going to get objections regardless. Nobody just comes in as like yes to everything. So I do think it's a critical skill. It's fun to watch. But my big three green flags is show me you know me. Take the time to do five minutes of research, understand who I am, what I care about, something more than just the surface level stuff. Next one, number two, the non-robotic sales motion. AE2 are really, really good at quarterbacking deals and making it feel like a very natural sales motion and less like you're just taking me through your sales process and following each stage robotically. And then last one, BAMFAM, book a meeting from a meeting.
(39:35):
If you got somebody on the call, book a meeting while you're there. Don't wait to try to do it over email. Yeah, green flags. We went through it. We went through pet peeves. We complained for a solid 25, 30 minutes, but we did provide some value, I think, right?
Eric Salvo (39:48):
I think so. I think enough to get a couple subs and get people coming back for next week, which is going to be discovery calls. Dear buddy, Alex Cabab.
Josh Rasmussen (39:57):
Yeah, we got our first guest coming onto this show next episode. I'm super pumped about that. Alex is great. I think you guys will love him. We might even have a shack in a full segment coming soon as well. But yeah, this is Game Shape. I'm Josh. Hi, Eric. And we will see you guys soon. Go close something.
Eric Salvo (40:15):
Awesome.