How to not do outbound in 2025 (and what to do instead)

Is outbound dead? Not exactly. But it is changing fast.

In this episode, Raul and Toni break down why the old outbound playbook is failing, where it still works, and how AI is reshaping the SDR role. We get into why brute force cold calls and emails are hitting their limits, why connect rates keep dropping, and where smart teams are still seeing success.

We also talk about the rise of “new world SDRs,” how AI tools are changing prospecting, and how to use spiffs to actually build skills, not just spike activity. If you lead a sales team or run outbound, this one’s for you.

Never miss a new episode! Join our newsletter at revenueformula.substack.com

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (02:09) - Problems with the old world SDR approach
• (12:31) - The role of SDRs in the age of AI
• (16:15) - What should SDRs do now?
• (25:26) - Using SPIFS to drive change
• (36:09) - Conclusion and final thoughts
• (37:25) - Up next: the real life of a CEO

Creators and Guests

Host

Raul Porojan

Voice of Reason in Revenue / Former Director Sales & CS at Project A

Host

Toni Hohlbein

2x exited CRO | 1x Founder | Podcast Host

What is The Revenue Formula?

This podcast is about scaling tech startups.

Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Raul Porojan, together they look at the full funnel.

With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.

If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.

TRF - How to not do outbound in 2025 (and what to do instead)
===

Introduction
---

[00:00:00]

Toni: Sales pretty much killed sales. The spammy approach that we were able to drive is what's creating all of these blockers. Now that we see.

Raul: What is completely different is the place and the mindset of what is kind of an SDR and what is kind of a BDR, and the relationship to AI and to tooling. Now, it's not just about extending the quantity, but it's also about working a lot on quality.

Toni: But that leaves us with. Okay, great. I now invest into all of those tools. What are the SDRs supposed to do now like? Like literally today, we are going deep on what separates the old model of outbound from the new, it will clearly tell you where the model still works perfectly fine, and where the limitations are.

We'll also go into what's next. And how you can implement those changes in your work. As usual, you can reach me at [e-mail] for ideas and comments and make sure to hit subscribe so later today, I'll actually be [00:01:00] on my way to Berlin. Couple of reasons for that. Number one, my. It's my godchild confirmation.

So you know, that's pretty important. Number two, there's a rev ops conference. Who would've thought in Berlin? It's called RevOps AF. And a bunch of, let's just say my online rev ops friends are gonna be there, so I didn't want to miss it. And then number three. Raul, you and I are actually gonna meet and chat a little bit.

Um, not sure if you want to tease anything here, but, um, what is it we're gonna be chatting about?

Raul: So Tony and me actually have, uh, quite a bit on our agenda. Obviously we're doing this podcast now, which, uh, as you might have noticed also is a little bit of a new format as compared to the old one. And, um, we have some exciting things planned that we wanna.

Discuss in, in more detail, but there is more. There's also a little bit of work that we actually wanna do together, uh, rather than just talk. And, uh, I'm pretty excited about that. And, uh, the moment we know more, we will let you know, because I know that some of you will [00:02:00] also probably wanna be a part of that.

Toni: Yeah. And I think you're gonna like it. Um, but until then, thanks for the tease here, Raul. Um, until then.

Problems with the old world SDR approach
---

Toni: What we wanted to talk about today is what we are seeing is a shift from an old world SDR approach to a new world SDR approach. Right? And the way we kind of came across this by actually kind of, um, working with a couple of, you know, actually you kind of some CEOs, some founders that really have those.

Uh, that really are currently seeing that, uh, lots of tech, lots of innovation, lots of things suddenly starting not to work anymore. So well for the outbound team. And basically, a lot of people are wondering, well, well how do you, how do you do this thing now? Right. And I think before we go into the, oh, you know, the, the new world and, and what you do there, I think what's really important first is let's [00:03:00] define what we actually mean when we say SDR and outbound.

Let's talk about what we've been doing for the last 10 years. Let's talk about what has led us to this current situation of things not working anymore. Right. Ro maybe, maybe you'll kick us off with that.

Raul: So very simply, old world SDRs, or BDRs, however you wanna call that, um, are mainly driven by activity and that is also the limiting factor.

So, uh, I'm not actually sure that that was only the case, but that was kind of the world view on them, right? So. The view was always, well, if I can only get these SDRs to be twice as productive or three times or 10% even, that will then increase my opportunities 10% and that will then increase my outcome of the fund 10%.

That's the old view and the tooling that was generated in the old world within the last 10, 15 years has also gone very much into that, and even in the AI world, that is what AI is still doing right now. When it comes to I-S-D-R-S-S-O, what we can just do is instead of when Tony has to [00:04:00] go to sleep, uh, as an SDR, we can just keep going and, and, and do the work at night.

So that's the old world. The idea here is though, that that has already reached kind of its limitations, uh, first of all with natural limit of the, the quantity of, of touchpoints. Um, but then also. Because of all the automation and because of all the, uh, the inputs that have been driven over time, over all kinds of different sources, uh, and, and, and channels, that the efficiency of each has also gone down over time.

Yeah. I'm not necessarily sure that that's true on all channels, depending on how you do them, but overall, the trend is that because of all the automation, the efficiency of channels has gone down.

Toni: So sales pretty much killed sales. Yeah, that's how, that's how some people kind of referring to it and obviously the, you know, the, the, the, the spammy approach that we were able to drive.

Is what's creating all of these blockers. Now that we are seeing, there's better spam [00:05:00] filters in place. There's um, you know, better spam detection. There are more limitations on how many emails you can send per inbox. Signs on phones, like, Hey, this is a sales calls call sales person calling you. Right?

There's more and more stuff that basically, you know, helps folks to. Push away the spam. Right. And we, we are not saying this anecdotally, so what we are actually seeing is that, um, you know, connect rates. Uh, are down to like 1%, you know, sometimes even below 1%, which is crazy. You need to do a hundred calls before you get a connect.

Now those numbers, and we'll get into this, they're very by region, so I think this is worse than the US actually. Um, but the same, for example, with email, right? Opens, uh, you know, open percentages are down to like five to 15%, right? Kind of really doing all of that work, and then it's going into nowhere.

It's really making it harder and harder, uh, for this outbound motion to break through. Right [00:06:00] now, the thing is, because we are like the principal's first guys, right? Kind of the, the thing is this stuff still works though in some areas, right? Um, so on the one hand side, the reason why it doesn't work is also sometimes money is the cost, right?

You can't have someone sitting in. I dunno, Manhattan or Paris or London, um, you know, on those salaries and only having those results, right? It's extremely difficult to do that, you know, making this work. C payback wise, what I have seen some people are doing is they're finding, uh, pockets, uh, specific. I saw this actually in Brazil.

Um, finding pockets of people sitting in Brazil, calling into the us, right? Basically there's a little bit of a, like a, like income, salary, arbitrage going on, right? You have cheaper resources calling into the more expensive market, and maybe then you can still make this work with those, um, uh, with those really poor performing, [00:07:00] uh, numbers here.

Another place. This also still works, is our wonderful, good old Europe. Um, not across everything. I'm not saying that, uh, but connect rates are higher. Email opens a higher, this whole, you know, avalanche of spam calls and emails. Basically hasn't happened to the same degree in Europe yet. Uh, so there's still markets, still areas.

Probably say the UK is probably the hardest, but then places like France or Spain probably kind of easier to kind of break through. And, um, there that playbook. You can still play that. You know, apply that and it might still actually work for you because those connect rates, those email opens are still good enough for this brute force.

Just push more activities kind of approach, right?

Raul: Other than just cost arbitrage. There's also kind of the, um. Niche aspect of, and, and depending on which kind of niche you're selling to, [00:08:00] it can still work really well. So, mm-hmm. In even brick and mortar businesses, some areas are completely sucked out.

Like, for example, uh, the food area has gotten a lot of influx from, from cold calls and, and all that kind of jazz, although I would say that they're probably a bit more open to that. So the classics would be the ferando and the RAs and the food. Pandas and all that. Um, and that can be, can be quite rewarding still.

Um, but then there's also other areas such as, uh, uh, appliances and uh, uh, electricians and technicians and whatever you want to do with them. What a kind, whatever kind of SaaS platform or B2B marketplace, you're, you're working there with them can work still really well. Uh, I'm also seeing this, for example, right now with a couple of companies I work in that are very.

Uh, brick and mortar driven businesses when it comes to retail and producers of real goods. So these things are maybe much more, much, a much bigger part actually, of the economy than just your SaaS and tech bubble and [00:09:00] can still work really well via the phone, depending kind of on, on who you're talking to.

Um, yeah, I would say really it's, it's not black and white. Um, and, and it also depends a lot on your approach. However. What I can say though is that even in those fields relatively compared to the same field 10 years ago, it has probably gotten a bit harder, right? Mm-hmm. So it's easier than maybe in tech, and it's easier than calling those, uh, tech unicorns that you're trying to sell to, but it's probably harder than it was in the same field 10 years ago.

So

Toni: then I think the reason why this is still more greenfield is simply because the math didn't make sense and the math might still not make sense, right? Kind of trying to sell to SMBs, um, in an outbound motion might just be too expensive to make this work out, right? Uh, what I've seen worked extremely well is actually, uh, verticalized SaaS, uh, that can afford doing that.

For example, I saw a roofing company. Uh, they actually have quite large ACVs, you know, [00:10:00] and, uh, they're basically kind of recalling all the roofing companies, dentists, uh, you know, these kind of verticals can still work with this approach. Um, and they haven't been, uh, spam too much. Right. I think another thing, you know, because you were mentioning this, um, we, we are also seeing some small, small niche pockets in enterprises still work out, right.

Basically, you know, new departments, uh, new areas that no one has really built tech for before that, you know, you can maybe still, you know, place a call. Uh, one thing is this whole SESG area. Another thing we've, uh, recently source, you know, in the procurement space. So there's, there's still people that can be accessed and we wanted to have like three examples.

We could only come up with two. Uh, so there, there're really, there're really not so many. And even those, it's debatable if they're greenfield, but there are not so many of those spaces left where that thing can still work out. Right. Um, but [00:11:00] the, the reason why we wanted to bring this up, which is really important, right?

While, while this whole Upbound is dead, clickbait is really great. Um, what is really important for us is if you think. First principles. If you think bottom up, if you really think through how this thing actually works, you will inevitably come to the conclusion that in some areas, this approach still absolutely works out.

And you can have great C payback with that approach, right? You can grow your company with that approach. Right? And hey, you know, if you want to do spiffs on this, sure do. Right? And those spiffs usually will be focused on. Um, just more volume, like, you know, incentivize on more calls, incentivize on more emails, incentivize on more meetings booked, and, you know, kind of try and push it through this.

Right. Um, and. I think this is the place we were then saying like, well, there might be a bunch of people that are listening that unfortunately are trying to sell to the VPO marketing, uh, of a US SaaS company and [00:12:00] trying to give them a cold call that's probably not gonna work out right. Um, at least not in this current approach.

So Raul, maybe you take us to, okay. We understand now. The, the numbers are too shitty for the old world to work out. Maybe in some niches still, but otherwise not, but what is, what is the thinking behind, you know, what you and I refer to as the new world?

Raul: It's not like everything is completely different mm-hmm.

In the way that people work and in the way that that kind of the qualifications are and all that.

The role of SDRs in the AI age
---

Raul: But what is completely different is. The place and the mindset of what is kind of an SDR and what is kind of a BDR. Yeah. And the relationship to AI and to tooling, because this is really what, in the old world, it was always just, oh, okay, I'll buy this and that tool and that was just gonna extend my productivity and it's just gonna make it so that I can target more leads, uh, in the same week.

Now, it's not just about extending the quantity, but it's [00:13:00] also about working a lot on quality and mm-hmm. Especially kind of as, as, as a, as a master of, of the AI or as a master of the tooling, as someone who is using the tools for what they're good for while doing themselves, what they're good at. And so concretely, what does that mean?

Um, I would venture that in the new world. We're already kind of moving there. I'm already seeing this with a couple companies already, where an SDR is not necessarily just a person doing the calls or writing the mails, but they're looking at maybe, for example, an AI SDR that they can manage on their own.

So in that sense, uh, an AI CR is not necessarily replacing them, but it's extending them and they're managing that because that's working much better than just replacing the ai, uh, the A SDR through ai. And the collaboration aspect is what's emerging right now as maybe actually the better aspect. Mm-hmm.

So rather than just saying, oh, we have 10 SDRs, let's get rid of 10 SDRs and spend that money [00:14:00] on ai, um, it's more that well actually we get to keep those 10 or eight of them, and we spend that money on AI and the outcome is much better than it was before. And that is a very simplistic view there. But in short, the point is that humans are very good at a couple of things and may many more than a couple of things actually.

And uh, we use them for that. And we use them for the judgment. We use them for kind of the long. An extensive understanding of history of accounts and what to do with them of the strategic aspect of things, of pain points and all that kind of jazz. And we use AI for what it's really good at, which makes a lot of sense to me.

Yeah,

Toni: I think to make this super tangible for folks, um, you know, when when we approach this problem, we were almost thinking like, okay, what, what is AI and all the tech that we now see what is good enough to really replace paths of the SDI workflow? Um, which then opens up time for the SDR to work on other things.

Right. [00:15:00] And I think we've seen one or two or three specific things. So number one, the whole research part can now be extremely sped up with ai. Right? And this is mostly two things. One is. The whole lead in an account enrichment, you know, whether that's clay or someone else, doesn't matter. But basically that part that I used to do, by the way, when I started my career in sas, that was actually what I was doing.

Um, that now is completely gone. AI can do a much better job with that, right? The same with, oh, I'm talking to this enterprise account and. I don't want to listen to their earnings call, but here's the transcript. Please kind of read through this and give me the gist that I can maybe use. Right. Those things, um, are much better and easier to do with ai.

Right. Um, and I think another piece is also the whole automation part that we have used in the past. That should still [00:16:00] also be used, right? Kind of we, we still need to find or should be using, um, the sequencing and so forth in order not to have, um, you know, all of that mess, suddenly sit with the SDI again.

Right? So we, we need to keep thinking about automation.

What should SDRs be doing now?
---

Toni: We need to keep thinking about ways that we can, um, replace from the current SDR workflow, but that leaves us with. One realization I think that many CEOs are running into is like, okay, great. I now invest into all of those tools, but how do I actually, you know, what are the SDRs supposed to do now?

Like, like literally. Um, and I. That switch usually isn't that super easy because it's a change of what you're doing as a, as a, it might even be a change of talent, kind of maybe you need to hire differently. Um, but how do you kind of go towards that? Right. For us, you know, Raul, you and I kind of, when we were talking to those folks, I think the, the realization had to be like, okay, what is it that SDIs are uniquely good at?

Right? To kind of create the opposite of [00:17:00] this is what they're not, you know, shouldn't be working on. This is what they should be working on One. Very simple, straightforward thing is calling sts are still better at calling. And this is not only a skill thing like Sure AI and you know, 11 labs and there's a couple of people working in the, in the whole voice direction.

They're catching up fast. And you know, some of the things I've seen, uh, right now is really, really, you know, mind boggling actually. There's actually one issue with this, which is, it's, it's for boden. You know, you're not allowed to do it, and crazy enough, you're not even allowed to do it. In the US it's called robocalls, and it's, it's outlawed, actually, it's illegal to do that.

Um, so there will be some governance behind it still that, uh, for better or worse, makes it so that s STS will probably, you know, humans will probably be. For a while staying the only ones being allowed to do those calls. Right.

Raul: And you know, if it's not even [00:18:00] allowed in the US then that means that it's probably going to not gonna be allowed here for another 20 years.

Toni: Yes. So there's, there's kind of, it is like, oh, you know, that's kind of a boring, you know, cop out. Tony, you're saying kind of a legal, legal issue? Well, you know, yes. It's part of that, but it is what it is and kind of, that's also the reality of things I actually saw, um. Uh, kd like Kevin Dorsey was also on the show.

Um, he basically now has his whole SDR team only doing calls. Nothing else anymore. I. Like we wouldn't necessarily recommend exactly like that, but there is, there is a thought process also for us to be like, well, um, then let's put them more and more and more towards the calling because some of the other pieces can be automated with, you know, machines anyway.

Right.

Raul: Adding to the first one though, and I strongly believe in that, is I believe that we're actually gonna go back to. Having more calls for the best people who are actually great callers. And I [00:19:00] have, um, I have this saying that I actually didn't do that. That there's, there's a couple people who I've Amal gated this from.

But if you think that calling doesn't work per se, or that cold calling doesn't work, that means you probably have never seen someone who's actually good at it because people who are actually good at that. Is, is, is, is levels and, and a 10 x magnitude, uh, above people who are not good at that or who think they are, but they're actually just average.

So the, the difference between someone who's a great cold caller or even a great outreach person on LinkedIn or a great outreach person on mail, and I've had the privilege of seeing these people. That's, those are completely different worlds of people who are, who are in the middle. And I'm saying that because I think AI will give an advantage to people who, or it will give the possibility to people to actually maybe move up and move closer to the people who are really good at that, because the people who are really good at that have some things in common.

Maybe we'll talk about that in another episode. But for [00:20:00] example, actually great personalization is one of those traits. So being able to really come up on the spot in constant fashion, 20, 30, 50 times a day with a great opener that's individualized for each company via phone is a difficult thing for someone mentally.

Now, imagine having an AI that is helping you with that. So you have the research Yeah. To do the things that someone is just, just doing instinctually. Maybe you're moving some of these average people up, uh, upwards as well. Um, and so in that world, maybe we are actually creating a couple of, uh, new performers that were not performers before.

Another thing that great performers are doing is that they're typically. Always and constantly reiterating and restructuring their approach to kind of the campaigns that they're using, and in a way also on a daily innovating who they're talking to and how they're talking to them. So very concretely, and I've seen.

So many examples of SDRs coming up with, oh, we should go for people who are over 50 years old. And then how can we figure that [00:21:00] out Over LinkedIn, we target people who started working before 1990, or, oh, how about we try this market segment and how about we experiment with this opener? And how about we, uh, pitch this kind of aspect a bit more when it comes to, to this region?

So the good performers. They obviously always have a playbook that you give to them as a CRO, and maybe they go by that, but then they innovate on their own. And I believe that in the new world with more capabilities when it comes to automation, the aspect of coming up with experiments, kind of like demand hacking experiments and then executing them very quickly and iterating on them is going to be a big aspect.

Yeah. And in a way. This kind of micro campaigning, this kind of innovating, uh, one man army, SDR, um, that has already existed. This is nothing new. The best people have already done that. It's just that they're now absolutely supercharged. They'll be able to do these things much faster and they'll be able to do these things in an iterated [00:22:00] fashion, where in a couple days they know if it worked or not.

And that is a very exciting prospect to me.

Toni: And the, you know, some people might say, isn't this supposed to be this GTM engineer thing? And. And we frankly don't know yet. Uh, the answer probably though is no. Right? Because really this is a salesperson that is extremely close to the market because he or she is actually calling that market as being incentivized to, you know, book meetings there.

Um, and the idea here is in the old world, you didn't want to have them think about any of that stuff. Here's the playbook. Go execute, hit, hit send. Hit send, and send. Um, now this is shifting a little bit towards like. Yes. Some of them, sometimes, not all the time, should be thinking about what other segments that could be attacking.

You know, what micro targeting that could actually, micro campaigns they could build. I. Then go and start executing this stuff. Right? And this will take creativity. It will [00:23:00] not be the GTM engineer that, you know, builds the clay table and then, you know, the waterfall comes or whatever, however that thing works, it will require a little bit more innovation, right.

Um, and ideally the person that does that, um, should or needs to be able to manage some of the tools that are helping him or her, or to get this done in a very efficient way. Right. And I think that will probably be more this, the, the SDR of the future actually. And you know, really what we're trying to tackle here, almost two things, right?

On the one hand side, yes, the, uh, time of the, of the person still needs to be leveraged as much as possible. Um, but then number two, there needs to be better and more creative ways and smarter ways and, and more fitting and more personalized. Uh, that then basically help you increase your conversion rates and your open rates, your call, you know, all of these things basically kind of help you lift that with that creativity in mind.

Now again, I. This is [00:24:00] there, there might be hardcore folks out there listening and saying, well, this SDR thing in general doesn't work anymore. Kind of that, you know, we need to burn that playbook. We talk with Jocko about it. You know, he thinks this is just, you know, uh, the last spasm of, of something that doesn't work.

But what we are seeing in reality in those businesses is while a lot of people are talking about, you know, that whole shift. A lot of folks are still running really successful outbound, uh, teams and, and you know, as, as we are engaging with some CEOs and founders right now, like it's, it's just silly to recommend, oh, you should kind of let go of those 20 folks like it, it's not, it's not the right answer yet.

Right. Kind of. We haven't seen that really work out. Um, and those are really some tweaks on how to get there. Um, I think another thing that we wanted to bring up in connection to this is basically kind of one of those questions that we're getting, like, okay, this is also people change management thing here.

How can we move [00:25:00] those folks from. Um, you know, basically being conditioned on, uh, doing as many activities as possible to starting to think a little bit more about quality, right? And we have actually prepared some examples, um, for you guys maybe to, to think about more as a, as a template, not something to kind of, uh, use one-to-one, but more as a template, uh, to adjust and maybe use in your own go-to market.

Raul: Yeah.

Using SPIFs to drive change
---

Raul: So the magic word is spiffs. And, uh, you might have heard of those. We've actually talked about those, uh, here and there. I know that in the American, uh, sphere that this is much more widely, uh, distributed to a point where may most people should know what that is. Um, the Americans might be surprised that in Europe we're actually not that big on spiffs or traditionally not so much.

Maybe a little bit more in the UK and, and kind of Nordics, but not so much in like Germany and France and, and other regions. Um, however. It's still an important [00:26:00] tool and it can be a very, very good tool, uh, to kind of improve what your company's doing or improve certain aspects of it. And in short, a spiff is just kind of a short time, typically one time or maybe repeated if you want to repeat it after a while, uh, action and activity where you're giving a burst to people for doing something specific and achieving something specific.

Mm-hmm. So typically. It is, Hey, we're gonna do a cold call week and whoever does the most cold calls is gonna get an Amazon gift card or whatever, a TV or whatever you want to give them. Uh uh. Or it can be a lot more elaborate than that, but that is the most basic version in the us by the way, I've actually also seen really, really elaborate schemes with, with one month spiffs and like trips to the Caribbean and all that kind of stuff.

So these things exist and they're still being done nowadays, especially kind of in the corporate enterprise world. Mm-hmm. The thing is that I believe, um, SP can actually be a great tool and I've used them myself also that [00:27:00] way for transitioning to a new way of working. And that's why they came up in this discussion with Tony when it came to, okay, how do we get to the new world of SDRs?

So the idea here is I've actually used spiffs to introduce, for example, new processes. Uh, new sales processes. I've even used spiff to introduce new CRM systems or new systems in general that I wanted people to work with where they, the point and the reason that I introduced a new process or that the CRO at the time told me to introduce a new process was, for example, he wanted to achieve certain behavior when it came to qualifying, uh, buyers or when it came to moving demos along and.

Those are great examples of a time when I can be like, okay, cool. We will introduce that new tool and then we will go and reward for a week, for example, uh, achieving the outcome that that tool was designed for, such as, for example, uh, doing more demos in a shorter time or doing them better prepared. And the same thing can now be done [00:28:00] with ai, for example, or with whatever move to the new world you wanna do, um, in, uh, as an example, very simple fashion.

Hey, um, for everyone who can, uh, present the best use case of AI within a week, uh, we will kind of give a little price to that. Um, and they have to come up with ways to leverage their own way, uh, of working with that. But it can also be more concrete, such as for, uh, everyone who achieves kind of, um, and, and you gave that example the most, uh, uh, very clear buying signals, uh, within a given week.

Uh, we pay five bucks for, for each or so, and we pay a grand price for the winner. Um, because you want AI to help people move ahead when it comes to understanding buying signals. Tony, but you had a couple more thoughts also about maybe some concrete examples, uh, of, of where to use this in the daily.

Toni: No, absolutely.

And the thing really here is, and, and this is important for everyone to understand this, right, the, the old world spiffs, were basically trying to give burst of motivations in most [00:29:00] cases. Let's just be honest. Like in most cases, the one that I used the most was like, most meetings booked this week gets 500 bucks.

Um. And, uh, uh, now what we are kind of advocating for, especially in this shift, um, to use it as a way to change behavior or, you know, train that behavior. Ideally, once that behavior sticks, you can maybe pull the spiff away and use it for other, you know, tools again, because it's, it's not a thing that should be in place for forever.

I, I at least don't believe that, right? Then it should be part of the comp plan or a spiff. Um, but yeah, one you mentioned already is really about, um, trying to find those buying signals like urgency. Could be friction, could be someone is really unhappy with this specific vendor. Um, however they figure this out, you know, could be on G two, could be because of the phone call.

Could be, you know, however they're figuring this out. And the reason why you want to do this is, uh, simply because you want to, you know, train the reps in. Understanding and listening for pain better. Uh, and then being [00:30:00] able to, you know, obviously kind of hand this over to the AE and, you know, for this to be used, right?

So really try and get them off only using the script, for example. Um, another one that I actually really liked is, um. Working the account deeper, right? So basically, let's just say you have usually one persona per account. Um, but you put a spiff out there to not just send spammy emails to that one person, but actually try and engage three or four different stakeholders in the same company.

I. And try and work your way into that organization through that. Right? And to a degree, you know, this helps I think in two different ways. One is to get a little bit more of an enterprise kind of skill going with your SDRs, right? Because usually that's only reserved for enterprise, um, you know, motions to have multiple entry points.

The other thing is also it reduces then the risk of single threading later down the line. Right? Suddenly you have multiple stakeholders that they can connect to. Uh, or if one of the stakeholders go stark, the SDR [00:31:00] can basically kind of, uh, try and ping and activate someone else again, right? Um, another one, and this really goes into you need to watch out how much of it you actually want.

Um, but. Uh, while SDRs shouldn't be reinventing sequences all day long, right? They shouldn't be doing that, but, um, if they're able to take a weak email, a weak script, and prove it, have, uh, you know, also a clear reasoning why it is now better. And are able to have this backed up by some numbers, then that should be rewarded, right?

Because we do know, as AI can kind of write all of these things, um, but in some areas, uh, human work is still better, right? And kind of that should be, you know, worked into this to a degree.

Raul: So I'll add to the last part because these are some of my favorites actually. Were kind of more team activity driven or kind of grouping people together [00:32:00] and, um.

So my favorite, one of my favorite top three spiffs that I've ever seen, and that was done by a CRO when I wasn't kind of designing the spiff was. We kind of create teams of people working on a specific problem. And we do that, uh, each month or so over three to six months. And we pair the worst performer in that area with the best performer and the second best with the second worst, and so on and so forth.

And as a very concrete example, it was, Hey, uh, I want the best performing SDR together with the worst performing SDR, trying to, as a group create the most opportunities. That is the basics, the most basic version there. And what was so great about that is first of all, maybe you don't care so much only about the worst performer getting better, although some people actually achieve miraculous outcomes and move towards the middle of the pack.

But then also the best performers start to understand and explain to others, which is typically a great catalyzer for doing and, and improving something, um, to other people and [00:33:00] conceptualizing better what was working, what was not working. I believe that this conceptualizing what's working, what's not working well is kind of.

One of the deciding meta skills, moving towards more of the automation and the IH. So when you're able to explain either to a person or to a machine better and better what it is that you want to achieve in what way? Because you know that that's what kind of the underlying principle of the best practices, then that is a great factor for a SDRs, but also for whoever is working with, uh, automation.

So maybe that's one of the ways that you can achieve that. Now, this is all quite intricate and I'm aware of that, right? So. You're trying to induce meta awareness of best practices into SDRs by coupling them together for the best people, with the worst people. So the best people have to explain it to the worst, and then they can, so then explain it to an SDR, uh, ai.

But I do believe that these things work, and I have seen them work.

Toni: And the, the thing is, again, the mind shift here needs to go away from activities and more to quality, right? Yes. And [00:34:00] it's, it's always harder to try and incentivize quality. That's why we're giving some of those examples. I have two left by the way.

I'm gonna run through those in a second. But it's, um, it, it will, you know. Even, how do you want to do oversight on this? You know, I think the sales ops, ops people listening, their hats are exploding. It's like, you know, how is that not gonna get cheated, but still, right. You, you as a team need to think about how can you incentivize more quality?

I. Um, two more, uh, that I found extremely helpful is, uh, doing a spiff around, um, being able to reach out and, you know, talk to, and ideally maybe even book a meeting with more senior titles, so VPs and C level and so forth, right? It helps you with. Targeting, uh, it helps you with, uh, you know, probably better confidence, right?

If you're able to actually speak on this altitude. Um, and again, those are things that are gonna help you also later on in your, in your AE career. And then the last one, I will say, and this is kind of a, like a hygiene thing almost. Is [00:35:00] creating an incentive and a spiff around the rep that has the lowest no-show rates, right?

So you book a meeting and then you know, someone ghosts you or doesn't show up, and obviously kind of then it's your task to follow up and get this done. But what it does train, I. Is, um, you know, a, a tighter pre-call, um, workflow actually, right? Kind of, uh, understanding clearly what's the purpose of this call, making sure that this is communicated, you know, making sure that in your call to book the meeting the other side understands why they're jumping on this.

Uh, making sure that there is, uh, you know, clear pre-call notes, uh, maybe even shared with the prospect, uh, that there are confirmations going back and forth, that they're showing up all of those little hygiene things. To basically kind of up and up and up the quality with this. Right. Um, but I'll, I'll leave you with that.

Uh, there's probably 20,000 other ways you can try and, you know, think about trying to improve quality. Uh, but those were just a couple of those, uh, spiffs that we [00:36:00] believe can help you move from this more activity based old world to a more quality based, uh, new world, uh, with SDX. Yeah.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts
---

Raul: To move this towards the end, to really, really, really reiterate this, right?

We're moving to a new world of what an ISDR or what an what an SDR can do. And in this new world, pips can be a great tool to kind of accelerate the move of those skills. And this is really what I wanna stress here, so I. This is not about spiffs as a tool to achieve 50 leads in a week or 50 opportunities in a week, uh, or push certain outcomes towards the end of Q1 or Q2 because you need to get running and, and, and get those outcomes.

This is spiffs for the evolution there purposes and, and, and skill building purposes for the purpose of building quality, as we called it. This is a completely different thing, right? The outcome typically will probably be yes, maybe a little bit more, uh, of a, of opportunities or deals, whatever you're going towards, but especially in the mid to long term, higher skills and higher return on your people.[00:37:00]

Keep this in mind, right? If what you wanna do is have people running for a week to do as many cold calls as possible, this is probably not the way you want to go. Yeah, but the way that things are moving and the way that the world is evolving, what you want to do is focus on skills and you want to focus on the meta skills of understanding what works well and then working together with automation.

Toni: That's it. Okay, everyone, thanks so much for listening. Thanks Raul, and uh, see you next week. See you, everyone.

Up next week: The real life of a CEO
---

Toni: I have worked for two of those and I've been one myself. CEOs don't nearly have it as good as you may think. Actually, I can tell you their jobs mostly stink. Next week, Raul and I dissect the life of a CEO and explain to you why you really should be nicer to yours if you don't want to miss it.

Hit subscribed. Whatever you think CEOs are doing around you, it's probably not that.

Raul: I know there's this trope of, uh, CEO founders after a certain stage, leaning back a little bit and, uh, getting [00:38:00] off to Davos, ensure these people exist. But then there's the being a plumber and being a maid and being a decision maker, and then also a salesperson and all of these things at the same time,

Toni: the bigger the organization gets, seemingly, the more the CEO is wielding lots of influence and power.

It's actually the opposite.

I.