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#93: Host Tyler Lindley attended HubSpot’s INBOUND conference and had the opportunity to talk sales with some of the leading minds in the industry.
This episode is part one of the compilation of his conversations, covering topics including advice for first-time SDR managers, personalization in outbound prospecting, and whether or not LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator tool is really worth it for sales reps.
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 #93
Interviews at INBOUND: SDR Management & Prospecting (Part One)
Hosted by: Tyler Lindley
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[00:00:00] Tyler: Hey y'all, it's Tyler Linley and welcome to the Outbound Sales Lift where I have a different kind of episode for you today. I attended HubSpot's INBOUND conference in Boston and I had the opportunity to chat with some great people working in sales and marketing. Such a great time talking and learning from other INBOUND attendees that I've started to combine these conversations into a two part podcast.
So this episode is part one of the compilation, focusing on managing SDRs, bringing creativity and personalization to your outbound prospecting, and the importance of pattern interruption. I'll talk. With Brian Mueller at ID 3 Consulting, David Mattson, CEO and president of Sandler Training, and Dan Mott, founder of Six Three Media and many others.
Hope you enjoy.
Had a great week here. A lot of key themes that I learned. First thing is about taking your network online. And taking it to the real world. You know, met a lot of people that I actually knew from online and uh, it was great to see all of them here in person and take those connections and really just deepen those relationships.
I think that's a key thing. We've been creating a lot of these relationships online. Taking them in person just deepens that connection. You know, Ben Ruben did a great job talking about that. One of our interviews, another thing I learned is the power of networks. LinkedIn is a great example. LinkedIn is such a powerful network.
They had a space here, met some people there, created some great content, and was just great to kind of see that network, that social network that we're all a part of in a physical space, right? LinkedIn just made up of humans, just like HubSpot, just like any other company. And it's great to see some of those great people working at those companies in.
And finally, I think it's the power of community. Dharma talked a lot about community driven growth, and I think that's really the next frontier of growth for a lot of companies, is figuring out how to leverage community and make community a big part of your growth driver. So give people an opportunity to network.
To meet, to interact, to engage, and to really help each other. Instead of us having to go to a website or to Google or SEO or anything. I mean, just go to your friends, go to your neighbors, go to the people that you're connected with.
Yeah, my buddy Brian Mueller here. How's it going, Brian? Doing great. How. Fantastic. Brian, introduce
[00:02:29] Bryan Mueller: yourself. Uh, Brian Muller, former Hubspotter for just over seven years and I do sales consulting for teams that are utilizing Sales Hub.
[00:02:36] Tyler: Oh, awesome. Okay, very cool. So Brian, we're here at Inbound, so naturally I wanna talk about outbound.
I work with a lot of outbound teams, but want to hear what does the difference between inbound and outbound these days and how should teams be thinking about both of those go to market strategies for their sales teams? Yeah, I think it's
[00:02:51] Bryan Mueller: an interesting question. I think there's been. A lot of evolution between the two terms.
It used to be very contrarian, whereas either inbound or outbound, and I think they're more complimentary now. Given, especially the social economic climate and macro economics of things, you need that outbound outreach to be able to connect with your prospects, meet them where they are, and then supplement also with the inbound approach to help nurture that journey.
[00:03:12] Tyler: A hundred percent. I've heard the term allbound thrown around. I don't know if you've seen that, where basically it's just, I guess it's the combination of the two, so it sounds like you think it's like a combo strategy is the best play. A hundred percent. I
[00:03:23] Bryan Mueller: think especially for sales teams, you need to be able to enable them with both inbound and outbound.
So the inbound leads only come in when they're in there, but you need to be able to go out, have a proactive approach towards your outreach and connecting with your ideal customers. And I think you need both of those nowadays in order to. Really win in today's market, and I
[00:03:40] Tyler: know you do a lot of work specifically with HubSpot.
Tell me a little bit about how sales teams should be leveraging a tool like HubSpot. When you're going in and working with the sales hub, what are you actually doing? What do sales teams need to be utilizing inside a HubSpot? There's a lot of different
[00:03:54] Bryan Mueller: things that they need to be utilizing. I think the whole idea.
On the top level though is people have a bad idea of what outbound is. You need to do outbound in an in boundy
[00:04:01] Tyler: way. What does that mean, outbound in an in boundy way? Yeah.
[00:04:04] Bryan Mueller: I mean, no one likes getting cold calls from companies who are unprepared to actually have a conversation or know that client that they're actually reaching out to.
So it is the amount of research that you do. It's preparing your sales reps, It's giving them a purpose to call, and it's really having them understand who their ideal client is. So they connect with them on a understanding of what their life looks like, what their day in and day looks like. I think that's where it's really doing that outbound in an inbound
[00:04:27] Tyler: way.
Yeah, I like that a lot. You mentioned ICP and stuff. Who should be developing a company's icp? Is that on the marketing leader? The sales leader is the ceo? Who should be creating that? All of them. I think
[00:04:38] Bryan Mueller: it's a cross functional idea. I think one of the things that, when I think of ICP and persona, Um, the persona term thrown around a lot, and it's usually used as like a checkbox exercise to say, Here's my persona.
I think the company needs a persona. Then that needs to go into your marketing team, and then the marketing has a persona, and then there's a sales persona. It's the same one that's generated from the top strategy where you have your leadership team and your executive team sitting down talking about that with input from your marketing, sales, service, everything along those lines.
And then once that ideal client and those personas are built, It's mapping out their journey. Where are they in each specific stage? And then each, the sales team, the marketing team, takes that and brings it down to their specific things. What questions are they asking in the sales process? How do you proactively handle objections that you know, this persona is gonna be able to, that gonna have throughout
[00:05:24] Tyler: the process.
So on our show, you know, a lot of SDRs and SDR leaders out there, heck, even some founders and CEOs who are trying to figure out how to implement an outbound motion. Yeah. You know, it seems like inbound inbound's been around for a while, right? This conference has been around for a while. HubSpot's been preaching inbound content marketing.
That's kind of a play where I think a lot of people are at least. Trying to do inbound. Yeah. However, outbound I still hear every day like, Oh, we haven't really, we don't know how to do that. We don't know how to start that because somebody's just getting into outbound. What do you think are some of the initial steps you need to take if you're trying outbound for the first time?
What do you need to be doing?
[00:05:57] Bryan Mueller: The first thing is you need to sit down and actually talk and interview your current customers. Cause your outbound approach is to the exact same people that you already work with. So if every person in your organization doesn't. The exact person that you're selling to, what makes them tick, what their day looks like, why your company is built, and how it solves their world.
That's where you need to start, is getting an. Understanding that should be your unfair advantage is the ability to know your customer better than
[00:06:23] Tyler: anybody else in the market. A hundred percent. And that kind of goes back to that ICP and buyer persona definition. It starts there. I feel like the next thing people struggle with is, Okay, well now what should my SDRs say?
What should my sales reps say? You know, as they're trying to do outbound, is it just the same? Do you just copy and paste what the marketing team is sending or is it slightly different? Great
[00:06:41] Bryan Mueller: question. I think marketing is sales. Sales is marketing. One's one to one's one to many. I think it's a more nuanced approach that is more person.
Than it is on the marketing message, but your value propositions, things along those lines, and it's more question oriented. When you're on a connect call with someone, you have to break the ice, but then it's more of, you give a little bit, but you have to get more and better understand where your value proposition's gonna land for that
[00:07:00] Tyler: individual.
Which a connect call, just for those out there listening, it's kind of a hubs spotty type term. Does that just mean a cold call or is that a discovery call? What does that mean, Brian? Yeah. It means different things for different
[00:07:09] Bryan Mueller: organizations. So one of the places you should start is defining exactly what things mean throughout your organization.
Essentially the first time you're reaching out to somebody, they probably
[00:07:16] Tyler: don't know you're calling. Okay. So typically a cold call, what you do is a cold call. But I think when we think about cold calling, which can be a pretty daunting task for a lot of SDRs and you people implementing outbound, pretty overwhelming process.
You a fan of folks having scripts in that circumstance, or do you think it's more of just understand the buyer and then do the best you can once you're live on. Yeah, I think that's
[00:07:36] Bryan Mueller: more of a question in training that moves into coaching, right? When I think you have a new individual, you have to train them on the things and infuse that information.
A lot of people work well off of scripts, some people don't, but know that it's not a
[00:07:48] Tyler: verbatim script. So you're not a fan of the verbatim script. No. And then someone asks a question, you're
[00:07:53] Bryan Mueller: like, like, Hold on, let me find that. Let me go flip to my notebook here. Exactly. I think it's more. You have to train them on something.
So a playbook, a script, things along those lines is key to getting them up and running. And then as a manager, your ability to coach them and make it their own is the key to making sure you develop that individual, that SDR to the next
[00:08:09] Tyler: level. Yeah. And you bring up a such an important point. I mean, we talked about having a framework right?
At kind of a playbook for some of these things, but then there's that ongoing coaching and training. What do you think? Cuz a lot of SDR managers are first time sales managers. Yeah. They're typically SDRs or they might be in other parts of the organiz. Never manage sales reps. How should new sales leaders be coaching and training their reps to make sure that they're improving on a consistent basis?
Transparently,
[00:08:35] Bryan Mueller: empathetically, it's really like you're in it together. There's not this like, I'm the manager, I know all of the things. Now it's a conversation to help work out things together. You're probably, if you're first time SD manager, you might have been in the s e. You're just having a conversation with someone and helping them get to their own place.
I think there's an interesting nuance in management when you have to understand when to ask questions, and then when's that tipping point when you need to help them get to their own conclusion. It's like that nuance like. Okay. What if I tell you what I was thinking or how I'd approach this? Yeah, and like being able to do that.
Just because you're in a management seat doesn't mean you need to
[00:09:07] Tyler: give all the answers. Why do you feel like new managers feel the need to do? I feel like new managers, uh, just let me take this, right? Yeah. Just let me drive. Watch a pro do it. Yeah. Why do you think that's the mentality and how do you change that line of thinking?
I think there's a
[00:09:19] Bryan Mueller: lack of management training of leadership training. I think no one's been taught how to do it right. It's just like you're thrown in the. It's a completely different role. You know how to do the other role that you're coaching, but you don't know how to coach that role. And I think the leadership management training aspect of it is something that does not happen very frequently.
So I think it's just a lack of education or a lack of teaching. It's not on the individual, it's on the organization to provide that to a new manager, not the manager. To just know that off the top of their
[00:09:44] Tyler: head. Do you feel like when you're working with sales teams, do you find yourself training the manager more often than you're actually training the reps?
Is that almost more important? If you were to come in and prioritize one or the other, would you focus on training the managers or training the frontline sales reps? Two paths. I think you have
[00:09:58] Bryan Mueller: to do both of 'em and simultaneously. Well, there's one that starts before the other one, but it's a simultaneous one, so most of the times we'll do.
In implementation, set up, new sales process playbooks, everything along those lines work on change management of how to get the team bought into something along those lines and why it's beneficial. And then as we implement that internally, it's now how do you coach on top of this? How do you then understand what's different with each rep and where to focus with each individual based off of KPIs and metrics and use that in a conversation not.
You need a hundred connect calls today, that's gone there to days where that's like an actual thing,
[00:10:29] Tyler: like Right. That makes a lot of sense. One other thing I wanna touch on before we hop today is I wanna talk a little bit about HubSpot and how sales teams are leveraging HubSpot. You know, a lot of SDR teams I work with are on outreach, SalesLoft, Salesforce, you know, a handful are on HubSpot.
Yeah. But not as many as some of those other sales engagement platforms. Do you think it's possible to run an effective outbound program out of HubSpot? And if so, like what does good look like there? That's a great
[00:10:53] Bryan Mueller: question. I, The answer is yes. I think there is. There is that opportunity there. Depends on the client who's on top of HubSpot.
Not everyone should have an outbound SDR team. I think one of the things that, the reason I started ID three consulting is cuz I saw people have new access to technology like HubSpot and they lean too much on the technology for the change that they were looking for, rather than the process that goes on.
So you get on HubSpot and you do the same thing that you did previously, um, just on a different technology. So you get some of the gains, but you haven't updated your go to market strategy on top of the new software. And that's the change that's key to making it actually work cuz it was purpose built.
For a modernized go to market sales process that has an allbound approach, right? Inbound and outbound. And how
[00:11:35] Tyler: do you structure that appropriately? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Brian, if folks wanna find out more about you online, where should they hit id?
[00:11:41] Bryan Mueller: three-consulting.com.
[00:11:43] Tyler: Thanks so much, Brian. Enjoy inbound.
I've got David Matson, ceo. Sandler training here. David, thanks so much for joining. Hey, it's my pleasure. Thanks for being here. Yeah, yeah. Just saw an exciting talk where David was talking a lot about sales leadership and a lot of the changes and and trends in the industry, and we're gonna talk a little bit about that.
You know, a lot of our listeners are brand new managers, brand new sales leaders who've just been, you know, maybe top sdr, top ae. Got promoted to now being an SDR manager, sales leader,
[00:12:14] David Mattson: we've now anointed you as the greatest you know person on your team. Now you're a sales leader, right? Yeah. Right.
[00:12:18] Tyler: You work harder for a pay cut.
Good lesson, , which is a scary transition, right? Very scary transition. What do you recommend folks do in that circumstance? How can you be a good first time
[00:12:27] David Mattson: manager? A couple things come to mind. First thing, we have to think in categories like, how do I grow my business? How do I grow my team, and how do I grow myself?
And so the business part I, I would assume as you're coming in as a new manager, some of those guardrails are already there. Here are the metrics that we need to have. Here's the activities that we need to do. I would do a couple different things. One, absolutely make sure that our. Our team has their talk tracks down.
Just don't hand it to them. I have two kids that are SDRs and the amount of coaching and training that they have is horrific. It's horrific. They say, Well, you have the script. Do it. Well, okay, but that's not how, Hence now it works. So I would do the thing, get your talk tracks down, but do a lot of role play with your people.
You know, look, they were gonna resist it. They're gonna tell you they're busy, but the more that they role play with you, the more comfortable they will be with Annette new. Yes. The other thing that I think I would worry about as a new sales leader is to worry. I've got the success triangle, which is attitude, behavior, and technique.
Make sure that your team has great technique, but really also focusing in the other two. Like their behaviors. I think at anyone in the organization, SDRs are more scientific than any other sales role. Why
[00:13:28] Tyler: scientific? Why do you use that word? They have
[00:13:30] David Mattson: metrics down. They know what's going on. You know when you get to, Hey, I'm a senior rep now I'm an enterprise sales.
I've been doing this 25 years. It's more magic than it is science. Really? I don't think so. So I think the sdr. Have it down. That's why in most organizations, SDRs, that whole organization is having much more potency because sales leaders finally realized when the transition, the pandemic, that group had their stuff together.
Right. And those were the least experienced, least trained, but they had the machine down. Yep. So the technique was there. I would also work on mindset, equal business stature, and all the things that holds us back from call reluctance. Right. Cause you can see the numbers, but the quality of the numbers. Is tough.
Yeah. Last thing is, of course, is a behavioral plan. Have 'em on a cookbook. I think most SDRs know that they have a certain amount of activities every single day to get.
[00:14:21] Tyler: So is By cookbook, do you mean basically playbook or is that more activity metrics? A
[00:14:25] David Mattson: playbook is more of, Here are all the things that you should know to be successful.
A cookbook is telling an SDR or any role. These are the things that you should be doing every week, every month in order to be successful every day. Quite frankly, my son, who's an sdr, he has daily cookbook things he's supposed to be doing every day, and then when he gets a lead, he's handing it off right to a.
So what is that? How does that work? And I think what you end up doing is you reverse your sales process if you've got an X amount of appointments or X amount of demos. However, you're gonna gauge that. It's what do I need to do personally in order to get that? And so how many outbounds, how many letters, how many this?
How many VIGs am I doing? How many of that am I doing? And once you have that cookbook, it's a well balanced thing. Otherwise what you end up doing, you spend all your time on one of those technologies and not the others, and you don't have a well balanced.
[00:15:11] Tyler: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One thing you mentioned is that Sandler actually starts working with a lot of SDR teams initially.
Yeah. Why do you think that is? Why do you think y'all and your sales training are starting with SDR programs versus starting with account executives or full cycle reps? It boggles
[00:15:24] David Mattson: my mind , except that Sandler's known for. The tactics and strategies, right? And they've seen such an uptake in uptick in SDRs.
They're like, Hey, let's help this group. Especially the managers are so new, they just happen to be the biggest SDR in the team, right? So here we go. Now I'm managing. And so we start there. Senior leadership says, Oh my gosh. Look at the change. Look at the what has happened since we've hired Sandler and then we go upstream.
I've never asked anybody, but if you know, I'm gonna age myself here for a minute. There's an old life, Life serial commercial, which is, Oh my gosh, we can't have that look like granola. Who's gonna eat granola? And they say, Let Mikey taste it, which is their little brother. Like, you know, if he dies, who cares?
Right? It's not me. And so I think what they end up saying is, Let the SDRs go through Sandler. We'll see if it's any good and if they improve, because we can see that. And by the way, that's front of the. Right, So the more SDR is successful, then it should cascade down to everybody else, and then they see the tremendous return on investment there, and then we go upstream.
Also, to be honest, I think most organizations they fail at this, but they should have a common sales. Methodology, common sales
[00:16:32] Tyler: language across the organization, not just SDRs is doing one thing, A is doing the other, You think across the
[00:16:38] David Mattson: roles? Yeah. Well, how I think about how insane this is, I get, let's say methodology A is sdr.
Now I'm promoted because isn't that why we're there? We're trying to go through the organization and now I've got a whole nother sales methodology that I have to. Why would I do that? Why wouldn't you just have the same language? So when I succeeded as an sdr, I can go into an AE or I can go into whatever.
Now I got all my baseline training, I don't have to start over. It's insane. Yep. But that's what companies do. That's what
[00:17:04] Tyler: I mean by that. Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. When you think about what. Does outbound mean specifically to Sandler? Like we talk a lot about outbound, and I know we are here at HubSpot's inbound conference, right?
Which is pretty ironic, but we're thinking about outbound in the SDR role. What does that mean to Sandler this day and age? Like what does good outbound look like from Sandler's perspective?
[00:17:23] David Mattson: So I think outbound has changed dramatically since Covid. I mean, let's be honest, right? Yeah. I think most prospects, most buyers are hiding behind technology now.
Yeah. Whereas it was kind of easy. We had an auto dialer, you know, we would dial a hundred names an hour, you get eight to 10 people on the phone. Life was pretty good, . And now I think both sides, including sales, is hiding behind all of the technology that has popped up. And I think that's trouble, right? So still, statistically, when you have a voice to voice convers.
Life is great. Mm-hmm. . And so I think for SDRs, what does it mean for us? I believe that if we really focus on developing SDRs globally, then sales will benefit in years to come. Mm-hmm. ?
[00:18:07] Tyler: Well cuz they're the future leaders. They are the future AEs. Sales leaders, CROs, VPs of sales. If we do a good job of nurturing them, realistically we should have better sales reps down the rep.
It'd
[00:18:18] David Mattson: be interesting study in five to 10 years. Do the organizations change from zero process to process? Because the SDR managers have been promoted. Mm. They grew up in an area where that was second nature. Yeah. Now they're coming over here and it's Lucy goosey. Right. So I did a session just a minute or two ago.
No one has playbooks. Mm-hmm. , right? Nobody has an onboarding process. The list goes
[00:18:41] Tyler: on. Why do you. Companies make that mistake where they actually bring on sales reps. They think the fir, Let's just go hire a rep. Let's go get that SDR in place. Let's go get that aid in place. But then there's no system or process around them, and then they kind of throw in their hands up in three to six months, like, Wow, this isn't working and this isn't working.
Why is that such a common mistake, do you think, in so many sales organizations?
[00:19:00] David Mattson: I think they're really primarily focused on bringing the SDRs on board. Just making the
[00:19:04] Tyler: hire, Let's get the body.
[00:19:06] David Mattson: Get 'em here, right? I mean, my kids are offering signing bonuses. It's ridiculous what's going on out there. So I think they're focused in on that.
Not necessarily all the other things that have to happen in the chain of command. And that's why, you know, sales leader will say, Well, if you brought the right types of people, then they say, Well, who onboarded them? That's not my job. I've gotta do X. Yeah, I think you need clear lanes. And even if somebody else hired an sdr, which is typically what happens, your job as a sales leader is to onboard that person from a sales perspective, regardless of what they did organizationally.
Yep. Because ultimately you are responsible for their results.
[00:19:40] Tyler: Yeah. Yep. Exactly. Any other parting thoughts as you think about, you know, I know HubSpot and Sandler have a new formed partnership. What are you doing here at Inbound 2022 and you know, what does the future of Sandler.
[00:19:52] David Mattson: So our partnership with HubSpot goes, it's multi-layered, but we're doing a lot of case studies.
We're training, of course, their, their sales group, their channel partners. Mm-hmm. , but really embedding Sandler within the flow of work. Mm. That's the key. So knowing a methodology is awesome, but when it pops up, this is what you should be saying. Now that's even better. So really embedding ourselves into tech stacks, which is where Sandler's heading is to make sure that we are in the flow of work.
It's nice when people come to seminars that's, But it's better when the Sandler tactics and strategies can pop up when you need. Where you live today in whatever that is,
[00:20:28] Tyler: which is so important, The integration between the methodology, the system, and then also the tech stack, right? At the end of the day, that's where these reps live, right?
Is inside that crm, which is why a playbooks tool and HubSpot is so valuable. Or insert in any other tool or CRM you're using. So well, David, thanks so much for joining. We'll have to do a longer version at some point.
[00:20:47] David Mattson: Hey, my pleasure. Good selling.
[00:20:53] Tyler: I've got Gray account executive at Quala with me Gray. How's it going? Nice. Well done on the Australian accent, Tyler? Yeah, Yeah, I'm working on it. It's Quill, if you're from Australia, I guess Quiller here in the States. We wanna talk a little bit. What is Quiller and how can you use it? Especially for SDRs out there prospecting.
What is the tool and how can they get some knowledge out of it?
[00:21:12] Gray: Yeah, so for me, two things are huge and outbound. One is pattern disruption, having something that stands out and kind of cuts through the noise of whoever you're trying to reach out to. And then for me personally at least, another big one is personalization.
I think if you're not personalizing, you're kind of just doing marketing emails, mass marketing blaster, but it's easy to get too spammy, right? If you're not personalizing something. Apology is if I'm offending anyone there, , but. Quiller fundamentally allows you to create a, a web based document that's tailored for someone.
So fundamentally you can create like a landing page tailored for a specific account or a specific lead that's really optimized for them. And in terms of cutting through the noise, a lot of times if you send someone like an attachment, it's like, What is this? It's like a pdf. It's like a PDF from 1993.
They're like looking on their phone, they're like, What is this janky thing? So Quiller fundamentally is a way to create a web-based document, like help you
[00:21:59] Tyler: stand out a little. So it's essentially like a webpage landing page essentially. And what can reps put on there? If I'm an sdr, and let's say I have a good connection with a prospect, but maybe I don't book the meeting and I wanna try to kind of nurture that prospect, what might I put on this QUILLER landing page?
So
[00:22:15] Gray: two things. One, I always include a video on mine, so like a personalized loom video or video or something like that. So I can kind of be there in the room with them as they're going. You can embed those directly, directly on the page. Same thing with like, we use HubSpot meetings, we're at HubSpot's inbound.
But we hub about meetings. You can embed the meetings directly onto the qui page as well. So it might be like the top has the video, tells a bit of your story, has some like ROI info, and then the bottom, the call to action is just an embed of your calendar directly. So they don't have to like go and message you or anything like that.
They just book directly from the Quiller page
[00:22:45] Tyler: itself. Got. Okay, that makes sense. We've talked a little bit about top of the funnel. Where else in the sales process might you use Quiller? Where are some other use cases? Yeah,
[00:22:52] Gray: so really our bread and butter use cases, proposals, things that are helping tell your story and need to be visually impressive during the sales cycle.
So like really AEs are a lot of time are using Quiller for they, they have a deal in HubSpot, right? They wanna create a proposal directly from that deal using the data that's already there. But because quarter pages are you, Web based, they can be interactive in ways that like a static PDF can't write.
So like if you are in a software industry, right, and you offer different packages, you can just include those directly
[00:23:19] Tyler: on the qui, just kind of include the pricing or whatever image you want to, Exactly. Same
[00:23:24] Gray: thing, but signatures as well. Right. So a huge thing is just. Simplifying the process, creating a better buyer experience, and ultimately speeding up sales cycles, right?
Cause right now, a lot of times people have this bifurcated process where it's like, uh, here's my pitch deck and here's my proposal and here's my quote, and here's my contract. And it's all these different things and like different email chains, but it could just be one single place where everyone goes and they have everything
[00:23:46] Tyler: that they need.
That's awesome. Yeah. And it sounds like there's a pretty tight integration with HubSpot. Does it play nicely with other tools as well? Or is HubSpot the main integration? No, HubSpot's a big one
[00:23:54] Gray: that we NAV integration with Salesforce. Those really two biggest CRMs we support. But then there's a whole lot beyond there, right?
Like Stripe for payment integrations to ask someone is signing. You can capture payment. Or if you wanna do like retargeting with Google, I always say AdWord, it's not AdWord anymore. Google ads, you can add the the pixel to your Q page. So if someone views your proposal, maybe it's someone too that you send it to, or like in the outbound use case, you send it, they share it with someone, someone else is viewing it.
You can then retarget them
[00:24:18] Tyler: with ads. You mentioned kind of personalization and pattern interrupt at the beginning. To me, that's huge across the sales cycle, right? Whether you're prospecting or closing, how do you do that best? What's standing out to you in terms of personalization, creativity? How can SDRs out there?
SDR leaders teach their reps to be more.
[00:24:34] Gray: Good question. I already kinda said this at the beginning, but in general, I'm a huge fan of video as a medium. You mentioned
[00:24:39] Tyler: not just regular videos, you're talking a little bit about putting 'em on pages or just doing something different. How are you using video creatively?
In my case, as
[00:24:45] Gray: an ae, right, I'll have a discovery call with someone, and then as a part of the follow up I put together with him, it'll be a. A proposal or a, some kind of follow up page and the video will be like a one minute synthesis of everything we talked about in their call. So I might still put it in a text version too.
Anytime you strip away body language and tone right, you're just missing so much of human communication and so video's just a way to bring some of those elements
[00:25:07] Tyler: back. And it sounds like embedding it in a way that they probably haven't seen before. I'm so used to seeing ARDS embedded into an email or embedded into a LinkedIn message.
I haven't seen too many embedded into it. Their own landing page. Yeah,
[00:25:19] Gray: which is a little bit different. And when you open it up, right, you would probably have that first page be branded totally to them. Right? So it might be their YouTube video that's playing in the background or their logo is the first thing they see.
So it's not just like, Hey, here, look at me. Here you are. And this is, you know, I've put this together for you. Yep,
[00:25:34] Tyler: exactly. I love anything that feels specific to the prospect at any stage of the buyer's journey. Awesome. If people wanna find out more about quiller, how can they do so? Greg quiller.com.
That's it. Q W I L r.com. So thanks so much, Gray. Had a blast.
Just wanna talk to you a little bit about standing out pattern interrupting. One thing I did this week here at Inbound HubSpots conference was actually create a little. Pattern interrupt with this sales hat here. The sales hat stood out cuz a lot of people, you know, thought it was unique. And I talk a lot about people taking on and, and taking off their own sales hat.
So do things that stand out, that pattern, interrupt your prospects, whether you're in person or remote. You can do it anywhere you are cuz that's what gets in front of prospects and that's what causes you. To be remembered and hopefully start some great conversations with your prospects.
Hey, what's up guys? Hanging out here with Jesse Lipson, founder and CEO of Coffee here at Inbound. Jesse, how's it going? It's going
[00:26:36] Jesse Lipson: great. Awesome conference. We're very excited to launch our product here at Inbound.
[00:26:40] Tyler: Yeah. Congrats on the product launch, and I know your product has a lot to do with sds, which we'll get into here in a second.
Want to talk. Some SDR best practices. I know that you've been around a lot of SDR teams. Want to hear what your thoughts are on how do you build an SD team? What are some best practices for getting started on building an SD team from scratch? Yeah,
[00:26:56] Jesse Lipson: absolutely. So you're correct. My previous company share file, we had over 400 sales reps.
We would be doing about a million calls every couple months that only a million. Yeah, 300 thousands of SDRs have a lot of great experience and that was part of the inspiration for building coffee. But in terms of best practices, I think so many companies try to build outbound motions and fail.
[00:27:18] Tyler: Why do you think that is?
Why do you think companies fail
[00:27:20] Jesse Lipson: at outbound? I think one of the reasons is you have to have leadership that understands how to build an outbound team, which is very, very rare. There are a lot of sales leaders that are not fluent in prospecting, cold calling and how to do it, and how to run a team with discipline toward the metrics and best practices.
It is a discipline and an. That requires very close management.
[00:27:45] Tyler: It requires like a deep level management, right? There's a lot of coaching, training, role playing, and if you don't do. Your SDR team's probably not gonna be that successful. Exactly.
[00:27:53] Jesse Lipson: Cold calling is not a natural state.
[00:27:56] Tyler: Y ran a cold calling competition here, right?
[00:27:58] Jesse Lipson: Yeah, exactly. We did because reaching out to strangers, I think probably evolution teaches you to be afraid of reaching out to strangers and possibly having an awkward interaction. Basically, if you allow a team to kind of enter people, we'll draw a team toward not doing the activities they need to draw them away from some of the harder parts of prospecting and toward the easier.
And so I think that having a culture and kind of discipline. Doing the hard work is critical to building an
[00:28:25] Tyler: SDR team. A hundred percent. How do you think the SDR role has changed in the last few years? You know, there's been a lot of changes with teams going remote and you know, software tools, your new software tools supporting SDR teams.
Like how has just the entire SDR space and sales development space changed?
[00:28:40] Jesse Lipson: Yeah, I think through C connecting with prospects has gotten to be a lot. What I've heard from a lot of uh, folks is that connecting has become harder as some people are out of the office and you know, on their mobile line. I also believe that the easy path that existed for a while when it came to prospecting of just setting up an email sequence and getting results is kind of come and gone.
Yeah. Most prospects have figured out that trick. They
[00:29:05] Tyler: kinda know it's coming. They kinda even know the timing of it. Right, exactly.
[00:29:09] Jesse Lipson: They know that it's not personal. So for a while it was like, oh, that just. You can just push a button and then people will think it's a personal follow up and I need to get back.
Now people realize they kind of categorize that like email marketing. They realize that's not real. And so I think the, the trick today, To be personal, authentic, do the work and actually earn the time of prospects. And so I think the times of easy send out 500 emails and get leads coming in, I think are pretty much
[00:29:37] Tyler: over at this point.
I tend to totally agree and it's made it harder I think, to go back to your original point about management, like it almost means you need a stronger culture of management, of coaching, of training. Cuz I think when we talk about personalization and relevance, those are also skills that aren't maybe necessarily.
You know, easy to pick up. I mean, that's something you've gotta practice and you've gotta, you know, kind of go over those, review those, audit those, practice those, get better at those and see what good looks like. And then you can try to mirror that over time may not be the most natural thing for a brand new sdr, especially those coming right outta school or switching careers.
[00:30:09] Jesse Lipson: Yeah, absolutely. Having to put deep personalization and thought into every call. First of all, I think it's great for the SDRs and the profession of prospecting. It's bringing your brain more into the whole process, which is great. It's not pushing buttons anymore, and just being in a person who's starting sequences and just all clicking all day, you're actually having to think about the prospect, what are their motivations, what are their pain points, and bring that to the conversation.
So it's harder, but ultimately I think it's what sales is all about. Yeah, a hundred
[00:30:37] Tyler: percent. You just said that you launched coffee. Tell us a little about what is coffee and why did you. Yeah,
[00:30:42] Jesse Lipson: so Coffee is a sales engagement platform. So it's built for sales teams that are doing prospecting, particularly on the HubSpot platform.
So it's tightly integrated with HubSpot and it makes the process of prospecting simple and also fun and gamified for SDRs and BDRs. So we're a team of sales people who built the tool that's kind of built by sales people for sales people versus being built by technologists and email marketing people.
For what
[00:31:12] Tyler: salespeople do. So y'all understand what a sales rep goes through, like what an SDR day to day looks
[00:31:17] Jesse Lipson: like. Exactly. We kinda understand what truly works the difference between, you know, what's on the brochure about, uh, feature sets and what actually is helpful to reps. Initially we didn't plan on selling it, we just wanted to build it for ourselves, and then we were really happy with it and decided to go out and kind of share it with the world.
But it was a tool we built to solve our own needs because we have a team of 50 salespeople. And so we built the tool we would love to use and now, you know, we're really
excited
[00:31:42] Tyler: to launch it. Well, that's awesome. Well, congratulations on the launch. Any parting words of advice for sdr? SDR leaders out there?
Just getting started with sales development. I would
[00:31:50] Jesse Lipson: say, uh, for sdr, follow the process. Do the hard work. It's tough at first to get through rejection and learn, but it's such a great skill. Sales prospecting is a skill that you can use whether you are a CEO or any profession, because everybody who's talking to.
A customer is in sales in some way, and so I have so much respect for SDRs and SDR managers. What we do is not easy, but it's really valuable and it makes the whole world go around. So a
[00:32:19] Tyler: hundred percent. Awesome. Well, congrats again on the launch and look. Forward to learning more about the platform soon.
So thanks for coming on,
chatting with John Roser, CEO of RevGen. Hey John. How's it going, Tyler? I'm good. How are you? Good, good. John, I know that you are big into the sales development space, into the outbound space. I want to hear what does the word outbound mean to you these days? Yeah,
[00:32:45] John Rosar: I mean, a big piece of it right now for a lot of our clients is educating a market that may or may not know that a company exists.
And another part of it is being there at the right time. You know, because oftentimes companies are waiting for this catch scenario where it's more explicit need than implicit. And if you're waiting and you're doing that, you're gonna miss a ton of opportunity and you're gonna miss a ton of the market.
[00:33:07] Tyler: A hundred percent. I'm glad you brought up the word educate, cuz I think that's a really good way of framing it. I think, you know, we hear a lot about pitch slapping and about feature dumping, but educate to me seems like something different. What does edu If I'm an SDR and I'm trying to educate my prospect, what does good look like there?
Right?
[00:33:25] John Rosar: Yeah. So you gotta keep in mind that. You've got three to five minutes on these cold calls and that's it. And so we're not necessarily selling the product, we're selling excitement and curiosity to look at the demo and take the next appointment. And so when we're talking about educating it, Bringing the light of pain or establishing a benefit, and that's really the simplest that I can make
[00:33:47] Tyler: it.
Yeah, Yeah, a hundred percent. But I like what you said, three to five minutes. What do you feel like is most important, given that you have such a tiny window of opportunity to do that education, try to peak their curiosity. What do you see as working best, especially when it comes to cold calling where you just have that limited window?
Well, first
[00:34:03] John Rosar: off, you gotta be real. You should not be using language that you wouldn't use in day to day speak, and you shouldn't be using fluff terms or buzzword. And you need to get out what you need to get out on the value points and validating the company that you're speaking on behalf of. You know, at that point you need to ask really good questions.
You need to ask good questions that drive the conversation and then you need to listen and respond.
[00:34:25] Tyler: Yeah. I'm glad you brought up questions cuz I feel like sometimes SDRs, forget about those. Forget about good questions. How many good questions do you think you need? And if I'm an sdr, how should I go about forming those?
How do I know what to ask a prospect on a cold call? You know,
[00:34:38] John Rosar: if on the list level and on the research level, you can answer a lot of your questions before you make the. , that's gonna be the best move. But really you get three to five fact finding questions. And whenever I'm teaching our reps, I like to think about it like this.
If they're holding a picture backwards, you need to understand what their picture looks like and start turning that frame. So you know, asking the impactful questions to really understand what their picture looks like so that you can then say, Our clients that fit that picture. These are the problems that they had and these were the way that we
[00:35:13] Tyler: solved it.
I like that way of looking at the picture from the other way around. Does that resonate with reps? Cuz you know, I think a big part of a successful SDRs is the coaching and training of SDRs. Do you like to use images like that? Like imagery or what other kind of useful tips do you have for those managers out there trying to coach a team of SCRs?
[00:35:32] John Rosar: Yeah, people learn many different ways and if you're a manager that only teaches through. Reading or just teaches through lecture or just teaches through role play, you know you're gonna miss people and you're gonna miss great talent. And so my recommendation to managers when you're training your reps is bring in all of those different aspects.
Ask your reps how they learn best. Tweak your training to make it individualized for those people, and you can unlock some really amazing talent that otherwise, if you. Stuck in your box, you would miss. Yeah, a hundred
[00:36:04] Tyler: percent. Yeah. Cuz we're all kind of a balance of that visual, auditory kinesthetic, and is trying to match and mirror.
So I guess part of that is almost like building out content. What do you think in terms of playbooks or content that you might give to a new sdr? What does that look like, at least in your organization? Or what does good look like for you?
[00:36:22] John Rosar: Yeah, well, understanding the persona that you're calling into is gonna be really important so that you can speak their language and have intelligent convers.
I actually think that understanding the persona more than you understand the product is a good
[00:36:35] Tyler: first step. Why do you feel like that? Why do you think it's more important to understand the persona than the product?
[00:36:41] John Rosar: Yeah. I think this goes back to what I was saying before. We are not selling the product as SDRs.
We're selling a solution or the excitement, curiosity, that there's something out there that's gonna make my life easier or is gonna solve my pain or gonna make me more efficient. And when we're thinking about the way that we're coaching our. It really is. Back to that, let's focus on booking the next appointment and getting to the next stage of the
[00:37:05] Tyler: sale.
Yep, a hundred percent. A lot of SDR managers that that we work with happen to be first time managers, first time sales managers. They might have been a best sdr. They might be a marketing leader, and it might be a founder and executive that's just added to their list of responsibilities. What do you think some best practices are for those SDR leaders out there managing reps for the first time in their career?
[00:37:26] John Rosar: Oh, that's a good one. Well, first off, I think that SDR managers are often looked at as the junior level manager, when in fact the complexity behind onboarding, training and getting individuals that, you know, haven't had a lot of experience in sales. Up to speed is definitely one of the most difficult things, and then maintaining people in a role that's just so hard and has its ups and down.
Certainly, I would say at the end of their management tenure as an SD manager, they're gonna be leaps and bounds above any other sales manager. So good on you for being an S SCR manager, but I would say be empathetic. Think about what it took for you to get there. Know that not everyone's gonna be you, and that they could still be great.
Keep doing what you're, I'm
[00:38:10] Tyler: glad you brought up. Not everybody's gonna be you. It's not necessarily about just teaching 'em that your way is the only way as the manager, but maybe that you have to be open to other ways as well. John, any parting words of advice for sdr? SDR leaders out there?
[00:38:23] John Rosar: I would say one of my favorite things is to, uh, always remind people to use sizzle.
And what is sizzle? Sizzle is essentially selling the excitement and curiosity. And validating what it is that you're doing in the company that you're supporting. And you can be serious and you can be professional, but you should also still be very excited about the role that you're in and educating these individuals on exactly how you can help 'em.
So validate it, bring in those sizzle points. Talk about other current customers. Talk about thought leaders that are recommending your tool. Talk about publications that you've been in does go a long way and helps to solve that excitement, curiosity, so
[00:39:01] Tyler: love that. Awesome. Thanks John. And, and John, just so our audience knows, what is RevGen?
Yes.
[00:39:06] John Rosar: We're either number one or number two largest outsource lead generation team on the East coast. So we support a number of B2B tech companies. We hire around 18 to 20 new SDRs every single month to put them through our training program, and then we usher them through the beginning stages of their sales career.
And help them land the next big job to then carry them on to continuing their SDR role and then into AE and so on and so
[00:39:31] Tyler: forth. That's awesome. And how could people find you online? What's the best way to find you?
[00:39:34] John Rosar: Yeah. Uh, website, RevGen and c.com. Okay, perfect.
[00:39:37] Tyler: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, John. Hope you have a great rest of your conference
hanging out at Inbound. Dan Mott from Six Three Media. Dan, how's it going? Good man. How you doing? Fantastic. So me and Dan, we're just talking prospecting. We're talking outbound, we're talking social selling. Dan's got a social selling class on LinkedIn and you actually just said a minute ago, and I, that's why I had to click record here, that you actually don't think LinkedIn sells navigator.
Is that valuable? I wanted to dig into that a little bit more. What did you mean by that track? Back
[00:40:07] Dan Mott: to about three and a half years ago when I was getting started with my. I did actually start using Sales Navigator, and it was a great way to get started, but I realized that I was doing all this content creation and I was doing all these things to on natively on LinkedIn, that when I was going over to Sales Navigator, everything was being done in silo and I was like, There's a disconnect here.
And great, I can prospect people and then nurture them, but I'm not doing any prospecting based off of my native organic content. So how do I take the content that I'm creating and turn that into leads? And I started looking for subtle signs. Who's liking my post? Who's commenting on my. Who's checking on my profile, sending me connection request.
There's a lot of these little flags that come up. Little hand raises, soft hand raise. That a lot of times we're pumping out content, pumping out content, and waiting for people to come approach us, or we're then going on to sales navigator to go do our prospecting. So I thought, well, how do I bring these two together?
How do I look at these little flags on my content, on my profile to then say, Awesome, let me start a conversation with this person. So it helps me, My content is now helping me qualify. I'm seeing people who are actually engaging with me, they're now familiar with me. So legit, I don't ever have to do cold outreach again because I'm only reaching out to people who are warm, which is really awesome.
[00:41:15] Tyler: Nice. So you're basically running kind of an inbound play. But you're running it through seemingly an outbound channel that is LinkedIn like prospecting, at
[00:41:24] Dan Mott: least on LinkedIn. Exactly, yeah. And that's why I said I outbound my inbound, so I'm pushing content and then I'm using that to find my leads to then go do my outbound.
I'm not waiting for people to reach out to me. Nice.
[00:41:35] Tyler: Yeah. That's awesome. So in that case, sales navigator just becomes almost less necessary it sounds like. Well, legit, the only
[00:41:41] Dan Mott: reason I have, So actually I don't have Sales Navigator anymore. I still use LinkedIn Premium, but the only reason I have it is because it allows me to see my profile views, because those are where my, So if you've ever heard of like lurkers and like why they make the bank?
Yeah. So they're out there consuming all of our content, but the only time they're ever gonna show up is when they message us. And again, I don't wanna wait for that. So, Secret is that they come and lurk on our profiles, and that's a sign to me that, Hey, this person checking out my content. They're checking out me.
They're interested in what I have to say. Why not just send them a message and see what's up? Yeah. The
[00:42:09] Tyler: profile view, it's kind of like the email open and it's that signal where we don't really know, but it's also if it, Oh, it happened again, and, Oh, that person just popped up again. Next thing you know that lurker is probably.
Way more interested and way more likely to be a potential prospect than anyone else. So I guess in that regard, that premium is nice to have because then you can see who's on your profile. Cause a lot of SDRs are asking me, do I need to pay for that? Do I need to see who's looking at my profile? Do you think SDRs should be thinking about that and buying that?
Potentially.
[00:42:37] Dan Mott: So I think, I mean, SDRs really should be creating contact. Cause I see a lot of people who will go in and use Sales Nav and I still think that's a fine approach, but I think that you still need to be going in there and creating content. If you're gonna generate all these leads, if you're gonna grow your network, but then if you're not nurturing them, if you're not building those relationships over time, then you're really kind of cutting yourself off the knees, right?
Like that's not scalable. That's one in for one out, as opposed to being able to take those leads that you're generating. Six months, 12 months, 18 months down the line, be able to actually build that rapport, get them to a point where they're ready to make a purchase decision and then capitalize on it. I started with LinkedIn Sales navigator.
Definitely do it, but start moving towards creating content. Once you start regular engagement, then figure out how to capitalize on that, and that's literally just comment. Start conversations in public, take those conversations in public to private. Yeah. And then take that DM to a phone call. Love
[00:43:22] Tyler: that.
And last thing before we hop today, cuz I think we're gonna have to do another full length episode to get into some of these things a little bit deeper. I wanna touch on, you talked about creating content. Yeah. Most SDRs, when they hear that are terrified, right? They will barely send out a one to one video, much less create a video that could be.
One to many mask consumed by anybody. So as you start talking about creating content, what do you think is the best way to kind of dip your toes into that arena and getting started there? Because I think a lot of folks have a lot of apprehension about that.
[00:43:50] Dan Mott: So what I'll say is, you know your product, you know your area of expertise.
Capitalize on that. Anytime you're on a prospect call a client call. Anytime they ask you a question, write that down, Keep a running list of that, and every single one of those questions is now a piece of content. Because if one person wants to know, everyone wants to know. Then you can take that whole list and turn that into, right.
You might need a graphic designer help, or I use Camba super easy, but you can now take 10 of those questions and turn it into a LinkedIn carousel. You can like digitally design that into a pdf, a downloadable asset that's gonna generate more leads for you when you actually record those calls with your prospects or your.
You can record that and clip those up, and now you've got 32nd video clips that you can post on, like content is everywhere around you. You just need to figure out where it is and
[00:44:35] Tyler: how to capitalize on. Yeah, I love that q and a strategy of basically just taking the frequently asked questions, turn them into video, and either someone on your marketing team or just somebody on fiber or just use Canva yourself.
It's not that hard to create. You just have to start doing it. I think that's the key is the start. So once you
[00:44:50] Dan Mott: have those templates set up too, you can repurpose them. I have like three or four that I use. I literally hit copy and I changed the text in it and boom. Within a minute, I'm done. I've got my next post ready to go.
So hundred percent. Awesome.
[00:45:01] Tyler: Any parting words from inbound from you, Dan?
[00:45:03] Dan Mott: Ah, man. I think it's always about people. It's always about relationships, and it's really cool to be here, to get to meet people like you, to get to meet people all over the. It's the same thing on LinkedIn, right? Treat LinkedIn like it is a networking event.
Don't go out there and just start. I use the term pitch flapping all the time. Don't go in and connect with people and immediately throw your pitch out. Go out there and build relationships. Get to know people. Shake hands digitally. Um, that's literally the thing that works. Yep,
[00:45:25] Tyler: exactly. We just saw that we were already connected on LinkedIn.
Yep. But now we've shot this short piece of content together. We have a little bit of relationship. Now I'm gonna be following everything you're doing on there. Now we're gonna go create
[00:45:35] Dan Mott: more content and there's more that's gonna come out of it. We're gonna further our relat. That's gonna lead to referral opportunities, that's gonna lead to more co-marketing opportunities.
Yeah. There's so much more than just prospecting and finding clients. Building relationships like this can help us do so much more on LinkedIn. Again, that moves us away from that one to one activity to being able to scale and nurture. And
[00:45:53] Tyler: that's what's crucial. And that's been a theme here this week, is talking about community, the power of community.
It's like your network, it's your referral. How do you build these? You build these by putting yourself out there, putting that content out there, going to conferences, connecting with people, whether it's online or offline. If everybody does that, everybody wins, so, Exactly. Yeah. Love it. All right, thanks Dan.
We'll have you on the show. So yeah,
one more key lesson I learned here at Inbound 2022 is the power of. Personal brand and how it can scale from one to one communication to one to many communication. I think this is really applicable to a lot of SDRs out there who are so focused on on building one to one content only sending it to one person.
Get comfortable building one to many content. If you can do it for many, you can do it for one to one really, really well. And I think Miguel at Addition's doing a great job of this, of getting SDRs to create content. The more you can do this and send that out, one to many, the better Your one-to-one content will.
And the better opportunity you'll have to connect with your prospects in a one to many fashion so that then you'll be able to basically do a little bit of inbound with your outbound. So like my buddy Matt that I met said, basically doing outbound in an inbound way I think is a crucial step to your growth in 2022.
That's it for part one of my interviews at Inbound. Don't miss part two where you'll learn. Social selling and building relationships. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe to the Outbound Sales Lift wherever you get your podcast. See you back here for part two.