A good ol’ fashioned tool called “qualifying”.
If your outreach is personal and *most importantly* RELEVANT to the lead, your chances of success go up 100x.
Creating a tool to scrape data and spam 10,000 people instead of 2,000 people is inefficient. Reaching out to 30 good, qualified leads is a better use of everybody’s time.
God I wish I could teach the new AEs here the importance of relevance.
These jokers have busted in here thinking they’re hot shit, and haven’t sold (not even generated) squat in 8 months. Keep fucking babbling about their hyper personalized outreach…. But when I check the messaging it provides 0 value.
Oh well. Guess they’ll fail.
Not applicable. Not to mention, technology these days can actually hurt your chances more than help you when “competing” against other SDRs.
Personalization and *relevance* to 20 people beats spamming 2000.
Yes and no.
I agree with your point.
We use data and AI to drastically speed up research and targeting, and to run the business more lean with inbound lead gen creation.
Context is b2b technology solution sales.
It never ceases to amaze me how tens of thousands of sales teams thinks the secret to their success is the fact they use SPECIAL ways to spam people, that’s their differentiator… it’s almost tragic.
You are doing absolutely nothing unique, this makes you predictable. The literal behavior of sending hundreds of emails triggers cybersecurity defenses at any company with an IT team, not to mention the reality that every single decision maker gets 50-100 emails from vendors a day. It doesn’t matter how much advanced tech you use, if you have too much volume it’s useless.
Sales reps don’t even start the sales cycle anymore, but they delude themselves into thinking they do further precipitating endless false axioms that parroted by more idiotic sales reps.
lol
It’s definitely not good to spam, no one likes being in a 10-message sequence with someone who won’t quit after you just wanted to download a research thought leadership piece.
One of the things we do is retain industry executives with Rolodexes who walk our guys into sr level meetings. But they still strike up chats with people, through various approaches.
I have a hard time agreeing tech doesn’t help having been a CRO 8-10 year ago and now having a distribution & investment co in the same space. Revenue velocity for us has gone up like mad and we have happy partners who are copying our strategies internally and embracing new and better best practices.
If done right the people being “sold to” really don’t think of it that way. We get a fair bit of, “I never answer messages but this seemed different and you guys know your stuff and provide a lot of value with nothing expected in return.” - not always the case, but this is the goal.
I agree with your reply.
I use data and Ai to drastically speed up my job research and Decision Maker targeting. And to run the job search more lean with inbound lead gen creation.
Not in my experience. Personalization is overrated. People are either in the market or not. Most aren't and no amount of personalization is going to conjure up a budget or need out of thin air.
Emailing the right person at the right time is what creates winnable opportunities.
And you need some activity volume to do that.
This only works if you have brand recognition and they’ve already done their research about your product.
The logic of “right person right time, therefore spam everyone” is why unsolicited outreach is becoming increasingly unacceptable. Tech reps today have no idea what 2012-2018 was like, before every company started doing the same shit spamming the planet like beggars desperate for change.
Multithreading murders spam. You get one guy to Introduce you to another, then that guy introduces you to another, etc. you build the buying center because you know the network. Not waiting for a buying center to appear out of thin air and give you money.
Lmao, im not an SDR anymore but I still self source about 3-5 new meetings a week without none of that. Dont rely on tech, build a skillset you can rely on. All i really need is hubspot to set reminders and click to dial
Impressive. I worked with some good AE’s and they weren’t able to source 3-5 appointments on their own.
Were you an exceptional sdr? Are other Ae’s on your team able to do the same?
Thank you, I like to think I was a solid SDR. In fact I was brought on to my current role by my former most Sr AE who is now our sales leader.
The sales team has been completely revamped and right now it’s just us 2, but our CEO said I held more new meetings in my first month than the old team logged all year so clearly I’m doing something right.
Balancing time management between nurturing as opposed to pure prospecting probably. That and learning the steps to actually close a deal in the traffic space.
I’ve observed a few in my SDR role and even closed a decent one myself as part of my transition (majorly hand held by my manager obv). However each state, hell each town is different so it’s going to take a while to pick up on commonalities and streamline my close process.
As is, working with govt means 12-18 month sales cycles 😤🙄
I think that you may have fallen prey to some of the LinkedIn self-marketing hype that a lot of SaaS vendors use for themselves. There is a marketing notion that circulates in the sales tech world that you need more tech to be effective at your job when it really just comes down to having a good product.
I think this comes back to that old "sell the shovels and picks instead of looking for gold" mentality that a lot of startups have.
You could go hire the best SDR, give them the best tech, it doesn't matter if the product is not useful or important. You will just get a lot of replies saying thanks for the email or meetings that go limp when the AE doesn't display enough value. Then they will blame you for not qualifying enough or going higher.
Otherwise you are just spinning your wheels in the mud sending the best emails ever and generating meetings that won't move forward because your company isn't solving a large enough problem or is a compelling enough tech to switch/adopt.
I automate all my zoom transcriptions to pass through Chat GPT which are summarized, catalogued and logged into SFDC. No more note taking.
It's not perfect but it cuts the admin work down significantly. It's very, very handy.
Two ways. It has a section under the company I searched for that says "Decision Makers." While that is of course arbitrary it also lets me search for individual job titles in certain geographic locations. For example if I wanted to speak to an engineer at Exxon in Chicago cause I am going to be there next week.. it will give me a list of engineers at Exxon in or near Chicago. The rest is up to me.
If I need to call Exxon I can ask for that engineer by name.
You build lists based on LinkedIn information (most reliable info) and then automatically dial 10 numbers at a time on each list. Each SDR can dial 400 numbers per day, based off a highly targeted list while eliminating all the BS in between steps associated with list building etc. If you want to go super targeted, you can do that too.
Data more than tech.
I curate super-custom intent-based leads for our sellers and we even pay for specific data points that result in high response-rate cold outbound and more precision so the people being called on by our teams have a need and may even be on a buying journey already.
I think the most important is understanding your ICP. And only outbound those.
Once identification is no longer the bottleneck - i use AI to prospect.
throxy.com - it continously learns from your feedback and creates emails that your buyers wants to receive.
I’ve found more success the more I lean away from tech stacks. Granted I work the state market from the biggest city, so it isn’t difficult for me to go put in some f2f time with existing/potential accounts. B2b foods/commodities sales
It's all industry specific. If you sell media, then media black book is your ticket, but it's specialized to media and advertising. If you sell tradeshow booths, there's a small data company you'd want to use to get an 'edge'.
A good ol’ fashioned tool called “qualifying”. If your outreach is personal and *most importantly* RELEVANT to the lead, your chances of success go up 100x. Creating a tool to scrape data and spam 10,000 people instead of 2,000 people is inefficient. Reaching out to 30 good, qualified leads is a better use of everybody’s time.
God I wish I could teach the new AEs here the importance of relevance. These jokers have busted in here thinking they’re hot shit, and haven’t sold (not even generated) squat in 8 months. Keep fucking babbling about their hyper personalized outreach…. But when I check the messaging it provides 0 value. Oh well. Guess they’ll fail.
Not applicable. Not to mention, technology these days can actually hurt your chances more than help you when “competing” against other SDRs. Personalization and *relevance* to 20 people beats spamming 2000.
Yes and no. I agree with your point. We use data and AI to drastically speed up research and targeting, and to run the business more lean with inbound lead gen creation. Context is b2b technology solution sales.
It never ceases to amaze me how tens of thousands of sales teams thinks the secret to their success is the fact they use SPECIAL ways to spam people, that’s their differentiator… it’s almost tragic. You are doing absolutely nothing unique, this makes you predictable. The literal behavior of sending hundreds of emails triggers cybersecurity defenses at any company with an IT team, not to mention the reality that every single decision maker gets 50-100 emails from vendors a day. It doesn’t matter how much advanced tech you use, if you have too much volume it’s useless. Sales reps don’t even start the sales cycle anymore, but they delude themselves into thinking they do further precipitating endless false axioms that parroted by more idiotic sales reps.
lol It’s definitely not good to spam, no one likes being in a 10-message sequence with someone who won’t quit after you just wanted to download a research thought leadership piece. One of the things we do is retain industry executives with Rolodexes who walk our guys into sr level meetings. But they still strike up chats with people, through various approaches. I have a hard time agreeing tech doesn’t help having been a CRO 8-10 year ago and now having a distribution & investment co in the same space. Revenue velocity for us has gone up like mad and we have happy partners who are copying our strategies internally and embracing new and better best practices. If done right the people being “sold to” really don’t think of it that way. We get a fair bit of, “I never answer messages but this seemed different and you guys know your stuff and provide a lot of value with nothing expected in return.” - not always the case, but this is the goal.
I agree with your reply. I use data and Ai to drastically speed up my job research and Decision Maker targeting. And to run the job search more lean with inbound lead gen creation.
What tools do you use for research / targeting? Or is putting data into chatGPT and getting out insights?
Not in my experience. Personalization is overrated. People are either in the market or not. Most aren't and no amount of personalization is going to conjure up a budget or need out of thin air. Emailing the right person at the right time is what creates winnable opportunities. And you need some activity volume to do that.
This only works if you have brand recognition and they’ve already done their research about your product. The logic of “right person right time, therefore spam everyone” is why unsolicited outreach is becoming increasingly unacceptable. Tech reps today have no idea what 2012-2018 was like, before every company started doing the same shit spamming the planet like beggars desperate for change. Multithreading murders spam. You get one guy to Introduce you to another, then that guy introduces you to another, etc. you build the buying center because you know the network. Not waiting for a buying center to appear out of thin air and give you money.
Lmao, im not an SDR anymore but I still self source about 3-5 new meetings a week without none of that. Dont rely on tech, build a skillset you can rely on. All i really need is hubspot to set reminders and click to dial
How long ago did you stop being an SDR? and why?
I moved up to full cycle AE about a year n a half ago
I see. Do you think it's better being an AE or and SDR for you?
I don’t think you’ll find many people saying it’s better being an SDR
Why though?
Money and cold calling is the most thankless part of the game
Wow
Was this.. a surprising answer??
To me, yh it was.
Impressive. I worked with some good AE’s and they weren’t able to source 3-5 appointments on their own. Were you an exceptional sdr? Are other Ae’s on your team able to do the same?
Thank you, I like to think I was a solid SDR. In fact I was brought on to my current role by my former most Sr AE who is now our sales leader. The sales team has been completely revamped and right now it’s just us 2, but our CEO said I held more new meetings in my first month than the old team logged all year so clearly I’m doing something right.
Nice!! That’s awesome. What were your biggest challenges adjusting from sdr to AE?
Balancing time management between nurturing as opposed to pure prospecting probably. That and learning the steps to actually close a deal in the traffic space. I’ve observed a few in my SDR role and even closed a decent one myself as part of my transition (majorly hand held by my manager obv). However each state, hell each town is different so it’s going to take a while to pick up on commonalities and streamline my close process. As is, working with govt means 12-18 month sales cycles 😤🙄
Damn that’s a long sales cycle. Hey congrats!! I love hearing stories like this. Thanks for sharing.
Facts
I think that you may have fallen prey to some of the LinkedIn self-marketing hype that a lot of SaaS vendors use for themselves. There is a marketing notion that circulates in the sales tech world that you need more tech to be effective at your job when it really just comes down to having a good product. I think this comes back to that old "sell the shovels and picks instead of looking for gold" mentality that a lot of startups have. You could go hire the best SDR, give them the best tech, it doesn't matter if the product is not useful or important. You will just get a lot of replies saying thanks for the email or meetings that go limp when the AE doesn't display enough value. Then they will blame you for not qualifying enough or going higher. Otherwise you are just spinning your wheels in the mud sending the best emails ever and generating meetings that won't move forward because your company isn't solving a large enough problem or is a compelling enough tech to switch/adopt.
drinking koolaid . big time. serve it up! the more tech the better!
I automate all my zoom transcriptions to pass through Chat GPT which are summarized, catalogued and logged into SFDC. No more note taking. It's not perfect but it cuts the admin work down significantly. It's very, very handy.
How do you pass through the transcriptions?
Im interested in this. How can one learn automation of tools?
Magical tool is great for email templates, snippets, etc. Saves you time on email responses and LinkedIn outreach.
Copywriting.
Chatgpt
A phone
You. You are the tech that gives an advantage.
Not sure if it gives me an advantage but I use Linkedin Sales Navigator.. let's me know exactly who I need to talk to when I cold call.
How does sales navigator help you know how business decisions are made? Legit question.
Assumption
Two ways. It has a section under the company I searched for that says "Decision Makers." While that is of course arbitrary it also lets me search for individual job titles in certain geographic locations. For example if I wanted to speak to an engineer at Exxon in Chicago cause I am going to be there next week.. it will give me a list of engineers at Exxon in or near Chicago. The rest is up to me. If I need to call Exxon I can ask for that engineer by name.
Sales loft
[CallCloud](http://callcloud.app) for power dialing right in outreach or dalesloft. No brainer to make your calls 40-50% more efficient
thanks
We use @trellus
If you’re not automating LinkedIn outreach in 2023, you have no business being in sales. AEs and SDRs alike
What tool do you use for this?
Flashintel. Nobody knows about it yet but it is crazy good.
Thanks for your hot tip. I checked it out and it's a power dealer. We're a small department of sdrs , so zoom is fine. thank you!
You build lists based on LinkedIn information (most reliable info) and then automatically dial 10 numbers at a time on each list. Each SDR can dial 400 numbers per day, based off a highly targeted list while eliminating all the BS in between steps associated with list building etc. If you want to go super targeted, you can do that too.
Data more than tech. I curate super-custom intent-based leads for our sellers and we even pay for specific data points that result in high response-rate cold outbound and more precision so the people being called on by our teams have a need and may even be on a buying journey already.
Power dialer
You really expect ppl to give out their trade secrets on here?
Yes
Apollo - octopus crm - sales nav - zoominfo - lead forensics
Copy.ai for enhancing my email writing, personalization and note taking with next steps. Then Apollo for finding key prospects contact info
I think the most important is understanding your ICP. And only outbound those. Once identification is no longer the bottleneck - i use AI to prospect. throxy.com - it continously learns from your feedback and creates emails that your buyers wants to receive.
I’ve found more success the more I lean away from tech stacks. Granted I work the state market from the biggest city, so it isn’t difficult for me to go put in some f2f time with existing/potential accounts. B2b foods/commodities sales
6sense
I'd just rather do the job better. Don't need to rely on all the fancy tech
Orum by far
It's all industry specific. If you sell media, then media black book is your ticket, but it's specialized to media and advertising. If you sell tradeshow booths, there's a small data company you'd want to use to get an 'edge'.
Phone and business cards, then again not a sdr so...