Mike Hamilton

SDR Dashboards - what do you want to see? Gimme your top 3 stats/charts/reports you like to see on YOUR dashboard for pipeline gen. There's the obvious activity levels and SQL/SAL volumes but what else do you like to see.....

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The Power of Team Building: More Than Just Fun and Games In the fast-paced world of sales, where targets dominate, it's easy to overlook a mission-critical component of success: team building. At Vendasta, we live by "work hard, play hard." Our sales team balances relentless dedication with a vibrant culture that fosters camaraderie and innovation. Can you guess the theme in this picture? These fun days are vital for: - Enhanced Communication: Breaking down barriers for effective communication. - Increased Motivation: Building loyalty and motivation to achieve goals. - Creativity and Innovation: Encouraging fresh ideas and approaches. - Trust and Collaboration: Fostering a supportive, collaborative environment. So, what's the theme of this picture? Drop your guesses below! 👇 #TeamBuilding #SalesTeam #WorkHardPlayHard #CompanyCulture #TeamSpirit #SalesSuccess #Vendasta

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Outsourcing SDRs? Don’t fall for: - A promise of X amount of meetings/month - X amount of dials and emails they promise to send out - Their email + call messaging skill Outsourcing has a bad stigma because there are so many companies looking to get quick money from clients with weak results. What to look for instead: - A team who understands they need to test messaging and help you make pivots to your ICP - Shares their sequence strategy - Shares their email and call messaging - Shares the tech they use - What they do to avoid ending up in a spam inbox and hurting your domain health - Builds your target/ICP lead list with you - Sends weekly reports on progress - Gives you access to their SDRs so they feel like they’re part of your internal team This is when outsourcing is worth it ⬆️ #outsourcing #sales

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Happy 4th American friends 🇺🇸... for my fellow Canadians in SDR land here's some things I often find are a good use of time on a day like today: - Draft personalized emails - Find and/or research accounts and prospects - Sequence prospects - Self enablement/study - Admin work/reporting - Cold call/disco call role plays - Cold call/disco call game tape - Tweak chatGPT prompting for pmails/account research/etc - Prospect into your Canadian/EMEA/global accounts Also use the time to breath. Go slow today so you can go fast the rest of July. Food for thought. #sdr #salesdevelopment #sales

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Multi-threading... A skill that's fast becoming the most critical in a sales reps arsenal. Why? 🤔 The market is tough at the moment. 🤔 Buyers are more budget conscious. 🤔 CFOs are asking teams to reduce spend and cut back on investment. 🤔 Prospects that once had buying power and sign off capability now have to get approval from C-Suite. It sounds like an uphill battle 🏃‍♂️‍➡️⛰️ but the truth is, multi-threading is not as daunting as you might think. ⭐️ Here's some tips that have worked well for me in the last 6 months ⭐️ 🗺 Map out your accounts. Org charts are critical for multi-threading. You need to understand who your prospects are, who they report to, and who holds decision making power. Tip - LinkedIn SalesNav let's you build drag and drop org charts! 🗣️ Check with your your champion. Confirm your org chart is correct. Ask them what the process is for bringing on a new vendor. If they don't know, 🆘 they are not a true champion. 📧 Share content early. Begin introducing yourself to key stakeholders quickly. Tip - Connect on LinkedIn with a short and sweet connection request, something like "Wanted to put a face to a name following some great conversations I've been having with (champion name) re (challenge). I'll send over some content via email shortly. I look forward to hearing your thoughts." 🎺 Make sure your content is personalised, engaging, and stands out. TOP TIP - Using a tool like trumpet 🎺 (digital sales room) is a sure fire way to encourage stakeholder engagement. Upload clear and concise value props, how you can solve their businesses challenges, client case studies and more. Ask these contacts to bookmark the page as you will regular update it with content as the deal progresses. And, track their engagement, so you can meet them in the moment. So far, my prospects have been LOVING it! 📞 Pick up the phone. Once you've connected on LinkedIn and sent content, call prospects to ensure that they have seen it. Ask what questions they have and tell them about next steps. By doing the above, when it comes to negotiation these stakeholders will be informed and aware of the entire process to date, and you and your product will be top of mind 🧠 Tenured AE's in my network (I know there are a lot of you), what do you do to successfully multi-thread? P.S. You can guess what I'll be doing in the office today :😉 #multithreading #sales #digitalsalesrooms #dsr #aestrategies

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A question for Sales Leaders re: quotas - A friend in Medical sales just got their quota...halfway through May (almost halfway through the year). As a territory manager they hustled in 2023 and achieved 111% to quota. They were #4 in Canada and #1 in Ontario. Great, right? Wrong... As a reward, they were gifted with a 12% increase in quota not from previous year's quota, but from previous year's achievement, and to me this just doesn't make sense. 👉 This type of quota calculation rewards those who achieved 90% (or even lower ) 👉 Demotivates those high achievers - They used their relationships to get orders in before quarter/year end and those doctors won't be needing those products perhaps for 18 months 👉 Promotes #quietquitting - doing the minimum requirements of one's job and putting in no more time, effort, or enthusiasm than absolutely necessary 👉 Promotes mediocrity - the more I sell the more will be expected of me next year My friend is understandably demotivated. They are the first ones to help with any events, often being away from home on a weekly basis to help other colleagues with their events/sales. They no longer want to put in any extra work and are questioning the company and whether it may be time to leave. I would love to hear from Sales Leaders out there as to how you calculate quotas, what systems/products you use, and how you deal with employees who have questions.

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Attention SDRs and Sales Reps🎙️ If you are not getting enough coaching, use Chat GPT to supplement the lack of support - P.S sorry you aren’t getting support 😥 Paste a transcript of your recorded call or role-play you did with a co-worker into ChatGPT (check with legal if you can do this) Ask ChatGPT to: • Analyze your call based on your call framework or script • Identify areas for improvement by asking Chat GPT (or whatever tool you may use) questions • Suggest alternative phrases to communicate value better Prompts you could use: "What did I do well on this call?” - Start off feeling good "What did I not do well?” "How could I have dug into the pain more? Please provide questions I could have asked?” “Can you give me 3 ways I could have handled the objections?” "Suggest alternative ways I could have gone for the close?” “Did I miss anything in the call that could have helped me go for the close?” A.I. will not replace you; the Reps who learn how to use it to help them improve will. If you are a sales or enablement leader and want to learn more about how you could leverage A.I. to help improve your team. Come to the Allego Sales Success Summit, where Sam Richter CSP, CPAE, will discuss how to use AI to help improve your sales team. https://lnkd.in/eKg3w7w2

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ZoomInfo Copilot is working 24/7 — surfacing important updates you should know about your top accounts. With breaking alerts delivered via Slack, you'll never miss when a buying group shifts or a key account spikes on intent. 🔔 Have a question about one of your accounts? Ask Copilot's interactive, AI-powered chat and get answers in seconds. Ready to give Copilot a try? Message me today ! #ZoomInfoCopilot #zoominfo

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SDRs / AEs: Account Selection is king right now when prospecting. Use these 5 filters on Sales Nav (LinkedIn Sales Solutions) to uncover healthy & growing companies: 1. Buyer intent 2. Recent leadership hires  3. Recent funding (last 9 months is good) 4. Headcount growth in the last 6-months 5. Recent hiring in the org / persona segment you target 6. % distribution of personas that makeup the total employee headcount There are still companies out there who are growing and investing.. You just need to find them. Don't cast a wide net right now, you're likely wasting a ton of time. Instead, go deeper on fewer accounts.

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Sales folks especially SDRs and AEs I will tell you a hack about how to achieve more in less time ↓ "Start blocking your calendar thoughtfully and strategically every single day" Working out of whims & fancies and adhocism will not get you the desired result you aspire to achieve. You need to have a plan for your day even before starting the day. Every time you block your calendar make sure you block it for a single activity and you define what output you want to achieve out of this activity. Have a time block for at least Prospecting, Identifying new accounts, and Follow-ups on a daily basis, the rest you can block based on your roles and KRAs. Remember: "You cannot control time but you can surely control how you want to spend the time"

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In honour of Singles' Day: What do outbound sales and dating apps have in common? Spoiler: way too much. ➡️ Lead qualification: That delicate process of figuring out if they’re serious—or just “browsing.” Bonus points if they’re as interested in your solution as you are. ➡️ Ghosting: One day they’re all in; the next, they’ve vanished without a trace. Were they even real? ➡️ No-shows: You put on your best pitch (or outfit), and they cancel last minute (or never show up at all). Classic. ➡️ “Not interested”: The standard “it’s not you, it’s me”—or “we’re not looking to buy right now.” Ouch, every time. ➡️ Hopes of finally closing a deal: When all signs point to a "yes," but somehow you still end up back in the pipeline. ➡️ Relentless optimism: The audacity of hope, even after 50 rejections and a coffee addiction that’s getting out of hand. Somehow, we still believe every new prospect is “the one.” How else could we keep doing this? ➡️ Endless cycle of starting over: The grind never ends. New day, new pitch, new prospects...same hope, same questionable life choices. Shout-out to all of us serial pitchers - whether you’re chasing the next big deal or the next right-swipe, we’re all in this relentless pursuit together. Just hang in there, keep swiping, pitching, and staying optimistic! 🥲

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If you decide your sales team needs to help with renewals make sure they are incentivized correctly (I usually see a 70% new bookings goal and a 30% renewal / upsell goal). If you don't incentivize hunting, sales tend to farm too much and your growth will slow.

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Co-prospecting If you’re an AE that finds it difficult to carve an adequate amount of time to strategically prospect and you have SDR resources, you should be doing it. During my 8.5 years at Zoominfo, I worked closely with my BDRs, and 8 got promoted: Sam Sheehy, Kyle Volpe , John Basile, Stephanie Siegart, Adam Toothaker, Mark Verrill, Jeremy Delphonse, Steve Nino Sorry if I’m forgetting anyone. Here’s how it works: 📝 Map out your target accounts and identify the key people you want to meet with. This should be the cream of the crop. 🤝 Work with your SDR on messaging. It’s important to incorporate any ideas they have with your own. 🎯 Write an authentic personalized message. Give the prospect a unique compliment, give them insight into the problems you solve with an example, and without being overly salesly. Keep it short and simple. 🏹Finally introduce your BDR on the same email. This is setting them up to call them. You can always drip more content/ messaging. Be sure to follow up with some value. Remember it might take 10 or more touches to land the meeting. This day and age people send video, direct mail campaigns, etc.. This can all be a part of it. But remember not to overdo it. I personally stick to good customer stories. 🏋️This way you’ve done some heavy lifting for the SDR. If the prospect read the note, they are expecting the call, and have already been introduced to you and your company. 📞Now say you’ve done just a handful of these each day, say 5 on average. On Friday, you’ve got 25 calls you can make, easy. Do joint calling sessions with your BDR. Watch what happens to your opportunity creation results. This was a huge key to my success over the years. Be invested in getting your SDR to the next level, they will be movitated to get you meetings and thank you for it. Yes, that might include, giving your SDRs a free meeting once in a while that you prospected. Remember, it’s a team effort. Start co-prospecting today and share some results. #sales #prospecting #coprospecting #sdr #bdr

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CROs and sales enablement leaders want fast, repeatable, and reportable ways to deliver sales knowledge to sellers whenever they need it. BUT:  1. Sales training doesn’t help do this fast enough (it takes 3+ months for the average seller to ramp up, and they will continue to need SE support to answer everyday buyer questions after that) 2. SE bandwidth is limited and hiring more SEs to solve this problem is an extremely expensive solution To combat this at scale, Luke Martin, Senior Manager, Revenue Enablement Infrastructure Operations at ZoomInfo decided to innovate with AI – where every seller could ask AI a sales question, and it would answer it accurately and phrased the same way an SE would. Curious to know how that journey went? Join us for our webinar, 𝗡𝗼 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗠𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗧𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘀: 𝗨𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗜 𝘁𝗼 𝗚𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻 𝗨𝗻𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗿 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝟵 𝗔𝗠 𝗣𝗧, 𝗡𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟭 where we'll be discussing: ✨ The challenges Luke and many other sales/enablement leaders are facing today ✨ Separating gimmicky “AI software” from AI products and solutions that actually work ✨ Scaling AI adoption across your sales organization while keeping security, data privacy, and costs in mind Link to register 👇 https://lnkd.in/ecEBPG_t #CRO #Sales_enablement_leaders

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Top SDRs are in top for a reason. Here's what I've seen that they do that others don't. 1. they seek to understand the data they are calling on 2. they develop a nose for where the appointments are at by understanding the data 3. they listen for emotion and confront what they are hearing... if it's negative they address it... if it's positive they roll with it 4. they make the most of every call... not every call will result in an appointment ... they dq to make their data stronger... they gain knowledge of their targets.... they get follow ups and make friends 5. they want it... second place is not good enough 6. they ask good questions... relevant, curious, and even challenging questions 7. they help other people... I don't consider selfish SDRs Top SDRs these are referred to as terrorist... they are good at getting appointments but contaminate the culture... Top SDRs are always reinventing themselves and giving away what works bc they know they will figure something new out 8. they know when people answer the phone and this allows them to reserve their energy... they lock in when the fish are biting and prepare or rest when they are not 9. they have a pipeline of follow ups 10. they invest in themselves These 10 things require 0 skill. Don't make excuses as to why your not at the top.... just go do it! What would you add that Top SDRs do?

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An AE on my team closed 25+ deals last month. 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: Some of this stuff sounds easy but I actually find it quite rare to see someone do these things consistently. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗱 𝗶𝘁: 1. Salesforce is up to date. I know this is every seller's worst nightmare but every top AE is highly organized and detailed when it comes to their pipeline. - Stage is correct - Close date is correct - Detailed notes on the account - Next step is future orientated w/ a date 2. Fights for every deal. At Deel we get both small and large customers in SMB and deal sizes can vary significantly. To him, size doesn't matter. He goes after every account with everything he has and gives a world class experience no matter what. Interestingly, a lot of the smaller deals turn out to be bigger than anticipated or make referrals to larger companies. 3. Is a sales professional. Shows up to every call prepared and dressed professionally. I think this is actually an underrated strategy in all-remote selling. Easy to dress casually (sweatshirt and hat) but if you're looking to close 100k+ deals the small things like this matter a lot imo. People can be judge mental and old school so you have to cover all your bases. 4. Differentiates like a pro. He's super well studied on and articulate with how we communicates about: 1. Our customers top priorities 2. How we solve those priorities 3. How our solution is different 4. Why those differences matter Discovery call: He learns their top priority and the associated challenges. Spends time explaining how we would solve it and how our solution is different from others in the market. Teases the solution to build interest for a longer demo. Demo: Starts with a slide deck focused on what he heard. The demo is focused on what solving their priority would look like. Does not show every single feature. Only the ones that matter. 𝗕𝗼𝗻𝘂𝘀 𝘁𝗶𝗽: He manages up really well. He asks a lot from his manager and myself. And is not afraid to say what he needs in order to get things done. What tips do you have for closing deals? Let me know in the comments! 👉 Check out my 250+ page course for everything I know about outbound prospecting and selling here: https://lnkd.in/gP_-mVXR

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Something that I see new SDRs and AEs missing is "Nurturing the prospect" It's completely different from follow-ups In follow-up, you generally ASK the prospect for something or there is a CTA involved in it. BUT When you are Nurturing the prospect there is NO ASK or there is no CTA involved in it You simply GIVE them something that's relevant to them or something that helps them to make a better decision in future like 1. Case Studies 2. Success Stories 3. Ebooks / Informational Videos etc The idea is to stay on top of the mind of the prospect during the non-buying seasons or to stay connected with them when they have already told you that buying will take time. Try making a nurturing sequence just like a follow-up sequence, you will see a good difference in your sales and sale cycle. #b2b #saas #sales #nurturinglead

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It’s easy to get happy ears when evaluating an opportunity and accidentally fall trap to *confirmation bias* instead of actually evaluating it for its merit. Couple of examples as a sales leader: 1️⃣ Tons of PLG demand 🤩 This seems like the dream. Have a bunch of people that are interested and have tested your product in some form. Finding ways to upsell them or expand seems way easier than outbound selling. Sign me up ✅ But.. the questions to evaluate: - does the company have a clear ICP they are targeting? Do they have an understanding of who are the target users and the buyer here? (PLG businesses can be horizontal which means there is no single target persona and requires a cultural shift to drive sales growth) - how important is the sales led motion in the next 12 months? what type of resources are they willing to invest in this growth? what type of sacrifice would they be willing to make (like product roadmap, growth rate, margin, plg momentum) short term to get this right? 2️⃣ Great product / engg teams 🤩 As a sales leader, i want to represent the best product in market. This means working with the highest quality technical teams is a key to driving big $$s But… the questions to evaluate: - are they willing to optimize for product velocity at the cost of craft? (If that’s what the market demands) - do they respect the customers voice? how do they incorporate customer feedback into their product strategy? How important is the market reality (competitors, broader trends) when making roadmap decisions? - will they make exceptions to their POV to help expedite GTM? Spending time at a company is a big decision and it’s easy to get enamored by the superficial strengths alone... 🛑 Cool investors, inbound / PLG traction, amazing engg team are all great but ultimately it comes down to: 🔑 teams ability to respect your portion of the biz and 🔑 adapt to the needs to the market / customers It requires objective evaluation of their weaknesses and connecting that your individual skills and attributes ✅ #recruiting #hiring #cro #salesleadership #vpsales #execrecruiting

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SALES, SALES, SALES - Let's meet & work together for the rest of your sales career - Account Executive Opening$ 💘 Revenue Tool - SaaS Series B $125- $150k base $1m- $1.2m quota $7k- $500k deal size selling into #saas #sales #gtm teams actual inbound $$ growing their sales team from 5-12 SDR support (one on one for now) for #startup rep$ only 💘 Direct to Healthcare Tool - SaaS Series B $900k quota Some SDR support ideal candidate has worked with #insurance and has #saas background 💘 Manufacturing ERP Account Executive & Implementation Consulting org $95-$110k base. $200k++ OTE $200k+ deal size Must MUST MUST have sold #erp to manufacturing companies this is NOT a platform, or a RESELLER, this is a CONSULTING ORG that sources, refines fit and works with the customer throughout a very long up to 2 year implementation process - you will be the #csm #am NO COLD CALLING OR SALES EMAILS you will work DIRECT with JUST the founder open to seeing #sdrs who have sold #erp to manufacturers who want to get out of software, and into consulting - SDR Opening$$ 💘 Direct to Healthcare Tool - SaaS Series B 10+ qualified attended meeting a month selling into #hr mostly within #nonprofits and #homehealthcare $55-$65k base, up to $200+ per qualified, attended meeting do not contact me if you aren't going to take my coaching seriously :) cold call me 10x in a row text me send me a blind invite do what you got to do <3 #sales #salesrecruiter #gtmsales #founderledsales #saleshiring #salesjobs

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