Ricardo Vieira

What are conversions in cold B2B sales nowadays? Talked about it with Dmitry Ivanouski - ex-director of B2B Sales PandaDoc at one of our Live-meetings at Community Sprints. Benchmarks: Open Rate: percentage of emails opened - 40% Reply Rate: overall response rate - 5% Positive Reply Rate: positive reply rate 25% Close to your results?

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The simplest way to increase sales conversion & velocity? DIDO - Date In Date Out. Instead of obsessing about MEDD(P)ICC vs SPICED, Outbound Email SaaS A vs B etc. ... ...simply always schedule your next synchronous touchpoint with your prospect during the call. "Let me get evaluate internally and get back to you if interesting / once feedback in I guess 1-2 weeks?" Schedule a 30min call in 2 weeks. "Just send me the offer, it should be fine to sign next week?" Schedule a 15-30min call in 1 week. Just never. ever. let deals slip just out of Laziness. Carelessness. And honestly naivety. Do you agree?

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💀 Is the role of a traditional SDR dying or evolving???? 🤔 Gone are the old days of the “Predictable Revenue” model SDRs used to: - Manually put together lead lists - Manually write and send 100+ emails per day - Call the leads on their list - Follow up manually with all contacts  - Have daily, weekly and monthly quotas to hit Just a few years ago, it would take a team of 10 SDRs to hit 1,000 contacts a day. Now, the game has changed… Being an SDR today means operating multiple tools + creating outreach sequences and flows at scale - where 1 SDR can do the volume of 10 SDRs How is this possible? 1️⃣ Lead list building - navigating the fragmented landscape: - Database tools like Apollo.io, ListKit, Skrapp.io, Prospeo, Ocean.io, Findymail simplify mining lead lists at scale - Purchasing lead lists from brokers you can then enrich with tool above and using databases like Dun & Bradstreet to find target accounts 2️⃣ Personalization and email verification: - Create waterfall cadences for contact email search and email verification with tool like Clay and FullEnrich - saving a ton of time to create clean lists to reach out to. Add your own API keys from email verifiers and other tools for ultimate workflows! - Use the same systems like Clay and their Claygent functionality to personalize your messages across platforms at scale to increase the relevancy and effectiveness of your messages. Use AI agents to do the manual work for you - scraping websites and finding vital information about companies and your prospects 3️⃣ Sending emails: - Tools like Instantly.ai and Smartlead make it simple to manage campaigns at scale, and with built in inbox warmup systems, you can monitor and ensure your deliverability stays in the 95%+ range - Bulk purchase and setup domains through systems like Mailforge - Cold Email Infrastructure 📈 - saving time on domain acquisition and setup 4️⃣ Linkedin outreach - Use Expandi.io to create outreach campaigns that mimic human-like interaction and behavior, enabling you to send personalized connection requests and lead meaningful conversations that drive sales at scale 5️⃣ Increasing the effectiveness of your cold calls - SDRs can now increase the number of daily dials by using parallel diallers like Salesfinity. - This allows your SDRs to significantly increase your daily connection rate by 3x-4x. Imagine increasing the number of people your team can speak to daily instead of wasting time on dialling numbers and waiting for someone to pick up? I personally think this is an evolution from SDR to something I would call an SSO - Sales System Operator. Bottom line - leveraging tech tools to create highly efficient outbound systems with significantly lower payroll costs. Have you already built out your tech stack for your outbound efforts? #saas #startups #growth #b2b #GTM #outbound #coldemail 🚀 Hey! I’m Fedor and I accelerate B2B startups to and beyond their first $1m ARR

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Hitting numbers with an outbound strategy is possible! I put you below some average numbers you can achieve. 2 sdrs 20x2=40 meetings booked/month 25% no show = 10 ; 40-10 =30 30 meetings done 10% closing 3 closings/month 10k average annual contract 30k signed per month 30x12 = 360k per year / average year for SMBs/ juniors target Do it It works with interns and alternance #sales #sdr #outbound

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The Old SDR model is DEAD. Here is how to replace it. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐥𝐝 𝐒𝐃𝐑 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥: - Building a large list of accounts that fit filmographies and are on the territory of SDR - Receive MQLs from marketing - Upload all contacts to the automated outbound cadence - Follow-up with cold calling - Rinse and repeat every quarter KPIs are leads and appointments for AEs. Sad reality: their account-to-pipeline ratio is <1%. Why? Because nobody wants to hang out with SDRs who send unsolicited, non-personalized pitches. You don’t even need any more SDRs to run these obsolete playbooks. AI tools can do it automatically for you. 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐃𝐑𝐬, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭-𝐁𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐒𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐬. They start by binge listening to customer demos and onboarding calls, learn about the product, customers and the industry, as much as possible. Account-based sales reps work closely with marketing and Subject Matter Experts on: - Account selection (intent + engagement data from demand gen programs) - Account qualification - Account prioritization (vendor awareness, buying signals, product-need evidence) - Buying committee mapping - Engagement and activation They evaluate ICP fit and revenue potential, and subsegment all qualified accounts into two lists: - Active Focus (vendor aware, strong buying signals/product need evidence) - Future Pipeline (vendor aware, product need/challeng is unknown) ACTIVE FOCUS DEVELOPMENT - Connecting and engaging with the buying committee (commenting, event invites, peers connections, content collaborations) - Sharing and distributing cluster-based content (change management, education) - Create with marketing and SME personalized offers and activation playbooks (1-1s with SMEs, business cases, connecting with peers/clients) KPI: pipeline. We have implemented this model with several clients last year, and saw account-to-pipeline 5-15%. FUTURE PIPELINE DEVELOPMENT 1/ Account Research & Progressive profiling: - What challenges does the account have? - Is the account in market? - Who are the technical and economical buyers they need to engage with 2/ Connect and engage with the buying committee (see above) On a company level, everybody accepts that Future Pipeline accounts are not sales-ready. Hence the main KPI are account engagement and relationship with the buying committee. Account-Based Sales Reps actively work on account awareness and create a future pipeline for themselves. --- B2B companies that continue running obsolete marketing and sales playbooks in 2024 are likely to continue laying off people and miss revenue targets. You don’t have other choices than adjusting your marketing and sales process to how your customers are buying. But the best part? Everybody wins! --- We'll share the role of SDRs in Account-Based programs this Friday with our Substack Newsletter subscribers. Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/dSje9cKc

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Sales has bad reputation. In places like Eastern Europe, especially ex-soviet countries, people look down on it. The "real" prestigious career is Engineering. Sales is seen as what slick middlemen do. But if you think about it, selling is one of the most crucial skills for success. Not just hitting quotas or closing deals. It's: - Getting others to believe in your vision - Landing dream job - Convincing investors to bet on your startup - Not falling into the classic trap of you build it, they will come Personally, selling shaped my life - from hustling contrabanda Nokia phones in high school, selling pro audio equipment later to PM career and startup. Selling is a crucial skill.

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Ever wondered how some SDRs crush quota? And others... well, not so much? Are they just wired differently? The School of SDR compiled data from 100's of professional SDRs to create a 118 page SDR Benchmark Report. It brings much needed transparency to SDRs' real experiences. It covers sales cycle durations, daily KPI requirements, career expectations, company support, and everything inbetween. Here are a few nuggets I found interesting: >> 13.5% of SDRs have a sales cycle of less than 30 days >> Most organizations maintain 2 – 3 SDR’s for every AE (Account Executive) >> 58% of SDR’s can achieve full productivity in 1 – 3 months >> Only 15.52% of SDR’s are able to attain above 90% of their target quota >> 48% of SDR’s want to grow into an AE (deal closing) position And TONS more. If you've ever wondered how you or your sales team compare with others, here's the benchmarking data you've always wanted. A link to the report is in the 1st comment. Happy prospecting!

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"What the hell do you do at SalesMeetings.AI ?" Have had quite a few people reach out asking this, so I filmed this quick video to explain how we're building some of the most sophisticated personalized B2B outbound campaigns in the market... :) Some of the key things we focus on: -Animated GIFs w/ personalizations that land in Inbox Primary 85-95% of the time... usually getting 5-20x engagement vs. plain text outbound emails -1:1 personalized landing pages with the person in the video saying the prospects first name (we use AI voice clone for this & we can also personalized anything in the background or foreground as well as pull in custom API data) -building unique datasets/data-enrichment that are much better than just using Apollo.io or Zoominfo -setting up a private email server that delivers at much higher rates than Google/Outlook/major SMTP providers hope you enjoy :)

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The biggest problem when implementing AI in sales teams, is that we’re still thinking AI first. Funny thing is, it’s just history repeating itself - remember when everyone wanted to build an app? And just like with apps, it’s not that building the app or implementing the AI is the challenge. It’s implementing it in such a way that it drives business value. For that, we need to stop thinking AI first. And we need to start: 📌 Think sales rep first How could I help my sales team to sell more effectively and efficiently? And could AI be part of the solution for that? 📌 Focus on data second Quality over quantity. Newer llm’s can generate great results with limited data input, but then you need to make sure your data is relevant and recent. Otherwise, you’re left with trash output. Tech hypes come and go - let’s just make sure we don’t keep on repeating the past.

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The best B2B SaaS sales advice I’ve ever heard, is: “get crazily narrow on your ICP and messaging”. Going wider in customer profile makes intuitive sense. More to go at right? Going less extreme on messaging also makes sense. Don’t turn anyone off, right? Wrong. Most great companies built from a truly narrow base. Where the pain point was absolutely, 100%, without equivocation fixed by the software. Very few great companies come from a wide base. Trying to be all things to all people. If in doubt, niche down. There’s loads of books on this very factor. And blog posts. And substacks. And LI advice. Pretty much everyone involved in building SaaS startups agrees. But it’s soooo counter intuitive that surprisingly few founders truly embrace the concept. #founders #startups #vcfunding

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Why AI SDR Tools Won't Revolutionize Sales AI-powered SDR tools are attracting big investments, but I believe they'll fall short. and They could make outreach worse, not better... Here are 10 reasons why: 1. Questionable Traction and Results: Some AI SDR companies inflate their success by showcasing meetings they've booked. However, these meetings are often with people interested in the AI tools themselves—not genuine sales prospects. It's a cycle where they claim you'll get more meetings, but the meetings are just demos to lure the next customer. 2. High Churn Rate: From my experience with various cold email outreach tools, users frequently switch because these tools don't deliver sustained value. They become more of a trap than a solution, indicating a lack of long-term effectiveness. 3. Same Old Data: These tools rely on widely available scraped LinkedIn data. I've seen over 700 million LinkedIn profiles and emails sold for just $500. Without unique or exclusive data, AI can't personalize outreach effectively, leading to generic and ineffective communication. 4. Not Enough Depth: AI needs rich, diverse information to make meaningful connections. Current tools lack the necessary data depth. Even advanced platforms aren't sufficient when enrichment is based only on websites or LinkedIn profiles. 5. No Human Touch: Sales is about building relationships. AI can't replicate the empathy, intuition, and personal connection that humans bring to complex sales conversations. 6. Poor Adaptability: Markets and customer needs change rapidly. AI tools often struggle to adapt to these shifts, reducing their effectiveness in dynamic environments. 7. Psychological Barriers: AI SDRs threaten the jobs of human SDRs and the status of sales leaders. Managers might resist or even sabotage AI adoption because it endangers their teams and positions. 8. Rules of Engagement Issues: Integrating AI SDRs into existing sales processes is messy. AI might contact prospects that human reps are already engaging, causing conflicts and confusion. Establishing clear rules of engagement is critical but challenging. 9. Risk of Spamming the Market: There's a danger of AI SDRs burning through the total addressable market by sending high volumes of automated outreach. This can damage a company's reputation and alienate potential customers. 10. Tough Competition: The AI space is crowded. Without something unique, these startups risk being overshadowed by established companies that can quickly develop similar features, leaving them without a competitive edge. In essence, while AI SDR tools sound promising, they might not deliver the game-changing results they advertise. They could make outreach worse, not better—it's already been damaged by over-automation and lack of personalization. It's important to look beyond the hype and assess whether they truly add value over existing methods. #AI #SDR #AiSDR #SALES #BDR #LLM

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Many sales teams struggle with it... low closing rates. Studies have shown why this is often the case: you should NEVER sell the product... but the VALUE!!! The positive side effect of this little change? Your deal cycle shortens and your closing rates will increase. Successful sales leaders rely on "Value Selling". They use the so-called Value Framework for this and thus help their team sell more efficiently... by getting everyone in the sales team on the same page. Today we'll show you how to create and apply this Value Framework for your team. #valueselling #valueframework #sales https://hubs.li/Q02tTGSc0

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AI SDRs shouldn’t fully replace humans—at least not yet. Based on conversations I’ve had with revenue operators, no one has seen long-term proof (6+ months) that AI SDRs can work well, consistently. And the downsides are significant: - Burning through your TAM in days - Bad, irrelevant messaging - Getting ignored or marked as spam Without the right guardrails, AI SDRs risk turning “spray and pray” playbooks into an even bigger problem. (This is what we’re all seeing more and more in our inboxes…) So for now, human SDRs still have the upper hand in outbound. That said, AI SDRs can redefine outbound teams in 2 important ways: 1. Augment lean teams by closing the gap between pipeline targets and SDR capacity so teams scale more efficiently. 2. Improve discovery and prioritization so SDRs can focus efforts on building relationships, creative outreach, and delivering relevant messaging. But this will only work if you use relevant, accurate signals at the heart of your outbound strategy. Why? Because signals are the foundation of intelligent discovery — without this solid foundation, AI SDRs will only deliver garbage results. So while AI SDRs have a role to play in outbound, their success depends on leveraging high-quality data and real-time signals to make your outreach meaningful, timely, and relevant.

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You don't need 120+ AI tools for sales. Just 8 REALLY good ones. 1) ZELIQ Generates sales strategies in seconds Creates icebreaker emails tailored to your ICP 2) Telescope Your prospecting assistant Finds the right people based on your ICP description 3) Crono Builds omnichannel strategies with AI Generates multi-touchpoint strategies quickly 4) Sybill Analyzes verbal and non-verbal cues Creates meeting summaries and CRM updates 5) Sendler.ai B2B email marketing tool Produces personalized videos for each lead 6) Gamma AI-powered design partner Creates presentations and websites in seconds 7) Twain Your communication copilot Writes custom outbound messages in your tone 8) Attention Teaches why you're winning or losing deals It helps you take action to improve Use these AI sales tools. Improve your sales game! Follow Charlie + Noam Reshare to help others ♻️

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🚀🚀Here are the top 100 B2B SaaS startups in Europe & Israel - 2024🚀🚀 See which companies are leading the AI and data revolution. 🙏 Thanks to Amy Lewin & Siftedeu 💾 Download the full report now! 🤞 Hope you're own the list #founders #saas #vc #growth #scaling #europe

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The traditional sales funnel is dead in PLG. Long live the growth loop! HubSpot's freemium model helped them grow from $255 million to $1.6 billion in revenue in just 5 years. Key elements of the PLG loop: 1. Acquisition through product value 2. Activation focused on 'aha moment' 3. Retention driven by ongoing value delivery 4. Referral built into core product use 5. Revenue expansion through usage and features PLG companies with strong growth loops see 50% lower customer acquisition costs. Is your growth strategy still stuck in an outdated marketing funnel, or have you embraced the continuous growth loop?

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Quality vs Quantity in Sales: A 2024 Data-Driven Breakdown of What Actually Works 🎯 As we close 2024... Here's what the data shows 👇 These are the 2 main approaches dominating sales automation: 𝟭| 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 𝟯,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘀 per month → 5 messages per contacts = 15,000 messages per month → 10-20% reply rate = 300-600 replies → 20% booking rate = 𝟲𝟬-𝟭𝟮𝟬 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 → 4 linkedin id + 2-6 email inboxes needed 💰 Cost: High effort per contact, but only 3K contacts needed --- 𝟮| 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗩𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 𝟰𝟬,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘀 per month → 5 messages per contacts = 200,000 messages per month → 1-3% reply rate = 400-1200 replies → 10% booking rate = 𝟰𝟬-𝟭𝟮𝟬 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 → 55-75 domains + 160-220 email inboxes needed 💰 Cost: Lower effort per contact, but 13x more contacts needed + high cost for domains/emails purchase & setup --- ≠ 𝗦𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (~𝟭𝟱𝟬 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀), 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗵𝘀: - Precision: 3K contacts → ~500 replies → ~100 meetings - Volume: 40K contacts → ~800 replies → ~100 meetings The hidden costs: - Domain purchase: 5$ / domain - Inboxes: 3$ / inboxes - Domain warm-up: 3-4 weeks each - List cleaning: 15-20% of contacts - Spam monitoring: Daily across 55+ domains - Time to setup everything - Weekly optimizations For 2025, which path aligns with your strategy? Share your experience: → Which approach did you use in 2024? → What were your actual results vs these benchmarks? → Most importantly: what's your plan for 2025? Let's learn from each other 👇

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Generating 2X Leads does NOT mean 2X ARR. The Problem with 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 It’s a common trap in marketing and all across GTM. The Blended Funnel has: - All leads - From all channels - And all types of leads - With different intent - Blended together This doesn’t work because: - Different channels convert differently - Buyers come in at different stages of evaluation - Ex: Demo requests converts VERY differently than webinars In other words, not all MQLs are the same! To plan accordingly, we need to unblend the funnel! More on this in yesterday’s 📰 𝙍𝙚𝙫𝙊𝙥𝙨 𝙒𝙚𝙚𝙠𝙡𝙮 📰 Get it here: https://bit.ly/4edZ84C ✌️

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"B2B buyers engage with 3-7 pieces of content before talking to a sales rep." (Kurve, 2024) This means you need more TOF awareness content to get more B2B buyers. Cold-outbound or SDR services alone are not enough anymore. You need to: - Educate your prospects on what you do. - Create more noise than your competition. - Showcase your industry-leading insights. - Reinforce your messaging & stay top of mind. - Position yourself as the only & go-to in your market. - Build multiple touch-points through content marketing. - Address common pain points and provide solutions early. - Ensure content speaks directly to their current buying needs. We're currently helping our clients sign the likes of Nvidia through our Content & Outbound System. If this post caught your attention, you can book in and hear about our strategy 1:1 here: https://lnkd.in/gu5n57sd

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