Andrew Salerno

#1 skill I’ve seen consistent across sales reps Is their ability to stay organized. It doesn’t mean unorganized reps can’t be successful, I know plenty that are. But a rep that can consistently execute a process will win a lot more often. This goes for: - Prospecting - Deals in early stages & follow up - Deal alignment with multiple stakeholders - Multi-threading - etc. Sadly, most deals are lost due to poor organization and follow up. My suggestion, take the thinking out of it as much as you can. Check out Boomerang who's solving this problem: https://lnkd.in/gmRveMqa

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SDRs, you need to stop asking for “30 minutes next week” 🛑 A cold email is supposed to provide value. Yes, booking a meeting is what every SDR wants. But, it can be counter-productive. You need to detach from the outcome and attach yourself to the process of asking the right questions. This is something you won’t be able to do if your only goal is booking a meeting. The key is to put yourself in your prospects’ shoes and ask, “What’s in it for me?” To do this, you need to reverse-engineer your value proposition. Take a spreadsheet out and write: ✅ What are the five to seven problems my prospects face? ✅ How can I solve them? (one to two sentences is enough here). By doing this tactic, you’re not focusing on features and functions. Instead, you show how you serve the prospect and what they gain from replying. Any thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments 👇

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SDRs - struggling for the best way to improve? Here are 5 ways I did it FAST: 1) Imitate the best: Find the top reps in your company for specific things. One for processes, prospecting, cold calling, cold emailing, social selling, objection handling - you get the idea. They clearly have a process that works so utilise it. 2) LinkedIn: There are lots of good (and bad) sales content creators out there, the likes of: Kyle Asay Brian LaManna Salman Mohiuddin Chris Orlob, Chris Ritson and Mike Gallardo are my go-to people to name but a few. Find a handful of creators you like and soak up their content and if you can, check out their paid stuff. This will speed up your development and allow you to skip mistakes. 3) Actively Seek feedback: Don't just wait for your call/deal/forecast review for feedback, chase your managers and actively set up extra sessions to go over weak areas. What's going to bother them more, you asking for help? Or you missing your number? 4) Meet with other teams: Struggling to understand persona pains? Meet with your ICP at your company. Need help on use cases? Chat to a CSM. Product knowledge? Meet with your SE. If there's an area you're finding difficult there are likely multiple people to lean on at your company to help you, so use them. 5) Help others around you: You only really know something if you can teach it so if a new joiner/teammate is struggling with something you're good at, help them out. Sales Karma is a real thing. BONUS) Take what's useful and discard what's not - Bruce Lee: Not everything you learn will be useful, so correctly filtering the bad and applying the good will allow you to make steady and consistent progress over the days, weeks, months and years. Anything you'd add?

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WOW! This couldn't be more true! SDR's position are evolving! Over the last year I have been pressing to evolve the SDR role in many conversations. Thank you to Santosh for sharing in detail where this role is evolving too! -------- - Senior, experienced staff with Analyst, Product, Consulting or Sales background - Powerhouse of information. Intimately familiar with product & customer domains.  - Thought leader in the space and trusted by prospects - Signal and Trigger based outreach. Social, Events and Webinar channels to engage with prospects - Demand Creation via Problem Identification and Solutions Exploration (Strategic role)  - Specialized Roles (Competitive Intel, Key Account Intel, Signals, Solutions and Business Case)   - Help throughout the funnel and deal cycle. Tyler Goss I know you do this so well! #sales #salesisdifferent #JMC #JMCADvisor Ben Steward Bobbi Steward

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Stop overcomplicating outbound. Let me give you a simple, 3-step framework for outbound prospecting. Step 1: Get a list of your buyers with verified phone numbers. Step 2: Call that list and talk to your buyers. Step 3: Repeat step 2. Pfew... that was hard.

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As an AE is a high win rate good? Not always. In Q1 my win rate from demo at Nooks was 55%, But my win rate was hurting me Let me explain... -Running too many deals -Discounting and lowering my ACV -Letting large deals slip through the cracks because i was spending too much time on smaller ones Since Q I've cut my win rate in half, but 3x's my ACV What do you think is a healthy win rate? Let me know in the comments

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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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Want to win more of your pipeline? 💰 Multi-thread It’s one of the most important things you can do to help drive urgency in your sales cycle Most mid-market deals include an average of 6-10 DMs Enterprise deals can include upwards of 20+ DMs The trap that a lot of sellers can fall into is over-relying on your champion Champions are great - don’t get me wrong It pays dividends to have a champion but it’s 10x when you have 3-4 champions advocating on your behalf Unfortunately most buyers don’t know how to buy so our job as sellers is to educate our buyers on how to effectively buy a solution to solve their problems & it’s actually pretty simple to do Take a look at your closed-won deals - especially your high value deals Who all was involved? Who is currently involved? What was the buying process like? What unexpected obstacles did you have to overcome? Use this as a roadmap to educate your prospects on how to buy I love multi-threading at the end of discovery in driving next steps (and farther along the sales process as well) Here’s a quick talk track you can easily apply when driving next steps with prospects: “Next steps typically involve looping in ABC partners (this could be higher level DMs in their function or other cross-functional leaders who are involved in the buying process for your service/offering) to discuss XYZ priorities (this should be the key initiatives your prospect is looking to solve/improve/attain in implementing your solution). We want to make sure that we’re all in alignment and moving in the right direction together. We usually see that looping in cross-functional partners early helps us to uncover potential roadblocks that we’d need to account for and improves our collaborative efficiency. What does your buying process look like and who is usually involved? Would it make sense for us to go ahead and loop then in on our next call?” Why it works? 1️⃣ You’re educating the buyer on who’s typically involved with the buying/implementation process at other similar organizations 2️⃣ You’re collaboratively driving next steps and confirming the prospects buying process 3️⃣ You’re using multi-threading as a way to add value (helping reduce unforeseen roadblocks and improve efficiency) 4️⃣ You’re reducing the internal selling effort required for your champion (again - adding value) Expand your reach by broadening your decision-making unit through multi-tasking and watch your sales cycle shrink What other tips do you have for multi-threading within your pipeline? Happy selling, friends!

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SDRs – before you cold call, remember: → Prospects are humans just like you → They have problems you can solve → Your next call could be your best call → You’ve got absolutely nothing to lose → A “no” now could turn into a “yes” later → Every call could unlock $$ commission → Win/lose every call is a chance to learn → Each dial gets you 1 step closer to quota → You’ll likely never meet them face-to-face Happy hunting this week.

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SDR’s, if you’re trying to become AE’s, read this. Your strongly detailed notes that you think are being ignored. Your thousands of cold calls that don’t always convert. Your strategic emails & linkedin outreach. It all ties into become a full cycle AE. Sometimes as SDR’s, its easy to get lost in the booked meetings quotas. And forget how valuable the skills you’re training day in and day out. It’s all going to be worth it, don’t give up. The only reason I was able to surpass my quotas as an AE. Was because I really honed into those SDR skills first. I know I needed a message like this many times as an SDR. So I hope this motivates you to keep going 🙌🏽

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Stuff you think you learn as a SDR: → How to set meetings → How to cold call → How to email blast a ton of people Stuff you're actually learning as a SDR: → How to identify buying signals without talking to prospects → How to tailor a pitch in real time based on these signals → How to run A/B tests on email campaigns → How to creatively source peoples personal contact information → How to track down anyone in an organization and get them on the phone or get in front of them → How to track the most mundane tasks every single day and understand what levers to pull to hone your craft → How to list build at scale with no budget → How to leverage AI to engage prospects at scale → How to work cross-functionally to build campaigns to engage top accounts and so much more. All skills I use to this day. The SDR role is no joke. Do it right, it'll transform your career.

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SDRs: When you set a meeting for your AE, it’s like setting up a blind date for your prospect. So get your prospect excited to meet with your AE! Put yourself in the prospect’s shoes. You get a call from someone you don’t know, from a company you haven’t heard of. They do a decent job in the call and you’re intrigued. And then… They set you up for a call with someone else. This process feels like a nurse handing you off to a doctor. Who will then ask you the same exact questions the nurse did. Not a great experience. Let's do better. Here’s how to pull this off: ✅ Tell the prospect what they’ll learn First, ask your AE what prospects learn from their first conversation. This excludes any language about platforms or dashboards. I’m talking education around “why change?” Second, watch a recorded disco/demo from your AE. Or ride shotgun in a few sales calls if your company doesn’t record them. Here’s an example of what this might sound like at the end of a cold call: “I’m really excited for you to meet with __________. You mentioned that staffing welders and figuring out how to automate high mix/low volume parts are top priorities. My Account Executive will walk you through how other manufacturers are solving these two problems so that you’re not having to push back orders. You’ll also walk away with a plan for how you can tackle traditionally tough to automate products.” Don’t mention “demo” at all. ✅ Humanize your AE Talk about your AE’s experience. Hype them up. After you tell the prospect what they’ll take away from the call with your AE, you could end with: “Oh, and ____________ has about 7 years of experience walking the plant floor. Not to mention, he’s had dozens of conversations with Operations leaders in the last 6 months. There are some really big trends we’re seeing and everyone’s dealing with the labor shortage right now. You should get a few ideas you can bring back to your team." --- Lesson here: Take that extra step at the end to talk up your AE and get the prospect excited about them as a HUMAN + what they can learn in that first call. ~~~ This is a great way to improve show rates. Have you tried something like this? #sales #outbound #prospecting

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SDRs/AEs when cold calling have a dilemma: -Spend too much time on research and miss out on making enough calls, or spend not enough time on research and sort of "wing it" when they connect with prospects Here are a few tips: 1. Use the same opener for each bucket of prospects IE: Truly cold vs previously engaged 2. Use a research tool, like Evabot AI for Sales Outbound 2.0 (#partner), which will help you consolidate research and tie back to a problem statement. Whatever it is, just use a tool that helps you connect 'why you're reaching out and why it matters to the prospect' 3. List out problem statements for each persona and build the business acumen to truly understand what similar problems they may have by leveraging your current customers (IE: what pains did they solve by working with you) If you do those 3 things, you'll reduce the time it takes to research effectively and make enough dials.

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"Our prospects get hammered with a qualification call from an SDR. Then they complain about getting asked the same questions again by the AE." ☝️ I'm still hearing this from sales leaders. In 2024! Here’s my issue with SDRs running a separate qualification call: It’s a TERRIBLE customer experience. Here’s what you’re doing to the buyer: 1) I take a cold call and agree to meet 2) I take a 15-20 min. call and get hammered with qualifying questions 3) I take a 30-45 min. call with an AE and don’t see the product 4) I take a second call where I actually get to see the product And you’re wondering why execs won’t take meetings with your reps? This nonsense has got to stop. There’s something fundamentally wrong in your outbound approach if the only meetings your AEs will take from SDRs are the ones that have been BANT-qualified first. 🚫 Budget Selling to prospects who already have a budget is table stakes. Any decent sales professional can land those deals. True sales professionals help prospects FIND budget, especially in today’s economy. You show them a perspective on their problem that is so big and impactful that they cannot ignore it. ✅ Authority This one I get. There should be some guidelines around sales conversations vs. research conversations. Talking to an end-user to gain insights is research. A great activity for an SDR/BDR to do. But that’s not a sales conversation. 🚫 Need Let me get this right… SDR cold calls the prospect. There’s interest. In a few minutes, or on a separate 15-minute qualification call, you’re supposed to figure out if there’s an urgent need. How can you possibly do enough discovery in that time to know this? You’re lucky if you find a prospect with an urgent need. Great sales professionals help prospects find/prioritize problems. And you need proper discovery to do that. 🚫 Timing Again, this assumes the prospect knows exactly what they need and has already thought about the timeline to implement. ~~~ So what am I suggesting? Unless your sales team is so busy that you're turning down business, your AEs should take calls with ANY prospect who meets your ICP requirements. It doesn’t matter if they’re ready to pull the trigger right now or not. Who knows, you may not even be talking to the right person. Start the relationship and SELL. Nurture if the timing isn't right. #sales

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No... let ME give YOU a pro tip as it relates to cold prospecting... Do not put {last name} where {first name} should be. Just double check your fields before you send out massive prospecting campaigns. "Hi O'Harris" just doesn't hit quite the same as "Hi Billy/Milly". TLDR: check your excel sheet/CRM before you mass email/message people. #sales #salestip #salestips #recruiters #headhunters #leadgen #digitalmarketing #recruiter #headhunter #recruitmenttraining

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Should you outsource SDRs or build a team internally? Depends... Building internally pros: 📈 You'll build a pipeline of future sellers made for your business. 📓 You'll own all the messaging, call talk tracks, playbooks, etc. that you'll utilize repeatedly beyond your SDR organization 📊 Control over metrics, data, KPIs, process, etc. ✅ Reduced risk around brand reputation + more control and visibility into the day to day 💡 Most of the benefit is about control and posterity for your business. Building internally cons: ❌ Doing it "wrong" Many business make the mistake of setting unrealistic expectations and create a broken SDR organization based on bad info or a lack of it. 💳 Cost You'll pay a premium to build your team internally. Health and other benefits can cost upwards of 15-20% of annual salaries. You (should) hire an SDR manager, sales ops support, etc. build your SDR function which can be costly for some teams Purchasing an SDR tech stack isn't cheap 🤑 Outsourcing benefits: 💰 Huge savings You don't pay for health benefits, hardware, etc. which can cost upwards of 15-20% of their annual salary You won't have to hire an SDR manager $100k+ You won't need to purchase as much tech to get the job done ⏰ Time savings You won't need to manage the day to day of an early career SDR who needs coaching regularly, not to mention you might have no idea how to coach an SDR and when to pivot 🙅‍♂️ Reduced risk You can outsource all or some of the recruiting efforts, training and the management process of the SDR team giving you time back and reducing burden on management. 🤓 You'll learn SDR best practices, i.e. what does and doesn't work Outsourcing cons: 🤒 Picking the wrong team to outsource can hurt A lot of teams opt for overseas SDRs. You could hurt your brand with poor messaging and a negative customer experience. Too many of these companies are still using the spray and pray mass messaging model 🎮 Less control over your sales process There are massive benefits to either model ✅ Unsure which is right for your team? Ask me 📥 #SDR

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SDRs - struggling with prospecting? Here are 5 ACTIONABLE tips to create a great list: 1. List the industries that your company has success in. 2. List titles you've booked meetings with that have progressed to SQO. 3. List the problems those titles and industries face. 4. Create problem-based messaging for calls, emails and LI 5. Set a high volume of calls/emails/videos to go out to your ICP and refine from there. BONUS: A/B test as you have live conversations to refine your targeting

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