Leslie Venetz’s Post

If you're an SDR leader you know there's a secret ingredient to an effective outbound program. Something that is pretty impossible to fake: When SDRs themselves actually use their product on a day-to-day basis. And are deeply passionate about its ability to make them more effective. That changes the equation. They can speak authentically and clearly about how it has changed their work. And wow do we have that here. A team that consistently crushes their numbers because they can automate busywork like list building and dialing -- and focus on real, human conversations with prospects. That's what YOU have the opportunity to help manage by joining Nooks as an SDR Manager. Reporting to the amazing Melanie Smith If you: 💜 Are passionate about cold calling + not afraid to make dials with your team 💜 Have helped recruit, hire and build an outbound dedicated SDR team 💜 Led a high performing team, in a quickly changing, high growth startup environment 💜 Love using data for SDR coaching + strategic decision making You too can now apply.

Whether you’re an SDR looking to step up, an AE targeting enterprise deals, or a leader chasing that VP title, 2025 is your year to make it happen. We help ambitious sales professionals like you land career-defining moves with high-growth SaaS companies across Germany and beyond. That’s why we’ve put together the ultimate guide to standing out in 2025. What you’ll learn: 👉 The key metrics hiring managers want to see. 👉 How to showcase your consultative selling skills. 👉 The latest trends in SaaS sales hiring—AI, remote-first, and more. Don’t leave your next career move to chance. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/erFGfjCE 🐺💜 #sales #hiring #careers #startups #recruitment 

#B2BSales #SalesHiring #SaaSStartup Hey folks! 🌟 I’m diving into the exciting (but slightly daunting) process of hiring my very first salesperson for my B2B SaaS startup. Since I don’t have a background in sales, I’m feeling a bit out of my depth, especially when it comes to finding someone who really gets the ins and outs of B2B sales. If you’ve been in my shoes, your insights would be supervaluable! Here’s what I’m grappling with: **Understanding B2B SaaS**: How can I tell if a candidate truly understands B2B SaaS? What questions should I ask during the interview to get a genuine sense of their expertise? **Lead Generation in a Niche Market**: I need someone who can effectively handle lead gen in a specific niche market. How can I assess if they’ve done this before and are capable of adapting strategies to our unique needs? **Establishing Sales Processes**: Since I’m starting from scratch, how can I find someone who can not only follow a sales process but also help create one fr... What's the Best Strategy to Hire a B2B SaaS Salesperson? Answers: https://lnkd.in/gEsVdReC

SaaS Sales Leaders - Relying on a quick post to say you're hiring AE's and a generic job advert isn't going to fill your inbox with top performers. If your sales team relied on prospecting this way you would fire them. Treat sales hiring like you treat business development - research, personalised outreach, nurture etc. Take some time to build a lead list on Sales Nav focusing on your prospective future hires, as you would your prospects. Make contact and keep in touch, if they aren't ready now they might be in the future.

The first sales hire can make or break a SaaS business, but we have a tendency to look at the wrong places for that first sales hire. It’s tempting to go for a: - Formerly successful sales rep - That continuously hit quota - and worked for an industry-leading SaaS Seems obvious right? The deal is just, in many cases, they’ll be running into a brick wall when joining as a first sales hire. If they succeeded at an industry-leading, fast-growing SaaS and came in as hire number 50, 100, or 500. They also got: - A strong brand - Colleagues to shadow - Strong enablement set-up - A well-oiled marketing machine - A proven sales process and playbook I’m not saying that it doesn't require sales reps to be good, that it isn’t hard work, and that their success is not earned. I’m just saying - it doesn't necessarily translate. Maybe we should look somewhere else? For reps coming from SaaS businesses that failed. These have been grinding every single day to figure things out. Fighting against superior competitors, being the small guy in the schoolyard. Nothing came easy, they didn't have a brand, enablement set-up, or marketing machine to lean against. Yet they still managed to pull off a win from time to time. Those reps can just as well prove to be your first superhero sales rep.

Scaling your SDR team means scaling your costs, but doesn’t always mean scaling profits. Why? Say you’ve managed to find a solid outbound rep that’s booking meetings consistently. (Although hard to find, good SDRs do exist!) You may want to scale outbound by hiring a gazillion more SDRs. If one rep books 20 meetings a month, two reps should book 40 meetings a month, right? Wrong. Scaling outbound sales teams isn’t linear. You can’t replicate the performance of your best rep: what makes one rep a high performer is different from the next rep. It’s almost impossible to hire solid sales reps consistently. That’s why ⅔ of SDRs fail within their first three months. (Shoutout to Nimarta Dugh for this stat. Super helpful for SDR leadership advice.) The Pareto principle is at play: 80% of your pipeline comes from 20% of your reps. The other 80% aren’t doing much for your bottom line. Even if you do find another solid sales rep, you’ll spend insane time and effort in reviewing resumes, interviewing, hiring, training, etc…especially considering you’ll likely need to make several hires before you find a good fit. Most companies have to hire SDR managers to make up for the fact that most reps aren’t self-sufficient—costing you another full-time salary because your entire team of salaried reps isn’t self-sufficient. Instead, add an outbound ops person to lead the charge on your outbound motion. If you find someone good, they can scale their performance with automation instead of headcount. More pipeline with less time, money, and operational headaches. Let them handle account research, prospecting, and even sending personalized outbound emails. SDRs field warm leads, cold call, book meetings, and qualify prospects. Welcome to 2024 :D

🚀 Hiring an SDR: Seeking Cold Calling Pros for Advice! 🚀 After the relative success of my last post about lessons learned from a failed business partnership, I’m returning to the same topic: expanding our sales team! We’re looking to hire an SDR (Sales Development Representative) to help with lead generation and qualification. They’ll be working through a list of approximately 3,000 potential leads, manually enriching the data, and reaching out via phone, SMS, email, or socials. The goal is simple: set up discovery calls with either myself or our main salesperson. The key? They need to handle objections and dig deeper when faced with “not interested”—we’ve got product-market fit, so I assume there’s always a conversation to be had (yes, I know how that sounds, thank you Rob Fitzpatrick and The Mom Test for keeping me grounded!). But here’s where I could use some help! They say cold email is on the decline, but I’m hoping cold calling is alive and well? But I guess the key caveat here is: if done well… So, if you know of any cold calling experts, have recommended resources, or follow people who are killing it in this space, please tag them in the comments or send recommendations my way. Thanks in advance for any guidance! 🙏 #SDR #ColdCalling #SalesDevelopment #LeadGeneration #Hiring #SalesTips

Last Friday I received the best cold call from a SDR. Here’s what she got right (and why it was so refreshing): BACKGROUND: In 2023, I received only 3 cold calls. That’s right. Three! And the calls were not great. The typical issues with the cold calls I got: - Not researching our pain points before they call me - Reps from the same company calling me (unaware I spoke with their team) - Absolutely no personalisation (it was clear they put in zero time before dialing) Then last week I received a call from Kay-leigh Johnston from Playroll. What did she get right? - Friendly and personable (so held my attention immediately) - When I noted I was not the right person, she immediately looked to add value  - She discussed our solution in detail, showing she had researched Cognism - When I mentioned our current provider, she had her battlecard ready - She shot down our provider so well, I forwarded her follow up email to our DM - I do really like our current provider so their AE now has an uphill battle! - She followed up with me multi-channel - email, LinkedIn, direct call - When we connected on LinkedIn, I noted she had already connected to our HR team and my CIO showing research and preparation before hitting the CEO For me, like many executives, cold calling is a breakthrough channel. I am a religious zero inbox fanatic. I delete emails almost immediately. I almost never see a truly personalized email. It's happened once in two years (and yes I did respond!). And my LinkedIn Inbox is worse. So mobile phone is the best channel for me. SDRs like Kay-leigh (only in the role for 5 months) show that good training and systems mixed with the right hire can cut through the noise and generate pipeline for the team.  Remember: If you're trying get ahold of executives, pick up the phone! Be like Kay-leigh. She has a bright future in sales.

Cold calling is a great way to get in touch with decision-makers! 👀 Our research has shown that there's around a 75% chance of prospects picking up the phone on the first try. AND this same research revealed that CEOs are most likely to pick up. And if you ever wanted to know what's the best way to approach a CEO over the phone, check out what got our CEO James Isilay's attention 👇

How many cold calls does a CEO receive per month? Three! What in the world is going on? We're spending so much time focusing on AI and automated blurb in outbound emails, we're missing the low-hanging fruit. James Isilay, CEO of Cognism shared a brilliant post last week about how an #SDR got through to him on a #coldcall And most importantly, what she did right. James explained that for him, cold calling is the breakthrough channel. He is a religious zero-inbox fanatic. He deletes emails almost immediately. He rarely sees a truly personalized email. And his LinkedIn Inbox is worse. This is why, his mobile phone is the best channel to reach him. Let me clarify my message here before anyone chimes in. Cold calling mobiles is not the best #sales channel for everyone. But it is one of the channels that must be used. Along with email. And LinkedIn. And along with a diverse range of approaches, because every single one of your buyers is unique. They prefer certain channels. Certain types of approaches. Certain media types. Enough with the one-trick pony approach. It's time to diversify your #outreach Or forever be average.