Mike Yakovlev’s Post

If I had 3 hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first 2 hours sharpening my saw (or something like that...) This morning I took 2 hours from 5-7am, and: 1) listened to 6 of Matt Green's gong calls (only bearable on 2.5x) 2) dug through hubspot to review some of matt's emails / engagement with prospects 3) jotted down about 2.5 pages of notes / ideas in a google doc Here's the deal: in 2024, matt is far outperforming me on the sales front. Shorter sales cycles, higher win rates, and more overall closed business. So - I want to learn from him. What's he doing that I'm not? What are a few things he says on calls that are framed better than how I do it? What examples or anecdotes does he share w/ prospects that are resonating? Nobody asked me to do this. Matt didn't PIP me (go ahead and try, bruh). But until I'm closing deals at 100% and my cales cycle length is in hours not weeks, I'm going to continue to find ways to improve my craft. I dont care what your title is, or how senor you are. BDR, CEO, or anything in between. Nobody is perfect, and everyone has the opportunity to learn and improve - it just takes awareness, and desire PS - Sales Assembly is here for revenue orgs who believe in this sort of thing :) PSS - this was legit the very best screen shot I could find from matt's calls...the guy is WAY too much of a hand talker.

Yesterday, I had a call with a prospect, and they told me, "I don't have the budget to invest in lead gen services." They also asked, "Vismay, can you help me with my offer and pricing?" I said, "Yes." I explained that you can use these four types of pricing models and create your own based on what fits best for you: 1. Base Model 2. Base + Performance Model 3. Performance Model 4. Bold Offer Pricing I usually use the Bold Offer Pricing, where you get your money back if you don’t get the results. When you have a format like this, it becomes easier to create an offer that people can’t refuse. This is part of my paid product, but I am giving it to you for free. Comment "Offer," and I'll send it to you in DMs (must be connected).

If I was restarting at SDR, what is one thing I would have done earlier? Build great relationships with my account executives. Why? Account Executives will likely make the decision on whether a lead is qualified or not & therefore impact how much you are getting paid. On the flip side though the higher quality leads you bring them, the more they are going to get paid. The relationship is a 2 way street which I think people over look at the beginning especially. ----------------- How to build good relationships? 1️⃣ When you book a meeting? - Go to the AE in office/jump on a quick call & walk them through your qualifications notes - Ask is there any information they would have loved you to get? - Ask this in your next discoveries - Makes them more prepared for next meeting = Happy AE 2️⃣ Sit in on Discoveries & Demos - Listen to their line of questioning, tonality, pacing, positioning of your solution. - Don’t just do this one AE though, everyone has different styles. Take bits from each & piece together what works for you - An underrated part of this is learning how they disqualify a lead quickly, just as important as qualifying 3️⃣ Come to them with ideas - If you are working their patch, don’t wait for them to come to you with work - Be proactive, it could be as simple as running a closed/lost report & ringing them all for them - Will create an excellent internal brand for yourself very quickly 🚨 Lastly & most importantly 🚨 4️⃣ Don’t put them on a pedestal - I fell into this trap at the start of that AE’s are some higher power nearly like another boss - Once you start to build a more personal connection with them it makes your life so much easier and the conversations you have will be so much more productive. ----------------- To the AE’s out there, what other advice would give to SDR’s?

3 sales calls canceled same day on me last Thursday. My thinking? You can whine about it. Or you can do something about it. What's important is how you maximize the time you get back. Here's what I did: ✅ Re-engaged with three old clients I found three clients I haven't spoken with in months. Sent them texts to connect and landed a meeting to talk about another training engagement. ✅ Reached out to prospects engaging with me I ran a quick Sales Nav filter of every prospect engaging with me, visiting my profile, etc. Found three great prospects and sent them emails & LI messages. You can do something similar in your sales engagement tool. Who's opened your emails in the last hour? ✅ De-risked a deal I opened up HubSpot and looked at a few late-stage deals that didn't feel solid. Called my champions. Had one quick convo about a risk I wasn't aware of in the deal. Set some time to talk more about it. ~~~ You need a list of activities to maximize 30 min. blocks that show up unexpectedly in your calendar. It's the "get sh*t done" mindset and no matter what, today will be productive. How do you maximize the time you get back when calls cancel? Let us know in the comments. #sales #outbound

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If you are not building a cold calling team....here's some data I wanna share for month of May 2024. (someone I personally know). Total Cold Calls Made By Team: 30k on powerdialer obviously Total Demos Booked By Team: 300 Total Demo Complete By Team: 127 Total Deals Closed: 52 (yup that's a 40% close rate on demo showups from cold calling). Total Money Spent on Ads: $0.00 😃 Remember 1. Most companies when they start out, they have no budget to do marketing. But once funded they are hooked to marketing and a forever CAC mentality. Break the glass...pick up the phone and start calling your lead lists. It worked in 1980's, worked in 2000's works today and will work tomorrow. 2. Have killer closers who can close deals, push through deals and work their entire pipeline relentlessly. 3. Create an offer that the Prospect will loose sleep upon if they don't invest (this is key).

Have you ever ver heard the saying, "Fortunes are made in the follow-up" ? It's bang on the money - literally. If you're not properly following up on your initial outreach, know this: your competitor is! It reminds me of when I closed a big deal while at Refract. Whilst I got it over the line there wouldn’t have even been a deal without Nia Woodhouse (who was in the SDR team then and of course is my colleague today!) Nia, SDR’d the prospect like a pro. She made ELEVEN attempts to reach and secure the initial discovery call for me. Here’s the sequence she used to get the prospect booked in 👇 - Call + voicemail - Email - LinkedIn follow - Call - LinkedIn connection request - LinkedIn message - Email - Call - Email - Call + voicemail - Email (and then, finally, the response landed) Two months later, I called Nia to share the news that they’d signed. A great feeling. Never forget it: "Fortunes are made in the follow-up." How much money have you or your team left on the table by not following up as persistently as you should? #salesperformance #salescoaching

💥 3 EASY intent signals to find ready-to-buy leads PLUS a limited-time offer 🚨 (More on your special offer at the end of this post!) But first, a little taster with 3 of our favorite signals for uncovering hot leads: 1. Recent job changes 💼 Prospect moved to a new company? Champion taken a promotion or building a brand new team? Now's your time to strike. New job roles often mean new pains, new purchasing priorities, and new opportunities for you to sell.   👉 Our BDR team books 30-50 meetings per month with this play alone! 2. Recent funding rounds 💰 Funding is usually a sign your target company is getting seriously ambitious about their growth! This is a great opportunity to find out about their next objectives and offer them solutions that will help them succeed. Don't forget to congratulate them in your outreach for an extra personal touch. 😉   3. Prospects interacting with competitor ads 👀 If they're engaging with your competitor's content, chances are good that they'd be interested in your offering as an alternative! This is one of our favorite advanced high-intent plays that's actually deceptively easy... with the right tools of course! Which brings us to the part you've been waiting for: We're offering YOU a free consultation on how to leverage these intent plays - and many more - using Amplemarket and boost your Q2 meeting bookings!   👉 👉 Book here before the end of May to arrange your pipeline-powering session: https://lnkd.in/dVFYmqyj

Some of the best Cold Calls I've had, are ones I didn't book meetings from... Yep, you read that right. 🤣 I mean, it's awesome booking a meeting via a Cold Call, don't get me wrong. But qualifying out an account based on timing can be just as satisfying. ⏰ I was on the phone yesterday with a prospect whose company is VERY similar to one of our current customers: ↳ The same types of services are offered. ↳ The same type of processes are in the field. ↳ The same type of customers served. It was a... "Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, must be a duck" kind of situation. But... Nowhere near the volume of work. 🤔 I came in with so many locked-in assumptions, that it surprised me that they were off. After a decent amount of discovery, and back and forth between him and me, we decided to reconnect in ~4-6 months. Not what you would want to hear ideally if your back is against the wall during the Quarter. But the best part was👇🏼 ↳ They'll be starting to evaluate systems in about a quarter from now, pending any service changes. ↳ He wants to make sure we stay in touch and keep an open line of comms in case we should connect sooner (keep sharing collateral) on a TEXTING basis. ↳ Having an open, non-forceful conversation led to A TON of account insights for future reference. You know, sometimes the calls that don't go your way, indefinitely do. Let them flow, don't corner prospects, and force them to take a meeting when the timing isn't right. Qualify them out for the time being if you have to. For all you know, they're a quarter or two away! 😉 - T #OutboundSales #SaaS #BDR #Prospecting

It's Q4 and the end of year push for most of us. Here are 4 things I'm doing to build more pipeline. We've been grinding all year on sequences, calls and emails. It's time to capture some low hanging fruit. 1) No Shows This Year What: People that have agreed to meet but no showed the meeting or ghosted you in a sales process. Why: They have familiarity with your brand. Something about your initial outreach resonated with them. It's possible that the professional timing or even the personal timing was off on the first go. 2) Closed/Lost Opportunities What: Deals that did not close in your favor in the past 12-18 months. Why: Most deals lose to no decision. It's possible that timing wasn't right. Or they went with your competitor and things aren't going smoothly. They're planning for 2025 and might be evaluating your space. 3) Churn Accounts What: Past customers that left over a year ago. Why: Oftentimes, customers leave to chase a shiny object. At Gong, we lost customers (or prospects) to very low-priced alternatives who were "sold the dream". When we came back down the road, we could often rip and replace their current vendor and they were happy to pay a premium for the best product in the market. 4) LinkedIn Green Bubble What: If you're dm'ing people on LinkedIn, you can see who is online by their green bubble. I will find people I've previously prospected and try to catch them when they're actually online. Why: Newsflash, Execs aren't on LinkedIn M-F 9-5 very often. But they do check it at night or on weekends, when things are quieter. I use the quiet/reflection time to see if I can stir up a conversation. What are you using to capture more demand in Q4? PS - We have a new cohort for our 7 Figure Prospecting Bootcamp kicking off next week. 10X 60-minute calls from some of the best coaches in the biz, teaching you how to become an outbound master. We'd love to see you there. PSS - I know this video thumbnail is not very favorable but IDK how to change it so we're rolling along.