Rahul Wadhwa 🦄’s Post

SALES IS DEAD! (thank you very large tech consulting company for the clickbait headline) SDR's are DEAD! (what a clickbait headline, thank you all AI companies) OUTBOUND is DEAD! (hrrmm, even better of clickbait headline, thank you all of LinkedIn) More like -"Evolving" and "You still need to know the exact reason you are reaching out to someone with specificity" (but the LI algorithm doesn't work that way)-- curiousity, enthusiasm and 1 really solid value statement/hypothesis (or Rumsfeldian "you don't know what you don't know') My first job in 2002, fresh out of college - at the time (arrogant, know it all, please fill in comments, if I knew you then) didn't realize I had two amazing coaches - one in SPIN selling (still VERY relevant, even in tech) and how to progressively account profile to get to the decision maker (still relevant) - none involved fancy tech (WHICH I LOVE!) While I was never an SDR, I was taught the basics - I had to cold call every morning at 7:30am for 30 minutes, Janice made it awesome - she would tell random stories to keep me motivated. Once a week Tim would teach us "sales skills"-- which sadly 20+ years later when I talk to SDR's they have not been enabled on. I was also taught how to cold "knock on doors" (this is not a 'I am better' - it sucked - but Janice made it fun, and changed my mind on how to be a professional, made it fun, no barriers, and would give me small engagement metrics (no b.s. in some ways I would go back to "that time") SDR will change - I look at this 3 dimensionally. Workflows should (and WILL) become easier, they will become hyper-effecient, and they will approach the job differently But what are we solving for? Pipeline! IT IS ALWAYS PIPELINE -- I have a book from the early 1900's from the DEC founder -- and he highlights PIPELINE as a major challenge and how to solve it. The dream of magical pipeline creation will never go away. (nor will my dream of playing in the NBA, but I digress) Actual prospecting (top down works too, imho it just slightly harder, and I have a friend who crushes it) bottoms up will reign supreme (the real answer depends on your company/the market/and your GTM) My actual clickbait headline is that as a industry "we need to get back to basics, coaching, leading, accountability ( in the right way), and training. (which WONT happen, which is why self-help and diet books sell soooo much) Yes, it's expensive, but commodity industries (payroll!) realized it's a differentiator and Lars (previously) at Snowflake and Hersh (previously Tray) made it a competitive differentiator for their companies. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, Neil

Growing a B2B Business to $1,000,000/year is not as hard as it seems. It actually costs a lot less than you think. Here’s a breakdown of the stack and costs: 1. Cold Email Outreach   - Smartlead.ai: $253/mo (90k lead space)   - Apollo: Free trial   - Upwork: $80 for 90k emails   - Mailscale: $250 for 200 emails Emails sent/month: 90,000   Total cost/month: $583 2. Cold DMs   X:  - Drippi: $144    - AIA: $185 (5 profiles)    - DMs sent/month: 50,000    - Cost/month: $329 Facebook:    - Faceoutreach: $120    - DMs sent/month: 20,000    - Cost/month: $120 Instagram:    - ColdDMs: $174    - DMs sent/month: 6,500    - Cost/month: $174 LinkedIn:    - Expandi.io: $99    - 400 connects/month    - 800 InMails/month    - Cost/month: $99 Total cost/month for Cold DMs: $722 3. Cold Calling   - Leads: From Apollo   - SDR (Sales Development Rep): $5/hr or commission (hire from Europe)   - Calls/day: 200 (8 hrs)   - Cost/month: $250–$1000 (base + commission)   - Dialpad: $27/month Total cost/month for Cold Calling: $277 4. Total Outreach   - Messages & Calls per month: 167,700+   - Total cost per month: $1,582 (Insane ROI) Depending on your product pricing, this will generate you 5-6 figures a month in revenue. Remember, a good offer is by far the most important aspect.

Transitioning from B2C to B2B Sales: Journey and Key Insights Making the shift from B2C to B2B sales can be a daunting task. I've had companies tell me that my B2C experience was a hindrance to breaking into tech sales. It was disheartening and eye opening at the same time. Over the years, I’ve learned why this perception exists. Companies often prefer candidates with prior B2B experience or freshers that act as "clean slates." Unlearning and relearning is more of a challenge than people make it out to be. While B2C experience can be beneficial, much of what you do in B2B will be entirely new. Here’s are some things that helped me land my first B2B role: 1. Define Your Motivation Understanding why you want to transition into B2B is crucial. Reflect on why selling to businesses appeals to you compared to selling to individuals. Does this reason excite you? Are you willing to deep dive into a new industry and give it your all? 2. Deep Dive into B2B Sales If you’re committed to the transition, start by familiarizing yourself with the differences between B2C and B2B sales and internalize them. There’s a wealth of content on LinkedIn and YouTube. 3. Network Strategically TLDR version of how I got into this. LinkedIn is the greatest source for anyone looking for a job. Spend time identifying the right people to connect with and reach out to them stating your interest in the open job role, their experience as an SDR, expectations from the role, just about anything that you can absorb. People are generally nice and open to help :-) 4. Create a Targeted Application Framework Develop a checklist of the types of companies you want to work for, your expected compensation, and the work culture you seek. Apply to the relevant orgs and double down on your outreach. 5. Stand Out in the Application Process SDR roles are highly competitive, often receiving over 100 applications within an hour. To stand out, connect with relevant individuals within the organization and send personalized messages and emails to hiring managers and HR. If you don’t have a tool to find email addresses, try the format [email protected] - works more often than not! This shows the hiring manager that you’re proactive in doing cold outreach, which would be your day-to-day as an SDR anyway! While these steps don’t guarantee a job transition, they will help you better understand the industry, build valuable connections, and distinguish yourself from other candidates. Feel free to DM for any help! #copied #B2CtoB2B #SDR

The SDR role is not dead.. by any stretch. But you might not recognize it. The SDR of 2024 is a much more senior and expensive hire. (S)he has built on her/his fundamental skills of account research, copy writing, social selling and cold calling and expanding into technical mastery of: sequencers, power-dialers, AI-enabled account research, domain management, API's, lowcode/nocode tools etc. The SDR of 2024 is more akin to a growth hacker than a telemarketer. These specialists are armed with bleeding edge technology and a have enough front line experience to build a full-funnel approach that covers both tactics and strategy. The future is here. Everything Justin Michael said came true. These people are extremely capable and can do the work of 10-20 SDRs of yesteryear. I've seen what some of these types can do. It's insane. The new question becomes: what is the career path for the SDRs of the future? I don't yet see how an entry-level can organically progress their career like they used to. Here are some skills that the new-age SDR needs to master: Traditional Skills - - Cold calling - Copy writing - Account research - Social selling Technical - - Advanced excel - v-lookups, macros, pivot tables - Advanced multi-domain administration - Sequencers, Power-dialers - Good understand of API calls/webhooks - Some form of locode, nocode tool - Prompt Engineering - Expert level research skills Strategic - - Account planning - Campaign design - Data administration - Conversion tracking, optimization, A/b testing What am I forgetting here? **Some notable follows that are doing this stuff at the highest level: Jordan Crawford Jesse Ouellette Kellen Casebeer Barrett Unger Patrick William Joyce 🦾Eric Nowoslawski What is your advice for entry-levels who want to gain these skills?

Insightful & Actionable post for sellers transitioning from B2C to B2B:)

Transitioning from B2C to B2B Sales: My Journey and Key Insights Making the shift from B2C to B2B sales can be a daunting task. I've had companies tell me that my B2C experience was a hindrance to breaking into tech sales. It was disheartening and eye opening at the same time. Over the years, I’ve learned why this perception exists. Companies often prefer candidates with prior B2B experience or freshers that act as "clean slates." Unlearning and relearning is more of a challenge than people make it out to be. While B2C experience can be beneficial, much of what you do in B2B will be entirely new. Here’s are some things that helped me land my first B2B role: 1. Define Your Motivation Understanding why you want to transition into B2B is crucial. Reflect on why selling to businesses appeals to you compared to selling to individuals. Does this reason excite you? Are you willing to deep dive into a new industry and give it your all? 2. Deep Dive into B2B Sales If you’re committed to the transition, start by familiarizing yourself with the differences between B2C and B2B sales and internalize them. There’s a wealth of content on LinkedIn and YouTube. My go to influencers were Trent Dressel and Patrick Dang. Thanks a ton guys :-) 3. Network Strategically TLDR version of how I got into this. LinkedIn is the greatest source for anyone looking for a job. Spend time identifying the right people to connect with and reach out to them stating your interest in the open job role, their experience as an SDR, expectations from the role, just about anything that you can absorb. People are generally nice and open to help :-) 4. Create a Targeted Application Framework Develop a checklist of the types of companies you want to work for, your expected compensation, and the work culture you seek. Apply to the relevant orgs and double down on your outreach. 5. Stand Out in the Application Process SDR roles are highly competitive, often receiving over 100 applications within an hour. To stand out, connect with relevant individuals within the organization and send personalized messages and emails to hiring managers and HR. If you don’t have a tool to find email addresses, try the format [email protected] - works more often than not! This shows the hiring manager that you’re proactive in doing cold outreach, which would be your day-to-day as an SDR anyway! While these steps don’t guarantee a job transition, they will help you better understand the industry, build valuable connections, and distinguish yourself from other candidates. Feel free to DM for any help! #B2CtoB2B #SDR

If I were trying to become an SDR with no sales experience in 2024 I'd learn these five things: First of all I'm a bit torn on a new SDR doubling down on AI and tooling because those things only help someone who has a true understanding of their prospects emotional and business circumstances. The things you can't learn from automated workflows are the exact things that will help you with automated workflows. Like... the reason I'm effective with that stuff is because I've done in person sales, I've done retail sales, I've done telemarketing, I've run my own business, and now I'm in tech, so I have years of experience of doing manual work that I can now automate through a deep understanding of what's effective when I'm doing it by hand. That said, I'm still including Clay and chatGPT on this list because I think those tools have helped me get faster in my time-to-understanding when dealing with a new prospect or account. Making mistakes in automation has also helped me learn where to slow down. In no particular order: • I'd start reading a bunch of sales books. And I wouldn't start with Tech Powered Sales or Fanatical Prospecting, I'd start with: 𝘚𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘖𝘳 𝘉𝘦 𝘚𝘰𝘭𝘥 by Grant Cardone (idc what you think of him, this is a great book and changed my life), 𝘌𝘹𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘚𝘢𝘺 Phil M. Jones, and 𝘖𝘶𝘵𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘕𝘰 𝘍𝘭𝘶𝘧𝘧 by Rex Biberston and Ryan Reisert • I'd sign up for a free Apollo.io and Seamless.AI account and start playing around so I could understand the inner workings of a CRM. I wish technical understanding wasn't a differentiator and that just being nice and hardworking would get you really far, but I've witnessed first hand how the inability to navigate the CRM can really make or break a rep. Once I mastered the CRM, I became a top rep. • I'd go get a job selling cars and do it for a year. First of all you can make great money doing this, and second of all, it will teach you way more about sales than most SDR jobs will teach you. If you want to be an AE one day, getting people to sign on the dotted line for a car is just as important as learning to build pipe as an SDR. • I 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 sign up for a free Clay account and get an OpenAI API account. The kids who will start their sales careers ten years from now won't have any quips about hooking up an API to their CRM. They won't have any issues building bespoke nocode workflows particular to their org or vertical. • Learn to cold call. Start with hiring managers and people you want to network with. Cold call sales influencers you like following and ask for their time. Set a meeting. Learn from them. Sell them on giving you a referral to their boss. If someone cold called me and asked for an intro to my boss... I'd literally have to give it to them, cuz that takes balls, and also no one has done it yet 🤣 P.S. - Go add my brother Mir Holley, he just made a LinkedIn account and is trying to get his first tech job. #sdr  

Hot take: Lack of technical product knowledge can be your competitive advantage as an SDR setting meetings in b2b tech sales. Rather than showing up on a call and dumping a bunch of information on the prospect, that may or may not be relevant, a lack of product knowledge encourages us to enter the call with a beginners mind, simply curious to understand their situation, what they're dealing with, & how we can help. One of my first mentors back when I started at Oracle once said "take the tech out of tech, forget about products, & instead focus on the business problems our solution solves." Peaking prospects' curiosity & setting meetings is about our ability to clearly frame a relevant problem to the right people impacted by that problem & asking thoughtful questions to help them more clearly define the impact of the problem & the urgency to solve it. In sales, your curiosity will always be more important than what you know. In fact, what we know about our product may be the very thing that creates a barrier between us and the prospect by limiting our ability to put ourself in their shoes & empathize with their situation. On your calls ask prospects questions like these... "We've noticed customers like you are struggling with X issue - how are you handling that?" "Oh interesting, tell me more." "How long has that been a problem?" "Do you know how much that is costing you?" "What happens if you don't do anything about it?" "Have you done anything to try and solve it?" "How soon are you looking to get a solution in place?" By the time you ask prospects these questions & get their answers you'll have developed a strong hook to have a further discovery conversation where you can go deeper on defining the problem and begin to highlight relevant aspects of the product you offer that addresses the issue better than your competition. So if you're drinking through the firehose as a new seller in b2b tech sales don't get overwhelmed that you have to be a product expert. You don't. Instead become an expert at connecting the dots between your solution & the business problems it solves. When you learn about new features always look through the lens of "how does this create business value in one or more of the following 5 areas?" 1) Driving revenue 2) Expanding marketshare 3) Reducing cost 4) Reducing time 5) Reducing risk That's what prospects, especially executives, care about. And if it doesn't do much for them don't bring it up. Happy Selling & Happy Living, Chris #techsales #salesdevelopment #sellmore

Most orgs look at the SDR role incorrectly. Five years ago, SDR work was a junior-level role. You could get away with throwing prospects into an automated sequence, making cold calls with little-to-no knowledge of your prospects, and passing warm opportunities off to an AE who would handle the more complex parts of the conversation. It doesn’t work that way anymore. Now, to even get a chance at earning a prospect’s attention, you have to know what you’re talking about in your outreach. The market is flooded with terrible outreach, a million competitors for every product, and more noise than any human being could ever hope to process. That means that the only outreach that is going to work is outreach that is tailored to your prospect. The really difficult part about this, and why most orgs are looking at this incorrectly, is that this doesn’t mean generic personalization. Nobody cares if you know where they went to college or that they love dogs. Prospects care about whether you can help them do their jobs more effectively. With that comes a far greater responsibility for salespeople conducting outbound. We need to understand our prospects’ businesses inside and out. We need to know how they make money, who their competitors are, what typical buying cycles look like within their industries, what problems they are most likely facing, how they’ve likely tried to solve those problems in the past, etc… Those are not junior-level pieces of information, which means that the SDR role needs to be looked at with more respect. If someone is going to survive in an outbound prospecting role, they are going to have to do so with a very high level of business acumen going forward. Business development through outbound is becoming far more strategic and senior, and to succeed we all need to be treating it as such.