3 Ways to Build a Sales Process Reps Follow

Will Aitken: 00:02

What is up, beautiful people, and welcome to the Daily Sales Show, brought to you by Sell Better. My name is Will Aitken, I'm your host today. Thanks, everyone, ever so much for jumping in. We always like to start off these sessions, if you've been here before, jump in the chat, send it to everyone, let us know where in the world you're coming in from. And just while we wait for everyone to show up, I'm gonna launch a quick poll to get an idea of who's in the room. Today, we've got a bit of a different topic. Most of the time on the Daily Sales Show, we talk about cold emailing, cold calling, we get very tactical on those things, but one area that often goes left unaddressed is the management side, strategy, processes. that happen when you step up in the organization, or own more of the function. Even if you're a solo seller, you're probably owning outbound, closing. If you're an SDR leader, you might be running a team of SDRs, and maybe this is your first management position. If you're a VP of sales, you might be managing 10 account executives, or 10 account managers, and then you might have 3 SDRs. You're not quite sure exactly what you should be doing to enable them for the most success. That is what we're going to be talking about here today. We're gonna be talking about 3 ways to build a sales process that reps follow, and in specific, Willie, we're going to be mainly talking about outbound today, just because that tends to be one area. Most people have a sales methodology for their discovery and demos and stages in Salesforce. the black box, or the place that often gets ignored is what happens before someone even gets in the funnel in the first place, so we'll be drilling in that today. Like I said, I'm going to launch a quick poll to see who we've got in the room here, and shout out a few people. Daytona Beach, Florida, Brandy, good to see ya, Mesa, Arizona, Manchester, UK, Tanya. To help me… David, put a face, though, we've got a couple of British folks on the call today. Now, to break this topic down with me, we've got David Wilkins, who is the founder of the SDR Leaders Global Community. David, maybe you could tell us a bit about yourself, real briefly, and the community that you've been running.

David Wilkins: 01:48

Yeah, cheers, Will. My name… yeah, so my name's Dave Wilkins. We run SDR Leaders Global, the largest sales development leadership community in the world. I've got about 15,000 followers of our community, broken out into Europe, North America, APAC, And our, kind of, vision and our mission is about to dictate what the sales development function is going to look like in 2030. So, we have a lot of, in-person events where we're trying to develop talent, help people get better every single day, virtual sessions. We're also running a conference in London for our UK friends here and European friends on October 14th, 15th.

Will Aitken: 02:29

That's awesome. David, that's so great to hear, and I feel like communities like this is just one way that The biggest questions I get asked training sales teams and SDR teams is, what does good look like? And it's so hard to give you an answer to that, because it's so different between industries. Some of the best ways you can do that is just collaborating with other people in your role, and you can kind of get a pretty good sense of what's working, what tools you should be using. So if there's one thing you do to level up your leadership game, I'd say get involved in communities, go to these dinners, go to these events. And check out, David's community as well. There should be a link in the chat for you to join that, or at least look at that. We'll put it again later as well. There is a little bit of a panic button moment here, because we were also going to be joined by, Ahmed Abdel-Raouf, who I might still join, but David's tried cold calling him just a minute ago. proof that sales leaders still do make cold calls, and we weren't able to get through to him. If he joins in, that'd be great, but David and I both are happy to speak to this topic as well, given we work with a lot of SDRs and teams as well. I'm going to show the results of the poll. So, yeah, generally, we normally see a lot more camera sectors and SDRs in the room. So it's great to see a lot more managers jumping in this one. Hopefully, some of the takeaways here will be useful to you and the team. And Ahmed has just joined as well. Ahmed, what's good?

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 03:36

How's it going, guys? Sorry I'm late, just feeling a little under the weather. So, it's… I'm moving a little slower today.

Will Aitken: 03:44

No, you're all good, you're all good. Ahmed, I was just about to introduce you a second ago. I understand you're the head of sales development over at Quantcast? How long you been in that role for?

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 03:54

I'm coming up on almost 18 months now.

Will Aitken: 03:58

Okay, awesome. So I know a lot of the stuff we're talking about today is stuff that you've actually recently done and built for your team as well, so I'm really excited to hear your perspective on a lot of this as well. Before we jump in, just a couple of pieces of housekeeping. Number one, yes, this show is recorded. The slides will be available. You can always check back on any recording of our shows on sellbetter.xyz, or by scanning the QR code on your screen right now. We do a show like this three, four times a week, pretty much, on different topics, so see some of the upcoming shows and past recorded shows while you're over there as well. As I mentioned, we wouldn't be able to do these shows without wonderful partners, like the David's team over at SDR Leaders Global, but also sponsors like Gong, who is a frequent supporter of the show. Gong actually have got a little cheeky cheat sheet for you for 5 reasons that deals slip off, which may help with some of the qualification criteria sections of the process overview and building that you'll be talking about a little bit later. Again, once again, there's a link in the chat to that. You're seeing deals drop off even before they used to get started. That's the best place to look and see if you match any of those, see if those common scenarios. With that said, though, let's jump into today's content and start talking about how you can build a better process for your outbound sales team. I wanted to start off, David, just by giving you the floor a little bit. Given that you work with so many SDR leaders, generally. What are the big…maybe generally what… it's a big question. What are you seeing some of the best teams do in terms of their process and setting their teams up to success? I'll open it broad and give you maybe one soapbox moment to get us started.

David Wilkins: 05:26

That's a really good, easy lay-up question to start off the day. Thanks. So what are some of the best teams doing? It's… they're taking a step back now, and rather than just keep on going on and on and on, using processes or tribal knowledge that they've kind of collected over years and handed down. from SDR to manager to manager to SDR. They've started to take a step back now and really gone, okay, how can we actually Have we actually built out our process? Can we visualize it? Can we actually see from end to end, from a lead being generated to revenue being closed? Have we actually mapped out what that looks like? And…The… we've asked this question quite a few times now at our meetups around the world. And the… The lack of hands that people are doing that, saying, yeah, we've mapped it out. it shows there's a lot of work that can still get done in that, where you can see, okay, how… when a lead comes in, how does it get routed? Or, okay, what are the qualification criteria needed for it to get handed over? And then how does… how can you move something from an S1 to an S2? And so. We're seeing now that teams are starting to just sit in a boardroom for a couple of days, getting all the big stakeholders coming into that room to really map it out. And then this has knock-on effects, then, in terms of technology. So, yeah, there's this thing about AI, and we might have heard that it's gonna take all of our jobs, and outbound's dead, and all that kind of stuff. Funny how that hasn't happened yet. And… but what we're seeing is that there's so much tech being bolted on… onto processes that haven't been mapped out, and we're spending so much money on it. fat. okay, what about if we take a step back, look at actually what our process is? Maybe we don't need to buy all these different tools, maybe we can do more with less. So that's what I'm seeing.

Will Aitken: 07:20

I think that's such a good call-up, because some people start trying to fix problems before they've even done that step of the process. the best thing you can do is take a step back and say, right, who are we going after? What problems do they have? How does that get transferred across to that team? What's the handover process there? How does that actually tie to revenue? Instead of, like, okay, how can we book 10 more meetings that don't actually ever close, right? Or even, how do we make sure that what we're offering on our cold calls relates to what someone actually gets when they get onto a demo or into a discovery process? So I think that's a really good point. Documentation, I think. to our point, a lot of people don't have this documented. They just start trying to fix stuff by hiring more people, or just doing a training on a certain skill. I mean, I know one of the first things you did when you joined the team at Quantcast was actually document the process for Outbound, and make sure there was a playbook of sorts, and I thought you could speak to maybe some of the first things you wanted to make sure you recorded, and I'll probably ask you some questions about how you… how you set the bar initially. So yeah, I'm gonna ask you that question. How did you start by building that process from scratch?

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 08:20

So, like any good leader, the first 30 days is usually a lot of observation, right? You're gathering data. We work in a space that… that we're…we're pretty lucky that there's a lot of numbers and data to gather from. So that's how I did it. I really just watched, what the AEs were doing, and what that process looked like, and what adding an SDR function, how would that benefit them, how would that create more pipeline, and ultimately generate more revenue for the company? So, you know, I looked at things like…outbound motion, you know, tech stack was a big one, so were the AEs using the right tools at the right times, or were there tools that didn't have the best adoption rates? Which was also something that I uncovered. And then from there, I just built out what I thought would…Ultimately, you know, influence pipeline generation and, revenue, whether it be, you know, activity numbers, or, you know, certain messaging, or, you know, a lot of the things that I saw on, you know, shadowing calls was. a lot of the same objections coming up, and how the AEs would handle it, so that was good preparation in the case that the SDRs ran into it. So, a lot of things like that. And then the biggest thing, obviously, was ICP clarity. Like, what is the ICP, and how do I convey that message to the SDRs when they come in that, you know, this is our ideal customer profile, and this is… this is who we're targeting?

Will Aitken: 10:01

So what they look like before we get there. I guess, were the account executives… so this was a brand new… it wasn't a function previously that you adopted, you were building this from scratch. Were the account executive team doing their own outbound activities before you came in? Was there, like, at least some kind of benchmark, or did you just say, okay, this is what we should be doing, we're gonna test this, and if it doesn't work, we can change it later? What did that look like?

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 10:22

Yeah, so there was no benchmark, a lot of… and it was a pretty lean team at the time as well. I think they only had, like. 3 or 4 AEs. We've since scaled. But yeah, they were doing… they were essentially full-cycle sellers, so they were doing their own outbound, their own discovery, and then closing the deal all the way through. But it had reached a point where they were running out of time, they didn't have enough time to close deals, and then generate new pipelines, so you were… you were hitting this vicious cycle of working the deals that you had in pipeline, closing those, but then finding yourself at the beginning of a new quarter, or at the end of a new quarter, without anything, so you had to…So the… the initial idea was to bring SDRs in to keep that motion steady, as opposed to the, you know, the peaks and valleys that came with it.

Will Aitken: 11:12

That makes sense. So when you…set this down? Was this all just based on your previous experience? Did you look into any extra external resources or help for this? How did you set those activity, and even, like, the templates themselves, the scripts, the messaging, was this all just based on stuff you've done in the past? Or did you look elsewhere for that as well?

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 11:30

Yeah, no, it was definitely a lot of the stuff I already did in the past. I had built a couple teams at that point, maybe 3 or 4, actually, before coming to Quantcast, so…not to say that it was pretty rinse and repeat, but the formula was pretty… was pretty similar, you know? Again, ICP clarity, and then messaging architecture. The messaging doesn't really change your selling value, so you had to find the value prop for each company and insert that. And then…Working with the ops teams, sales ops, or marketing ops on operational infrastructure was a huge piece, and then putting it all together in a playbook for enablement and reinforcement, and then creating some sort of measurement, right? So, again, I'm not a… I'm not an SDR leader who believes in driving activity, so you don't have to make the 500 calls or whatever it is, but I do believe in a bare minimum, just so I can be able to gather the data where it is sufficient enough. Because if you only make 10 calls, but you get 10 connects. you have a 100% connection rate, that's an outlier, it's not a real number. But if you're making 200 calls, and everyone else is making around the same, and you still get 100%, then that tells me that you're doing something different, as opposed to the luck is just there, right? So, I enforce minimum requirements, but they're not set in stone, and I don't… I don't kind of, like, look into those. If anything, I'm double-clicking into those and looking at things like talk time as opposed to connect rate, reply rate, not open rate, because you know, we have a super high open rate, but a really low reply rate. That means that our subject lines are great, but our messaging itself is not great. But if you have…a great, you know, reply rate, then your messaging is strong, and there's something in there that could be, maybe. Taught or reinforced throughout the rest of the team?

Will Aitken: 13:27

Okay, I like this. So, document the playbook. How long is this playbook? Is it, like, maybe even… is it, like, prescriptive? Like, this is an email, or is it, like, more vague? Like, this is generally the pain points or the value props that we want to speak about, like…

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 13:41

It's a pretty lengthy slide deck. I would say it's probably, like, 70 slides, and I would say it's a mixture of both, so I have examples, so the prescriptive side is there. Here's what a good email looks like, and it's broken down into different sections, so, you know. personalization in the beginning, value in the middle, strong CTA at the bottom. Sort of, you know, that's just an example, but it's obviously a little bit more detailed than that. it also gives them an idea on how to gather personalization, so it's not just like, oh, hey, congrats on the new role, or, oh, 5 years at, like, Gong, way to go, like…It's… it goes a little bit more into it, about, you know, interests and stuff, and posts they like… because people will tell you things without actually telling you, so if they, you know, they follow, you know. I don't know. Red Cross, then you, you know, they're into charity work, or something like that, or, you know, they're into some sort of sports…you know, they follow some sort of golf society, then they're into golf, and you can just talk about that. So, there's always a little nugget of information there. It's not just, you know, the school they went to, or how long they've been at their office. I think that line has been done to death since COVID. So you have to be a little bit more creative.

Will Aitken: 15:02

Okay, that's a really good call-out, and I'm curious, because this is actually something, and David, I want to get your read on this as well. Folks, if you have a playbook in place on your team right now, in the chat, put a 1, if you don't have a playbook, like a documented process, like what Ahmed just described, put a 2 in the chat, because this is something that, like, a lot of people actually come to me to pay me to create for them in some cases, like. And I have a template that I go into, similar kind of things, what you were saying there, like, you know, this is… these are the tools you might have available at any given company, this is how you use them, this is how you're going to do the research, like, very prescriptive. Dave, do you see this as, like, the norm on a team, to have this documented in detail, like what Ahmed's describing there, or would you say most people have skipped this step already?

David Wilkins: 15:41

No, it's not common. And Ahmed's just really good at his job, so, So, no, I think it's… and again, I…we were… we were talking a little bit earlier, Will… I'm sorry, we're gonna go behind the scenes here. Me and Will were talking a little bit earlier on, before we started, and…you as a leader, as an SDR leader, you do have more power, more responsibility than sometimes you know that you do.

Will Aitken: 16:09

Hmm.

David Wilkins: 16:10

And… A lot of the time. You're put into this role, Obviously, by merit, but then the other piece then is around giving you the coaching, the training, the development that you need to really start to excel into that… into that role. And so these are one of the… this is one of those things that you as a leader can drive yourself, and… and if you do, your senior leadership team will go, oh, okay.

Will Aitken: 16:37

I appreciate that I didn't have to tell you to do something. Yeah. Most leaders will thank you for it.

David Wilkins: 16:41

100%. And I think that's… that's a huge thing that…I mean, well, I do want to steal your, your, your playbook that you had, it looked really cool.

Will Aitken: 16:52

Confidential.

David Wilkins: 16:53

Okay, sorry.

Will Aitken: 16:54

NDA for that one. No, I'm just kidding.

David Wilkins: 16:55

Okay, I took a pic… I took screenshots, so it's fine. Okay, good.

Will Aitken: 16:57

I tried to go as fast as I could.

David Wilkins: 16:59

And… and I think that… I mean, but that's… that's great, and I think everybody can build that, but then also the big thing then is about keeping that live, and keeping that as a working, living document as well. Building it is one thing, but then also then continuously developing it and doing new versions, that's another important part.

Will Aitken: 17:17

updating the templates, changing the sequences. As you find people who really resonate with sent off a message, maybe it's an ICP, you add that in, right? It's not just a one-and-done thing that people forget about 3 months after you launch this thing, or show it to them, right? That kind of brings me on to… I mean, I think in your case, you've got to build this team from scratch. Some people might inherit a team as well, but one of the first things you're gonna have to do is start hiring reps as well. Ahead of time, we had a prequel for this session here, and you said when it was hiring, like, the biggest…differentiates as useful between the people who made it. Best. and those who weren't as successful, or one of the big traits you were looking for was curiosity, and you weren't really looking for someone to experience. I think this is where many people go, I'm hiring an SDR and I want someone with 3 years' experience. and they assume that will mean equal success. I'm curious to hear what you think on the side of hiring good reps for your team.

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 18:06

I think it's the, to touch on that 3-year experience thing, I think if… if someone's been in SDR for 3 years, that's a little long. Unless they want to be…an SDR, like, there are lifers as SDRs, and that's fine, but you have to uncover that, and I think we spoke about that last time. But yeah, I think it's a red flag. If you've been… if you've been in SDR for 3 years, I think it's a bit of a red flag for me, like. It's either you're not ambitious enough, or you're just…you're not hitting your numbers, something is there. Like, if you've been stuck at SDR for so long, something doesn't add up. and again, like I said, what I look for is curiosity, like, if you're not curious enough that you're willing to come in and break stuff and just ask for forgiveness, then you're really…too safe of a player for me. I like… I like people who take risks, I like people who come on strong, I like people who challenge the status quo a little bit as they uncover things about the company or about their own skills. So, curiosity is a huge piece, because it's also about learning from the people around you. You're curious what's working for Rep A, or Rep B, or Rep C. So, you're more curious to, to build your own kind of, like, utility belt, if you will, as an SDR. And a lot of times, if you're just like, oh, I know everything, I don't need to learn, I'm not, you know, there are reps who come in, and they carry, you know, older, you know.

Will Aitken: 19:38

They got some ego.

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 19:40

Yeah, exactly. Egos as part of it, but they build some older ideologies that they have, and they bring them into a new role. you've kind of put yourself in a bubble at that point, you're not really gonna grow. And, you know, a lot of the times, it's those reps that stay SDRs for a long time.

Will Aitken: 19:56

Okay, I like that point. And to your point about hiring people with experience, I think… I don't want to paint with too wide a brush, because there are situations where people take jobs that mean maybe they're promised something different to what they got, but I do find that when you hire someone with experience, especially when you're in that kind of entry, like, lower, entry level, like, SDR, maybe a junior AE, if they've been bouncing around a lot, it's often you're, like, basically taking on someone else's failed project, you know what I mean? Not to say that that's always the case, there are exceptions, but to your point, it's not maybe a reason to throw their resume in the trash, but it's definitely what's something that you can drill into, especially when you're interviewing to ask them questions about it as well. So, what kind of backgrounds have you hired from, out of curiosity, for your team?

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 20:35

Honestly, the most successful reps I've ever hired come from retail or hospitality. I think having to deal with people, or, you know, as terrible as it is to say out loud, but to work for tips like that, I think you have a certain drive in your DNA that isn't you know, that isn't easy to find in a normal rep. So, you know, perfect example, one of my top performing reps at Quantcast, she's been with me since September, maybe October, and she's about to be an AE in July. She had no prior sales experience, and she worked retail at the Apple store, right? But she came in with curiosity and a determination to be number one. And she stayed number one for… for, you know, her whole time here, and a lot of people recognized that, and that's why she's moving up. to an AE, right? So…that's just one example, right? I've had prior examples of people coming from, you know, hospitality, where, you know, a waiter for 2 years. Yeah, exactly, you know what I mean? So they have that natural…

Will Aitken: 21:45

of good communication, but they're not coming in with all these bad habits. They're almost, like, they're gonna need to learn, so therefore you can they're there for the ride, and they know they're there for the ride as well, they didn't come in, like, I know everything already, they're like, I want to be successful, help me, right? That's always, like, yeah.

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 21:59

Exactly. So, they have a perfect mixture of, like, people skills and really good discovery. Like, if you think about a bartender, they do the best discovery, because you know, they're talking you up at the bar, and they want you to buy the next drink and the next drink, so they're doing great, great discovery. So, you know, if they were a bartender or a waiter, they're perfect for discovery calls, and they come naturally equipped with that, so all you have to do is just kind of, like, talk about the product and the value edge, and give them that, and, you know, 9 times out of 10, they're very successful.

Will Aitken: 22:32

I love to hear that. David, I'll throw it to you real quick. What's a kind of hiring best practice that you're seeing? Or maybe even a hiring mistake that you see a lot of SDR teams make?

David Wilkins: 22:42

Yeah, I think the big… the big hiring mistake is…as a leader, it's not what you got, so I got… I got taught, Very early on as a manager, that if there's doubt, there's no doubt. And so that means that you might be having a conversation with somebody, but if you just get that feeling, like, oh, I'm… I'm not sure, there's a reason for having that, and…This is why face-to-face interviews are really important and critical to really try and understand who those people are and how they really are. Yes, if there's a red flag, move on. Alicia, thank you, and Sarah. So I'm just seeing the comments agreeing, so that's good. I think it's… it's really important that you get that kind of face-to-face, because you…I'm sure we've all experienced this one way or the other, but we're starting to hear a lot more about people who are doing interviews virtually, and they're asking a question, and then suddenly there's a…

Will Aitken: 23:39

It's like a typing or a…

David Wilkins: 23:41

Yep.

Will Aitken: 23:42

And this is true for… as a seller as well, like, when you're on a Zoom discovery call with a client, let's say. it's nowhere near as productive and as real as when you go to an event, or maybe you actually go to an onsite with them. You get so much more information, so much more, like. like, less… fakeness, right? And it's tough to suss out virtually. That's a great point there. So, in-person interviews.

David Wilkins: 24:06

Which you've got a trusty gut? If there's doubt, there's no doubt.

Will Aitken: 24:11

Ahmed, you brought on these people from backgrounds that aren't in sales, so maybe these people have never even made a cold call before. they probably definitely haven't signed a cold email. I mean, maybe Apple Store, I get a lot… my Apple Store rep is… he's on top of me, like, anything, and he doesn't even get commission. I'm like, what… what's in this for you, man? He's like, you need to finish off your business account. And he hits me up the next month, you still haven't filled in the business account. I'm like, I'm not gonna buy a laptop anytime soon, man. But… so, obviously, some of that's drilled into them, but…That probably means you have to do a lot of onboarding to teach them the basics and get them up to the point where they can go out there and produce results on their own as well. What does your onboarding flow typically look like?

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 24:44

Kind of unconventional. I, I believe in throwing them into the fire right away. So, the cohort, the first cohort at Quantcast, we actually had an like, an event that we were at, and we had a booth set up and everything, and I think it was, like, their third or fourth day, and I just took that first cohort of, like, four SDRs, and I said, okay, guys, well. You have your elevator pitches down, we have a couple AEs here when the conversation does get a little technical, you can throw to them, but the idea is to go out and talk to everybody, and just, you know. get your elevator pitch down, and it was great, honestly, to see… because you can… you can sit in a conference room and practice the elevator pitch, or do mock calls, or whatever, but it never simulates the real thing. Like, no prospect is ever gonna be like, oh my god, this was great, here, take my money. Like, it's never… it's never like that. So…throwing them into the fire and having them just, like, fall on their face quickly is the best way to go about it. that's really just my unconventional way of getting reps up to speed. I would much rather you spend 20% learning the product and kind of practicing, and then the other 80% just iterating and falling on your face. So that's kind of how it works. The 30, 60, 90-day plan that I have is that the first 30, you're just learning product, you're sitting through modules, you're, you know, we're doing objection handling calls, and, you know, mock calls, and all that stuff. with me, and the rest of the team, but then after that 30-day period is done, I want you to hit the field and just…fall on your face, write a bad email, you know, get hung up on a thousand times before you get a yes, all that stuff. And that's kind of what I've done with this team. Now, they are way more comfortable on the phone and in person at events than they are with email, because that was the first thing that we did. We just… I threw them into the fire, said, pick up the phone and dial, let's go to this event, talk to everyone. So…now we just, you know, we blitz Tuesdays and Thursdays, everyone just, you know, we're on the phones all day, Tuesdays and Thursdays, we book a lot of meetings, it's been great.

Will Aitken: 26:57

I love that. Did you present this playbook that you built to them, or, like, hand that over to them? How did you end up using that in the implementation stage?

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 27:05

In a way, I did present it to them, like, I sat through it with them, and I did a presentation, and we went through the slides, obviously at a very high level, but, you know. it wasn't… it wasn't something that was detailed or anything like that, it was just merely an idea to just show them that there is a plan behind, or like, you know, there is a method to the madness a little bit. Like, it seemed a little unconventional, but here is why.

Will Aitken: 27:31

Okay. I think… I'm curious to your side on this, David, as well, because I've seen sales teams do two things with this, and there's obviously a healthy balance. One is be so prescriptive, this is the email, this is the script, you break this, then you're in trouble. you better not change this sequenced email that we wrote 3 years ago, otherwise I'm gonna have words, even if you feel like it's crap, we know best. The other side is, do whatever you want. And oftentimes, that can lead to people picking up bad habits, etc. what… where do you see the right balance there? Is it, like, giving them frameworks? Is it giving them, like, a skeleton, letting them put the muscle on? What's that look like?

David Wilkins: 28:09

Yeah, so the thing I used to say to, my teams and the leaders that I worked with was, you're in a bowling alley, and you know I have the things that go up? The bumpers, I don't know what they're called, because obviously I'm really good at bowling.

Will Aitken: 28:25

I've never even seen them. Didn't know they existed.

David Wilkins: 28:28

Don't know, don't know what they are. Yeah, I've heard they're called bumpers, and we act as the bumpers, so we need to give… we give our teams leeway. as Ahmed said, fail, fail fast, because that's the way that you're going to learn. I heard somebody, somebody yesterday was saying how they have a… am I allowed to swear on this, or…

Will Aitken: 28:50

It'd be timed right. 3, 2, 1… beep! Okay, that didn't work.

David Wilkins: 28:55

Oh, page. There we go.

Will Aitken: 28:58

Yep.

David Wilkins: 28:58

That was good. That works. So we're going to do a… they have an F-Up page, where they… they show, okay, what the things that didn't go well, and then they can all learn from one another, so they're… they're… they're not hiding their… their problems, they're sharing them, because they want to get better. And I think that's the thing that we need to do as leaders, is give people leeway to get them to understand what's effective for them, what works in their voice. And then if they're going right over the edge, then it's like, oh, okay, come, come.

Will Aitken: 29:27

Yeah.

David Wilkins: 29:28

Back in the middle.

Will Aitken: 29:28

even if they're failing, you're rewarding doing, because that's the most important thing, that you're not…

David Wilkins: 29:32

Yeah.

Will Aitken: 29:33

sat there spinning your tires, planning, revising, going, instead of just getting out there and doing it. Sometimes overthinking can be the enemy of actually just making any kind of progress and improving in the first place. Love that piece. I mean, you roll someone out, you've got the system, tell them to go fail on themselves, but I imagine part of your role is making sure that they're getting better, if they are failing a lot, learning from those failures. How does it look like from an enablement standpoint, coaching? Do you still do training sessions like the ones you mentioned when they first onboarded? What's it look like on a maintenance basis of the skills layer?

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 30:03

Yeah, so we meet every Thursday, and it's something new every Thursday, so maybe we'll do a messaging workshop if I, like, look at the numbers and I see a dip in, like, reply rate, or, you know, I don't know, connection rate is not looking great, or talk time is a little low. we'll do a mock call gauntlet, where, you know, we'll just…go through and do objection handlings, or I'll throw them a couple curveballs. So it's… it's pretty just…dynamic in that regard, like, based on what's missing or what… what I need. I'll do… I'll do a session, so I have, like, a…Probably a 90-minute session. blocked out on my calendar Thursday morning, where I just, you know… and right before that, we'll go and grab a coffee, so everyone's, you know, all relaxed and loose and everything, and then we'll get into a conference room and kind of just figure out what's missing. And I'll work with the… with the enablement team, so we have…The enablement manager. In office, so, you know, her and I will collaborate, we'll talk about what we want to do for the Thursday session, probably a couple days before, she'll put an activity together, and then, you know, I'll approve it, and we'll go from there. So, it's always changing just based on what the numbers are saying, and what the team needs, so…That's kind of what we have there.

Will Aitken: 31:23

You mentioned a lot of the biggest improvements you see, and I've seen this as well, both training teams and coaching reps one-to-one, is that a lot of the… you can't treat everyone the same, especially when you're dealing with a small team. One person might have an issue with confidence, another person might be having an issue with, like, getting their value prop down, another person might be just going through a rough patch and struggling with motivation. Said a lot of your coaching happens in the one-on-one sessions. How do you typically approach that?

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 31:47

Again, it's very different, like you say. Everyone's different. So you have to be… you have to tread that line very carefully, because, you know, managing people, I think the hardest part, or the trickiest part, and I think Dave will agree, is managing all the personalities that you have, because everyone is different. So…early, when I… when I first, you know, initially start having one-on-ones, I… I learn, or I try to learn quickly, you know, what drives or what motivates certain reps, whether it's money, career progression, you know, just…you know. Spotlight, whatever it is. Everyone's motivated differently. And then I try to learn about their personal lives, what motivates them outside of work, whether it's, you know, partner, spouse, or, you know, family, friends, you know, personal ambition, whatever it is, and learn a little bit more about them. And then, just track the numbers. So, I'll give you an example. A couple years back, I was working on…At a startup. And I had one of my top performers just, like, continuously creep, like…downward, and I was like, what's… what's going on with her? first couple one-on-ones, you know, I would ask, I'd be like, hey, are you okay? What's going on? Like, you know…everything okay? And I would get a very, like, short answer, yeah, fine, everything. And I wouldn't like to pry, because it was clear something was wrong. And then, you know, I think it was maybe, like, the third or fourth one-on-one And we went out for a walk, and I said, hey, let's just go for a walk today. There's no need for a formal one-on-one. And then we went for a walk, and I asked her again, I said, hey, like, is everything okay? Because your numbers are saying otherwise. And she said, oh…my grandma's been in the hospital for the last, like, month, she's not doing well, there's, you know, there's no hope, blah blah blah. And it was this really, like, deep and personal story that I didn't know about, and no dashboard will ever show that. So then I said, okay, you know what? Why don't you take the rest of the week off, and we will, you know, be with your family, see what you gotta do, and then…come back, get your head in the game, and finish strong. Because I think that there was a month left in the quarter, and she was slightly behind pace. I think she was at, like, 60%, and she should have been at, like, 70. So she took the week off, she really appreciated that, you know, I was… I was… I was on board with that, and…came back and killed it. She blew it out of the water. I think she ended up hitting, like, 110%. So, sometimes you just have to…remember that everyone on your team, especially during those one-on-one calls, is a human, and not just a number on a dashboard, or in Workday, or whatever it is.

Will Aitken: 34:34

they were just a number, but this is also what makes being a manager and leader rewarding as well, right? Like, let's be honest, it would be fun if it was just as simple as going, that number's wrong, let's change that. There's complexity to this. It's kind of what makes sales fun.

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 34:46

Yeah, exactly. And that's… and that's partly the most rewarding part of the job, and that's whenever I get asked as to why I'm such an advocate for SDR leadership, the answer is always this, because you're taking these young career professionals at a very early stage in their career and helping groom them to go wherever they need to go. So, you know, when I look back at my history, there are AEs, leaders, managers, SEs, CSMs, all that came through, you know, an SDR org that I led. And that, to me, when I look back, is actually the most rewarding thing.

Will Aitken: 35:24

I like that point, and I think it's a really good, awesome call-out about the human element, knowing your team, knowing what motivates them. David, I want to throw a question to you, which goes in the other direction. I'm sure you get asked about this all the time, because you're working with a lot of leaders out there. what happens when someone isn't improving? Like, how… what's… maybe they've inherited a team, and heck, they've joined a team, there's already underperformers there, who they didn't pick. They don't know as well, who aren't on board with any changes they want to make, like, what's the process there to figure out if someone's not a fit anymore?

David Wilkins: 35:52

Yeah, it's…it's one of the toughest, things you can do as a leader, because it's… you're dealing directly with human beings, and you want to… you want to see the best in people. That's… that's what people want to, but sometimes it just… it just isn't a fit, and it could be just wrong place. Wrong timing, and they could be… they could be better off flourishing somewhere else in a new environment. So, it's…there's a couple of things that we've… that I used to do as well when I was, previously… I used to be a SDR leader at Snowflake, Where we would… it's a kind of… we won't go straight to a PIP. That's… that's just too…barbaric, and that isn't really taking into account the kind of human nature… human nature of what we do. So, you've really got to understand, first off, as Ahmed said. walking one-on-ones is one of the best things you can do, because people are just naturally relaxed. They're not in… they're not in that space, confined space of an office. So you can find out what's going on, you know, how… how can I help best… help support you more? But then sometimes, then, it's then around. if it's… if you can't… if something's happened and it hasn't changed, then it's around the coaching piece. And you've really got to… and then it's about, okay, what are the areas that we need to improve upon? And it's not a… it's not a PIP, it's more of a kind of a coaching plan. areas that we want to see improved. And again, it's one or two things. It's not a long list of stuff. Because in the end, you're trying to turn this person around. And then the… and then the final option then is then on a performance improvement plan. But, I mean, I've had conversations even before that, the PIP stage, where I've said to people, like, I just don't think this is the right fit for you, or I don't think…flopping. So, okay.

Will Aitken: 37:53

You can ask them as well. I think most people are somewhat self-aware enough to say. do you think this is the good fit? And if they say yes. let's figure out what we need to do to make it better as well. If there's hesitation there, or you can sense it, then maybe…They know as well, and that can often save it being this thing that you do to them, but instead do with them, right?

David Wilkins: 38:13

Yeah, 100%, and, you know, I've had…I had a conversation with somebody once where we… we got to the point where it was going to be a PIP conversation, and we had that conversation with her, and we said, look, you know. I think we're at that point where we tried to…they said… they said what… they said that thing, are they enjoying this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, really like it. But then, I think it took them time to realize that this wasn't the right fit, and this wasn't the right environment for them. But then they really praised by how we helped them. They knew that we did everything in our power to help them. be better. And now that person's flourishing in a different industry, in a different role. And, yeah, sometimes you gotta just.

Will Aitken: 39:02

If you'll meet in the moment, you probably helped them much long-term as well, right?

David Wilkins: 39:06

Yeah, 100%.

Will Aitken: 39:07

You freed them from the shackles of sails while the last nutcases stayed in it.

David Wilkins: 39:11

Huawei.

Will Aitken: 39:12

I wanna… I wanna call out the final piece, because it's probably other considerations. One thing that I see so much right now, I get asked about all the time in my LinkedIn DMs, when I'm talking to leaders, etc. There's so much noise out there about technology. And we mentioned earlier, AI replacing salespeople, etc. There's… there's a lot of noise, not a lot of substance to some of it. But I am curious to see, like, where you are seeing gaps, or where you're seeing a lot of success, or how you re-evaluated things that you wanted to change, especially Ahmed, for yourself, because I know you had some, you inherited a tech stack of some degree when you first jumped in there.

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 39:42

I did. So, this is gonna…work out perfectly, so the sponsor of today's episode is Gong, and I'm a big fan of Gong, so we are actually very close to implementing Gong here. When I got here, we had a pretty old tech stack, so it was very light, lean, mean, you know. Outreach, ZoomInfo, LinkedIn, Sales Navigator. That was pretty much the tech stack. Now, sadly. you know, outreach has not changed since I was a seller, and that was probably, like, 10 years ago. It looks exactly the same, nothing's changed, it's… it's just ridiculous. I have a lot to say about outreach. This might be bad. I will keep my mouth shut.

Will Aitken: 40:28

I sponsor any upcoming shows to make sure I don't invite you on again, Ahmed, just in case.

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 40:32

Yeah, exactly. Or they didn't watch this episode, because then they're definitely not sponsoring you after that. But yeah, outreach… outreach is not my favorite. But, but anyways…But yeah, I inherited a pretty old tech stack, and then I did an audit, when I first got here, about, you know, the things that I saw gaps were missing. So, the ability to record calls was a huge one for me, because if I'm gonna, you know, lead with this phone-heavy motion, I need to know what's being said. Maybe even just on the rep side, like, you know, 9 times out of 10, I'm only listening to what the rep is saying anyways, I don't really care what the prospect is saying, but I need to know what they're saying, in order to be able to coach better, in order to be able to see where the gaps are, why did this call go sideways, etc, etc. So…Outreach didn't have that, or at least our outreach instance did not have that, so that was one. And then just…again, infrastructurally speaking, I don't even know if infrastructurally is a word, but we're gonna call it a word. they just… it didn't talk to the CRM properly, so, you know, if you looked in Outreach, you know, there was, like, $150 made, but if you looked in Salesforce, there was, like, $27 made, so it's like…Where is the… where is… what's happening in the middle? I don't know. So, it just didn't integrate well with our system, and I don't think anyone actually stopped to take a look there for a second and say, oh, wait, these numbers don't add up, so…That was one of the big initiatives that I had, Now, I know that tech is a big thing, a lot of AI stuff, so now you can have AI do everything for you, and, you know, what's the point of an SDR if AI's gonna do it all, blah blah blah blah blah. These are things that you hear. But I can tell you… Sales will always be a human thing. No matter how much you automate of it, there's always going to be a need for a human element, even if it's this small. So that means that you can have a very heavy tech team. Or, sorry, tech stack, but you'll still need humans to control or monitor or whatever that tech stack. And I'll give you an example. So, a couple…Not… a couple years ago. We ran a campaign where we wrote handwritten notes for people. It was… it was… it was like you were sending out an email, but it was handwritten, and put in an envelope, and sent out. And we had one of the prospects who actually, you know, ended up booking a meeting because there was a QR code at the end of it, or whatever it is. The first thing he said was, do you know how long it's been since I've seen my name written on a piece of paper?

Will Aitken: 43:12

Yeah.

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 43:13

And I was like, I don't know, like, 5, 6 years? He's like, probably 15 to 20. He's like, everything's been so digital. Text message, email, your profile's on all your social media, everything that has your name on it is very, very digital. your, you know, even your IDs, everything. You have not seen this since probably school, when you had to write your name on your own test, right? So he was like, he's like, honestly, he's like. 85% of the reason why I'm here is because you guys took the time to write this out in, you know, by hand. So…Not to say that AI can't do that at some point, they're probably gonna send machines that, you know, write by hand, sure, but… but that's all to say that it took a human touch to pull in some of these prospects, and I think, you know, you can have all the tools. And that's fine, but I think at some point, you need a human in between that. I also believe that reps, and I've seen this. are sort of… they eventually get paralyzed by how many tools are in the tech stack, right? So, some will adopt the majority of the tools, and be like, I like these ones, these are the ones I will use. And some will just stick to what they know, so the outreach, the Zoom info, and the LinkedIn Navigator, for example, you know, that's someone's tech stack, they love that, they're not gonna go outside of that.

Will Aitken: 44:30

Yeah.

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 44:30

So, having too many tools is a problem, and not having…the proper tools is a problem, but having the proper tools and the right amount is that sweet spot. Now, have we figured that part out? I will say for myself, no. Dave's a genius, though, and I'm sure he's already figured it out, so, you know, I gotta cheat off him at some point.

Will Aitken: 44:51

Well, David, I would love to hear all the things you're seeing in the sales tech space. That said, we are at time, but I know if there's one place that people can discuss this, what's working for people, what tools are the best right now. You have a community, so maybe just quickly, let's finish off the mat, if people want to ask questions, or get to know other leaders in this space. remind us, SDR Leaders Global.

David Wilkins: 45:11

Yep, the link is in the chat, so go there. We've got 3 different communities for EMEA, USA, APAC, come and join them. We're a nice, welcoming bunch of people. We'd love to have you there.

Will Aitken: 45:23

And Ahmed, if anyone wants to connect to you, I really appreciate you jumping on, sharing some of the learnings you've had over the past, year or so. What, where can people find you?

Ahmed Abdel-Raouf: 45:31

LinkedIn is the best place, again, it's just, I'm pretty responsive as well on LinkedIn, so if you want to just send me a quick message on LinkedIn, we can chat about all the things SDR leadership.

Will Aitken: 45:46

Sounds like a plan. Folks, do that, join the community. Really appreciate you gents for jumping on, sharing some insights with us today, and thank you all for attending the Daily Sales Show. We'll see you next time. Keep it real.