The Return of Disruption to the Sales Development World
4/28/2020
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 This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.
-J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan I was in college in the 4 years leading up to the new millenia. As we climbed our ladder, our professors would often tell us “ you will enter the workplace during one of the most unprecedented economies in the history of the world. One where there just aren't enough people to fill the demand of what we are setting out to accomplish.” In the Spring of 1999, the message began to change. The energy of our Economics and Business courses were off. I could feel something wasn't right. I came back from a Summer abroad, and their messages began to change. “You might need to compromise.” “You’ll need to practice resilience.” “You may need to take jobs you never would have otherwise.” Sound familiar?  None of our SDRs were making quota....
Rewind the clock a few years, I was at a Unicorn, everything should have been going great. But our 25 SDRs were struggling. Each week we gave them over 3,000 fresh MQLs, but none of them made quota. We just fired our 2nd CMO and 3rd SVP of Sales, both of whom were successful at previous companies. I was asked to step in and “fix” it. What the hell was happening? We were a billion-dollar SaaS unicorn, the movie wasn’t supposed to end this way. The problem it turns out was simple. Most of the prospects filling our funnel were not prospects at all. The 3,000 MQLs had been ‘qualified’ using basic Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) criteria like # of employees, industry, and annual revenue. While helpful for sizing, this ICP told us nothing about what our prospects actually wanted or needed.  Jason started off studying biology, but quickly realized he didn't want a research job. Instead, he wanted a career where he could interact with people and solve problems. Specifically, he was always fascinated by how people make their buying decisions. That fascination has helped him excel in Sales Development.
In this interview, he shares how his team is raising awareness of a new industry, why they no longer use data enrichment tools, and how they keep their messaging relevant. New industry challengesSegment is a customer data platform that allows companies to capture the complete customer journey by tracking their first-party touchpoints, then leveraging that data to provide personalization at scale in a way that respects users’ privacy needs. It’s a new approach, so some education is needed. To meet this challenge, Segment is serving as a thought leader in the space. They’re talking to companies and introducing the idea of a customer data platform, explaining what challenges it solves. The category is defined by their messaging, so it’s important that their message is clear and consistent.  From her first retail sales job to building and leading a global Sales Development team, Karlie Morien has had plenty of experience at all levels of Sales Development. In her interview with Tenbound, she shared her process for closing more retail sales, the lessons learned over nine years in Sales Development, and why she wants to redefine the SDR role.
Getting to the third NoKarlie learned a lot from her time in retail sales. When you're standing in front of someone who is either going to buy something or not, right there, there’s very little time to help them. That’s when Karlie came up with her process of ‘Getting to the third No.’ If you ask someone if they want to try on a pair of jeans and they say they’re not interested, our default reaction is to leave it at that. Sometimes, though, you just have to talk to them and dig a little deeper to figure out what's going on. Taking that interaction a couple of steps further—past that initial no—and learning a little bit more about them can often get us a better result. |
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