​David Cancel, CEO of Drift, is on a mission: to help a million people achieve their potential. I was lucky enough to get a chance to speak with him on the Sales Development podcast, where we spoke about how people’s low expectations fueled his success, staying humble, and the key to a successful business like Drift. Here are some of the highlights. 

No expectations mean nothing to lose

When David was growing up, he had no idea what was possible: “I didn’t even know it was possible to start a company.” No-one, not even his parents, expected him to achieve anything. However, David saw that as an advantage. With the freedom that came from zero expectations, he had nothing to lose. When people told him what he couldn’t do, he’d set out to prove them wrong. Rather than letting self-limiting beliefs hold him back, he was motivated to keep pushing forward. Now he wants to help a million people from having to learn the hard way what’s possible. 

Taking a beating from your customer

What’s the difference between successful companies, like Drift, and the 99% of businesses that fail? For David, the key is humility. That means setting aside any personal pride in your work and listening to the customer, even when it’s hard. Sometimes, when the customer is telling you you’re wrong or laughing at your ideas, it can feel like you’re taking a beating. However, any kind of growth requires discomfort. Most people will shy away from that, but by leaning into the discomfort and taking that daily beating, you’ll have a strong advantage over your competitors. 

​This time in our Leaders in Sales Development series, we talk to Katherine Andruha, 
GTM Sales Development & Strategy at Eightfold.ai. 

Tell us about your role at Eightfold.ai?
Eightfold.ai is a talent intelligence platform that allows companies to place the right people in the right roles utilizing AI to find those candidates. Therefore, at Eightfold.ai my role is to grow the pipeline and company brand by equipping the SDR organization.


You’ve held Sales Development leadership positions at multiple companies. What’s been similar and different regarding Sales Development across those roles?
Each company has a different vision for their SDR organization.  
When I start a new role at any org, big or small, I think about scale, operational excellence and how can the SDRs bring value. I don’t care about metrics and their daily KPIs. I always measure an SDR org by pipeline.  
Pipeline brings a measurable, consistent value to every department. Sales teams measure pipeline to predict their revenue. Marketing teams measure pipeline as event or MQL ROI.  Sales Operations uses pipeline to determine territory and commission plans. It’s a win-win: bring the value to the organization.

​The past year has seen an explosion of new products and services for Sales Development Leaders. 
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To help you stay up-to-date with the software you need to excel, Tenbound—a research advisory firm focused 100% on the Sales Development industry—has released two different resources you’ll want to bookmark today.

The Tenbound Sales Development Market Map

First up is the latest version of our Market Map. This fourth version collects all the major players in the Sales Development products and services category, from sales engagement to data enrichment, and puts them together in one easy to understand visual map. 

We understand that Sales Development is not the same as Sales, Marketing or Account Management, and in turn needs its own map of the key industry players. 

Sales Development is the critical connection of those departments and more, and has very specialized needs requiring specialized tools and services. 

​​You can usually spot Sam Nelson easily… he’s the guy with the blue dyed hair popping up at sales conferences and in your LinkedIn feeds, sharing his thought leadership with the community. His day job is the SDR Leader at Outreach (a Sales Enablement Platform)

Sam (SDR Leader @ Outreach.io)  is a well known entity in the Sales Development world, and gave a great presentation on how he and his teams have integrated referrals into their outbound sequences with great results. We’ve compiled a few highlighted takeaways below for you, but you are going to want to take a look at the session recording to get the more granular advice.

​Earlier this year I had the opportunity to talk with Peter Kazanjy, the founder of Atrium Sales Analytics and the Modern Sales Pros community, on The Sales Development Podcast.  

As sales professionals, we all have a part in advancing the science of sales, with innovations and new technology coming along all the time. 

For Peter it’s exciting, fun, and intellectually challenging to be at the forefront of this movement, both from a product development standpoint at Atrium and with the community at Modern Sales Pros. 

We spoke about how sales is changing, why the MSP community is so important, and how Peter made it the success it is today.

The rise of the “Sales Nerd”When Salesforce came along, it introduced a shared database where sales organizations could store prospect information—from lead to close.

This was huge. Clever entrepreneurs started pulling data from the CRM and picking out different use cases, creating an opportunity for people to piece together a thoughtful sales stack. 

It goes without saying that buyers today have a very different set of tools at their disposal versus just 10 or 20 years ago. There’s a tremendous amount of information online and on social networks that they can use in order to make a purchase decision. 

Think of the last time that you purchased a product. You probably started with a Google search where you didn’t leave the first page of results, and you started to get a feeling for what was out there. You may have checked a few review sites to see what other people are saying and see who the top players are in the market. 

Once you narrow down your top three or four you probably went to their websites and started to look at what their content and thought leadership. Are they legit? 

At some point in this process, your phone probably rang with an unknown number that you either blocked or sent to voicemail. If you decided to take that call or listen to your voicemail, and it was someone describing a problem that you were trying to solve at the moment and how they may have helped you might have added that company to your list of ones that you were checking out, you may have then filled out their lead form or taking a demo. ​

It goes without saying that buyers today have a very different set of tools at their disposal versus just 10 or 20 years ago. There’s a tremendous amount of information online and on social networks that they can use in order to make a purchase decision. 

Think of the last time that you purchased a product. You probably started with a Google search where you didn’t leave the first page of results, and you started to get a feeling for what was out there. You may have checked a few review sites to see what other people are saying and see who the top players are in the market. 

Once you narrow down your top three or four you probably went to their websites and started to look at what their content and thought leadership. Are they legit? 

At some point in this process, your phone probably rang with an unknown number that you either blocked or sent to voicemail. If you decided to take that call or listen to your voicemail, and it was someone describing a problem that you were trying to solve at the moment and how they may have helped you might have added that company to your list of ones that you were checking out, you may have then filled out their lead form or taking a demo. ​