 What sales development leaders need to know about the connection between sleep and productivity and how to get more of both. Even before the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans were underslept. A large body of research shows we were quite unproductive as a result. During the current crisis, we face even more threats to both sleep and productivity: anxieties keep us up at night, while distractions working from home, burnout from a lack of boundaries between our professional and personal lives, and the cognitive overload of Zoom all curb our focus. Now, more than ever, it's imperative to understand the connection between sleep and productivity and invest in your team's rest. The Science of Productivity There's a deep body of research on the negative effects of sleep deprivation on mental processing. The prefrontal cortex area of the brain, which directs what psychologists call "executive functioning", has been found to be particularly impaired by a lack of sleep. Problem solving, reasoning, organizing, inhibition, planning, and executing plans - processes essential to performing our jobs - are all the domain of the prefrontal cortex. It is true basic motor and visual skills decline when people are sleep deprived, but they do so not nearly to the same extent as these higher-order mental skills. And the more sleep deprived you are, the worse the consequences. This is the concept of Sleep Debt - how much sleep you miss, or owe your body, relative to your sleep need over the course of 14 plus days. The bigger the debt, the worse the impact on how you perform your job. Yet, when organizations think of ways to make their teams more productive, more regular sleep is rarely the answer. How Your Team's Sleep Debt Impacts Its Productivity The last 100 years of sleep science includes tens of thousands of studies on the direct impact of sleep debt on workplace performance, and the implications are becoming harder to ignore. Deloitte, the multinational professional services network, has escalated sleep deprivation to a "business issue", supporting the scientific community's findings that "people’s ability to learn, concentrate, and retain information is greatly impacted by how well-rested they are.” This remains the case regardless of remote work practices or the status of the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, rigorous academic research shows that sleep debt affects productivity in profound ways: ● Increases in cognitive lapses that reduce alertness and attention: Researchers found a 400% increase in mental lapses following one night of missed sleep - and the same result for participants who slept for 4 hours over the course of six nights. ● Increases in response times and increased errors in tasks that require sustained attention, especially under time pressure and as task duration lengthens. Research has tied sleep deprivation to an 11% increase in response times - equivalent to the increase you would see from someone with a 0.8 BAC (the threshold at which you're deemed legally impaired). ● Difficulty learning new information and acquiring new skills, with a decreased likelihood to revise and adapt strategies in response to failures. Researchers have found one night of sufficient sleep improves motor learning task speed by 20% and accuracy by 39%. ● Degradation of working memory: When you sleep at night, cerebrospinal fluid and slow-wave activity both help flush toxic, memory-impairing proteins from the brain. Research has found a 40% reduction in the ability to form new human memories under conditions of sleep deprivation. ● Fewer insights: Sleep, by restructuring new memory representations, facilitates the synthesis of your day. Researchers found 2x as many subjects gained insights after 8 hours of sleep than after wakefulness. ● More sick days: Sleeping less than 7 hours a night has been found to make you 300% more likely to catch the common cold. Direct costs due to sickness absence could decrease by up to 28% if a workforce gets sufficient sleep. Worse, sleep debt can have negative consequences for traits and habits that foster team collaboration and morale, including: ● Increased likelihood to use a negative tone of voice. Decreasing sleep debt by 8 hours reduces negative vocal emotions by up to 67%. ● Emotional irrationality: Sleep deprivation leads to a 60% amplification in emotional reactivity. ● Less empathy: Decreasing sleep debt by 8 hours increases empathic response by 30%. ● Difficulty reading emotions ● Increased risk taking ● Unethical behavior It’s actually possible to measure the productivity costs of sleep debt in dollars and cents. In an 8-month controlled trial we ran with a Fortune 200 sales team, sellers using Rise increased key activities as their sleep improved. Outbound calls increased by 50%, while overall revenue increased by 14%. When you assume roughly 70% of your salesforce is underslept, it's easy to see how fatigue-related productivity losses add up quickly. Why We Fail to Make the Connection Between Sleep Debt and Productivity So why don’t organizations prioritize sleep? Caffeine may be one reason, since we can use it to counteract low levels of wakefulness. But this use ultimately boomerangs, as caffeine negatively impacts that night's sleep, triggering a vicious cycle. The more insidious reason leaders don’t focus more on sleep debt is we as humans tend to underestimate just how underslept we are and how impaired our performance really is. Indeed, sleep researchers have wondered, if sleep is so important to our daily performance, then why don't we realize it? What they've found consistently is significantly sleep-deprived individuals repeatedly rate themselves subjectively as only moderately sleepy. In "Why Six Hours of Sleep Is As Bad As None At All" the author aptly describes the findings of seminal research: "Lack of sleep ... apparently tricks you into thinking you’re an office all-star. People who slept just six hours per night for two weeks functioned as poorly as if they’d gone without sleep for 48 hours—yet they thought they were performing at the top of their game." How to Improve Your Team's Productivity Through More Sleep The good news is some organizations appear to be changing their tune. Google and Goldman Sachs cover healthy sleep in employee trainings. Aetna actually pays its employees about a buck for every night they sleep seven to nine hours. We at Rise Science are seeing an uptick in companies prioritizing sleep for improved productivity outcomes. The even better news is that improving our sleep—and reaping the rewards for productivity—is in our control (unlike much of the current moment). Managers and other organizational leaders can encourage their teams to harness the benefits of regular sleep. Not sure where to start? Research shows that simply giving employees more control over their schedule, without even directly influencing their sleep, has lasting benefits. But there are also ways you can explicitly prioritize sleep for improved productivity outcomes. These fall into three main categories: awareness, environment, and behavior.
If all this sounds like a lot, consider the alternative: less focus, decreased memory and learning, irritability, and a cut to your bottom line. A lot is uncertain right now, but the need to run a business remains. If you’re looking for tools and tricks to stabilize your team’s productivity, why not start with the one that is a certainty? Sleep is the most important investment you can make. At Rise, we're committed to bringing you content that's 100% backed by science. To discuss, go deeper, or question any of the claims we make here, please get in touch: science@risescience.com. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffmkahn/ https://twitter.com/jfkahn Jeff Kahn is Co-Founder and CEO at Rise Science. Rise is the only app that delivers the real-world benefits of better sleep. Jeff and his Rise co-founder were the first to publish research on technology-enabled sleep behavior modification over a decade ago, and have recently completed the largest known study on sleep and real-world job performance across the NFL and sales teams. Jeff's research and work have been featured in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and The Wall Street Journal, and on ESPN, NBC, CBS, and Fox Sports. Jeff holds a B.S. in Health Systems Engineering and an M.S. in Engineering Design & Innovation from Northwestern University.
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You might be wondering what a marketer knows about cold calls, and the answer is “Quite a bit!” I sit with my SDR team, when we’re not working remotely, so I hear their cold calls and pitches all day every day, which gives me insight into what’s working for them and what doesn’t based on the rest of the conversation.
There’s nothing more important for an SDR / BDR than the first words that come out of their mouth, and that especially holds true for an agent-assisted call, where the potential customer has been passed from the agent to the sales rep for the pitch and you have just a few seconds to gain and hold their attention. So, what should you say and what should you NOT say? ● DO NOT state your company in your first sentence. Say your name, but not your company. They most likely don’t know what your company is, which gives them no reason to care. Your job is to make them care. ● DO note that you’re an interruption. There’s no way around that. You are an interruption to their day with your cold call, and by acknowledging that right off the bat, you’re showing that you’re self-aware. ● DO NOT call without knowing who you’re talking to. Before you start dialing, or have your human agent start dialing, you should have notes in your CRM for each person on that list from your research into their LinkedIn or past conversations. Don’t go in blind. ● DO ask them for their help. Most people want to help others, and if you state that you’re looking for 30 seconds of their time to just point you in the right direction, instead of saying that you’re looking for them to buy something, the conversation is more likely to continue. Plus, the person you’ve called might not be your ideal customer, but someone else at their company might be. All you have to do is ask. ● DO NOT let the person just avoid the call. But do so nicely. If they say they’re busy or have a meeting to get to, your go to answer is not “Sorry. Bye.” Instead, ask them if there’s someone else you should talk to or if you can set up a meeting for another time. Once you’ve gotten past those first 10 seconds, you can go on to ask open-ended questions that discuss their pain points and challenges to narrow down what you should focus on for that next meeting. The objective of any cold call is for it to feel like an actual conversation instead of a sales pitch that hits the potential customer over the head. You want to keep that conversation going to build a rapport and hopefully lead to a sale. Mary Hart is the Senior Marketing Content Writer at ConnectLeader, a multi-channel sales engagement platform focused on helping B2B sales professionals increase their top line revenue and reduce sales cycle time. https://www.connectleader.com/  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? In February 1998, it would take 1hr and 45min to drive from San Mateo, CA to San Jose, CA at 8am PT. On October 1st, 2001, that same drive would take just 48minutes. Why do I remember that? Probably because it was my defining moment and a drive I was very familiar with. During college I worked for a communication construction company. Often I would pick up and deliver plans. Most of our Jobs were in San Jose while some of the best General Contractors we worked with had offices on The Peninsula (Silicon Geo Slang...sorry). One moment, my phone is blowing up because because I am stuck on a freeway full of Out-of-State plates and the General Contractor appt is about to be blown; the next, I am getting pulled over for doing 85 in a 55 and I’m shocked because I just wasn't used to an open freeway. Right now, at 7:55am, I can see that same strip of freeway via a webcam is just as empty. Perhaps worse in moments. What’s it going to take to get back to ‘normal’ The last time I was in this position, I was 20 something with a college degree and a girlfriend who had relocated with me so that I can attend college without being apart. When I graduated, I was automatically furloughed because I was part time and didn't have any children or dependents. This time, it’s the opposite. I am married, 3 kids, and I was furloughed because I was middle management and didn't touch any orders- thus I am a cost. This is the Half Glass Moment INSIGHT 1: GET OVER IT. It’s not personal, even when it is. It happens/ed. Take a moment to grieve, and then start working the problem. INSIGHT 2: THE NEW NORMAL IS COKE CLASSIC. The ‘new normal’ is just a rebranded experience that helps us cope. People who succeed in this moment will be the ones who not only realize this but also empathize with people who are coping via the rebrand. INSIGHT 1 + INSIGHT 2 = SOMEONE’S ADVANTAGE OR DISADVANTAGE. The momentum in the current economy, as well as the micro economies, has halved. It has not stopped. Right now, someone is taking advantage of this situation. Positively or negatively. This is the half glass moment- which half are you going to be on? When I was hired at Siebel Systems in 2004, it was after a down-year in founding. What does that even mean? There were fewer companies founded in 2003 than in the 5 years previous. This means the economic momentum had slowed to an achingly slow pace. I was told, “use the phone first, and then use it again. If it’s worth writing, it’s worth saying.” We would send 1 email and make 3 dials for every email. Translated, everytime someone received an email, they were guaranteed to receive 3 calls over the next 8 business days. We went from speaking with AEs struggling to recall the last SDR meeting they received to struggling to find a spot in their calendars for our SQL. Right now, you are either talking yourself out of the market and talking your way in. Plain and simple. Objections you are hearing that we’ve all heard before Here’s a few objections we heard then that you are hearing now along with the ways that they have been solved over the last 20 years The phone numbers don't work. Companies have closed. Locations have closed. People have been moved to home office or consolidated to new locations. Half our numbers in the marketing database don't work Does this sound familiar? We heard the same thing during these economic crises: 2001 (dot.bomb + 9/11) 2007 (Mortgage/Financial Crisis) 2020 (Covid-19) My questions I asked my teammates: Do they still have a main number? (great, why don't you call that?) Do they still have a support number? (great, why don't you call that?) Do they still have a general inquiry email address? (great, why dont you email that?) Is Google still in business? (great, why don't you ask her where to find your prospect?) Is anyone else there we need to know? (great why don't we call SOMEONE who still works there and just ask if they can help us connect with your prospect? LinkedIn says there are people still working there.) If you don’t try, you can’t succeed. These are simple actions that have huge effects. Everything is at a standstill - we’re putting all projects on hold. I call bullshit. Do they have job reqs out there? Are they still in business? Do they still need deals? How many gaps do they have with the workforce that just exited? At this moment, it is a giant math equation about optimizing fiscal efficiencies so that the company survives. I dont think it’s appropriate to be asking people to buy things when there is so much going on. Disclaimer on this one: There is a huge difference between being insensitive and being available. Make sure you are acting on the latter. As I responded, I looked for a source to cite, but couldn't figure out where I first learned this. Feel free to share the source, Somewhere along the line, I learned and then confirmed that in sales, just as in publishing, no one cares what you WANT, THINK, FEEL, or LOVE. And the way I was told was that no one f@#%ing cares. The point? Your job is to listen to learn. And by listening to learn, you show that you care. This moment with your customer? It’s about how THEY feel, what THEY love, and what THEY think they need to do. If someone asks you what you THINK, what they are really saying is: What do you KNOW about what I THINK, FEEL, LOVE, or WANT? No one has any budget for anything now. The sky fell and the world is collapsing. How is this any different than yesterday? It only illustrates why BANT is NOT the best pre-sales technique out there. ANUM is a critical requirement right now. In fact, it’s a guarantee that NO ONE has a budget for anything unless they WANT, THINK, FEEL or LOVE to stop something extremely painful. No one wants a tourniquet until they need one. And in that moment, they would LOVE to have one. But do you LOVE applying them? No one does. One company I’m aware of, furloughed 20% of their staff and then went to market looking for 3 solutions to optimize the loss of headcount. Right now, they have $300k in software solution investigations going on right now. Should you call or should I (your competitor)? Because one of us will get our unfair share of that $300k, and with the attitude, I’m betting on me. No one is calling me back, responding to my emails. This is a timed response. How much time do you spend doing versus the time you spend planning to do. In Sales, you exist only in those two states. We spend 80% of our time planning to do, and 20% of our time doing. Sure it may not be exactly that, and mileage can vary, but the fact of the matter is, in these times you have to ask yourself: How am I making that 20% the most valuable, worthwhile, engaging, and pleasurable experience for my customer? In this world, more than ever before, we are exposing the sales people who have NOT been about the customer. Those who have NO IDEA how to be about them are stuck with this piece of self-doubt and cancerous defeatism. If it’s about the customer, then you will spend more time on: Valuable Worthwhile Engaging Pleasurable Experiences that will help them solve the problems of TODAY and TOMORROW. Afterall, isn’t that what life’s problems are always about?  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. And at the end of the day, that’s why prospects buy -- when you can fulfill their wants and needs. Does my unicorn story sound familiar? It should. In Sales Development today, only 1 out of 100 MQLs will convert to an opportunity. And poor fit is largely why. Pair this with the common misperception that more leads = more sales, and when leads flood in but sales don’t materialize, you lose your job. Don’t blame the lead, blame the seller, right? Today only 43% of sales reps make quota – a number that’s declined every year from 63% in 2011. We need to change how we sell and by focusing on what prospects actually want and need, we can. How to sell prospects what they want. So, how do you figure out what prospects want and need? Great question. The wants and needs of a person or business are known as ‘psychographics’. It sounds fancy, but it’s been around since the 1960’s in B2C and is incredibly powerful in selling. For example, if you’re expecting your first child, you’ll have a strong personal interest in new baby products and services. Those are psychographics. If I sell baby clothes, you are my perfect prospect. It’s that simple. Do psychographics really work? Have you ever bought something Amazon recommends? If so, you’re not alone. Amazon sees a 30% sales increase from psychographic-driven recommendations. How about NetFlix or Spotify Discover? NetFlix attributes over $1B in retention to psychographic content suggestions and Spotify delivers 31% of its music based on psychographics. These are multibillion-dollar businesses using psychographics every day to deliver valuable goods and services that you, the consumer, want and need. 3 ways to use psychographics in B2B Sales Development Traditionally it’s been very difficult to figure out business psychographics. What does a business really want or need? They rarely take surveys and they keep their data closely guarded. But we live in an amazing time for Sales Development. The massive surge in public web data and digital communication makes it easier than ever to know what businesses want and need. Here are 3 ways you can leverage psychographics in B2B to improve prospect fit and close more deals:
Matt Belkin is the founder of GrowFlare, a prospect intelligence platform focused on helping B2B sales professionals sell better with psychographic data. https://tenbound.com/company/growflare/ He also serves as the COO of eSUB, a construction SaaS company, where he oversees all sales, marketing, and client success efforts.  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. Another big challenge for any company is reacting to inbound requests fast enough. A slow response leads to a huge drop in conversion. To ensure they’re responding as quickly as possible, Segment has people in various parts of the world so they can reply promptly to customers wherever they are. It’s also important to properly qualify prospects. This a rigorous process so that, when a prospect is handed over to an account executive, they have a strong understanding of what the customer wants to accomplish and what particular solution will best help them. Using the right tech When a customer visits the Segment site and submits a demo request, the experience should be as seamless as possible. By using Chili Piper, companies are given the option to book a time with an SDR immediately. They can select the time that works for them and it’ll be routed to the appropriate rep, without any of the back and forth trying to schedule a meeting over email. Other tech tools, while potentially helpful, don’t fit in with Segment’s philosophy. As a company, they pride themselves on respecting customers’ privacy wishes; if somebody chooses to provide Segment with their contact information, that's great, but they no longer use enrichment tools to uncover data that hasn’t already been shared. Using multiple approachesWhile his team is supported by a healthy amount of inbound activity, Jason also wants to be regularly experimenting with new ways to create as much pipeline as possible. To that end, the team runs campaigns on three separate levels:
Whenever the team does outreach, they make sure it’s relevant and specific. That involves looking at what’s happening with a prospect company (if they’ve just raised funding, changed their tech stack, etc), but also the signals they’re giving out directly to Segment. Are they viewing content? Are they signing up and attending webinars? These signals are taken into account so they’re able to personalize their messaging. Sales Development in 2020A lot of customers are starting to understand the importance of customer data, personalization, and delivering personalization while respecting customer privacy. Segment is developing their story across those three areas, so understanding and conveying their positioning on those topics is something that's top of mind for Jason. Going forward, Jason is working to keep their messaging consistent with the direction the company is heading in. Rather than talking about the details of what Segment does, he wants to drive conversations with companies about their initiatives and their strategy, and how Segment can be a part of that strategy. If you’re looking for ways to improve your Sales Development program and overcome similar challenges, contact us at Tenbound today for a no-obligation exploratory call.  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. Lessons from different SDR rolesKarlie’s first SDR job was calling real estate offices and convincing them to let a sales rep come in and pitch them. She soon ended up helping manage the outside sales reps, essentially acting as the office manager. It was here that Karlie realized she also liked the management side of sales. She later moved over to Comcast. Sat with 140 other reps in a huge room, she would take calls from business owners setting up their phone/internet. The goal was to upsell them right there on the phone, getting them to sign before they hang up—a true one call close environment, with no room for error. Karlie got her first taste of tech sales when she moved to Qlik. She was soon leading an inside team there but, even though the company had an SDR engine, it wasn't optimized. That meant she had to do a lot of her own prospecting and, as a result, she quickly became adept at building programs and campaigns. When the opportunity came to build Monetate’s SDR function for the North America and EMEA regions, Karlie took it. Now she’s taking all the lessons she’s learned along the way and doing the same for NetBase Quid. Top Sales Development challenges
Sales Development in 2020The common view of SDRs is that it’s an entry-level role, and Karlie believes companies don't generally give as much love to the SDR team as they should: “It's considered entry-level, but it's one of the hardest jobs. How does that make sense? How do we pay people entry-level, treat them entry-level, but then ask them to do something that no one else in the company would be comfortable doing?” Karlie wants to break the mold so that SDRs are recognized as a valued expert, just as important as an AE. They have the ability, but as companies and leaders, it’s our job to enable them. If you’re looking for ways to improve your Sales Development program and overcome similar challenges, contact us at Tenbound today for a no-obligation exploratory call. Daniel DeFilippo started out as a public accountant. However, he soon found himself bored out of his mind. The breaking point came when he fell asleep at work and a highlighter bled through 400 pages of inventory. He made the jump to sales, where he’s thrived and built an impressive resume.
Now he’s Director of US Sales Development at Mimeo, where he loves helping people and seeing junior reps grow into polished, solution-oriented sellers: “There's nothing better for me... That's what gets me out of bed every day.” He sat down with the Tenbound team to discuss recruitment, outdated tech features, and his philosophy for creating a top-performing Sales Development team. Challenges in Sales DevelopmentFor Daniel, the biggest challenge he faces is finding and retaining talent. However, he’s found that talking about a career progression plan from the very first interview helps retain that talent. There's a common misperception in Sales Development that SDRs are just feeding the sales funnel. The real value of an SDR team is creating and molding your next class of AEs or CSMs. It can also be a challenge to relate to your team. Each individual likely has different motivations. Daniel makes a point of finding out what’s motivating each person. So, instead of going through the floor and just telling them to make more calls, if one guy wants to propose, Daniel will say ‘princess cut,’ and if one girl wants to get a beach house, he'll say ‘beach house.’ Being an SDR is by far the hardest job you can have. It's a grind and it could get really boring really fast. To combat this, Daniel tells his team to do what's proven and predictable 80% of the time, then for the other 20% have some fun. Do something outside the box. Be creative! When technology stops being helpfulAccording to Daniel, teams have a tendency to have too many tools, with features that are no longer effective. For example, he used to pay a lot of money for local area codes when dialing out. At the time, it increased the connect rate. Today, if someone calls with a local area code, people realize it’s spam or a sales call. There are plenty of fantastic tools out there, but they have to be used properly. You have to think about the long term consequences for you and your brand. Email automation is great, but it has to be personalized. If someone feels tricked into opening an email, where's that going to go in the long run? The important behaviors and activities are the ones that grow your revenue. Don't call just to make calls or email just to get a reply. At Mimeo, the SDR team works closely with both the Revenue Operations team (to identify their ICP and buyers) and Marketing (to put them through a warmup campaign). By the time Sales Development gets involved, the prospect knows who Mimeo is and the team can focus on their pain points and how they can help. Building a Sales Development team in 2020Daniel’s philosophy is simple; build your team around hard work and honesty. Everything else, you can teach. However, you can't teach somebody that hunger so they want to go out and make calls, or how to be honest. Finally, Daniel believes you should never ask your team to do anything that you're not willing to do yourself. You have to lead by example. “I'm the first guy in the door and the last one to leave. If it's a Friday, late in the afternoon and starting to slow down, I'll pick up the phone and start banging out calls.” If you’re looking for ways to improve your Sales Development program and overcome similar challenges, contact us at Tenbound today for a no-obligation exploratory call. Lauren didn’t have a traditional start in Sales Development; After studying molecular biology and theology, she spent four years researching termites. However, meeting some sales professionals on a trip to San Francisco changed her life.
Starting out as an SDR, she has worked her way up to Head of Global Sales Development at Segment. In our interview, she discussed the importance of personalization, how her background has helped her, and her goals for 2020. The importance of personalizationWhen Lauren started her first SDR role, her team was sending 100% automated emails with zero personalization. However, she started attending conferences where speakers like Ralph Barsi, Steli Efti, and Sean Sheppard were talking all about the importance of personalization. After eventually convincing her boss to let her try some personalized outreach, she booked three times as many meetings in her second month than any SDR at the company had before. Video can help you stand out even more. After booking several meetings with prospects at a conference—prospects who’d previously said no to her emails—Lauren thought more about why they’d said yes to her in person. After all, she’d used exactly the same message. The difference, she realized, was they could see she was just another human being, someone they could build a personal connection with. That was her big aha moment—if people clicked on a video and could see and hear her, if they could see she took the time to personalize her message, she’d make a bigger impression. The results were overwhelmingly positive, getting a 25% return from emails compared to a 1% on emails without video. Top Sales Development challenges
One uncomfortable thing a dayLauren’s dad taught her to do one thing that makes you uncomfortable every single day. For example, Lauren would introduce herself to all the executives at a work party, rather than just drinking with her friends. Her parents also made her get a job the minute she turned 16, at least if she wanted to use the car. For Lauren, that meant working at Jamba Juice. Working a minimum wage job in the service industry helped her develop more appreciation for people. She got comfortable talking to strangers, helping them and making them smile. People sometimes ask Lauren if it feels like she wasted her degree, but there are many aspects of her science background that have helped her in Sales Development. She has a deep appreciation for driving meaningful stories from data and poking holes in theories or testing hypotheses. “I geek out on that type of stuff.” Tech tools no longer used
Sales Development at Segment in 2020Lauren has two objectives for 2020. First of all, she wants her Sales Development team to be best-in-class, empowered and enabled to truly personalize their outreach. When a prospect receives outreach from their SDRs, Lauren wants it to be of the best pieces of outreach they’ve ever seen. Lauren’s second goal is whenever an SDR leaves the team, whether it's for another position internally or working for a new company, she wants whoever hires them to find them to be the most driven, hardworking, curious and ambitious people they’ve ever worked with. It’s all part of the brand Lauren is developing for her team, as she strives to help create a phenomenal career foundation for all the people that are on the team. If you’re looking for ways to improve your Sales Development program and overcome similar challenges, contact us at Tenbound today for a no-obligation exploratory call. After graduating, Robert decided to go into Sales; a good fit as he enjoys meeting and talking to new people. Following the advice of his family and mentors, he combined this with his love of technology and went into software sales.
Since then he’s worked his way up the ranks at companies like Outreach, before becoming Senior Director of Inside Sales at AuditBoard—#3 on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500. He sat down with us to discuss the Sales Development challenges they face, creating the best possible tech stack, and their plans for growth in 2020. Building a strong Sales Development teamFor Robert, the top challenge he faces is keeping everyone on the team excited and motivated. It's a challenge, trying to convince a stranger to give you time out of their day to take a meeting and look at your product or service, so Robert wants to make sure his team is having fun and feels valued. It’s also important to keep the recruiting talent pipeline strong. Robert was taught by a former VP of Sales he worked for that the primary job of any good sales leader is to always be recruiting the best talent possible. You can never take your foot off the gas when it comes to networking, interviewing and hiring. Finally, it’s important to make sure you’re onboarding that talent properly. For Robert, it's important that he gives everybody a great experience and that they have every tool and bit of wisdom they need to be successful. Creating a best-in-class technology stackWhen Robert first came to AuditBoard, there weren’t a lot of systems in place. As a result, he was able to create the exact tech stack he wanted:
By constantly checking what’s out there, he ensures his team has the best tools available that money can buy, something that gives them a huge strategic advantage. Bridging the gap between sales and marketing Robert sees his job as bridging the gap between sales and marketing. He works closely with their marketing leaders so he can understand what they're doing, as it's going to come down the funnel and eventually reach his team. At the same time, he’s also heavily involved in the account-based work his team is doing on the outbound side. They reward their business development team, not just for following up diligently with all of their inbound leads, but also for being avid outbound hunters. Sales Development in 2020 For AuditBound, the plan is to continue growing the team. That means going from a headcount of 16 to 26 and creating a diverse team with a wide range of talents, experience, and interests. It’ll also include promoting some of the more experienced top performers into leadership roles, as well as giving people the opportunity to move cross-departmentally at the company. It’s all about helping them accelerate their career. As for the Sales Development team, they'll continue testing different messaging, different tools, different strategies, and different channels to reach people and spread the good word of AuditBoard to auditors around the world. If you’re looking for ways to improve your Sales Development program and overcome similar challenges, contact us at Tenbound today for a no-obligation exploratory call. From his first job as a box office cashier, Stephan has always had a taste for sales. Drawn to the consultative approach, he took on many different sales roles before becoming the Sales Development Manager at SteelHouse.
He spoke to Tenbound about the challenges his team face, how sending physical gifts helps them stand out, and much more. Sales Development challenges For Stephan, the biggest challenge is getting in front of the right people. A lot of decision-makers today still don't want to take the phone call or reply to the email, even if they know it's something that they're looking for. Once you’re in front of the right person, how do you stand out? Just how much more creative can you be? While there’s plenty you can do in terms of research and personalization, sometimes that still isn’t enough to get a response. Finding new ways to make your message even more relevant is a constant struggle. Finally, the internal workings of companies and how Sales Development supports both marketing and sales brings its own challenges. Having worked on both sides, where the Sales Development team reported to either sales or marketing, Stephan is very familiar with how difficult that can be. Using technology to stand out Stephan’s number one tool at SteelHouse is their Sales Engagement platform. They use Apollo, which combines prospecting and the engagement into one tool. They also use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find the most up to date information about companies and the people who work there. One tool that’s been particularly useful is Sendoso, a platform for sending gifts to prospects and clients. It’s enabled the team to get creative with what they're sending out; sometimes it might be a Starbucks gift card, other times it might be a lawn chair with the prospect’s university insignia on it. Either way, it’s getting them in front of the right people and starting a conversation. Combing Sales Development strategies SteelHouse uses both an account-based and demand gen approach. For Stephan, the key is consistent communication. That means talking with the sales team to confirm the exact strategy and approach for going after accounts, while marketing gets the right message in front of the relevant people at those companies. On the demand gen side, SteelHouse has a great team that’s always producing content around their offerings and the space that they operate in, content that gets a lot of interest. All of that comes back to the SDR team for qualification before being passed over to the sales team. Conclusion These are exciting times for Stephan, with a growing team and plenty of innovations in the industry. For the Sales Development team at SteelHouse, he can't wait to dive in and explore more options for creativity in 2020. From there, Stephan wants to continue the success they’ve seen so far: “We just can't take our foot off the gas pedal. Like I tell my team all the time, I don't ever want you to think that getting to 100% means your job is done. What are you doing to make sure you're at 150% of your goal? How do you get to 200%? How can you keep on going all the way to the last day of the month?” If you’re looking for ways to improve your Sales Development program and overcome similar challenges, contact us at Tenbound today for a no-obligation exploratory call. |
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