Digging mud; be a historic SDR
"Grind now, shine later." - J. Cole
I started my career as an outbound SDR on a daily quota. It was six meetings a day to hit goal and four meetings to get paid. It was a grind. Before I started, my manager told me, “Most people here know this is going to be a hard job, but they are fancy folk, and when the diamond is in the mud, they are going to stop digging.” This was his way of saying, get the job done and be prepared to get your hands dirty.
Here is what worked:
Smart prospecting. SDRs don't fail because they don't know what to say. They fail because they don't know who to call. I would spend most nights creating "hot lists" of leads in my territory. These calls had an incredibly high hit rate.
Aggressive time management. Block everything in your calendar—every follow-up, every call blitz, every coffee break, etc. Don't bog yourself down with microdecisions on what to do next. You can't afford the lost time. It looks like this:
Blue for call blocks, orange for hard follow-ups, green for AE meetings, and red for non-sales work.
No wheel spinning. If I knew someone was not going to set a meeting, I pretty much hung up on them. I didn't see the ROI in spending an hour trying to be a hero and selling them in a different direction.
Nurture the AE relationship. I treated my AE’s time with respect and their deals with urgency. At peak, I was supporting 18 outside field reps. They each wanted their meetings set differently and had different requirements. I followed all of them - and in return, they fed me back. When they had hot leads that needed follow-up, they sent them to me.
Inbounds are a gift from god. I remember once sprinting from the lunch table back to my desk to make sure I got to the customer within a minute of hitting the site. Don't f'up free money.
Personalize every email. This was 2012, so there was no sequencing or sales engagement yet. You had to write your own follow-ups. It worked better than some of the generic comms and cadences I did later in my career.
Nothing ever beats the phone. Pick up and start dialing.
The SDR role is the most challenging role in tech. You need to optimize your chances for success by calling the right people, being present and available to get lucky, forming allies, and working your ass off.
Until next time.