Gordon Stephens

To all SDRs or anyone entering B2B sales, read this post to avoid falling into common traps. 1. The most successful AEs I have met were the best SDRs. 2. SDRs who didn’t excel in the role and are now AEs are still struggling to generate their own pipeline. 3. AEs who skipped the SDR role, often due to an MBA or strong interview skills, fear switching jobs and roles without inbound leads. They’ve never faced the grind of building a pipeline from scratch, filled with rejections. 4. AEs who have never been an SDR majorly rely on their SDRs or Inbound leads from marketing to help them build pipeline and if any Quarter they don't get inbound or enough meetings from SDRs they sh** in their pants. 5. When these AEs become managers, they often question their team—"Where are the numbers?" or "Why isn’t there a pipeline?"—instead of guiding them on building it. Lacking experience in pipeline generation, they fail to lead by example and eventually lose the respect of their team. Learn the art and science of being an SDR and excel at this job at any cost, you will never have to look back or depend on anyone for pipeline EVER. Prospecting and Generating Pipelines is fundamental to Sales whether you are an SDR, AE, Sr Manager, or VP if you don't know how to do OUTBOUND you will continuously live a sales life of fear and anxiety. So SDRs ask yourselves do you want to be such AE and Managers in the future who depend on others to determine their performance and faith or would you like to own your job? #sales #prospecting #outbound #pipeline #sdr #ae #b2b #saas

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People don’t realize what “closing skills” are in sales, and they’re not “is persuasive.” Reps with closing skills CONSISTENTLY know, can choreograph and advise on how the deal gets signed and returned. And their forecast accuracy reflects those skills.

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Multi-threading... A skill that's fast becoming the most critical in a sales reps arsenal. Why? 🤔 The market is tough at the moment. 🤔 Buyers are more budget conscious. 🤔 CFOs are asking teams to reduce spend and cut back on investment. 🤔 Prospects that once had buying power and sign off capability now have to get approval from C-Suite. It sounds like an uphill battle 🏃‍♂️‍➡️⛰️ but the truth is, multi-threading is not as daunting as you might think. ⭐️ Here's some tips that have worked well for me in the last 6 months ⭐️ 🗺 Map out your accounts. Org charts are critical for multi-threading. You need to understand who your prospects are, who they report to, and who holds decision making power. Tip - LinkedIn SalesNav let's you build drag and drop org charts! 🗣️ Check with your your champion. Confirm your org chart is correct. Ask them what the process is for bringing on a new vendor. If they don't know, 🆘 they are not a true champion. 📧 Share content early. Begin introducing yourself to key stakeholders quickly. Tip - Connect on LinkedIn with a short and sweet connection request, something like "Wanted to put a face to a name following some great conversations I've been having with (champion name) re (challenge). I'll send over some content via email shortly. I look forward to hearing your thoughts." 🎺 Make sure your content is personalised, engaging, and stands out. TOP TIP - Using a tool like trumpet 🎺 (digital sales room) is a sure fire way to encourage stakeholder engagement. Upload clear and concise value props, how you can solve their businesses challenges, client case studies and more. Ask these contacts to bookmark the page as you will regular update it with content as the deal progresses. And, track their engagement, so you can meet them in the moment. So far, my prospects have been LOVING it! 📞 Pick up the phone. Once you've connected on LinkedIn and sent content, call prospects to ensure that they have seen it. Ask what questions they have and tell them about next steps. By doing the above, when it comes to negotiation these stakeholders will be informed and aware of the entire process to date, and you and your product will be top of mind 🧠 Tenured AE's in my network (I know there are a lot of you), what do you do to successfully multi-thread? P.S. You can guess what I'll be doing in the office today :😉 #multithreading #sales #digitalsalesrooms #dsr #aestrategies

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Most sales leaders focus on their top performers. But your best reps will crush quota whether you help them or not. Here's the uncomfortable truth about scaling revenue... Your top 10% will succeed despite you. They'll figure out how to sell your product and close deals even if you give them zero support, no collateral, and an undefined ICP. But you can't build a scalable revenue engine on top 10% talent alone. It's just math. Even with a rigorous interview process and strong recruiting brand, our 12-month retention rate at Levelset was around 55%. And that was GOOD. The key to scaling isn't finding more unicorns. It's raising the floor for everyone else. That means writing down exactly what success looks like. Not just hoping good people will "figure it out." I learned this the hard way. For the first 4 years (or so), we closed deals almost in spite of ourselves. No real sales playbook. No defined process. Just talented people working hard. When we finally documented our exact process - from first touch to close - our ramp time plummeted and consistency shot up. The uncomfortable truth? Most founders spend way more time recruiting than preparing to train and support their hires. Your playbook doesn't need to be fancy. Start with one document: "How to Run a Demo." Make it painfully detailed. Your top reps will hate it. Your new reps will love you for it.

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How did ZoomInfo Copilot help Account Manager Dave Howell close a $195,000 deal? 🤔 From surfacing insights about customer sentiment and product interest to identifying a C-level decision-maker who helped seal the deal, Copilot empowered Dave with everything he needed to win his client's business. Watch the full story below. ⬇️ #ZoomInfoCopilot #sellbetter #gtm #zoominfo

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How did ZoomInfo Copilot help Account Manager Dave Howell close a $195,000 deal? 🤔 From surfacing insights about customer sentiment and product interest to identifying a C-level decision-maker who helped seal the deal, Copilot empowered Dave with everything he needed to win his client's business. Watch the full story below. ⬇️ #ZoomInfoCopilot

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Hey Sales Leaders - your sales reps don't want to be automated... they want to be coached. The data has shown time and time again... the majority of your replies come from the minority of the emails you send. It's the +80% personalized emails. It's the 1 offs. NOT the "scaled" attempts Teach your reps so they can thoughtfully grow in the role.

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I think Tim Davidson's post below applies equally to #SalesDevelopment teams as it does to #marketing. If your #SDRs are sending out quality, personalized outreach, they're likely educating some of your future customers in ways that your attribution data will never accurately give them credit for. 😕 So much buzz on LinkedIn debating "is the SDR job dead?" "How can you make sure your BDR team is profitable" etc. Business Development Executives are out there justifying their teams' existence on a monthly basis. And yet, if you got rid of your SDR team... ...if you went from years of having a squad of well-trained, hard-working SDRs... ... who every day were writing personalized emails, making cold calls, sending gifts to target accounts, leaving voice memos, posting on Linkedin... ....if you just turned that all off one day the way marketers turn off an ad campaign that their metrics suggest is not performing well, then likely you'd lose more than just the revenue you were attributing to the SDR function. Because beyond sending out emails, those SDRs are sending out vibes, and vibes matter 😎

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Every seller I know is looking to elevate their game and win over C-suite executives. Learn from the best with ZoomInfo's top sales tips, including insights from our CEO and Founder, Henry Schuck.  Check out the definitive guide to selling to the C-suite in 2024: bit.ly/4aSCL3i

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SDR Dashboards - what do you want to see? Gimme your top 3 stats/charts/reports you like to see on YOUR dashboard for pipeline gen. There's the obvious activity levels and SQL/SAL volumes but what else do you like to see.....

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I think sales leaderboards are genius for so many reasons. But I also don’t want to get hung up on the numbers. I think it’s easy to feel the urgency to up your numbers. But I feel like that’s how you get commission breath. I think about this a lot. And I just gotta trust that the urgency should be on the activities and not the numbers. The numbers are just a result of the activities. If I continue to: -Connect with more people through outreach -Ask inquisitive and purposeful questions -Seek to understand the person -Prioritize the relationship -Provide great service I see no other option but to believe that if I continue to do all of those things… ...everything will take care of itself. And I feel like this is true for everything and for every goal. Winners and losers have the same goals. It’s their habits and actions that differentiate them. It’s mastering the basics.

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The #SAAS revolution of ever growth of sales & market cap is not working for most users The impact of unspent licenses and unused tools are becoming an eye sore The use it or lose it philosophy with users are being used for many IT tools by business focussed IT departments I see decommissioning of SAAS tools becoming a trend as many companies see taking out systems that are just protecting old ways of doing work a value driver Those providers that try to arm twist customers into staying may succeed in the very short term, but are well served to remember that SAAS was sold on " pay per drink", rip and replace and their ilk #Salesforce #Microsoft

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Samuel Adams: a pioneer of modern enterprise sales strategy? Sellers cannot: - create urgency - create priorities - make events We can: - map our solution to a high priority - uncover urgency through great discovery in the words of Samuel Adams... great enterprise sellers help their customers "wisely improve" those events. #sales

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You make a cold call... Prospect says "I'm not interested" at the top of the call. Now you have two options: - 1. You can either treat this as an 'objection' - where you take the words literally & say something along the lines of... "You don't even know what it's about yet - so can I just quickly explain?" Which will likely get their back up even more... Or 2. You treat it for what it is - most likely a knee-jerk reaction to an unsolicited call, where it serves to get rid of you. The prospect's amygdala (reptilian brain) has kicked in. It's a classic fight or flight response to protect them from a perceived threat - in this case that you'll either take up too much of their time or talk them into something they don't want. So we need a response that deals with this reality, something like... "Of course - I know I've caught you off guard a bit this morning. Before we hang up mind me asking, is this just the worst possible time, was my intro that bad, or do you simply hate cold calls?" Now sit back & let them respond. 9/10 you'll get something closer to the truth - because you've labelled the situation & given them a few options. You've also made yourself human through honesty & vulnerability, which people almost always respond positively to. So the next time you hear any of the following... "I'm in a meeting." "Send me an email." "I'm good thanks." "We already have a supplier." "Call me in 6 months." "Where did you get this number?!" "I'm a bit busy right now." Etc. Know what you're dealing with - namely that these are not 'objections' but usually fall into: smokescreens, rebuffs, questions or statements. Want more like this? Cover all bases to 12 of the most common cold call 'objections' with 50 responses by clicking on the link below... For £30 never become tongue tied again. https://lnkd.in/ey3uSjmb #sales #coldcall

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Here is the real impact that value selling is having for revenue teams: Tom Pisello David Yockelson 🔑48% improvement in winrate 🔑35% increase in deal size 🔑25% reduction in sales cycle time BUT...... ⛔️ only 19% of reps and 19% of pipeline is using value selling today. BIGGGG opportunity here...!

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Not all leads deserve a VIP pass. Here are 3 ways AEs can gatekeep their pipeline like a bouncer at a nightclub. 1/ Initial Screening Before you let a lead in, ensure they meet the basic criteria. Do they have the influence, incentive and/or information needed to make a deal happen? 2/ Assessing Fit Just because they’re in your ICP and are genuinely interested isn’t enough, make sure you uncover a potential problem (or opportunity) that you can sell to. 3/ Manage Capacity Just because your sales leaders expect a 3x pipeline multiple, doesn’t mean you should commit to deals that are Dead on Arrival. Focus on quality over quantity to avoid being overwhelmed with poor leads. It's not about how much pipeline you have, it's about the pipeline that you commit to. Rather than focus on pipeline multiples, you can still hit your number by focusing increasing your win rate and ACV. 4/ Maintain Pipeline Integrity I've seen AE's qualify pipeline from an SDR they like just to help the SDR get paid. While I can appreciate this from a team culture standpoint, it doesn't help either of you in the long-run. Remove emotion when qualifying leads and give your SDR honest feedback so that they can improve. The analogies here are endless, what are some others?

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How we drove $2.5+ mil in pipe for a 50+ BDR org: Look at a list of key contacts who left their previous company Enrich in Clay with current company, company size Cross reference with Salesforce to see account owners, ROE Check previous, current accounts with Gong AMA to build out an account brief Push into Evabot AI for Sales Outbound 2.0 to build a 100% custom AI sequence BDRs execute Super admins start a new deal cycle $2.8 mil and counting in pipe generated (Granted... 1 mil came from Coca Cola... but if we helped start an opp at Coca Cola, I'll take it)

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SDR Leaders: “I statements” are killing your reps! Are your SDRs inadvertently making conversations about themselves? It's time to shift the focus. 🚫 "I think it would be a good idea for you to speak with one of my AEs..." 🚫 "I would love to show you our platform..." These "I" statements put your company and SDR first. They scream, "This is how I get paid!" Let's flip the script. The Golden Rule of SDR Conversations: -It's never about the SDR. -It's never about your company. -It's always about the prospect and their pain points. Action Steps for SDR Leaders: -Stomp out "I" statements during role-plays -Train SDRs to disconnect from the outcome (h/t Josh Braun ) -Emphasize: Not every prospect is a fit, and that's OK Remember, there are plenty of fish in the sea. Coach your SDRs to focus on understanding the prospect's needs first. If there's no fit, move on gracefully. By making this shift, your SDRs will build better relationships, have more meaningful conversations, and ultimately, drive better results. But I could be wrong 😑

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