Full Transcript below. Here you can find the condensed show notes.
Intro: You’re listening to the sale success stories podcast where we deconstruct world class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more visit us on TOP1.FM. Here’s your host Scott Ingram.
Scott Ingram: Today on the sales success stories podcast my guest is Reid Oliver. Reid is the top business development rep at Vidyard and focuses on the large enterprise space.
Welcome to the show Reid.
Reid Oliver: Thanks a lot Reid, glad to be here.
Scott Ingram: We going to do things a little bit different today, different for me anyway and that is since Vidyard is a video marketing space it seemed only appropriate that we also record this as a video in addition to the audio that we typically do for the podcast.
So, if you are listening to this and you would like to see my head talking to Reid’s head, you can over to Top1.FM /12 that are the number 12 for the episode 12. You’ll see the video and we will also have all of the show notes and links to anything else that we have talked about throughout the show today.
So , like we always do with the show , I’m gonna ask Reid to start with the three things that has set him apart and has got allowed him to get to the top of the leader board .
Reid Oliver: Absolutely and I think that’s a great way to kick things of.
I think in the BDR world and sales we often living life in the fast lane heads down, so when I had the opportunity to think through these it was a great point for me to really reflect and kind of see , how I‘ve gotten here and what steps I’ve taken.
The first thing thinking back all the way back to the beginning of starting off in my role, something I think was imperative was asking a ton of questions and really learning. So, I’m lucky enough that I’m in a position that I have a manager who is a rock star across our company , he’s always open to learning new things and helping us grow .
So I really leveraged that early on and I asked a lot of situationally specific questions, whether it would be how to handle current messaging, and what strategies to go into accounts with? And if really helped me ramp up quickly get to where I wanted to be in the role and then not only my specific manger but I also tried to really be a sponge and soak in everything my peers where doing when I saw that they were being successful.
Whether that was somebody in a role that I wanted to move into within the company , somebody that was doing really well in the BDR spot , I tried to pick and choose things that I saw them doing that were working and put them into my own processes and really tried to make it fit there.
So, that was a big thing for me at the beginning, the second thing is just taking action from what I was learning. I think it’s easy to have one thing going in one ear and out the other especially when you have a lot going on but to actually be meticulous in what you learning and actually action that knowledge to your day to day processes is a real big thing.
It doesn’t matter what you reading, what you’re hearing in blog post you action need to put it towards your data day to day and see what is being successful.
And then the final thing, the final thing that I thought it’s something that I really try to apply not only on my role but also in my day to day, is just to be gritty. On of my favorite pet talks by Angela Duckworth is around perseverance and about really being hungry to succeed and I think that if you come into your role, if you come into anything in life.
Being hungry and being willing to do whatever it takes to kind of get to your top role or where you want to be, it’s going to allow you to really to do those little things and really push through and get to the top leader board spot.
Scott Ingram: Yeah, that’s great and that’s a great TED talk, I recommend folks listen to that. Reid, it sounds like there is a lot of learning, so you’re not only talking advantage of your leadership and your peers and the people around you but also different information sources and putting that into action.
What are the most common, what does your information diet look like? What are you listening to? What are you watching? What are you reading? That informing, that process, that you have built for yourself.
Reid Oliver: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think my information diet is really consistently evolving , here at Vidyard we have a few different channels were we share a lot of blog post , industry news , that are very video specific in tech world , so I take advantage of that content .
It’s something that is trending and that is worth sharing within the company so I really focus on that. I also do a lot of reading , our company is lucky enough that we have a library where every new hire will put in a book that they think it helps them get to where they are today.
So, I‘ve taken full advantage of number of those books, a few that I’ve read when I first started out in technology was Marc Benioff, Salesforce, his sort of memoir of how he started out that company. Recently I read phonetical prospecting by Jib Blow and me actually a few of his strategies and I’m using them every day in my role here, so.
It’s neat when you can grab from different information sources and kind of apply them to your day to day.
Scott Ingram: Before I keep digging into this conversation with Reid and we are going to go quite deep into his strategy and kind of what’s working in his role as a BDR.
I wanted to thank my inaugural sponsor which is Nudging and these guys literally are making this show possible. So, your action here is easy, you will get to sign up for something that is free, that will help you.
So Nudge is a modern sales platform that uses AI to help you find insights on your prospects and customers. It’s a tool that I use every day and it keeps getting better , just added a Chrome plug in , so it shows up right inside my Gmail and I get to see some of those insights on my contacts as I’m in Gmail.
So, to get your own free account go to Top1.FM /nudge. Top1.FM/nudge and you can get your free account.
So Reid talks about a little bit more about your role in specifics and how you got to number one. In particular I’m interested in what you mean by, what is a large enterprise these days?
Reid Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. So large enterprise for us we basically we set of as a revenue, so we looking at a company who are above a billion dollars in annual revenue. My role specifically is to identify who in that revenue basin can benefit most from our solutions.
So my real goal is to understand what a company is doing within a video strategy and that’s across the organization. Some things are easy to pick out from a marketing stand point, I can see what videos they have from their website, and I can understand what campaign they are running.
When it comes to internal campaigning that often has to be a bit, digging a little bit deeper which is something I can touch on later. For my end goal is to understand how I can bring value to the company and who the right people are to talk to at that company.
Because at the end of the day I need to book meetings with account executive that are actually having meaningful conversations where we proving value on our end and where they interested to hear how our solution can help the on theirs.
Scott Ingram: Great stuff. Reid quantify your results for us a bit what does it mean to be number one at Vidyard?
Reid Oliver: Sure we measured on how many meetings we are able to book with our account executive as well as how many of those are deemed qualified opportunities. Myself over the past 6 months I’ve been at around 140% of my quota attainment, sales is really an up and down process.
Sometimes you have ups and sometimes you have downs. I’ve been able to mash those months together and really getting the numbers towards it.
Scott Ingram: Very Good. So let’s talk about some of those specifics. There’s been a lot of interest in these SDR, BDR type of conversations that we’ve had and I really like to dig into the process. So walk us through kind of end to end, the research that you’re doing, the prep that you’re doing as you get ready into one of these accounts and then what works? I mean in today’s world what are you finding most consistently helping you open up some of these doors.
Reid Oliver: Sure, there really are a ton of tools out there and a lot of them are fantastic and I think you really need to pick and choose which ones are going to benefit your style most. So for me it all being sin the research phase, we use Sales Force here.
So, I will often look into accounts and run specific reports on whether we’ve had conversations with them in the past, whether we have met with them in conferences. If we never have any sort of interaction with them, I will go even deeper like follow the company on sales navigator, set up Google, just so I can understand when people are interested on the video process.
Because if you can understand when a company, has a reason to invest in video or to invest in their digital strategy you’re going to be more likely to have that conversation. So I really being with the research phase and try to understand does it make sense to me reaching out at this point in time?
I find that research is one of the important things whether it’s a company or specific people because if you really feel in the back of your mind that you’re reaching out for a purpose or a reason it’s not going to bother you whether you’re interrupting their day or whether they too busy . Because you coming there with real value and you really want to help, you really believe in the company that you’re standing behind.
So I think that’s a big part of how you find the companies that you’re going after and the people specifically that you’re looking to contact.
Scott Ingram: And I assume the research that you’re doing is one kind of high level within the company. Like you said before it’s not just kind of the marketing angles but how else might they be using the video and then kind of connecting the dots between individuals. And what they care about and how video is going to impact their own roles. Is that accurate?
Reid Oliver: Yeah, exactly. We actually had Jill Riley at our office earlier this week, she is a social selling guru if you will and she talked a little about how in order to be interesting, you need to be interested.
And I really liked this cause it is something that I try to be , in my research phase I try to be interested in what companies doing .Maybe understand their business model , maybe understand what that specific marketing executive wants to have for their goals. And I have experienced more and more speaking with these professional, I can kind of understand what priorities that have what they like to hear?
But every individual company is different and if I’m able to take the time and kind of be really interested in what I believe they looking to accomplish , it often transpires into more likely them being willing to try it out with me as well.
Scott Ingram: Yeah, awesome! I know Jill Riley quite well; we were actually colleagues back in Ale quite days, so she’s great. Reid talked about, so you done the research, now you prepared to go after the account. What is your outreach look like?
Reid Oliver: Yes, so we use Sales loft yeah at Vidyard. It’s really great because it allows me to schedule and have my priorities set when I go into the day. I have specific cadency that I have built out, it’s a scenario where I have different emails set for different persona’s and then I personalize each of my emails based upon the research that I have done.
So some if it is going to be from a template so that I can save some time but I’m always going to be adding 2 or3 touch points through those cadencies. It’s a mix of emailing making phone call and also having social touches, whether that’s liking post on LinkedIn , commenting of different articles or forms that I see online , it’s all about having different angels and mixing up a variety of the outreach that you’re doing.
And in my case specifically, I’ve been trying something in the large enterprise phase, it is even more difficult to actually get this people attention. So I actually work something where I can understand as soon as an email is getting into their inbox or whether they have opened up a video that I have sent because we are able to track that on our end.
I’ll put them into something that I call a hot cadence where I work specifically on one to one bases. I move in more of a c consultant bases and I try to further that research and try to understand exactly what they trying to do in order to book that meeting.
It’s almost my own marketing funnel if you will on the BDR side.
Scott Ingram: And that’s really interesting and talks about, I’m sure you’re doing some really interesting things the way that you’re using video in your prospecting, talk about that.
Reid Oliver: Yeah. To drink my own cool aid here, video has been a game changer for me in terms of cutting through the clutter. I mean I think I see every day LinkedIn post about how many email executives they getting or we often see people who rail this is another poor BDR , SDR prospecting email , so I try to really think differently and a huge part of doing that is including video in my email strategy .
So I found personally just including a thumb nail of myself or with a white board inside the organization , say hey Scott my click through rates through my emails are actually gone up by 5 to 7 X. And I’ll even take that further and I’ll put together a short demonstration of where I see on the website I can provide value.
How I noticed a campaign coming up that I think I could be interested. So the whole point is just trying to get somebody to take that 10 seconds while they scanning, to say ok this looks interesting me and then boom you actually able to follow up and understand and hopefully have that meeting, have that conversation with them.
Scott Ingram: And what is that tool because you guys actually have a tool that is available to not just those that work at Vidyard.
Reid Oliver: Yeah absolutely, it’s called Viewedit, there’s actually a free version that you could use, it’s a chrome extension and the whole idea is that you can either what we call selfie video. Let me show you what I look like being recorded right now and insert it in the body of the email or you can also share your screen and you going to show up in the little bubble in the corner.
And you can walk through different things that you want to share whether it be something on the website as I mentioned , something on our own platform but I found it to be really effective communication medium above and beyond just the emails or just the phone calls .
And there even different ways, I use it initially if I’m trying to reach out from a cold touch prospecting point but I also find that it is a powerful after a meeting kind of recap. “Hey , Scott this is what we kind of talked about today , it was great having that conversation , I wanted to put this short video together just to recap what we spoke about , so you can have this on hand when you review this on your own. “
So there’s different ways that I found it has been effective but the number one on the BDR side is to be able to just cut through that cluttering and get those responses up.
Scott Ingram: And I think that is so powerful , it’s actually how this conversation started , a couple of your colleagues are fans if the show and they sent me a video and said” hey this is something we thing your audience would really dig , you know let’s talk about maybe sponsoring an episode.
“And I said: “Err, I said we full on sponsor, we a 100% focused on Nudge and Influitive, who are our sponsors right now but I do think that there is a lot of value in this particular tool.” And I asked for the number one person, let’s just kind of cheat and have them on the show.
That’s how Reid got to the show but I think what makes View edit so powerful and interesting is so much of all of this automation of email and these processes, people see through it, right. They can see that even if you are personalizing a little bit, it looks like I could be 1 of 100 or 1 of 1000 today.
And I think just taking that couples of minutes to send that one of video especially if you can have something that say,” hi Scott “or whatever it is. I think this is really personalized and d I think it is so much more attention grabbing and so different.
So, again it’s one of those things it will work for a few more months and then everybody will go doing it and then you’ll have to go find the next think but for now it is a very interesting tool.
So Reid as you looking at this thing obviously a video is a piece that is having an impact, as far as and maybe it’s the variety that is the spice o0f prospecting in this case. But what do you see most consistently gets you that conversion, I mean if you thinking about sales from a funnel prospective. What is typically the thing that converts, that gets you to the meeting?
Reid Oliver: Yeah that’s a great question and something that I try to often reflect on. I think I kind of touched on an early , the biggest thing I try to do it be different and kind of separate myself from the masses and the BDR space, so what I’ll often try to do , is I’ll just try to find something , something that’s going to peak somebodies interest .
So for example, one of our marketing Ops guys on our team he was recently named the Hinges top 3 game changers list. I always read things like that and it happened to be that I noticed that there were 5 other people named on the list who are also companies that I’ve been working with currently in the large enterprise space.
So it’s a matter of , “hey congratulations on the award , we’d love to hear a little bit about what your teams doing by the way we’re also somebody that is honored in this space we’d love to connect, “ or something like that . Were it’s not necessarily the ask of: hey do you have 5 to 10 minutes to chat because you want to be able to provide value from the beginning on.
So sometimes I’ll even have email where it’s not necessarily an ask at all, it’s more acting from a consultative space and just saying if you like to learn a little bit more about how our companies similar to X are using our platform to achieve results like these, I’m happy to help and kind of work with you on that.
Scott Ingram: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think what you said that resonated the most for me is that you just have to find a way to separate yourself and differentiate yourself from all of the other BDR’s , SDR’s that are reaching out .
And you just have to be really creative in a lot of ways , I feel like its doing the right thing , that you want to learn , you want to grow , you want to seek this stuff out . But seeking out the specifics of, you know what the nest practices is in the industry, they quickly become what everybody is doing and they just don’t work anymore and then people go make fun of them on LinkedIn.
Reid Oliver: Exactly.
Scott Ingram: So, Reid let’s take a step back. What’s your origin story? How did you get started in this sales path?
Reid Oliver: Yeah, it’s funny you asked that , it’s kind of the typical question in the interview process when you moving into sales and I don’t thing I locked down with an answer yet but a big part of me getting into sales is , all growing up I was big into sports. I liked the completive nature of it, I liked the idea of being on a team, also being able to control your own destiny and I really like sales because essentially it’s what you bring to the table am what you going to get out of it.
So whether you’re the one going to the office and really grinding through and really pushing to try and get your numbers up , it’s what you bring , I like to control that aspect .And I also think, I really love having conversations with people and kind of learning what people are doing , learning about new businesses.
From a young age I worked at a at the golf course for 6 or 7 years, where every day was,” hey Scott how are you today or beautiful weather, ah. “ So just having those conversations and I think it made me comfortable in meeting to familiarize myself , personalize myself , even in sending videos just having that appeal , so I like that communication value in it as well.
Scott Ingram: Awesome! And of your accomplishments today, what are you most proud off?
Reid Oliver: I think personally the thing that I like in my curveball is, I‘ve been able to align myself to a place were a lot of my team mates will come to me to maybe ask specific questions, maybe ask about current account that they going into, maybe they not sure what they want to do or even if they want to sit around a call and shadow it.
But the fact that I’m somebody in their eyes that they can go to , really means a lot to me but at the same time I end up learning a ton from them to because it kind of a different scenario than I’m not use to and I’m able to take on sort of a leadership or coaching role.
So I think I’m really happy that’s something I’m able to take part in.
Scott Ingram: Yeah, that’s interesting and typically I wanted to ask the question later but I’m starting to have some suspicions here. Where do you thing this evolves for you? Where you hoping to take your sales career?
Reid Oliver: Yeah , I’d really like to get into a full on executive role , sometimes when I’m working with deals on the early stages and I see things transpiring it almost pains me to not be able to kind of continue on . That being said I have full trust in my account executive that I’m working directly with but I’d love to have that closing aspect in the account executive role.
But also in the longer time arisen I would like to move into a management role to because as I mentioned I love the opportunity to work with others , to share what’s working for me and also gain knowledge from them as well.
Scott Ingram: Yeah that’s awesome! I think that a lot of individual contributors management path is not necessarily right for them but what I heard in your answer that sort of spoke to me is that you really care about that contribution and that coaching and that impacting on other people , so I think you’d make a pretty good manager.
So, Reid lets go in the other direction and I want you to dig really deep here and lay down on my leather coach and talk about the time when it was the hardest. Like what’s the biggest challenge that you had to get through in this portion of your career?
Reid Oliver: Yeah, so the hardest time that I’ve had here at Vidyard, I initially started out as a SDR, so that means that I’m getting in bound leads, having a lot more conversations. Two months in I was fortunate enough, I was doing well and there was also an opportunity for a BDR role that had opened up.
So when I moved into that , I was thrown right into the large enterprise space which is arguable one of the toughest to get started in just because it is a whole different ball game , it’s a whole different strategy in the conversation sector. And I ended up being at 38% of my quota that month which I included in the numbers at the beginning.
It was yeah, a pretty big wakeup call because it was something I was kind of cruising along, thinking that I was doing quite well, that was sort of a road block that I hit. And it was something that I really had to evolve with and kind of tie back to what we spoke of at the beginning.
What that meant for me was going to others who worked in large enterprise and setting meetings with them and saying” hey , can I talk about what you did , what I’m currently doing , kind of figure out a game plan here and I was eventually able to get out of that very quickly.
But it was a low point in the career.
Scott Ingram: Yeah, I’m glad you shared that and then tying it to what helped you get to the top is what helped you get out of the bottom, it sounds like.
Reid Oliver: Absolutely.
Scott Ingram: So, Reid I’ve improved my questioning on this line. So the first question learned to ask, are you a morning person or a night owl?
Reid Oliver: I’m more of a night owl myself.
Scott Ingram: Ok, so as a night owl I’m curious about what does your evening routine look like? Talk me through that.
Reid Oliver: Yeah, my evening routine is really getting myself ready for me morning routine because I know that my mornings aren’t as strong as my evenings. So a lot of my end of day is going through my calendar, setting specific reminders that I need to know, that I need to do both in the morning and all day next day.
Its prepping what sort of tasks I’m going to do outside of just emailing , so whether that be social touching actions that I want to take , if somebody asked me to send them something I’m making sure that I have all that prepared . I’ll even use tools where I can schedule out my emails so that I am taking care of them in the night time for the morning, I’ll even go as far as that.
But it’s really a planning phase in the evening, kind of getting ready for the next day.
Scott Ingram: And when is that, how long does that take? I mean give us a little more detail about that, about what you’re processes there.
Reid Oliver: Yeah, it depends; it really varies on day to day. sometimes if I’m having a really busy week and I need to spend some time , I probably take an hour at the end of the night , sometimes while I’m on the coach watching TV getting ready for the next day, sometimes I’m still focused on the office.
But a lot of it is working through our sales tool sales loft, going through what my tasks are for the next day and kind of planning it out and saying ok, this is what I need to do here, this is the steps I need to take, grab a few articles that I want to share the next day to kind of take that next step.
And it allows me to move through my day really quickly because the previous das has it all set up for me, teed off if you will.
Scott Ingram: Yeah, that’s sweet, it there a particular way you try and structure that next day? I mean do you, are you blocking out time, how are you doing that?
Reid Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. So I mentioned fanatical prospecting a bit, one of the major things I took from that book is setting up call blocks in my calendar. What I do is I switch it up between pacific time and east coast time and I will variate day after day but I’ll set blocks were all I do is focusing on making those calls .
And it actually gone a long way in getting more connections , having more conversations but it’s a good way to only focus on one thing , so that’s a big part of the day and it’s something that I use my calendar for , religiously if you will.
Scott Ingram: Very cool. And I’m going to try something with this episode, I haven’t done this before, we’re playing with a new tool. We also have a sales success community that is a part of the show that’s where the Influitive sponsorship comes to bear, so that’s hosted by Influitive.
So since you’re probably listening to this with your phone like in your hand or within the next couple of feet, if you text Top1 that’s the number one, Top1 to 444 999 that will get you an invite to the sales community that we got.
We got a lot of great resources in there as I keep going with Reid , I’m sure I’ll find something that I’ll ask him for and we’ll include that in the sales community . It’s just a nice little bonus for you, it’s totally free, just away for us to kind of give back and kind of build some community.
So again Top1 text that to 444999, quick has you got that’s only going to work for the 70% of our audience that is in the US. So, Reid I’m sorry your Canadian friends and those that are around the rest of the world, you still have to go to Top1.FM and out your email address in there.
So, Reid you talked before that there is a lot of different kind of tools and Apps, what are your favorites? What are the most important tools that you’re using? When we were obviously talked about Sales Force, we talked about Sales Loft. What else is in your arsenal?
Reid Oliver: Sure. A few chrome extensions that I find that really help me out. I find a chrome extension called detained, extensional I can go on a website, see a predictable, what they likely have in revenue? What kind of funding they have? If they a smaller company , what kind of technology using , so a big piece for us is understanding what type of automation system and what sort of CRM the company has ? And that arms you with a ton of intelligence especially if that are not a company that we currently have on our Sales Force, so I’m a big fan of that.
We also use Rapportive which gives me email addresses of LinkedIn , so if its sometime that we not able to find good data on we’ll use that in addition to kite desk. Where it’s another opportunity to grab data whether that is email addresses, contacts, where people are moving within a company. Those are some of the few extensions that are all 3 you can add no charges as a BBR or as a sales rep.
And then a big piece of my day to day is sales navigator on LinkedIn. I take full advantage of following specific product specs that I’m not connected with, following full companies and getting alerts on that end. So , I’ll often scan my own news feed on LinkedIn for information scenes going on in my network but I’ll also fully live in the navigator space where all the companies that I’m living with and contacting day after day.
Scott Ingram: Sweet, I just realized that a very funny association with Rapportive and it’s actually your fault. You guys did like a sales fails video and I know Greg Rosenberg is in one of those episodes. And he’s reading and it’s all people, its Greg Rosenberg and Matt Ian’s then Kyle Porter and some of those guys. And they all reading just bad sales emails and Greg’s reading something, “something along the lines of Rapportive showed me your LinkedIn profile and he’s like ok, what else you got,” So any way good stuff.
So Kyle, see Kyle. Thinking about Sales Loft now, Reid how would you describe your style?
Reid Oliver: Yeah, my style its pretty heads down when I’m at the office I’m pretty focused on what I want to be doing today. I’m definitely taking the opportunity to kind of converse with my team, converse the day to day offerings and what we having but I really try to stay focused on the task at hand and on the goals that I have.
And then while I am being focused, a big part as I mentioned is trying to think differently and strategically and differentiate myself. I think I have quite a few responses from people, people often say “Wow! This is a great email; I haven’t gotten something like this in the past.” I like to think a big part of it is directly from me, the big part of that is also including video in my email strategy but to try and blend those two together and just try to cut through that clutter.
Differentiation and strategy would be essentially the philosophy that I stick to.
Scott Ingram: So, its sound like you’re gritty, you’re kind of keeping your head down and in a lot of ways but doing it very creative and trying to understand above and beyond.
Reid Oliver: Exactly.
Scott Ingram: What motivates you or how do you motivate yourself? Because it sounds like you got a lot of drive, there’s been at least one challenging point. How are you keeping that energy level up and keeping that activity going.
Reid Oliver: To be honest the dash board motivates me quite a bit, when I go in and I know I’m having a slow month, I always myself peering at that even at sports I was always that guy that was checking the stats and kind of seeing what’s going on.
So, just from a purely numbers point of game, quantum matrix, that’s a big part of it. It’s also just my team we have a lot of team specs or activities we call them , we’ll be put into groups and have specific things that we will be measured on for the month and a huge part of that trying to be a part of the team and trying to win it for the group that we in.
And even my manager that I mentioned, he is an awesome guy, I have a ton of respect for him and I know that he is a happy camper when the numbers are pouring in from my end as well.
Scott Ingram: Nice. So what is the dash board? Is that a personal dash board, is that the company dashboard? What are we talking about here?
Reid Oliver: I guess I should elaborate on that. That is our team BDR dash board, so that’s something in sales Force where we can see, essential all of our matrix we are tracking. Things like how many view it’s our prospect are watching , strictly from an activity base how many emails , how many calls things like that , how much pipeline is being generated .
It’s really awesome because it gives us a holistic view from what’s going on in our BDR organization and something that I have book marked and open essentially all day.
Scott Ingram: Nice, so you were going to turn this into a freak in view day commercial I guess, so you actually bringing that into Sales Force, I assume that’s not part of the free version. Is that something that’s available to the public or just because you guys have the best stuff?
Reid Oliver: Unfortunately, that’s on our enterprise version, so we do have to hide that behind, a bit of a pale low in that sense. Yeah, we’re able to push in integration, sorry we able to integrate directly with sales person kind of understand when any of our prospects are watching the videos that we sending out.
So, it’s really advantageous on my end because I can understand, I think we have a stat of about 72% of our people watching some sort of video before ever contacting a company. So , if I can get a little bit of an idea that somebody is maybe interested but not ready to chat with me , I know that they kind of on that point of willing to chat with us and willing to have that conversation.
So it’s really video intelligence we call it and then we take on full advantage of that within sales force.
Scott Ingram: Sweet, I think you got to call Reid if you want that.
Reid Oliver: Absolutely, I will take calls; I’ll leave my number at the end.
Scott Ingram: Perfect. So, is there something that you believe that the average BDR, it would think its crazy?
Reid Oliver: Not crazy because honestly I’ve seen so many different styles that end up leading to success cause at the end I don’t think I can fault any one on a crazy factor. I think there is a lot of different ways to get success in sales, so I would never be one to ridicule another and try something new.
Cause I know myself , I’m trying things that I would never thought about even a month or 2 ago and some of them are working and some of them I thinking , why am I trying that , that’s crazy. So I think there is a lot of different ways to get there and I don’t think that there is something specific on that end.
Scott Ingram: So, it’s about applying your own brain basically it sounds like.
Reid Oliver: Yeah, I think a lot of it is just kind of figuring out what works and trying new things.
Scott Ingram: Yeah, so I got to Reid where I wanted to go, I wanted to ask on that dash board it sounds like you guys are tracking a lot of different matrix’s . What are the ones that you find that have the biggest impact and drive you or motivate you the most? What do you give the most attention to?
Reid Oliver: Well I pay the most attention to the hard numbers in terms of meetings booked and qualified opportunities because those are essentially the end goal but often times if those numbers aren’t there I have to look back and see maybe why is that. Maybe I’m having less activity, have I been moving in a different direction and not getting my numbers up across the board on the dash board.
And often times more often than not it is the people that have high activity that are doing the best because at the end of the day a big part of sales is the balance between having a numbers game and having the calls, having the emails then also using that differentiations, so when you do get into somebodies in box they actually willing to respond to you.
So, I think it’s making sure that your numbers are up and also applying all the strategies that you bringing in the back ground as well.
Scott Ingram: Yeah, that’s a good point I think that activity that wins the day but it’s the right activity , so it can’t be pure activity but if you looking at that , that’s the more important matrix than the result. I feel like if you doing the activity and you doing it in the right way , results just kind of come and you benefit from all the good karma that you generating from a sales prospective.
Reid Oliver: Yeah, exactly I think, one addition point that I want to bring out to the but it’s not actually on our dash board. It’s a matrix that I look at quite often is within Sales loft you able to understand what emails are opened , what your respond rates are , what your open click through rates are and that’s a bid thing that we track especially from a AB split testing stand point .
Whether we are sending video or whether we just sending text emails or kind of what’s working and I try to make sure that my ratio is kind of high because I don’t want to have wasted opportunity where somebody is clicking on my video or even opening my email and they not getting back to me. So it’s a big matrix that I” care about as well that I should point out.
Scott Ingram: You know you’ve been doing this for a little while; you’ve had this up and downs. What advice would you give to somebody that is starting out a new BDR role?
Reid Oliver: I think I’ll push back to the initial point that I said about just not been scared to ask questions. I think I was lucky enough that I was in an environment that really embraced that and I think a lot of these new tech companies are similar and you often have a mentor or peer that’s going to be working with you from the beginning.
Definitely leverage them , there’s not going to be a lot of stupid questions, as you get a little bit further down the line even myself I use to think , do I really have to ask this or figure this on my own but there never going to be these questions where they say don’t , leave me alone don’t ask that.
It’s all about learning at the beginning and picking the right people to learn from and I think it’s pretty obvious early on who’s doing well in your company, who you want to model what you doing after and it’s all about reaching out to them.
Even early on , I had people in my company that I hadn’t met yet and I just said ;”hey , man I’m new here , I heard you doing really well , can we grab a cup of coffee and talk about how you got to where you are? “And I think that was a big piece for me to kind of getting where I am and ranking up my learning.
Scott Ingram: Yeah, sound like you doing a lot of what I’m doing really well. So if you were in my shoes and you were talking to other top sellers, what would you want to ask them? What would you want to know?
Reid Oliver: Yeah, that’s a really interesting one. I think I would love to hear , much like you’ve asked me , sort of how do they go about choosing their accounts that they are working with and what’s their specific messaging is ?
I think it’s really powerful to just see what people are sending in emails and understanding what’s getting wins and what’s gaining traction across industries. I know ours specifically, we have a, if I have to brine up ViewedIt, we have a ViewedIt channel where we actually post the videos that are leading to successors, leading to responses and book meetings.
And begging able to say again, ok, Mark had a great video I’m gonna tailor some of that and messaging the Hughes on my own. So if you were even able to look a little bit further and understand there’s a community where people are sharing successful emails and not just the ones that passing on LinkedIn.
I think that will go a long way but that being said once everyone starts doing the same thing, like you mentioned in a few months it changes up again.
Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Well I think we finally found our sexy tit bit that I get to put into the community. Reid would you be willing to share a few of your best of, whether that be ViewedIt videos or other messaging that we could put into the community.
Reid Oliver: Absolutely, I would be more than happy to.
Scott Ingram: Awesome! See people I told you that there’s reason. So you got to text Top1 to 444999 , if you in the US or just go to Top1.Fm to get on that mailing list , we trying to load that thing up with a lot of good stuff.
I think I got a great question , I think it can be challenging for folks because not everybody is opened and willing to share that but I know that ,I’ve known a lot of people at Vidyard over the years and you guys have a super great kind of open culture . So I appreciate your willingness to contribute that. Reid who’s the very best sales person you know personally?
Reid Oliver: The best sales person I know personally is a friend of mine who was 2 years ahead of me at school. We both went to Western here at Ontario and he actually is at Sales Force right now and he was one of the big reasons that I decided to go into the BDR attack and the sass world because of a lot of the things that he was sharing with me.
I’ve modeled a lot of work that I do after him and he is one of the guys that you could just tell when you having a conversation with him, you know he is sharp and he is always on the ball and you think ok, I enjoy talking to you and see why other people as well and why you’re doing well in a sales atmosphere.
Scott Ingram: So what else? So what is making him such a great seller in your opinion? What are those things that you try to emulate the most?
Reid Oliver: I think that he is a really knowledgeable guy, is has a really strong business acumen and he takes that knowledge that he grasped whether it’s from education at school or kind of what he is learning at Sales Force and he applies it every day to those conversations that he is having.
And he also one of those guys , he is going to do anything to win as well , he is really competitive at nature that’s why he is one of the great friends of mine but it’s also why I think he is rising to the top pretty quickly over there. Just because of that ambition that he has.
Scott Ingram: Very cool, alright that brings us to the very hardest question I think I will ask and that is we talked about a lot of different things today and I try just like you want , learning is great but learning for the sake of learning doesn’t convert to sales results.
So, how can and how would you recommend the person listening to this take action on what we talked about. If they were to take on a challenge say over the course of the next week or the next two weeks to improve their own results. What would you suggest they do?
Reid Oliver: I think they should definitely start with having a set goal and a time around that set goal. So whether that means as you mentioned a seven day time period whatever sort of role there in I think you have to have something to push towards.
So whether that’s you want to book 5 meetings, you want to have this many email responses, whatever you want to do have that in the horizon and pick how you going to get there. And try to choose what steps you going to take so whether that’s in the BDR world specifically whether that’s having the right combinations of social touches, emails, phone calls.
And whether that’s doing something completely different , looking at job boards , understanding when companies are hiring , going from a different angel but trying something and kind of having a plan that you can kind of execute with kind of an end old goal is kind of the best way to stay on task and stay focused I think.
Scott Ingram: Yeah, good stuff. Hey, I really appreciate everybody that’s listening through to this point. I want to Reid, I going to put this all on your shoulder; I want to create a great nugget for those made it through to the end with us.
What’s the most fun, the most, just the most interesting thing that you’re done that, I hope you get a meeting that you thought was really cool?
Reid Oliver: Let me think that, give me 10 seconds and I’ll think that over. Yeah.
Scott Ingram: No pressure.
Reid Oliver: So I have it, I have it; it came up to my mind here. So one company that I was working with they had a big event coming up, I learnt about it on their website, I often browse through different event pages because the big thing that we do for events in company marketing is video.
So I knew that they had this event coming up , they had a few different videos promoting it and what I did is I actually took some of the video content that we had and I went in and I personalized it all specifically for that person for the company . And I even built out, we call them calls to action from within the video that said : “hey, Reid would you like to sign up , “ if you clicked it you actually went to their website to sign up page , so.
I had to admit I got a little bit of help from one of my deaf friends here at Vidgard but it is pretty intuitive of how you able to do that and I actually set up a full video invitation for their events team and they ended up really liking the concept behind it.
Scott Ingram: That’s awesome! You know I did one and one of the ones that I’m most proud of and I’m so bummed out , I don’t think I still have it a picture from this . Now , I’m struggling to come up with the name of the company , I know I got a lot of ladies that listen to this shows , you guts will have to bail me out.
There is a famous shoe company out of New York, Madden is the guy’s name but I can’t come up with.
Reid Oliver: Steve Madden.
Scott Ingram: So, a Steve Madden shoe was one of the accounts we were trying to get in front of and I was working with Bazaar Voice. Bazaar Voice sold, they had a rate and reviews type solution, you know we could put on peoples websites.
Well I found out that Steve Madden was coming to the North Strom here in Austin so my SDR and I, I made a sign. So I took this poster board , it was big , actually were my hands they not even on the screen right now and I made stars , I had 5 big stars we painted them blue , I put it on this thing , we stood in line for God knows how long .
We probably standing there for an hour, the funny part is the CEO of Bazaar Voice happens to walk through and he was like “what are you guys doing? “ I’m like; I’m actually trying to sell something right now.
And it’s on like a Saturday, so here we are in North storm in this line, so we get up to this table, so both Elven, my SDR at the time and go in for the picture and we were like: “will you hold this sign “and he is looking at us like what are you going to do with this? And I’m like I promise it’s all good, so we got that picture and then we used that to open the door with their head of marketing.
So that was a fun little project , that stuff doesn’t always come around but every now and again you find way to be super , super creative and it gets noticed.
Reid Oliver: Yeah , that’s a fantastic story and kind of great story of differentiating yourself , like when I was talking a little bit about before , not many people are taking that step , so that’s awesome!
Scott Ingram: Yeah, exactly. You know if only I had the picture we’d put that on the website but oh well sail lave.
So once again thanks everybody for listening.
Don’t forget to text Top1 to 444999 or go to Top1.FM .Get into that community we really trying to create a lot of value there.
So, Reid once again thanks for your time.
Reid Oliver: Absolutely. Thanks a lot Scott really appreciate it.
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