Hear the secrets of world class sales professionals
Sam Silverman – Top SDR at Outreach.io – Being very targeted, personalized and leveraging automation
Sam Silverman is the top SDR at Outreach.io. He is the only SDR in the company’s history with multiple months over 200 percent quota. He has a 55 percent correct connect to meeting schedule conversion. In this episode, Same shares how he got started in sales, his process and how he has been successful.Continue Reading …
Clip from Episode 42: Sam Silverman – Top SDR at Outreach.io:
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You want to be totally in control of your success and your earnings. You should figure out how to start liking it. Probably my two favorite AEs to work with internally of Outreach are people who will always help you on a follow up email. They prospect themselves. They actually get it. Those people definitely get favored internally because of that and they’re more empathetic to the role and understand that initial conversation could be all he needs really to help win yourself a giant deal and a great logo for the company.
That’s usually the worst time to send somebody e-mail because everybody else is sending one at 8 a.m. And so I try to do it around certain times like 11:00 a.m. is usually a good time or like 1 p.m. or 2 p.m. sometimes even like 6:30 p.m or 7:00 p.m. Usually people go back and look at their inbox and then also coupling calls around those same times as well like don’t be calling at the same time everybody else is and trying to figure out where they spend most of their time or where they want to be communicated with as well. So I actually couple all of my touches in per person at once so it’s e-mail call LinkedIn message or something on LinkedIn. And every time I talk to someone or every time I touch them it’s with value every single time. I’ll never send a Hey, following up what you think it’s like. You have to send value. You have to give them value every time you reach out to them. Or is it just it kind of gives them a negative connotation with it.
The Tier 1 contacts. What I do is it’s called I call it that five by five method where you spend no more than five minutes researching a prospect and no more than five minutes drafting an email or drafting a series of emails that are personalized and the way I do that is I leverage LinkedIn and whether what they say on LinkedIn Twitter social media things like that I just kind of figuring out OK what is this. What does this person care about. Like to be have something that they can connect with. Can I reference in my first in my first sentence hey I noticed you’re a Chicago Bears fan. So am I like what do you think of the draft coming up. Who do you think they’re going to pick. And then it goes into I was doing some research. I noticed you lead a team of you know 50 SDRs. Have you thought about the data that they’re using you know in their day to day. And it’s kind of position that you know you’re just starting out in a personal sense and then it’s the next part it’s like OK let’s get down to the reason why I’m reaching out to you. And so the five five and I hold myself very accountable to that because I know that somebody can spend hours and hours researching something you know people to go after they can go down the rabbit hole and and then spend another hour trying to write the perfectly well crafted e-mail and get inside their own heads and so I actually have set the timer on my phone and make sure that I only spend five minutes on each step.
Starting tomorrow if you have a name or a list of accounts find the 10 best accounts that you want to go after that you know in your head in your heart that they should be using your tool or that you could be providing so much more value to their day to day. Think of those 10 accounts and identify your target buyers your persona’s who you know the last the last 10 meeting you set find those same ten people at those companies and figure out how you’re going to stand out of their inbox. When you email them stand out on their phone when you call them stand out on LinkedIn when you reach out to them on LinkedIn and you know whatever other touches you have that you are part of your cadence do the things that others aren’t willing to do and see what happens if you feel like with those you know 10 or 20 people that you reach out you feel like you’re doing the same thing you did previously. Change it pivot and add more value in that way.
I think that some SDRs would think it’s crazy when I would say that you don’t actually have to call them a hundred times a day if you’re providing value every time you call them. Like when I make my calls and I guess every time I touch someone it’s it’s with value so if I leave you a voicemail I’m saying hey Scott we have this you know BYOD project happening. That company wanted to know that was in your. It looks like it’s in your wheelhouse. Would love to talk to you about it. And then that e-mail is Hey I I understand your your team targets you know I.T. decision makers in charge of BYOD DiscoverOrg can help your sales reps or your SDRs get in front of the people who control it or have the decision making power within your target accounts. And it’s like if you’re either providing that kind of value you don’t need to call them 100 times as you know their salespeople they know what you’re doing for one and two they understand how like that resonates with them and you don’t have to keep all those harassing them it’s like if you’re providing value they’re going to eventually come around and then. And so that’s kind of my way of positioning is you don’t have to do all these you know hundreds and hundreds of touches if you’re providing value with every one of them you can shorten it down. It’s kind of the quality versus quantity argument.
I’m good at being personalized over e-mail. So for me I think that e-mail is great. I think that e-mail works very well for me but I don’t rely solely on that. I think that as soon as you start relying on one single form of communication you’re kind of alienating yourself from the rest of the resources out there the rest of the channels. And so I try to think about that I have a pretty good process in place where its like you know email called a follow up email. Touch them on LinkedIn or social somewhere and really figure out where they spend most of their time. If its been two weeks I’ve been going after somebody they’re not picking up the phone they’re not returning my voice mails and they’re not answering my emails but they’re posting all this content on LinkedIn and it’s like oh maybe I should you know send a message that that’s valuable to them that would resonate with them. And really just figuring out where they’re spending their most time and where they want to be engaged with. Some people hate the phone. Some people love the phone some people hate e-mail. It really depends and really is the best the best SDRs out there are the ones that are going to use every channel to their disposal. I mean for us at least for DiscoverOrg it’s like we’re selling to people we’re getting in front of people who are doing exactly what we are doing. So you know you can also kind of there’s a silver lining to that. Some people say that it’s hard you know it’s tough to sell to people who are selling themselves. But it’s also well you know if it’s somebody that I’m going after spends all their time going after their customers on LinkedIn. Well I think that if I was to reach out to them on LinkedIn they’d probably be more receptive to me because that’s where they spend all of their time. You know vice versa. So really just trying to stay agile in that and in that sense of getting in front of them.
I struggled a lot and you know I honestly I found out I almost was I was about to get like go in my first 90 days which after after learning that I kind of thought about you know where did I cross the chasm in and it was really just removing that entitlement and having an open mind you know reaching out for help and letting people know that hey I need some help with this I can’t do this on my own. And so the beginning was I guess a little bumpy and then just building on that moment. From from from the start to the outbound I started to like I said I’m working longer days so I was able to understand what made me good and what I was good at and what I wasn’t good at its strengths and weaknesses played a large part in it being able to relinquish those you know my competitive advantage.
The Top SDR at DiscoverOrg – Josh Sutton – Grit & Doing What Others Aren’t Willing To Do
After a rough first 90 days as an SDR at DiscoverOrg, Josh Sutton found his footing and became the top Sales Development Rep in the company. In 1 year he generated over 300 completed meetings that resulted in nearly $2M in closed business. He even set a company record by scheduling 10 meetings in a single day. In this episode of the Sales Success Stories Podcast you’ll hear how he did it.
It’s about having the building the relationships even without trying to sell something you know I’m sure that if we weren’t already working together he would probably somebody would have tried to sell him DiscoverOrg I’m sure but never using somebody as a means to end I guess it just kept staying on top of maintaining relationships and you know figuring out how you can leverage the people in your network and then also provide value to them as well.