Florin Tatulea – Effective SDR Prospecting Tips to Get More Meetings
Data Wins: Don’t rely on others, do your own tests to see what works for you!
Florin Tatulea is the Number One Business Development Representative (BDR) at Loopio, a company that helps clients manage RFIs, RFPs, and Security Questionnaires. Florin started off at Loopio as the first salesperson in the company, and has now grown to the point where he recently made the transition from SDR to Account Executive (AE). In this episode, Florin shares his secret to success — that data always wins, and why you should always do your own A/B testing to find out what works for you. Tune in to find out more!
Shareable Clips & Quotes:
Learning from how bad most sales outreach attempts really are
The top three things that have made Florin a successful SDR
A/B testing with SalesLoft
4 different ways of reaching out – the phone is really powerful
Using voicemail in a way that actually works
Transitioning from SDR to AE
Florin’s Information Diet: John Barrows, Morgan Ingram…
Sales Tech Stack – Momentum, SalesLoft, ViewedIt, Zoom Info, SalesforceIQ
Capturing attention and standing out from the crowd with ViewedIt
Setting up a sales outreach cadence that works
Ending the debate between social selling and cold calling
Key Takeaways:
[:25] Scott welcomes his guest for this episode — Florin Tatulea.
[:56] Florin has written a few interesting articles on LinkedIn, but he has an interesting background about what prompted him to write them.
[2:54] Head to top1sales.wpengine.com/florin, or text top1 to 444999 to get an invite to the Sales Success Community for access to some great resources!
[3:13] What are Florin’s top three tips for having more success as an SDR? 1. Know when to reach out to your contacts. 2. Have cadences and a decent number of steps within those cadences to ensure a decent response rate. 3. Constantly test your scripts, subject lines and content, to weed out the bad ones.
[4:39] What does Florin think about timing and knowing when it’s best to reach out?
[5:45] How does Florin conduct tests and determine what works best in his approach? How does he use the information he gathers and put it into action?
[7:30] Florin has specific times and days to call clients and prospective clients, so his daily schedule is structured around that.
[8:50] What are the different touch points that Florin utilizes that breaks through to clients most often?
[10:10] If someone just says “no,” outright, how does Florin manage that objection and work around it?
[11:54] When calling someone, we often end up with voicemail. How does Florin use voicemail as a tool?
[13:36] Florin talks about Loopio and his work with RFPs.
[14:01] What is Florin’s role at Loopio? How did he get to be #1?
[16:14] Florin recently moved into an account executive role. How was his transition?
[17:19] How did Florin get into sales?
[18:17] What is Florin’s morning routine?
[19:13] Florin is more of a night owl. What do his evenings look like?
[21:16] Monday and Friday mornings are not as good times for calling prospects. Florin schedules other activities during those times to increase his productivity.
[21:51] What does Florin’s information diet look like?
[23:40] What are some tools and apps that are critical to Florin’s process and approach?
[24:33] How does Florin use ViewedIt?
[25:46] Florin’s company gets a lot of outreaches, but there were only three good ones in the last year. What was it about them that made them stand out?
[27:43] What does Florin’s research process look like? How does he find unique insights to make his outreach more personalized and relevant?
[28:41] You can’t stop at two, or four touches in your cadence. Florin walks us through his playbook. Tip: When you call a prospect with a number from their area code, you get a much higher response rate!
[30:54] What is Florin’s style?
[31:44] What motivates Florin?
[32:45] What is something that Florin believes that the average salesperson would think is crazy? And vice versa?
[35:13] Were there some lessons that Florin had to learn that have made a significant impact on his success?
[36:03] Florin has some advice for SDRs just starting out: 1) Don’t underestimate the power of the phone. 2) Build a brand for yourself.
[37:30] What is a question that Florin would ask other top AEs?
[38:45] It’s easy to talk about structuring your day, but to really achieve results, you have to focus entirely on what you say you will be focusing on. Stay disciplined!
[40:40] What are some strategies that Florin has adopted to block out other things and focus on the One Thing?
[41:40] Scott shares some of his techniques to maintain his focus on what he’s doing.
[42:55] Florin challenges you to fail, fail fast and learn! A/B test everything that you do to find what works best for you!
Mentioned in This Episode:
Top1.fm
Florin Tatulea on LinkedIn
Articles Written by Florin Tatulea on LinkedIn
LinkedIn
SalesLoft
ViewedIt
LinkedIn Conversation about whether “No” means “No”
John Barrows
SDR Chronicles, by Morgan Ingram
The Challenger Sale, by Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon
The One Thing, by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
Momentum app
ZoomInfo
Salesforce
SalesforceIQ
Owler
InsideView
Pomodoro Technique
Inbox Pause