Filling Up The Funnel With Outbound Prospecting - Video & Voice

In terms of strengths, so I had very strong success as an SDR. I think a lot of it came down to my kind of natural ability on the phone. So I did B2C sales for the best part of 6, 7 years. And I think sales is quite transferable in that sense. I think being able to understand value and being able to effectively demonstrate that is the same across business-to-consumer, business-to-business. So coming into the SDR role and even as a BDM now, when I do the prospecting, when I do it, I just love having people on the phone, having human-to-human interactions is something that's come quite naturally to me. So in terms of my strength, that's what it is. It's definitely not admin. For a lot of you admin people that are watching this. Yeah, so a little bit more Maverick, if you'd like.

Yeah, I'm glad you finished off the sentence of my natural ability with actual, like, tangible things that people can take away because that's the worst-case scenario for a guest. Yeah, I'm naturally good at this. I don't think they care. Can take anything from that. But I think the fact that you're taking, you know, relevant work experience prior in a consumer environment and translating that is certainly valuable. Just next up, we've got Madison. I'm delighted to invite our first US-based guest. A bit of history with respect to Madison: I always talk about her approach to me personally on behalf of the business that she works for, Gong, probably 8 to 10 interactions over LinkedIn, some more over email, over a period of, say, 3 months. And one of the things that I most liked about her approach was the variety, the personalization, and the fact that even though there were multi-touches, it really didn't feel like I was in a kind of automated or self-generating cadence. And so when we had the opportunity to invite someone from the US on, she naturally sprung to mind. Just to start with Madison, and for those that don't know, who are Gong and what do they do?

Absolutely. Well, first off, thank you so much, Callum Henderson, for the kind words and for having me today. I have to say, I'm a bit jealous that you guys are heading out for a gin and tonic soon. We're just sipping on my morning coffee over here in California, but got a great day ahead. But yeah, so Gong, we are the leading revenue intelligence platform, and what we do is we capture all of your customer-facing interactions, whether that's phone, web conferencing, or email. And then we deliver sales and sales leadership actionable insights into what's really going on within their customer-facing teams, their market, and their active pipeline. Um, so really like helping sales leaders right now especially understand how their client base is responding to everything going on, how they can help their sales team sell more effectively and make sure that deals are crossing the finish line.

Sure. And you pretty much translate the conversations that people are having day to day, whether that's on cold calls or on demos, into, I suppose, tangible data that people can actually use to make better decisions about how to position their product, those, those kind of things.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. So we're recording, transcribing, and then analyzing, like you said, all those customer-facing conversations and As Saif mentioned, lots of the best salespeople, you know, aren't the best at admin work or entering notes into CRM. So that's kind of where Gong comes in, instead of sales leadership or you having to go back and rely on notes in your CRM that may or may not be there, maybe biased or 2 months old, you can have insights and data straight from the voice of the customer or the conversation that happened 5 minutes ago, an hour ago, whenever it did.

Sure. And so we had a lady on from Salesloft the other day, and one thing that she was armed with was just so much data about prospecting. And I would imagine that as a staff member at Gong, you're the beneficiary of the data that other people generate for you. So I assume that it's, well, for all salespeople, it's been a trying period. You've had the benefit of that kind of data running in the background. So how are you leveraging that in your own sales process? And what are the kind of key things that you've taken from the last few months to to help your prospecting?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I got a chance to listen to that webinar you did last week, and Salesloft is great. We're always sending Jeremy Donovan's little snippets of this is what's working right now in our Slack channels and everything. As far as Gong, yeah, we have a great data team and we're always posting, if anyone's familiar with Gong Labs and Devin Reed and all of their content. But I think it's been really helpful just from an SDR perspective to understand as Things have changed so quickly, both for good and bad, and kind of up and downs over these past few weeks, just where things are trending as far as even like mentions of COVID like that word or pandemic or things like that on calls, like how that trended. At first it was like a huge spike and a huge spike of people talking about locked budgets or, you know, meetings that were dropping and just seeing the data and like the graphs trending as far as even on Gong's own calls, how that was being brought up. And then seeing that as time went on, that gradually decreased and was starting to become less of a factor. So as an SDR and as someone who is doing that outbound prospecting, like gave me a lot more confidence that this isn't something that's— needs to be preventing me from going about like positioning my value as they normally would, even though I'm still repositioning it to address like the changing needs, but really understanding like how this has affected like what clients are saying on calls and how I need to then adjust that in my outreach.

I know you've seen, you've obviously said there's a negative trend there. Are you seeing things that replace that in a positive light? So if you're not saying those things, what should you be saying?

Yeah, absolutely. So at least like in the beginning, Gong was seeing when I think, I know California and San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place like was right in the beginning when that first happened. And even as Nestlé are like on the front lines, it was a huge spike in like, do not call me, don't talk to me. I think like you said in your past webinars, there was a huge kind of like ambulance chasing kind of crisis mode with that. Now that we're past that, it's really more about just how we've pivoted our messaging and how we can reposition. So for Gong specifically, whereas before it might have been maybe more about a focus on how Gong helps you ramp new reps or shorten time to value, or like that, that coaching and deal piece, now we're focusing more on delivering broader market intelligence, more to see the C-level suite. And like, we always offered that before, but it's more just how we're going about who specifically we're prospecting, targeting more of C-levels because we know that they're the ones, you know, with the lack of visibility into their business right now. So really just thinking about like, I know in the last webinar, again, like your panelists mentioned putting yourself in the customer's shoes. And I think just understanding like how their positions and their roles might be changing right now and then being able to pivot your messaging or bring in, topics or things that you might not have thought to just say on your first 30 seconds on a cold call before, but now might be the most impactful thing for them and their business.

Absolutely. Well, welcome to the panel. Just another address to the people that are guests today. I'd really encourage you to make use of the chat feature. If you could send any messages to all panelists and all attendees, it would be great to get some ongoing questions so that we can try and keep it on topic to the things that are of interest to you right now. Just to dive back into something that you just mentioned, Madison, you spoke about the fact that you obviously have the background data that's enabled you to change messaging. There are some people on the, as guests, who maybe don't have the benefit of that data. I've always seen that SDRs, when changing their approach, often they're quite quick to make a decision about whether or not something is working when you've changed, and it's really important from my perspective that you you give it time to mature, you will need to work on it as you go through the new verbiage to make sure that you can deliver it in an impactful way, but ultimately you can't really make a decision about whether a message is being effective or not until you've probably had in the region of kind of 50 to 100 conversations, and that might be a 2 to 4 week period, depending on your connection rates and all those kinds of things. So for you, Saif, I'll start with you. How have you found changing message in the past and what would be your tips to anyone if you were looking to change the way that you're gonna prospect?

Yeah, so it depends. I think it comes down to the types of personas that you're reaching out to. So I think a lot of SDRs are very, very niche in terms of the type of people that they wanna reach. So I know a lot of people previously will say, yeah, I've had great success with CEOs and they'll just stick with CEOs, but they won't vary what they're saying. And I think the problem with prospecting is that it's an ever-changing kind of landscape. So you have to constantly A/B test the personas that you're reaching out to, as well as A/B test the messaging that you're putting out via digital format. I have to be careful here because I don't want to sound like I'm a representative of Gong, but we use Gong in all of our calls as well. And I absolutely love it because we do get to see persona on persona what is working, what's not working. But you hit the nail on the head. You have to give it enough time to create a representative sample. So we actually follow something called the Egoj sequence. So it's a 16-step cadence over a 30-day period, which essentially incorporates a multichannel approach, which would include phone calls, emails, and LinkedIn touchpoints. And then what we'll then do as an extension of that is have A/B testing of the emails that are going out. And then based on the calls that are successful or not successful, we'll record those calls and then we'll review them weekly. So yeah, that's kind of the process in which we kind of analyze and refine and perfect. Does that answer your question or have I missed the point?

Yeah, no, no, no, it does. So actually I was just Googling what you just said. So AGOGE is the name of the sequence.

That's the one.

16-step, 30 days. So what you're really looking at is almost on some days like a 2-touch on like a 20-day working month. Yeah. Which is like definitely something that people should be taking away, which is that it's completely reasonable to to be making a couple of touchpoints on a day with a prospect. Just to go into the A/B testing, like how much are you varying the A to the B?

Okay. So we vary. So there's multiple things that we vary in terms of the email. So it's, we A/B test the subject lines. Well then we'll A/B test the body of the text. Well then we'll also A/B test the media and the content that we're putting into our campaigns because everything is value-led. So what we'll then do is we'll dissect the campaigns that are going out, and then based on what is being more successful in terms of click-through rates or reply rates or even general engagement rates, we'll then understand what needs to be improved. So for example, if on step 1 the subject line A is a lot more effective than subject line B, we'll understand what about A was better, and then we'll look to incorporate that across multiple campaigns. However, if halfway through the cadence we understand that Persona B is responding a lot more positively to, let's say, a particular case study or a particular statistic as opposed to a snippet of our solution, then we know that we still need to be a lot more value-added in that area. So then we'll then liaise with marketing and get more relevant content around that, and then we'll push that out, and then we'll test it, and then we'll refine again. So we're really testing what it actually is in terms of each stage of the campaign, because I think, let's say, at the top it's a lot more manual, at the back end it's probably less manual and less personalized maybe. So we'll test it out and see what's working at what stages of the cadence and then try and refine it from that perspective.

For sure. So it's really important to vary but not have too many variables so you can understand exactly where to really focus.

Yeah, I think if you are going to have multiple variables then you need to ensure— basically the key takeaway I would say is If you are going to have multiple variations, have it across separate campaigns as opposed to multiple variations within one, because then it's impossible to tangibly identify what change has directly led to what result, if that makes sense.

For sure. And certainly something that we've seen is that it's a work in progress. I don't think you should try and suddenly push up your open rates or your meeting rates by like 100%, even 50%. Over a period of time, as long as you track the data, and it can be done manually without tools like Salesloft or Gong if you don't necessarily have the funds or resources to do that, if you have a good organized process, and just take it step by step by step in terms of any changes you'd look to make. Madison, do you have anything to add on any of those points?

I just want to add that I think that's a great point that you make as far as not changing all the variables at once. I think, like you said, some especially as SDRs, you see something maybe working or not working and all of a sudden you've like uphauled your whole process and have done something completely different. And like that, when I've tried that, is not successful or it might be successful once and then you're realizing you don't really have a way to measure it. So, um, obviously like at Gong, I'm lucky to have a team that's be able, is able to rely on a lot of like the data from all of our company-wide, like customer-facing conversations. But if you don't have that, I would recommend just really trying to study, um, if even if it's just asking your colleagues, like, re— like having them forward you emails that worked or, um, things they've said on calls, like really just see it more as like gathering knowledge and like studying that, but not trying to implement all that change all at once. Like maybe you're changing a few things you're saying on calls, testing that out for a couple of weeks and then reevaluating instead of just trying to overhaul your entire script and to do what someone else is doing. Cause you still need to stick to like what you found success in historically and what, you know, you do best before you just try to make a drastic change.

Sure, that makes sense.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, I completely agree. I think especially with newer SDRs, I was so guilty of this when I started, but you treat every prospect and everyone that comes into your cadence as a sprint. But I think prospecting is a marathon, especially given the current environment. It's a lot more value-led, it's a lot more kind of drip feeding bits of content and staying relevant over a longer period of time. And if you don't incorporate that mentality in the way that you're approaching your campaigns and you just try and go from 0 to 100 in each step, it just becomes a complete mess. And you don't know what you've changed. You don't know where you are. And yeah, it just becomes so messy. So I think having that structure and then making little changes as you go along is definitely a lot more effective to find out what works for you. Because what might work for me might not work for Madison and vice versa. So making those little changes is really the key to finding that sweet spot in my experience.

Sure.

Definitely.

I think something you touched on there as well, Madison, some people might be beneficiaries of being sat in large teams, and so you can really shortcut a lot of the understanding by collaborating and having a sense of community. But also, if you don't have the benefit of being part of a large team, you can seek that from outside of your organization. There seems to be, particularly in the sales development space, like quite a lot of people who are looking to share knowledge, whether that's cross-product, cross-sector, and that will really help for you to accelerate your understanding of different techniques. Just to dive into one of the questions that's come in from Adam, I think I've understood the question right. Basically, we've touched on a multi-channel prospecting process as one which is valuable, but where are our preferences And as said, there's some reference about how calling and emailing, how to use that alongside each other. I think firstly, from my perspective, I'm hugely biased in the fact that EngageTech are primarily like a cold calling business. It's 95% of the work that we do. I think I've always tried to champion the fact that anyone who is in a sales development role who isn't cold calling is essentially finding a reason not to. I come from maybe an extreme end because of the business that I work in, but I am very confident in the fact that it is the best way to ultimately have a meaningful conversation with someone. And in any other means of connecting with someone, your ultimate goal is going to be to have a call or to meet with them. So it might be a little tougher to come by conversations. It might be a little bit more brutal in terms of people telling you, I don't want to speak right now. But it is the quickest way, uh, with a prospect to get to the end goal of a meaningful conversation. But I'm also aware that you need to have a multi-channel approach because not everyone will answer their mobile. Some people are in a lot more of an open mood when, for example, they're scrolling through their LinkedIn feed and a message, and a message pops up. So my overriding point would be, if you are prospecting, make sure you're not selecting channels because you don't want to prospect in perhaps more brutal or like tough, tough environments. Just over to you, Seth, I know you've been doing a little bit of video prospecting. I know you spoke to some people at EngageTech about that. So yeah, I'd be keen to put that question to you.

Yes, I'm a massive caller. I love it. I love getting someone on the phone and being able to have like a meaningful conversation when they don't know you at the start. It helps that the admin's less as well, but I'll stop joking about that now. But yeah, I think You completely hit the nail on the head. I think phone calls are the best way of having a meaningful conversation very quickly, and also video prospecting as well. So we have a Vidyard that we use in the form of our cadences. Again, it's one part of it is standing out from the crowd because not many other people are doing it. But the second way is I think it's easier to convey a lot more value in a 30-second clip as opposed to an email that will take 30 seconds to read. Um, I think especially when you're prospecting and SDRing, your window of opportunity is very, very small to impress. Um, so phone calls and video prospecting is the way forward for me, followed up by LinkedIn and emails.

Yeah, I would agree. Video is definitely a great way to stand out. Um, we use Drift, so very similar, but, um, just like that ability to put a face to the name, um, especially right now when you might not be seeing people all the time, like just getting that personalized touch, but also just showing that you obviously can't, um, just kind of spray and pray. And a personalized email or personalized video, they know that you actually took the time to do the research on them to create that video for them. I find that when people do reply to the video, and granted there's still plenty of times when you put that time and effort into the video, which is why it's not always as effective as a cold call, And then people will still never get back to you, but it can be a really great way to like show that you're putting effort in and really like earning their time. But I have to agree with Callum with what you said, as far as if SDRs or sales reps in general are just finding themselves eliminating a channel because they don't want to do it. I'm completely guilty of that. When this all started, I had gotten pretty comfortable over the past 6 months with social selling, with leveraging a lot of the videos, the LinkedIn connections, emailing. Found that, you know, 2 months ago when everything hit, like, that was no longer working at all. And kind of was hit with the hard reality that I needed to get myself back on the phone. So, um, seeing even just like on our team specifically, that percentage of demos scheduled, it's gone up like so much from like the percentage that's happening on the phone and on cold calls versus we used to be pretty heavily like social selling and personalized touches there. And we still are, but just realizing that, like you said, quickest way to value and sometimes easiest way to just get that opportunity and get that conversation is through a call. So SDR is just, uh, keep dialing even if you don't always think you want to. It's— it gets better. And I'm already feeling like so much better with making the calls. And Saif, it's awesome that you just like love that. I can tell you like that's like that on my team. They just like are so excited to always be on the phones and it definitely benefits them.

Just to dive into, we obviously touched on video. I think you guys said like it makes you stand out at the moment. I'm really conscious of the fact that you won't be standing out in a month or two's time because the main thing that I'm hearing about in like, as like the popular new thing to do is video prospecting. And what will eventually happen is you just join the noise. For example, it's just someone's got 5 videos dropping in their inbox per day. it suddenly dilutes it massively. I have sent some videos myself and would certainly be of the view that you shouldn't really be pitching. The first few I sent were like an elevator pitch and just didn't really get any responses on that. First thing is make sure it's a craft and you need to work on it and you need to improve, same as the cold calling and the messaging changing and your emailing and understanding how those metrics work. I would be of the opinion that when you could really see value in video prospecting is once you've already had a response. So like later, at a later stage in the process, once someone's already engaged with you, I think a lot more can happen in a 1 to 2 minute video, and your time spent in that act of prospecting is so much more valuable than for you to send 100 cold videos. Another really interesting way to potentially do that would be in a reference situation. So you're speaking with a champion, you want to like get in contact with the buyer, you drop them a worded message saying, I caught up with your colleague earlier today, and follow up with a video where you can catch them up on that conversation and talk about your next outcome. And so from my perspective, try not to dive into a fad and try and look at it like, how could I actually leverage this? Know my ideal customer profile, know my own cadences, know my own message, and make it bespoke to you rather than just thinking, I'm just going to tick the box of video prospecting and suddenly expect like 100 leads a day to drop into my lap. It's really important that you make that, make that differentiation.

If you don't mind me kind of butting in here, I think you completely hit the nail on the head. When I say kind of video prospecting to stand out, I would never make a video my first touchpoint. I actually wouldn't use it until step 5, 6, or 7. So Cognizant, because we do run quite a few campaigns, we actually have insight into quite a lot of data. And what the data actually showed is that typical, the average C-level or C-suite, whatever you want to call it, actually responds on step 8, 9, or 10. So that's where I decided to put my video and my video ad into the cadence, because salespeople inherently lazy. I mean, I'll speak for myself maybe, but we'll try and reach someone 3, 4, 5 times if they're lucky before, a lot of people tend to give up. But by that point of 6, 7, 8, or 9, they should hopefully be familiar with you, your name, because you obviously would have tried to call, you would have emailed, you would have sent them a LinkedIn message. So when that video does drop, it does allow you to stand out a little bit more because the chance of them opening it are a lot higher if they've already kind of noticed your name before. That's what I saw when I A/B tested it. Of course, I A/B tested a video ad right at the start. I actually saw a lot of people open it just out of curiosity, but the reply rates weren't great. And I guess again, it's probably because of the lack of value right at the top as opposed to later on in the cadence. But again, just my experience.

Yeah, I think those— that's a great call out from both of you guys. I've found that in my own experience as well. Kind of curious, you mentioned it's like your 8th or 9th touch. Is that over email then, or over LinkedIn, or are you doing both?

Um, so the typical go sequences is quite call heavy at the top. So I'll do call, email, LinkedIn. I'll do call, call, email. And then wherever video falls into that second automated email, that's where video would go in.

Yeah, interesting. I've mostly experimented with video on LinkedIn when they've already connected, um, just because I wasn't sure if it would be as well received over email. But I'm definitely, uh, intrigued and we'll give it a shot as well. Like you said, Callum, like I feel like it's just like it's another touchpoint in sequence. Like you can't expect a silver bullet with video. Like I know I had a few successes right off the bat with it. I was like, oh, when I send a video at a meeting and it's not going to be like that. So just like understanding it's another step in the cadence.

Yeah.

Callum Henderson, have you— I'm quite interested to learn, have you ever tried to prospect US and UK simultaneously? Because a lot of a lot of the people that I speak to within the team, because we have offices in New York as well as here, that video prospecting, especially via LinkedIn, is a lot more effective than it would be with the, with the UK crowd, just culturally. I don't know if maybe you had any insight on that. I'm always kind of keen to learn the cultural differences too.

From my perspective, the only comparison that I really, really aware of is that if you're cold calling, you're probably looking at about like a 3% connection rate in the US. Whereas in the UK you might be looking at closer to like 8 to 10%. But for me, that would maybe show, like, point to why LinkedIn video prospecting is seeing good results in the US, because they're not necessarily seeing the connection rates that you would over, over the phone. And just another point, what you guys are talking about with the video stuff, voice notes, I think, also apply in this situation. It's another sensible step which seems like it's coming into fashion. I imagine there'll be some people on this webinar today where the idea of them hitting record on a camera is not particularly high on the list of things that they want to do. So when you're sending videos, what would be your tips? Saif, you want to take that? Yeah, go first.

I guess, I guess for me it's Larry, Larry Wallpaper is a good start. Yeah, Larry Wallpaper and dodgy china. Yeah, that's a good way to start. I guess for me it was just kind of breaking through the initial pain. I kind of thought of it as my first 10 cold calls. I remember when I first joined Cognizant, I did anything in my power, even admin, to not cold call. And it was the same for video prospecting when Dave, who's our inside sales manager, Callum Henderson told us to incorporate it. I tried to avoid it like the plague. I ran it multiple times. I would do 15, 16 takes before I was happy with it. But there just came a point where I just had the value prop that I wanted to give in that particular video. I recorded it, watched it back, make sure I didn't say anything or trip over my words, and I just sent it. I think it's— for me, it was just ripping off the plaster and just going for it. And that's just how it worked for me. I'm not much of a perfectionist when it comes to that kind of stuff.

Cool. Anything for you, Madison?

Yeah, just that I agree that at the beginning it'd be like, I could spend 20 minutes on one video and ultimately like, that's not scalable. That's kind of a waste of time. So realizing that you just needed to kind of send off your first shot one or second shot one, even if you make mistakes on it, mistakes ultimately like make you seem more human. They don't want to, if they wanted a video from a bot, they would go on and like, look at your demo. You know, they need it. It's nice to put a face and a human touch to the name. So like if you mess up, even if you have to stumble over your words or correct yourself, I just send them anyway. I don't think you should be re-recording them 1,000 times. And also a key for me was cutting down the length of them. When I first started, I was trying to give my entire elevator pitch of why Gong and why them and why now. And now I just try to keep it like 40 seconds, even if it's just to introduce myself, say like a sentence why I wanna connect and then using the follow-up from there is for me been like a key, like not even the video itself sometimes, but then being able to follow up or even then when you call them reference, hey, I sent you a video, not sure if you got a chance to check it out. So almost just like using the video itself more than, or using like the video premise more than the video content even itself. Yeah.

I think a couple of things just to touch on that you guys have both spoken about. First is the awareness that comes from the multi-touch cadence and multi-touch prospecting that you're talking about. One of the main things with respect to your approach to me, Madison, was I didn't really know about Gong when it started, but by the time it finished, I was so familiar with the name. The fact that I hadn't even replied didn't really change the fact that I was now aware, and you transitioned me to like in the Gong funnel through that, through that activity. And so even if you're not getting responses, particularly if you're prospecting via message, don't be disheartened. It doesn't mean that you're not actually making progress in that manner. The second thing, just a subtle point that you touched on, Madison, was about the difference between prospecting in LinkedIn via video and then doing it via email. My experience of email prospecting with video is that someone would need to click on the Vidyard or the equivalent vendor link to take you to a different browser, whereas in LinkedIn you would literally just hit play in the current platform that you're actually in. I'm really interested to see if like the suppliers will eventually find a way to embed a video truly in email so you don't actually need to leave. But I would have thought that that additional step could slow your follow-through rates, as in someone clicking out of their email browser, they might be less likely to do that than just hitting play in LinkedIn. Just an assumption, not necessarily backed up in any data. Point: we've dabbled with sending videos with an elevator pitch versus videos with just a short hello, etc. Which have you seen work more?

I guess for me, elevator pitch— I don't really like the elevator pitch in the general sense. I would say in my terms, business value with C-level, and the more hello, introducing myself to end users. So that is to other SDRs, other BDMs, other account execs. The hello, introducing myself works well because we pitch all day long. Last thing you want to do is get pitched ourselves. But with C-level, it's, if I'm going to open this video, you sure as hell better give me something that's worth my time. And a hello doesn't normally cut it. And that's when I would typically lead with a little bit more business value. But Yeah, interested to hear the variations in results here.

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head with that. As far as if, uh, someone super high up is going to take, you know, a minute to watch a video, you better offer them some sort of value like you said. Whereas I, I like that idea actually, as far as reaching out to maybe like influencers, not directly decision makers, but more like other colleagues at other companies, um, to get intel. As far as with the video, I haven't done that so much, but I think I mean, I personally think I would respond a lot better to a video or like a friendly introduction versus some sort of pitch over LinkedIn to try to pick my brain for info about what my execs might care about. So that's a great idea.

Yeah, I think for, for a lot of the, the people that I speak to, especially if you have a product that is quite a complex sell, if you are going to be speaking to a decision maker where it would be massively beneficial to have some understanding of the current workflow within the business, then getting in comfy with the end users is so, so valuable. Because if you can go to a decision maker saying, I know X, Y, and Z, this is how, you know, you might be able to benefit, that's so much more powerful than even generic business value. So I think there's a lot to be said about delivering value and prospecting towards end users as well, which you could kind of do your own webinar on. But yeah, completely Agree.

I think in answer to that question from my side is no one has really cracked video yet.

No, agreed.

And like, it could be you as, as either, Sean, you asked that question, like if you're willing to put the hours in and to experiment and to really go with it, there's going to be something that comes out like within the next year of someone that's literally just cleaned up because they worked on it. They came up with their own process that really, really caught the, caught fire, and why couldn't that be you? So just, just be willing to experiment and try things out. One thing that I was quite keen to dive into was just a little bit about meeting management. It's not really anywhere near as fun as video prospecting. I'm just conscious we've only got about 6 minutes left, so I just wanted to just get a couple minutes from each of you just on the topic. So I've always tried to view it like there are two distinct different jobs: book a meeting and make sure it goes ahead. Very different skill sets, very different activities, and I would say there are a lot of SDRs out there that have been hit by not being able to do the second part particularly well, particularly in the last quarter. So, say, for you, like, how do you manage that process?

Are there any tips that you'd like to Yeah, I love this topic because when in my first few months as an SDR at Callum Henderson, the first 2-3 months, I think my no-show rate was about 20%, which is crazy high when you think about the amount of work it takes to book in a meeting. But I had absolutely no idea what I was doing wrong. And I think for me it's because a lot of SDRs think of booking a meeting as very transactional. So the end of the cycle is sending someone a calendar invite. However, where I saw massive increase in my attendance rate was actually the people that you're booking in with booked in with you because there was value. And now in order to keep them engaged all the way up until the meeting date, you need to still deliver value. So the first way that I did that was by setting an agenda. So in the calendar invite, I would briefly recap the main points that we spoke about and the areas that we were looking to address. And then that went in the calendar invite, so they always had that. And then depending on the length of time between the meeting, um, from the booking in meeting. Yeah, if it was, let's say, a week, I would do a check-in maybe every 2-3 days, um, just confirming that, um, they're still good to go. I'll probably just do that once, and I'll give them a call, um, in the morning of the meeting just to confirm again that that time was good for them. However, if there was slightly more time in between, then what I would do is I would make sure that I'm sending them relevant content that is based on what their pain points were. So marketing create quite a lot of collateral, and there's quite a lot of collateral on LinkedIn for a load of different points. So if there is anything valuable, then I'd definitely be sending those as well, just keeping the general engagement and keeping Cognizant top of mind. But those are typically the main ways that I would have done it.

Sure. And for you, Marzo?

Yeah, I agree with everything you said. I think for me, one of the keys has just been trying to book a meeting. Like, one would be trying to book a meeting as in a, like, soon timeframe after you have that conversation. I know on our team, like, we're not allowed to create opportunities that are greater than 2 weeks out, just because we found that the no-show rate on those were so high, it wasn't even really valid opportunities. So trying to keep those within, you know, a few days of when you have that initial conversation, so you're still top of mind, is huge. But also, I would say for the most part, anytime that I've had an issue with no-shows, um, Obviously it's been a little different in the last few months, just with, you know, elements out of our control of no-show rates. Um, but like, it's always been when I'm not creating enough value, like personalized to them or that they actually care about within their role. So even if I've done a lot of company-wide research or industry-wide research, unless on that conversation, whether it's LinkedIn, email, phone, they actually like are tied into the solution enough to want to solve for the problem that we're discussing or that they think it's going to directly impact them. Why would they, you know, everyone's super busy, take time to chat with you? So I think even like Callum Henderson mentioned earlier, like the nurturing that you do before that first meeting happens, like you mentioned, I kind of took you further down the funnel before you've even responded, like making sure that every time you're following up, even if they haven't responded, you're still delivering unique value on something new and something that's personalized to them so that by the time they actually do agree to take the meeting, um, you know that they're bought in enough that they're going to want to show up versus if it's just like a first touch, you get them on a cold call and they say, oh yeah, sure, like this sounds interesting. The chances that they're going to be invested enough to want to have that conversation are probably very slim.

So actually, like building someone up over a 2, 3, 4 week period, multiple touchpoints is maybe better than the one-time booking in terms of the attendance rates in your experience. It's a good point that I hadn't necessarily really considered in depth before. Just some interesting points, I've shared some data on my LinkedIn profile this week. We've had, I think since the company existed, about 25,000 meetings. We have typically seen that attendance rate between 5 to 6 PM is 90% plus. Attendance percentage from 12 to 1 is 80% plus and is better than many other hours in the day. Booking meetings on the half hour 2% less likely to happen if you book it at any other time that isn't on the hour. And if you book meetings on the hour, there's a further 2% penalty. Basically, 99% of our meetings happen before the third time of asking. So if someone is rescheduling often, then basically can it after the third attempt. And in situations where an invite was accepted 12% more of our attended meetings had the invite acceptance than without. So put time into, into getting that follow-up, and sorry, put time into following up to get the invite acceptance. For those of you, just as a brief summary, there are a couple of people that were mentioned, Devin Reed and Jeremy Donovan. Definitely follow both of those guys on LinkedIn, and there'll be some good content there. A/B test across different personas was something that Saif mentioned, and check out that 16-step cadence in a 30-day period. Madison touched on community. I think it's really important to make sure that you're sharing intelligence within your business, and if you don't have that option, then build some connections, grow your network into other similar companies, or companies that service the same customer but with a slightly different different product. Check out Cognizant, Vidyard, Gong as potential tools that can support you in this process. Alternatively, you might have to get creative if you don't have money to spend right now, but I'm sure there are different ways that you can, that you can do that. And an interesting point, that C-suite responding on step 8, 9, and 10, typically if you've got a cadence. And from some of the data that I looked into the other day, we're typically seeing that the C-suite director level are having a 5 to 8% attendance rate, higher than other kind of job titles. So it might be slightly harder to get those guys, guys and girls on the phone and actually schedule that appointment, but you're going to reap the rewards at the attendance end. I just want to say thank you to both you guys for joining us, some incredibly valuable input. This is going to be available on the YouTube channel for anyone who wanted to share it with any colleagues. I appreciate everyone joining, and we'll see you soon.

Thanks for having me.