Outbound Prospecting: Running a Remote Sales Development Team (Webinar - Ep 2)

Cool, we'll dive in. Afternoon everyone. Firstly, hello to people joining for the first time and welcome back to those of you who were here last week. Firstly, you can tell that the panel are taking their quarantine haircuts seriously with the three of us with some suspect haircuts. I've seen lots of similar events cropping up in the last week or so, and thanks for giving up time to be on this one in particular. I'm involved in a couple of the SDR communities, and a headline piece of feedback on these kinds of things is providing more actionable takeaways and less generic advice. That's a bit of a call to action to the panel today, and I'll also do my best to make sure that we're providing useful tips throughout. Just a recap on some of the guidelines from last week: we'd request that you stay on mute for the call unless you're a panel member, and if there's anything you'd like to say, please make use of the chat feature. One of the panel members today caused a bit of a commotion in the comments last week. We're okay with a difference in opinion here, and you never know, if you're active in that section, you might get an invitation for next week. I think there are two key areas we'll be touching on today. Definitely, as there is a new panel, we'd like to touch on their experiences since we've shifted to the work from home climate. And secondly, and this is probably more, more so the content, but it's going to be around how to manage sales development teams generally, but definitely there'll be an element of that around the work from home scenario as well. I suppose the, the EngageTech angle on, on this is we've got a team of 30 SDRs recently transitioned to the remote climate, and we've been the beneficiary of only ever being based in one location previously, and have a great culture there, placed on the Sunday Times Best Small Companies to Work For, in the top 5 in London twice in the last 2 years, but we know that it is tough transitioning that culture to a remote environment. But more importantly, we want to pull our information today with sales leaders from other organizations with just as much experience, great stories to tell themselves. Just to quickly roll into the, to the new lineup, we've got John Carr, who's head of global inside sales at a company called Axios, who are an IT service and operations management firm. He's got 30 years of sales experience under his belt, but rose to fame last week by confronting Boyd about his views on sales targets. John, quick intro, how's the last few weeks been for your inside sales team?

Well, I think to keep it polite, it's been really tough. Won't tell any lies, no point in buttering it up. I think the biggest challenge that I've experienced from the start of the outbreak is having teams in different areas around the world. So every single country was at a different point of the outbreak. So, you know, having resource and team members working the DAC region, APAC, North America, Middle East, and Africa, So it's a constant moving target all the time, everything is changing. So it's been about— I think the biggest challenge was at the start was trying to know what each country's position was because we couldn't— it's impossible to have everybody doing the same role as they would normally do because, for instance, Germany was in total lockdown before everyone, so our Dach callers really struggled. And then, you know, other regions then followed suit. So first week was really bad because everybody was in different positions. Second week, everybody was locked down. So slowly but surely, we all got into the same playing field, if you like. So I've tried to sort of switch focus quite a bit. First couple of weeks was a lot of training, HubSpot accreditation, Google courses, dealing with inbound, you know, when it comes in, but we put a stop on cold calling prospecting, certainly for the first week or two. We needed to let people transition into getting remote and being able to take calls, and also there was a bit of a general consensus that to some sectors it was quite insensitive to be doing cold calling sales calls, such as phoning healthcare hospitals. I mean, the last thing they want to be speaking to you about now is projects and IT and spending money. So I think now we're reaching a sort of playing field where more people are now remote, they are online, service delivery and IT teams are not as stressed out as they were, you know, they've went from having to I just did a call an hour ago with one of our prospects that's had to delay a demonstration because they've just got 3,000 remote as of Monday, and they've come in this morning to 200 P1 incidents. You know, so there'll be a plateau very shortly where you can start prospecting properly, but first couple of weeks were tough, but we're getting to the point now where we can do more activities on the phone. And not feel as bad about selling as such.

Yeah, yeah, thanks, John. I think to summarize, you've got a scenario where understanding the global climate and bringing all your team onto the same page allows you to be a better manager. You've obviously focused on some training and upskilling in that, in that time frame, and there's definitely a focus on existing relationships or warmer relationships rather than entirely cold prospecting, which is feedback I've heard from, from a fair few other companies as well. Just rolling through the rest of the panel, we've got Steph, who up until recently was Head of Sales at a company called Venue Scanner, and last few weeks has picked up some consultancy work with the founder of another leading travel business. Steph, it's obviously been a whirlwind few weeks in your sector. What for you have been the main takeaways? What have you learned from the experience?

Yeah, so I mean, Venue Scanner operates within the events industry, and our sales team we're selling purely to venues. That's how we generate our revenue. So when I was on another webinar earlier on in the week and the chap that was leading it, a guy called Aaron who was one of the authors of the book Predictable Revenue, and one of the things he was talking about was kind of looking into looking into your customer profiles and who you've got and the importance of segmenting it. And you know, if you're working within travel sector, if you're working within the events industry, probably leave those industries out. And I thought, yeah, that was our entire customer base. So it was a really, really challenging time. And I'm now in the fortunate position that I'm kind of reflecting on what it is I'll be doing kind of moving forward, but I'm using that time wisely. And I've decided to focus my efforts and my time on some consultancy work. And that's been— I think it's important to look at everything as an opportunity, right? Whatever happens, whether you fail, whether you succeed, you've always got to look at things and kind of think about what you can pick out and what you can learn from the scenario. And I'm now working with a motor group up in Scotland. And I mean, Motor Group, they're in the retail sector, so they're being hit pretty hard because they've had to close down all of their dealerships. And the motor trade probably has a reputation for not necessarily being that innovative, maybe being a bit behind the curve. There's a lot in the news about how they're not necessarily anticipating what's going to be happening and kind of consumer trends in the future. Now, the business I'm working with at the moment, CEO, he employs about 1,000 people across Scotland, and he is facing a number of different challenges. But really interestingly, what he's not focusing on is, 'This is a disaster, we're not going to be making money.' It's actually all about innovation and opportunity and how this type of climate, this time, can actually lead to increase market share, and it can also allow you that time to innovate. So we're looking at the topic of mobility and trying to anticipate trends that will come up in the future and look into how we can utilize tech and how we can launch different businesses that will actually start to create solutions for the motor industry, but also for consumers more importantly. And so that's been a really interesting time that despite being in a business that is really, really suffering and really being really significantly challenged, actually it's about where's the opportunity and how can we use this period of time to kind of really propel our company forward. So that's been a really interesting, um, a really interesting time. And I think what I've taken from that is whether you're an SDR, whether you're a CEO, this can ultimately be a career-defining time. Like when I started my career as a graduate, we'd just come out of the recession and things were starting to really pick up. And I remember working for a guy who, he was just like, his mindset around strategy and how to create a business development strategy was incredible because he'd had to graft and create something out of very little opportunity. And so if you can succeed in that environment, you can succeed in any environment. So that's been really interesting kind of point that's been re-emphasised over the last few weeks for me.

Thanks, Steph. Last, we've got Mark, CEO and founder at Robertson Sumner. They're essentially a market leader when it comes to placing talent in the IT channel. Mark, as a founder, what skills do you think business owners are having to display right now to keep companies moving forward? And that actually links quite nicely with Steph's point.

Yeah, well, leadership skills for a start. I think, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty amongst their staff whether they're going to be keeping in jobs, etc. So they're going to have to do to sort of certainly display that. I think the business continuity plans that they had in place have been really tested. So most companies who might have had agile working or remote working, etc., were trying to grab stock from their companies like we were. We were trying to grab PCs, desktops, etc. And I think that's been really, really tested. I think now people are thinking more, actually, this is, this is going to be, this is going to be the norm. And actually now it's probably the second wave of that, actually thinking, I need to actually think of my business continuity plan of this going forward, i.e., having video Zoom calls, Microsoft Teams, those sort of meetings with clients, instead of actually getting clients face-to-face, making sure we're booking in clients in face-to-face, sorry, over the video. So I think that's been imperative to actually take a mind shift from, for staff to actually think, right, I'm not gonna be able to see this person face-to-face, I'm not gonna be able to hustle over the phone either to try and get ahold of them, I need to actually book time in their diary because they're going to be all maxed out.

Sure, thanks for that. I would just like to invite people that are on now, we're almost at 100 people. One of the things that really kept things moving last week was the interaction in the chat. I think I'd just invite people to just, if they could, perhaps just drop a line or so in that chat just to give us a bit of an indicator about perhaps some of the key things that you've found you've had to adjust to moving to a work-from-home climate, and how you feel you've been managed successfully or unsuccessfully in that timeframe. And I'll dip in and out to that chat to just supplement what the guys are talking about, but just to keep it interactive, that would be really useful. John, if I could just loop back around to you, because this was something that you were obviously passionate about in that section last week. We briefly touched on the view on targets changing in the current climate. What do you see as the— well, what's your view on that right now? How could companies successfully navigate that minefield?

Well, I think from my end, I amend targets quite a bit. So I have been accustomed to doing that, especially at Axiom Systems. The reason being Every country, every region is a different market. Every country and every region has different events that are on, different marketing activity. So for instance, the Middle East and Africa, where we have very limited data and smaller numbers of organizations as compared to America, I can never target them the same if there's no marketing activity. So I normally amend targets each month, but certainly for this type of period, I've reduced targets and in some cases, believe it or not, two people in particular I've given no target to because they are brand new, they're only in the door 6 weeks, but the way I think of it is if we have, if I have a team of outbound callers who consistently hit target every single week under normal circumstances and now fast forward to the period we find ourselves in, and these same people are now missing target every week. For me as a manager, and knowing what the opportunities my organisation need, if I target them normally to 4 in a week and they're only finding 1 or 2, they're demoralised because they're not making as much money. But I know that my company would get a lot more out of 1 more opportunity where they miss target than the bonus that we would pay for that opportunity. So I feel by reducing their target of 4 a week to 3 a week, it gives them an up. It's still going to be, it's not a given target because if they're struggling to get 1 or 2, you know, 3 is still stretching a bit. But again, I feel as though, and again, for Axiolos, our average order can be anything from a quarter of a million up to 10 million for our software. So that one opportunity that we may pay 50 quid or 100 quid for that lead on that project, us paying that out as opposed to the potential of winning the million-pound contract far outweighs. So I believe reducing people's target to something that they can see and touch. We can't target people currently the same as what they were. Simple as that. There is not enough businesses open, the budgets are being slashed, the amount of industries and sectors that they can contact are limited. You know, if people are being smart, they should be phoning places like haulage, transportation, you know, video technology, all the people that have got lots of money now as a result of this. You know, places like healthcare, public sector, retail, Don't even think about phoning them, you're just wasting your time. Even if you get through to people in retail, they're worried about their job, they're worried about their company's performance, they're worried about the future. So I think, you know, reducing targets or even changing targets, you know, so having worked in an agency previously like Engage Tech, you know, one thing that we would do is maybe speak to clients, open the timescales, you know, so if they're insisting on face-to-face meetings, right, we're not going to get them in April, we might not get them in May, let's set them for the end of May, let's set them for the start of June, let's relax the criteria, but that's one way of changing targets. We're still, you know, an SDR can get buy-in to hitting targets if we say, right, if I've only got to set up, you know, meetings that are 2 months away, people can see the light that far away, or again, you know, if you reduce the number that needs to be found and certainly changing the scope of things. So it's something that I'm a big believer in, and because I think the number one thing is having an SDR that starts the week off thinking they can hit a target.

Yep, thanks for that, John. I think the momentum in there is important to look at, you know, someone believing they can achieve coming in at the start of the week is is so important to their success, and I can agree with that. Steph, do you see there maybe being any negative aspects of the message that you send by reducing targets in this time, or are you in John's camp entirely?

Yeah, I think one of the potential risks is, kind of, it might be complacency, or people resting on their laurels, but I mean, that then poses a question as to whether you've got the right people in your team. So, I actually am probably very much in John's camp, and I've worked for CEOs who have set wildly, wildly ambitious targets that no matter how hard the team works, and no matter the growth that they deliver, they still feel like they've not necessarily achieved success. And so, I think target setting is a really, really important aspect of creating a culture. Interestingly, so the Revenue Collective, it's a global network of sales leaders, and they've been conducting a number of different studies throughout the last few weeks, and they found that 57% of businesses have actually adjusted their revenue target, and there's a further 27% that are expecting to reduce their revenue targets. So you can see that this is definitely happening across the board. If you then look at individual sales quotas, you've got about 70% of sales leaders who have or are intending to reduce sales quotas. So it is happening, and I think it's the right thing to happen because, like, in my opinion, trust is one of the most important aspects of running a successful team, but also a sustainable team that kind of works together. And if you don't— if you give your team unachievable, unrealistic targets, not only are you going to demotivate them and deflate them, but actually you're going to lose that trust and you're not going to be able to work towards success in the future, in my opinion.

Yeah, thanks for the stats there as well. Love the stats. Yeah, reeled them out. And I think that brings like some good metrics to the dialogue. I think that trusting thing is so important and I think everyone's kind of got no choice on that now as well, like, to really explore that. Mark, do you have any additional opinions to add?

Yeah, I would be really worried if any leadership team or management team was insisting to sort of manage people to their current targets, what they were before. I'd actually really worry about that from a well-being point of view. You know, this is a situation where we should be engaging with our staff and of the care of them and actually considering what they can actually do physically, let alone, you know, trying to micromanage them or push them into doing targets or managing like that. I think that'd be really poor for managers to do that, I think, I really do. This is a time when, you know, whether we're going to adjust it by 20%, 30%, 50% or whatever it is, this is very much a time to be engaging with your staff, collaborating as much as you can, increasing as much communication with you as you can and making sure they're actually being effective to your customers. I would really worry if actually people were sort of trying to manage people to targets at the moment, when actually they might be actually worried they've got parents or friends or whatever that might not even live. So I'd be actually really concerned if I was working for a company like that and I was actually getting, being managed to a target and saying I'm not doing X, Y, Z, I just wouldn't work for a company like that. This is a time where it's the next 2 or 3 months to actually, you know, put your arm weight around your staff, making sure their wellbeing's there, making sure they've actually got the right mindset to actually even engage with your customers, let alone, you know, trying to push them towards targets. So I think there will be an adjustment, I definitely do. You know, I'm definitely going to adjust potentially 50% of my targets down. But even then, I'm very much going to be coaching and mentoring and making sure they've actually got the tools to do the job and they're doing it in the right way rather than just sort of like push them to do the job. You know, can you imagine putting someone in the pit right now in this crisis? They weren't hitting stuff. I'd almost be insulted if someone, a manager did that. In this current climate. So let's not forget the human element in this. This is about people, this is about— yes, sales is a target level job, yes, it's a pressurised job, but currently in this market, I think probably that goes out the window.

Sure. I think like just a few points from me on the topic, and thanks for sharing your opinions, guys. I think it's really important for people that are on today to appreciate that with how many people we've got, there are a lot of different varieties of business in on the webinar, and for me it's important to distinguish between 100% of your target and having a floor that you need to achieve, which is maybe set at about that 50% level, and differentiating between, at least from my perspective, the fact that there might not be an expectation that you hit your 100% anymore, but there is probably an expectation that you still need to hit like a reasonable output in the coming weeks and months, because it absolutely is still possible to particularly from a sales development perspective, be striking up relationships. And I think the other point, which I think is a really good one, Mark, that you made about like a performance improvement plan over the coming months, is maybe as a staff member to control that dialogue and just maybe put your hand up and just communicate the things that you are struggling with in the current climate so that you can be enabled to improve. And I think that there are certainly— there's a lot of pressure put on management to make sure that they are handling things correctly, but definitely as employees you can also do your part in making that a seamless process, and I think it certainly is a time to over-communicate how you feel on certain topics.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Just on the topic of, well, trust was raised, I think everyone on this call is likely aware of targets and there are KPIs and certain metrics that that come into play to gauge performance. I'd be interested to see, Mark, if you had any views on the data points that really matter at the moment in terms of managing the team. What are the KPIs that you would pay attention to?

Well, I'm obviously interested in getting the buyer persona, who they're actually targeting and making sure that's correct. Also the sort of the content interaction, if we are putting out marketing, who's interacting with that. The worst thing to do is actually put content out, whether it's marketing, whether it's posts, whether it's marketing initiatives or wherever it is, getting dialogue back and engagement back, and then not obviously following up with that. I think that's poor. So really, really making sure that you're on point with the data. Why customers are leaving. You know, it might be at the moment that, you know, people are putting freezes on or why they're not actually dealing with you. So finding out the data on that, why they're actually not leaving, and that is just a direct question. You know, is it just a crisis or is it actually you're unhappy with the service? What else would I say? And also how they found you. If obviously customers at the moment, you know, we're on this webinar now, there'll be lots of people at home, in fact, not lots of people, everyone at home, everyone at home actually looking at LinkedIn and looking for opportunities. You know, I'm finding it very, very easy to get hold of decision makers at the moment on calls like this, because they're naturally looking at, they're actually looking at LinkedIn and looking for opportunities. So there's massive opportunities out there if your marketing's right and your content is right. But I would say the data, the points you should be looking at is who's engaging with it. If you're putting out posts and content, et cetera, no one's engaging with it, change it up. If you're then getting engagement, make sure you're engaging back and following it back because at the moment to me, it's quite easy to be flat out with lots of new prospects if you're getting them on the platform and you get some interesting content out. Don't be that person doing, you know, I noticed a point from James Kane here on saying the navigator, you know, I'm not in demand creation, but I certainly wouldn't appreciate, you know, an email from a sales navigator selling me XYZ of the benefits of what some products or service can do when I'm actually more focused on actually the wellbeing of my staff and how we can actually potentially keep our head above water. So I would say the data points would be the buyer persona, their behaviour, their history of what they bought before, their marketing decisions and how they found you.

Yeah, sure. That's an interesting one with respect to the online content. I think it's such an opportunity right now for people in sales development particularly to just start building that brand online. There's not really an excuse, there's not a distraction, you're sat there with your laptop on your own, start putting some stuff out. And like you say, people will tell you if they like it or they don't and you'll start to improve down that route. John, earlier you mentioned that there was a focus in your team on booked meetings. Perhaps it was 4 a week, now 3, just as an example you raised earlier. What are the other metrics outside of booked meetings that you care about right now?

Right now? So right now, I'm not even looking at— I'm looking at call activity, but I'm not reading into it too much. So what I check more, or what I've asked for more recently, is enriching data. So it's a big part of what we need to do with our inbound. When inbound comes in, they only tell you so much, so part of enriching that is filling in all the blanks and the job titles and from LinkedIn profiles, so getting the data as clean as possible for when we're ready to call that. But I'm also checking, you know, how many records are— the way I can check that, I can go into the CRM and see how many records, how many leads or contacts or orgs have been edited, when they were edited, and who they were edited by. So the team don't know that I do that. Yeah, I don't want them to know because it's just a way— I don't want them to think— it's not a micromanagement piece because there's no target for it. I just— it's my way of seeing that we're doing what's being asked. So the main things that I'm looking for just now is editing records, adding contacts especially. I've asked also for a focus on the industries that I mentioned that we know are going to have money at the back end of this. So, you know, all your supermarkets, delivery, haulage, transportation, all these types of organizations, we are now building up a prospecting list for them so that when We're good to go in a few months. We have a lot of good targets for all these organizations with email addresses. This is a target as well that I've introduced that we need, so they're receiving our content. So the main things I'm looking for is not phone time. The phone time I can see is picking up over the past week or so. The connected calls are connecting more and longer calls are happening, so calls we might look at in the future, but certainly enriching the data and doing more training, but also going on LinkedIn, building— if you're on Navigator, build up a new leads list, who you're chasing. You know, the last time I've built my lead list was about a year ago, so I reassessed all of that and, you know, brought in some fresher contacts. So, you know, work on things like that where it doesn't matter the cost coronavirus is going on, whether you do that now or 3 months ago, it's the same. So that'll help moving forward. That's the main things I'm looking for from the team.

Thanks, John. I think one of the things for me which is important to make a distinction on is educating yourself as a manager about data points that matter so that you can have a constructive 30-minute to hour-long chat with a staff member once a week versus micromanagement. Micromanagement is commenting on every activity, undercutting it in the here and now. And I think it's really important that the stigma of micromanagement doesn't stop sales managers and people running sales development teams from looking at the data that is in front of them, considering how someone is performing, because you just need to use that as a guide. It's factual and helps you to manage appropriately. And that stigma is something which I think is probably holding a lot of people back from doing like a really effective job in the current climate. Consciously been on that topic for a bit there, so just saw a really good question that come into the comments: advice to an SDR starting a new role in the coming weeks. Steph, what are your thoughts on that?

It's a good question. First of all, I think don't put too much pressure on yourself. I think Going into a new company is a challenging thing, even in the best of times, because you want to prove yourself and you want to get up and running as quickly as possible. But I think there needs to first of all be an appreciation that it's not normal times at the moment, and you have to cut yourself a bit of slack. I would focus on building relationships internally, so make sure that you're speaking to other SDRs, the AEs, whoever it might be, to understand what is working well at the moment and what are some of those challenges so that you're on the front foot. One of the challenges is when you're new to a company, you want to shadow people, you want to understand what they're doing. So I would hope that the company has in place some kind of call recording software that will help you kind of listen in and hear some kind of live examples of conversations with customers. And I would just focus on as well, from kind of getting to know and understand, like whether it's the ICP, so the ideal customer profile, who are we trying to target, why, how are we trying to target them, and focus your time on really getting to grips with that before you kind of throw yourself into the deep end of contacting prospects when, like we say, there's got to be a lot of sensitivity. So I would build the foundations, build the relationships before you throw yourself into it, but don't put too much pressure on yourself.

Sure.

Mark, aware that you might be putting someone in a role in the nearest future where they're starting a new business, like what advice are you giving people in that position?

Yeah, obviously not so much on SDRs, but yeah, I think it, It's keeping up the communication. I think if people are being onboarded virtually, that's going to be a challenge. If people are going to be doing inductions at the moment, that's going to be a challenge. If people are going to be trained virtually, that's going to be a challenge. But, you know, just soaking up much of the— as much of the data as they can. And if they are going to be identifying the sort of the buying persona or the data points they actually need, just really absorbing themselves into it. And obviously they're going to have to work twice as hard as they would probably normally, as they would in a normal situation, which probably isn't isn't the best advice they want to hear when starting a new job. But this is a real point where they can potentially make a name for themselves. And also as well, again, I look at these data points and I look at, you know, how people are engaging. And I said, I don't run an SDR firm and I don't do that, but I'm more interested in people that are using a bit innovative, you know, ideas to get through to people, you know, looking at their LinkedIn profile, seeing common knowledge, seeing something they're going to be able to have commonality with, seeing if it's something they can reach out on, commenting on LinkedIn, commenting on posts, seeing some engagement where they can get engagement with them, and then trying to get the appointment or trying to get the meeting or trying to get them on video. For us, that has worked really, really well. You know, we're very much putting content out, getting some engagement, putting something back or showing some commonality. If people are doing that and they're starting a new job, especially if it's their first job, you know, I don't want to be, as a CEO and owner of a company, I don't want to be approached by an SDR about trying to just give me features and benefits and information. That's the worst thing I want to do. But if there's something they've commented on my post, on my profile, or they've sent something interesting, or they comment, I will respond. I will naturally respond, whether it's my ego responding or actually I've got some commonality with them. I will respond. And I think just sort of be a bit outside the box. Just use the human element a bit rather than just doing it on stats, numbers, dials, call times.

Yeah.

I think that's such an important thing for people to take away from this call who are in sales development. You've got a CEO, founder of a business, telling you right there how you could ignite a relationship with the, the equivalent of the companies. And the reality of the current scenario is there are a lot of people, decision influencers in the current market, that you are looking at a longer-term funnel play, you know, just starting to warm relationships up. If you are genuinely looking to sell in the next 2 to 3 months, like transact for revenue, the only people that you're going to be able to do that with are people like Mark. And so use that ticket that he's just given you to try and open doors, not solely just into Mark's inbox. I'm sure it's not to him.

I have 100 emails now.

There's going to be 50 ropey new shirts coming in. Just quickly on that point, do you believe there is a moment where companies might be able to strike to pick up the best new talent on the market before loads of other companies start recruiting?

100%, absolutely 100%. You know, lots of people have been put on furlough, yeah? I've had staff on furlough, so lots been put on furlough, lots of people are now going to question the company they're working for. They're going to question, they have more time on their hands to actually think, do I want to, you know, am I going to, is this the right career move for me? Do I want to work for this company, etc., etc. So there's a lot of companies out there looking at this as an opportunity to actually sort of target companies that are actually putting on furlough. I know one reseller in the market has put their entire workforce on furlough. They are going to be attacked. They might think this might last 4 or 5 weeks. They are going to be attacked and there's going to be recruiters like us who'll be seducing and romancing those candidates off of LinkedIn trying to get their CVs, and by the time they come off furlough, if they're not communicating with them regularly, they could have another job. So this is, this is a time at the moment to really over-communicate with your staff, really over-communicate with, with the furloughed staff, and make sure and give them reassurance that they are coming back. And if you are recruiting, you want to grab market share, this is the time to sort of continue to recruit and continue the pipeline, continue to look at talent, to continue to look at interview people, whether it's virtually on a platform like this because you can't do it face to face. And you might just come out of this and grab 4 or 5 people and serious market share. I see a lot of people are doing that. You've got the ones that are actually terrified and batten down the hatches, and you've got the ones who are actually saying this is an opportunity because this isn't going to last forever. You know, we're, you know, at the moment every IT company I'm seeing are having record months. Every distributor, record month. Every reseller, record month. The top vendors having record months. You know, they're actually maxed out, and if they can be agile as well and actually look at talent at the same time, you know, some of them are going to come out really flying out of this.

Yeah, so there is going to be an opportune moment for companies to strike, to pick up that talent, and they should be aware of that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Cheers, Mark. The comment in the side panel from Morgan, who's actually been historical, like, really high performer at EngageTech, and has communicated to me the other day that he's found that some of the adjustments in the climate have allowed for him to focus more and hit a higher meeting level per week. And he's basically put in there, do you think that some high-performing members of the team can kind of throw a bit of shade onto the fact that some people are using COVID as an excuse? John, be really interested to see what your input is on that.

Well, it's a pretty good point. I'd be interested to know what campaign Morgan's working on, what type of contacts, what sectors he's working into, because having worked in your area, I know everybody will be phoning different people, different campaigns, different playing fields, and so you can't really compare apples with oranges. It's as simple as that. Different if you compare Morgan to someone who's on the exact same campaign, are phoning the exact same type of contacts in the exact same sectors. So as I said as well, there are some businesses out there that are doing brilliant. It may well be that Morgan's thinking smart and he's not phoning healthcare, he's not phoning local government, he's not phoning the people that are, you know, maybe stressed out. He might actually be phoning contacts that are not IT. Phoning IT contacts is the toughest just now. So, I mean, some people, some people will use that as an excuse, you know, in every sales environment where you have a large team, there's always going to be people there that, you know, don't always give 100% but can do a good job, and, you know, they might use this as a rest, resting period, or an excuse, but I definitely think that just looking at the comment, counters any argument for lowering targets. I don't agree with that. I mean, there's so many— if I was, right, talk about my type of fight, if he was on an IT service management campaign where you have to speak to IT service delivery who are all trying to get people working remote and dealing with incidents all day and VPNs and connectivity and remote access and passwords and All these different things, these people are speaking to nobody. So, you know, we're struggling to get meetings, we're struggling to have conversations. If, however, we were trying to speak to people in e-commerce, you know, for certain businesses, we could speak to them. Finance, you can speak to them. It's IT that's the real struggle. So hats off to Morgan, you know, if he's still hitting target, well done, because what We always need our top performers to lead by example. If they're always at target, if they're thinking outside the box, he's doing something different, that's for sure. So I would say well done to him for doing that. Just one point as well, I just wanted to flick back just to, just a very, very quick one on Aaron's point, advice to an SDR starting in the coming weeks. If he's starting in a role in 3 weeks, he's in a great position. To be way ahead of any other recruit that's ever started. He's got 3 weeks to immerse himself in that company's website, every bit of training, everything on YouTube, all the products. He could go in there as a superstar. How many candidates will have come in there with 3 weeks off before and just spent all their time getting to know it? So that would be one bit of advice I would do. I would say, you know, immerse yourself in the company's training and website.

Yeah, thanks, John. I think the points that you made that really stuck with me there are just don't take a view on reducing targets, changing targets, because someone next door is doing it or not doing it. You need to look at your particular company, particular performers, the data they're calling into, the message they're taking to market, and make your own reasonable assessment off the back of that, rather than just this happened at this company, so we need to do the same, and need to resist that pressure and make an independent decision, which I think is sound advice for sure. I think, Steph, one for you. I mean, we are engaged at the moment, we've broken down the company into kind of pods or smaller groups, and we're having 3 video calls a day, and there are probably about 6 or 7 people on those calls, and that's how we're approaching it. And whether it's a group situation or one-on-one, what do you think the people that are running those sessions should be really focusing on communicating? Like, what would be your top things that you think people should be discussing in their— on their kind of catch-ups daily?

That's a really good question, and I think I'm a big fan of constant and open communication, and again, going back to the trust piece, creating a space where people feel that they can communicate openly and talk about the challenges. I think the most important thing to be talking about is what's going well and what your blockers are, and actually using the team's kind of collective input to solve and overcome those challenges. Because if you're having those high-quality conversations, you're going to unlock a lot of opportunities. And like Mark has already pointed out, it's all about innovation at this point of time and thinking differently. And you are going to have to try things out that won't work, but then you iterate and you improve. So I think that's really important. What I would also say is important though is actually the kind of how you're having those conversations. So for me, with the teams I looked after, I don't like to be the person that is always leading the stand-up or always leading the call. And I think this plays into the micromanagement piece around— it's important that everyone understands why your targets and your metrics are what they are. So KPIs are not arbitrary. KPIs are basically your toolkit to go, if you do this, this, and this, it's going to lead to success over here. And it is a really good steer as to how you can improve performance or how you can step up to that next level. Level. And I think there needs to be that common understanding across the team so that different members of the team can step up and can have kind of open challenge amongst each other, where it's peer-to-peer and you're collaborating. The other thing that I would encourage, I've talked about already around call recording. I think it's good for people to bring along a call to like a team stand-up and be like, right, this is a call that I had that was really challenging. And maybe you share it in advance in advance of the team meeting, and then you brainstorm how you could have handled that call differently. But I think it's working together to talk about what's working and what's not working, basically. But then also having that every single week. Like, things are moving so quickly at the moment, and what applied last week is completely different to this week, and that will be the same with our data. Sales leaders need to be looking into the data every single week to look at how the different stages of the sales funnel are changing and how conversions are changing. And actually be talking about that and what the different barriers are and then adjusting your targets accordingly. But yeah, building that trust within the team so that they know this is like real time that we're looking at rather than a standard approach of what's worked previously.

Yeah, I think like varying the voice is something which is so important, like you said, and I think it will also get members of the team, if it's a group scenario for example, to actually not just mindlessly turn up to call but actually think, 'Oh, it's on me today to lead and to bring something.' And I think, well, I know for me personally, on the calls that I'm on, I have been guilty from time to time over the last few weeks of rolling off another call or something like that and just straight into it. I think it's really important that people prepare and make sure that there is a topic to discuss. Like you said, I love the idea of the call being listened to because it just engages people and you can have a bit of coaching in there alongside just a just a touch point. Mark, I see you nodding a little bit there, seemed like you had something you want to say.

It's interesting because, you know, most people I think don't know how to run an effective meeting, you know, and that's one of the big challenges they've got because really if the person that's holding the meeting or the person that's coming to the meeting has got a blank piece of paper, just don't turn up. There's just no even point. You know, every meeting should have an agenda, every meeting should have someone that's going to manage it, Everyone, every meeting should have someone that's going to coordinate and manage it. Every, every, and that person should be making sure that everyone on that meeting, like we're doing now, has got a chance to articulate their view. If they don't do that, it's just going to be a waste of time. Once you've done that and you've got the meeting running effectively, someone's managing it, someone's coordinating it, someone's given an opportunity, and the agenda is stuck to, and you're not just, you know, you're not having a meeting where someone's talking for half an hour, 'Oh, actually, 'Oh, we've only got 5 minutes left. Does anyone else want to say anything?' That's a complete waste of time. So someone's got to run it effectively. That's my first point. Then my second point is once you've done that and you're bringing opportunities and you're bringing success to the meeting, repeat success. Set a WhatsApp group saying, you know, we're sending WhatsApp groups with same messages saying, 'Look, this message has happened. This message has happened.' Showing people how they've actually— can you repeat success? So some people do it different ways. So we've got a WhatsApp group where I've sent a message out to a prospect. He's come back, I've shown him the reply, I've sent them the whole, the whole message context so they can actually physically see it. Because otherwise they're going to be interacting in different ways. Some are introverts, some are extroverts. And if they can't see physically the success of what they've actually done, it's very, very difficult to repeat that. So making sure effective meetings are effective, but then showing and sharing successes as a group, whether it's a group of 5 or 6 or however many it is.

Yeah.

Thanks, Mark.

It would be good to get an answer from each of you on this, and then I think there's just one top tip section which we're just going to roll into. A comment in the chat, essentially along the lines of, what's the balance between striking while the iron's hot on an opportunity that's moved quite quickly through the cycle in the last week or two, and empathising that actually now might not be the time to purchase? Where can you apply pressure and not in that? I don't know if you want to take that, John, to start with.

Yeah, well, I would probably say if it's that hot, close it, engage it, make it happen just now, and not wait, you know.

Let the—

depending on how the conversations are going with a prospect, if he's not told you about that he has any problems happening there's nothing to stop them, why not close it? I would still go for it and then empathize afterwards. There's no point in empathizing first if you don't know if you need to, you know, he, although all this might be going on, the prospect might actually be fine still to sell to, still needs the product, still has the need, the problem's not been fixed, what's the point, depending on what it is they're looking at, what's the point in waiting another 3 months and living with this problem? They want it fixed and you've got the solution, and that's why you've been speaking to them previously. So I think, you know, I would still aim to try and engage and close that as soon as possible. If they say the timing is not right, then totally empathise.

So the fact that they've moved kind of further down the funnel away from just a warmed-up engagement to the fact that you might have sent paperwork or you're doing, you're having back-and-forth negotiations, whatever, that's your license to treat this as you would in a normal circumstance, yeah?

I would say so, yeah, yeah, I would say so, because, you know, they've taken themselves down that path in a sense a lot of the time. They might be asking you for the proposals, they might skip out so many sections of the buying process that we would normally go through with nurturing people till they're actually ready to sign, but, you know, I would just, I would still go for it.

Sure. And yourself, Steph?

I think, I think there's a few different things to take into consideration here. If it has moved quickly, I completely agree with John, like, keep pushing on. But I think at the moment, in this climate, it's even more important to build relationships and be a trusted advisor and not a salesperson. So using techniques that get the prospect to sell back to you rather than you pushing and selling. I think are particularly successful at the moment. So build a relationship, be the trusted advisor. I would also be having a think though about what we need to be doing to get creative to actually close a deal because there may be discounts required, there may be like a light version that you want to offer to kind of get them over the line and get them trialing your product. To your service. I think what's important is that during that process, you're thinking, okay, well, if I'm giving up this, let's say I'm giving up 10% of the price, what am I getting back in return? Without asking for what you're getting back in return. So that might be a referral, it might be a testimonial. There are so many different things that you can actually get out of a relationship. But I think the important bit is that relationship and building the trust between you and that prospect. You're not trying to push them over the line at a really difficult time, you're trying to provide a solution for them that's ultimately going to help them. So yeah, I'd say that's probably quite important.

I think what you've identified there as well though is that it is a skill to apply that pressure in a way where it feels like you're not, and it's actually the prospect which is helping to move the deal along rather than it feeling like you're forcing it. I mean, That could be a topic of its own to discuss for an hour, I think. Mark, did you have something to add?

Yeah, I suppose it's very difficult to articulate to someone what to use their own emotional intelligence, when to apply pressure, when not to apply pressure. I think, you know, they've got to use their own, their own nous with that. What I would say is they should have a clear understanding where they are with it down the funnel of that sales process. They should, you know, they should really understand where they are with that, and at the end of the day whether it's, you know, we call it trusted advisor or relationship builder or whatever you want to call it. At the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with challenging the client. You know, is there anything stopping us actually moving forward with this project today? Yes, COVID. Okay, we'll move forward. You know, lots of people really worry about asking the final question. It's like, oh, actually, I'm really, you know, I've got a good partner. I think that deal's going to come over. I'm waiting for him Friday. What are you waiting for? Just ask the blooming question. Just ask the question, what's going to happen? Why can't we? Is there any reason why we can't do this deal by Friday? No? Great. I'll speak to you then. You know, all these sort of subtle alternative closes or, you know, do it in blue or red, all that sort of stuff should go out the window. At the end of the day, if you presented the opportunity, the solution's right, you've moved them down the pipeline and you're not, you know, the guy says, how do I facilitate trying to get the deal over the line? Ask them. Literally just ask them, what is stopping us doing this deal today? 'COVID, right, when can we speak?

2 weeks, whatever.' Yeah, I think the point is really like, if you're unsure about the scenario, you probably need to ask a few additional questions. That definitely should be in line with the qualifying criteria which your business maybe lays out as the standard, and there's other mediums of doing that, but also don't be afraid to really just ask the crunch questions when needs be. I just wanted to move on to something just, just a little bit more, a little bit softer, and just if you guys could just recall like your previous experiences. I'm keen to understand if there have been any kind of successful or innovative incentives that you've seen put out for sales development teams or sales teams full stop. John, don't know if you want to take that one to start with and move through the panel again? Just conscious we've got about 5 minutes left, so it'd be good to have about a minute each, just so I've got a moment to wrap up.

Well, so incentives in particular. So, I mean, it's hard to incentivise as much just now because there's not as much happening. So over and above existing commission structures and comp plans that are there, you know, we would maybe do Different things around pipeline creation. So some people who are on here, it might have been former team members of mine, will know we collect stage 4s and 5s, project within 12 months, project within 18 months. So incentivizing on those, and they can be quality checked, you know. So these are future projects, so let's not talk about here now. Incentivize on these stage 5 projects that are within 12 months. If we've got call recordings, check them, is it the right person, will they have budget in 12 months, have they confirmed a project, fits criteria, good. You know, these types of things that we've been— that's what we've been trying to sort of focus on as well, is the future engagements rather than the here and now.

Yeah, I think the important thing about that is running incentives which are tangible in reality metrics, which actually help to move conversations forward.

Do one just quick note there, just Stephanie mentioned earlier, and Mark touched on it as well, about, you know, Mark mentioned the WhatsApp group thing, Stephanie mentioned something similar. What I like is you can also have a Teams group or similar with everybody on the team. Every time you engage something, share it with everybody. Every time you get a stage 4 or a 5, share it with everybody. So everybody's getting to see, right, they're finding projects 'He's found a project,' it keeps them upbeat. Some people will be demoralised, but they might not be true salespeople if that's getting them annoyed that other people are finding opportunities. So it shares the good news and motivates others to do a bit more to catch up.

Thanks, John. For you, Steph, incentives, creative stuff?

I would be incentivising team performance at the moment because I think twofold, One, it's not going to be an individual contributor that gets people through. Second of all, it's creating that culture and that cohesiveness and that team approach that will kind of carry everybody out. Mark's point earlier about recruitment, like, I think the best and worst traits come out during times like these and they get really exaggerated. So people need to be really reflecting on the companies they work for and how they're treating people. Internally and externally. And I'd be focusing on team-based incentives. And I think Greg's point on the chat is absolutely spot on. You need to celebrate the small wins at the moment and trust in the fact that small wins are going to lead to bigger wins. So it might not necessarily be a revenue target you're attaching your incentive to. It might be to do with meetings booked or whatever it may be. What you then attach to that, what that actual incentive is, will vary depending on your cash flow position, but it might be something as simple as, like, there's a company called Big Smoke Events, and what they do is every Wednesday night they're running a pub quiz, and it can be tailored to your team, and it's about £4 a head. So you can get, right, if we do X, Y, and Z, let's all get onto this pub quiz and have a bit of fun together virtually. Or it might be that you're, you're, you're kind of pulling together a big celebration for post-COVID once we're all able to get together and be in the same room again, and that celebrates the success, and you've got something that you are all working towards as a team and something to look forward to.

Absolutely. And Geoff Mark?

Yeah, well, one of my clients is doing it just because they wanted speed in terms of actually getting deals in the door. They've actually put a they've actually put a little incentive, like the first deal, the first GP on the day gets some sort of incentive. So literally, 'cause they were worried about people lying in bed or whatever they're doing, they couldn't remote manage them. So what I found quite interesting there is no one's like, not on the value of the deal, literally the first order on the morning, which has gone on. So basically sort of saying just little competitions between the teams where it's not about, oh, it's a £50 grand deal, it's a £5 grand deal. It's like, right, who's got the first order on the system for the day? Now, some people are obviously sandbagging deals from the day before and all sorts of stuff on these unscrupulous sort of methods. But I think it's quite a fun way of actually getting people to sort of think, actually, yeah, oh, Joe Bloggs put a deal on at half past 8, damn, I've missed that one, etc. There's the next one. And it keeps the sort of momentum and the collaboration and the team environment amongst the team. So that could be any incentive. It could be, you know, free lunch, football, £50, whatever it's going to be. But I think At the moment, when people are worried about what actually your people are doing and they're worried about how remote managing, getting little incentives around speed and actually getting people into that routine of actually, who's got the first order? Oh, Joe did. I think that's quite good for morale and also productivity.

Yep, agreed. I think just a few things, just for myself, that we've rolled out in the past and they're definitely possible remotely. Sales bingo, break people up into teams, achieve different KPIs, you can start to cross cross the boxes off. We've done Battleships remotely, split the team into two, and obviously any success you start to cross, you know the game. We've done the same with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Weakest Link, so you can start to unlock quiz questions every time you're successful. And I know the guys have been playing Pictionary in Teams over Slack calls, like through video. Again, similar premise, you can align the KPIs. So there's loads of ways you can be creative on that. I'm just conscious of the time, just wanted to start by saying Thanks very much to the panel, you've been amazing, really insightful, articulate throughout, so thanks very much for that. We're going to be posting links to this on the EngagedX site and LinkedIn, and if you want a recording, email in direct and we can send you a copy of that. That takes us to the hour, thanks for everyone that joined, there's another one happening next week, and panel, it would be great to stay in touch, I'm sure we'll see you around.

Great, thanks a lot guys.

Thanks all, cheers, see you later.