S3E16 - Why Your AEs must do prospecting even with SDR support with Anthony Netoli of Outreach.io

Jersey, actually.

So.

Hey, everybody, it's Richard Harrison Scott Lease with another episode of Sales Bonfire Session. This is our live session where we bring guests in along with the live audience to ask some questions and of course, take yours as well. So thank you so much. First, big shout out to our sponsors of Scratchpad, Sendoso, Outreach IO, as well as Vidyard for joining us. And for those of you who are interested in outreach, check out Qlik IO dot.

Oh, sorry.

Qlik Outreach IO Surf. Qlik Outreach IO surf. We're not promising a discount, but that doesn't mean you can't ask for one since you got the name from here anyway. So I am super excited as I try to get organized. The way this is, there's no real scripted agenda for today. We never do that on our podcast and we certainly never do it on our bonfire session. So I'm going to stop there. Anthony, introduce yourself, tell us where you're from, tell us your title and what.

We'Re doing here.

Mr. Professional. Scott Lease Control.

Yeah. Hey, everyone. Really pumped to be here. Anthony Natoli. I'm an account executive at Outreach. I've been here for about a year. Before that, I spent three years at Demandbase. I'm really passionate about prospecting. I was an SDR for quite some time, and so prospecting is in my blood, something I do every single day. And I'm a firm believer that AES that aren't doing prospecting are leaving a ton of money on the table, and I think that's kind of what we're going to dive into today. My hypothesis is that everyone wants more pipeline, but not a lot of people like prospecting. So I'm going to try to give you my tips and tricks that I've learned to make it as easy as possible to build more pipeline.

Great. Great. Hey, everybody. So, just so you know, do us a favor, go into the chat, let us know where you're dialing in from. Love to see that coming around. Always post your questions in the chat. We'll bring them up. Or you can hit Scott and I with them and we will either unmute you and let you ask it, or we'll ask it for you. So great to see everybody here. Thank you, Anthony. Thanks so much for being here.

Anthony, are you in love with prospecting and cold calling?

Put himself on mute again.

You guys really should just get out of the way and let me drive this whole entire thing. Don't touch any buttons. For Christ's sake, Richard. I'm screwing everything up.

I got nothing.

I got Nothing that's. That's on me.

That was you either. No hands. Both of you, get your hands off the wheel.

So, yeah, the question was, am I in love with prospecting? The act itself, no, but the outcomes that it drives, yes. So, like prospecting, like, for me, sometimes it's fun, but a lot of times, like the actual. It's like going to the gym. Like, no one wants to go to the gym most of the time, but you do it because the outcome, the reward is worth it. So.

Got it.

What do you say? What do you say, Anthony, to all of the AES out there who think that prospecting is beneath them and they should just sit around and wait for their SDRs to hand them over a half dozen demos a day and they can run their demos and close deals?

Yeah, I think it's quite a lazy mindset, respectfully, if you think about it. Those are your future customers and who better to have that first interaction than yourself as the ae? So I think that's like my thought on it. And the end of the day, your SDR is one person a lot of times supporting a lot of other AES. Um, and for me, if I've got like my 10 accounts, like that 20, the 80, 20 rule, the 20% of accounts that I need to focus on to get 80% of my revenue, like, I'm going all in. I'm not letting someone else control like, like my destiny, if you will. I want to, of course, enable that SDR if I'm working with one to guide them, but I should take matters into my own hands and make things happen for myself.

Okay, then what? Okay, then why don't we have full cycle AES anymore? Why do we need an SDR if all the AES should be prospecting all day? All day long as well?

Yeah, yeah. So AE shouldn't be prospecting their entire day, but there is enough time in the day when you're scrolling LinkedIn or Instagram or Twitter, whatever you're doing, that you could replace that with prospecting. And So I think SDRs are phenomenal at what they do, but AES do bring a different, I think, perspective for SDRs to enable them to build more pipeline as well.

So, yeah, I don't know if that answers the question.

It does.

I want to.

Scott, how long ago did you get rid of Facebook and Instagram?

Years. Yeah, a couple years. I don't even remember years.

How much time do you think it saves you a day?

30 minutes probably.

@.

Least. Okay, so there's. During the work. So that's.

Two. Two and a half out, two and a half hours during a work.

Week. Right. And I know you. I know that you're probably putting that maybe into your LinkedIn social or maybe with the kids or your wife, but, you know, if you haven't gotten rid of it, it's definitely time to. So I want to talk to you a little bit more. Anthony, you talked about bringing up coaching your SDRs.

Right?

Yeah. What do you do to help your SDRS get.

Better? Yeah, I really think it's understanding, like, what drives them. So I just got. We just, like, reorged, and I got two nests to do two new SDRs. And the first thing I asked them was, like, why. Why are you even an SDR in the first place? Like, what do you want to do? You got to understand what motivates them and drive them and kind of be their partner and their guide, because for many of us, we were in their shoes once as well. So building that relationship. And then, like, in terms of tactical things, I'm a firm believer that if you don't have a strong why and hypothesis of why you're reaching out to an account, then, like, you shouldn't be reaching out to an account. So SDR is oftentimes like, they're just trying to hit activity numbers, they're trying to make calls, trying to make emails, but if they don't know really why they're reaching out to someone, then they're just kind of prospecting to prospect. So I, as an ae, try to say, hey, these are the accounts that you're focused on, but here's why you're reaching out.

Because. What are some of those whys, though? What are those.

Whys? Yeah, so I think of them as, like, compelling events. And so, you know, for outreach specifically, if I see a job posting or if I dig into a 10k and I get some information from that about them trying to go up market or releasing new products, whatever I can kind of latch onto of, like, what our product solves rather than, like, what our product does for the customer. I think those are all kind of reasons why. So, like, are they using a competitor of yours? Did they come from a previous customer, like, starting a new role?

And so that's like, the compelling reason you're reaching out is also the relevancy that you'll use when you reach out. You know, like, the reason I'm reaching out or in your email, the first line of that. That body of the paragraph is that relevancy of why you're reaching Out. And so I think there's a ton more that I can send as like a follow up. But you should always have a why. And then if you can get a why now, like, what's the urgency? And tie it back to that, that's even.

Better. How long did it take you to figure out in your current role.

Exactly how much you needed to do every single day to build enough pipeline every single month or every single quarter in order to make sure that you're hitting your goal and then some. I'm talking about understanding the math and the activities that you need to do every single day to make sure that you've got enough that there. And is it 2 to 1, 3 to 1, 10 to 1? How do you think about that in terms of your prospecting, your efforts every single.

Day? Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. So we actually took on a new initiative around AE prospecting specifically. And we found that in order to really, for an AE to hit their number, they needed 3x pipeline coverage between both SDRs and AES. Then we realized, based on headcount, things like that, that AES needed to make up 30% of that total 3x coverage by.

Themselves. By themselves. So the STR is gonna help you with 70%. You're responsible for the other.

30%. Yep.

Exactly.

And is that something that you think, you know, people need to know right away when they first begin, or is that something that evolves with tenure? Is that something you think should be coached from leadership above? How do you think about that? Where does the burden of responsibility lay.

There? Yeah, I think it comes. It has to be supported from the top down. Because in order to change behavior of an ae, it has to be talked about every single meeting, every single one on one. Like, hey, what are you doing to generate pipeline? Who are your three big bets? It has to come from the top down. And as an ae, I want to know the math. Hey, how much pipeline do I need to hit to hit my number? And how much pipeline are the SDRs actually able to generate? Like, what is their bandwidth to generate X amount of pipeline and where is the gap that I need to.

Fill? Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, we got a question from Nick. Richard, you want to take Nick off.

Mute? I did do that part right, I.

Think. I hope so. Yeah, I'm.

Here.

Yes. What's up, Nick? How's it going? What's going on, guys?

Score. Scott223, Richard1 on.

Technology.

Yeah, I was just interested to.

Hear how you navigate dynamic without crossing wires with the sdr. And you guys are already talking and going over that a little bit, but without stepping on their toes and getting in the way of what they're already doing and having clearly laid out rules. And I guess it does start from the top down, but interested to.

Hear how you navigate.

That. Go for it.

Anthony. Yeah, I think at the end of the day, like, if you're, if you have a list of accounts that you're assigned, they're both of your accounts, they get paid based on meetings booked and oftentimes meetings that get moved to Pipeline. So they want to know from. From you what makes a good meeting, what moves from sales accepted to or from meeting book to sales accepted to Pipeline. They want to know that information because that's what they're gold on, that's what they're paid on. So I think more times than not, SDRs like, want to hear from their. Their AE, but they're too timid or shy to ask. So the AE needs to kind of approach them and have that open communication. And there's a lot of tactical ways to do that. It's. You meet once a week. You understand together your list of target accounts. You divide them up. Hey, I'm taking these three above the line contacts at this account. You take these three people, and this is the messaging that you're going to be using. They want to be guided, like a buyer wants to be guided. They want to be told what to do, and they want it to be easy. So if you just make it as easy as possible for them and say, hey, if you book a meeting with these three people, like, I'm going to move that deal for you. I'm going to move it because this is an important account. And then they get pumped and they want to do as much as they can to book that.

Meeting.

I don't disagree with what you're saying. What I actually would offer is that the way that should be done properly is RevOps should be doing all that sales and RevOps should be doing all that so my AE and my SDR don't have to spend too much time having that conversation and organizing themselves like that. That's one of the benefits. That takes a very mature sales rep and SDR to have that kind of conversation and get it right and to be organized and tight like that and at scale, I don't believe that that can.

Happen. How do you do.

That? Well, you have a rev Ops person who's in charge of, you know, assigning people the right accounts and making sure that everything's you Know, labeled and distributed appropriately and managed the right way and making sure that, you know, two people are not trying to hammer on the same contact inside of an account and all that kind of thing. It's still good like Anthony's talking about to have those conversations. But like, I don't want to put that burden of responsibility on my salespeople. You mean the burden of responsibility goes on my sales rep, sales ops and rev ops.

People. Right. And so your, your point, Scott, is the list should be there, but maybe they could still have a conversation if they need to around.

Messaging. Yes, yes, I agree with that.

Yeah. Okay, so, and just so I understand, Nick, do you, when you work with an sdr, do you both work the same account? Because it used to be like, oh, you're going to take the top 10 accounts and my SDR is going to take the other.

80.

Yeah.

So. Or do you now how do you do.

That? Yeah, phenomenal question. I think, you know, for me, I work like low tier enterprise, which is like up to, you know, 5,000 employees. So sometimes certain accounts, like it needs, like I need to have more than 10 people in a, in a sequence at any given time in order for me to scale that I need SDR support. But there's some accounts that like, I just want to handle on my own based on previous history. Right. Like if I've talked to them 90 days ago, I've had a closed lost op or there or I'm using some kind of third party intent data and like, sure, they're, you know, they're in market. Like I may just take that on my own. So it really just depends on the size of account that you're working and the history of that account.

To understand who should be, who should be doing.

What. Gotcha. And how do you, do you think your SDR should be paid on the meeting being held or that it needs to be a qualified meeting? And granted, I know you're an ae, but I'm curious to your belief on.

This. Yeah, yeah. I think to Scott, I think to Scott's point, if, if we're assigned accounts that we know are going to buy, then like every meeting that I should be being, or every meeting that's being booked for me should be a qualified account.

That, that I'm meeting with. And they shouldn't be reaching out. They should have the training and the enablement up front to know, not to read out, reach out to certain people to book those meetings. So I think it's like the SDRs are doing the best they can. And with the information that they have. And so, you know, oftentimes when a meeting doesn't get moved to sales accepted some of that, I think responsibility has to go back to enablement. It's like, how did you enable that SDR to know who to reach out to and.

Why?

So then does the SDR get credit for it if that's the.

Case?

Look at him punting. He's punting this question. Trying to say it's below his pay.

Grade.

Exactly. No, listen, when I was an sdr, so I would love for. To get paid on meetings held.

I think they should be like, there's only so much you can do. If I'm given the right data and the right information, I get a meeting with that person, so be it. All right, I'm.

Gonna. I.

Know. We've got. Vishnu wanted to ask a question. And Scott, I'm trying really hard. I'm hitting the ask to unmute button, but Vishnu is not able to unmute. So I don't know.

If. Oh, I think I got it.

Richard. Great. All right, so what's your question? Go for.

It. Thank you. Hey, Anthony. I'm Vishnu. I'm an sdr. And kind of as I was ramping up, a main issue I had was prospecting and finding enough contacts to actually make my dials. And my AE was really good at prospecting. So my question was this. What do you think about the efficacy for having, like, recurring joint prospecting blocks with your SDRs? Kind of like structured as a group activity or even a spiff as a bonus point, kind of, you know, you'll be able to get in more people in your pipeline as a team. But also SDRs will be able to shadow you and kind of, you know, learn how you do your.

Process. Yeah, I love it in theory. Like, it sounds awesome. It really just depends, like, the personality of the AE and the. And the SDR and, like, the bandwidth of both individuals. I love it, though. Like, I have at outreach, we have prospecting blocks. So, you know, on Monday, that's when we do our account plans and add people to sequence. And then Tuesday and Thursday is when we actually execute on those tasks. I'm a big fan of pinging my SDR and be like, hey, when's your next call block? If I have time on my calendar, that allows me to also make calls alongside them. Cause I shouldn't be telling them to make a bunch of calls if I can't do it as well. And if I have the time, why not do it with.

Them?

That's Great. Um, I'm kind of curious, how many prospects in like an hour long prospect block do you, do you aim to get? Is there a specific.

Number? Um, for me? No, for, for the AES specifically, we focus on two accounts a week and then five people each to sequence at those. At those accounts. So depending on, like where my contacts are at in their sequence and what step it could be, could be 20, it could be five. It really just depends on where I'm at in the.

Week. Got it. Thank.

You. Yeah, no problem. Appreciate the.

Question. Yeah, absolutely. I want to talk a little bit more because there's some other questions coming in that we'll tee up in a second. But talk about building the framework. Right. You're a brand new AE, you're starting April 1st, right. And you're walking in and you know they've got an outreach and they've got, you know, zoom info and some data and, you know, it's, it's in good shape. How do you build your framework? What is the first place you start in building your framework for your own prospecting purposes as an.

Ae? Yeah. So I've got to like, know those accounts inside and out. So I've got to know, have we spoken to them in the past? Like, when was the last time we had a closed op with them? Are they using a competitor? A big one for us is like partner selling. So are they using like a partner technology already that I could use in my messaging.

You know, what's like recent news with that account and then I need to start tiering them. So I like to Tier them like 1 through 3 based on all that information. Like, what's their tech stack, what's the estimated size of. Of prize, if you will, like, where are the biggest, the whales, if you will. And then with all the other information, like looking through LinkedIn of are they hiring? Did they recently go public? Did they recently raise money? Do we have mutual connections in that company? That's something that's, I think, overlooked often. Are your executives connected with their executives or other people in your org? And those are just, I think of them as like buying signals of who I should be prioritizing in my tiers, if you.

Will. So, Scott, that's a lot of research he's.

Doing.

Yeah. Are you paying Anthony to do all this.

Research? No. So.

What? I'm not, Right. I can tell you how, I can tell you how I do it. So I do it the first week of every quarter and once I do that, I've got my tiers. I Have my why of reaching out. I know my contacts and now all I have to do is execute so I don't have to spend time like researching and prospecting. I already know they're hiring. I already know the information from their 10k. So all I have to do is like put them into a sequence and now reference back that research I've already done. But to your point, if someone's doing that research for me that first week of the quarter, phenomenal. But I do it on my own. Right.

Now. Are you, when you say the first week of the quarter, are you like Monday through Friday, eight hours, however many hours you work in a day? Like, are you like, that's all you're doing those days aside from maybe any current prospects and clients you're already engaged.

With? No, it's. It's an hour a day. Usually it.

Takes. So it takes you five hours a quarter to do the research for all the business you're going to try and drum.

Up? Yeah, depending on if I have, you know, if I'm a brand new ae, that's. This is the first time. Yeah, yeah. If I'm touching these accounts for the first time, yeah, I'll spend the five hours on it. But if I. What's.

That? I said that doesn't sound so.

Bad. Oh, the only part of it that sounds bad is like, what the hell does this guy do with the rest of his time all quarter.

Long?

So.

Scott, throwing the.

Zingers. I'm just saying that's how, that's how every CRO MVP of sales thinks a hundred percent. Whether they're bold enough to say it or not. That's what they're thinking.

Right. That's.

All. That's one of the only reasons why people bristle at like how many hours and hours of research is somebody doing? But if he's hitting his. If he's hitting his number and everybody's hitting their number, then you know, who cares? But in the back of every sales leader's head, they're like, if only he did.

More. Right? Yeah.

I think that's a hundred percent valid. And I think that's if you've got the culture around 80 prospecting now it's just a matter of like, I can. I know if I know that 30% of my pipeline number is coming from my reps for that specific team, I now have to track that. They're actually like, is there over overdue tasks or are they actually executing? Because if they're not building pipeline, like you're going to be able to see pretty.

Quickly. Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. Let's go to Ethan. Ethan, you had a question that you punched in.

There?

Yeah. Thanks guys for putting this on. This is awesome. I'm excited to be here. Gotta follow all you guys. So kind of like the other people said, you know, longtime listener, first time.

Caller. Who do you like more, me or Scott? That's all that matter. I'm just.

Kidding. Oh, geez. Oh, gee. Can I just say Anthony and avoid both of.

You? Yes, that's the right.

Answer. Well.

Played. There we.

Go. There we go. No, just curious. You know, when reaching out, what tips and ideas do you guys have on creating the relevant personalized outreach? Like, everyone on this call is probably hitting some of the same contacts, same company, same accounts. So how do we show up differently in front of these guys? And how are you enabling your BDRs and SDRs to do.

That?

Killer question. Anthony, try to answer this question and make it like Richard or I is the prospect that everybody's trying to break into. So it's like a real. A real life example.

Here. Yeah. So like, I mean, everyone. Scott knows you like surfing. So imagine I sent an email and it was just like, hey, notice you like surfing. And then went right into my pitch. You'd be like, this email sucks. So I would try to tie back something with surfing to what our product does and make it relevant that way. Um, because I think people oftentimes, like, mistake personalization as like, something that's effective. But if you don't have relevancy alongside that personalization, then it's like, who cares? Type of deal. So whenever I, like, look at an email that I'm sending, it's like, okay, would I respond to this? So that's just like one example that I would use off the top of my.

Head. Can I. Can I riff on.

That?

Yeah. So that, that to me is like, that's.

Okay.

Yeah. And even better way might be to your point about a little bit of research and sending something personalized, I might send over a message to me and be like, Scott, not sure if you saw but a couple weeks ago, Kelly Slater won the Pipeline World Championships. He's 50 years old. He probably is not riding the same board today that he was riding 30 years ago and 20 years ago and 10 years ago. Things have evolved. Technology has changed. Are you doing the same.

Thing?

Bingo. Now it's a little deeper. Right. It still has to do with surfing. It's relevant, recent kind of pop culture fact. And he's tying it. He would be tying it into, like, this dude is a world champion and has evolved his tactics and his tooling. Shouldn't you. You send that to somebody like me? And I'm like, okay, dude, that was pretty good. Now you got my. Now you got my.

Attention. Yeah. Richard's a U of A guy, so I'd be like, you know, the last time the Wildcats were in the. The final four was X. Like, when's the last time you reevaluated? Whatever. I don't know. Something like.

That. I'm telling all my friends to not contact me about U of A basketball for.

March.

You. And I don't.

Here's. Here's a test. Everybody can try this. If you don't know, who knows? Put it in the chat. What's Scott's favorite kind of drink? Anybody.

Know?

I feel like this is very common knowledge. Wins. Jordan wins.

Yeah. Now, not, you know, later today. You can do it in the chat if you want. Write an email like the Kelly's the Evolution of Technology to Scott referencing tequila. Other than here's your bottle, which actually might work sometimes, but go ahead.

You can send it for real. I just gave you my email address. Go ahead and practice your super personalized pitch on me. Was that helpful, Ethan? Nod your head. Give me a thumbs up. Right on. Giovanni, you're.

Next.

Hello.

Hello.

Thank you for the time, by the way.

My question is, I just started.

Actually as a full cycle.

AE. It's my first time in B2B.

Sales where it's done.

Digitally. And my question is, you know, in the development we're getting, we did hire a consulting firm. Sorry, Scott. It was before I started, so.

I wasn't able to vote for.

You. And most of the training is centered around the STR word track. So what is an ideal word track to, you know, as a brand new ae, potentially use? I know it's not gonna be a blanket, but in order to, you know, when I get someone on the phone. Or should it be the exact same word path that an SDR would.

Use? I like this question. Go ahead.

Anthony.

Yeah, so just so I make sure I understand the question correctly, are you saying, like, the talk track for an AE versus an sdr, should it be the same or.

Different? Well, that question, but more so, like, if you were starting today as an AE and you knew what you knew today, like, what would you tell yourself, you know, several years back, hey, this is the word track that I've had the most success with or the general path to take when I get someone on the phone to be you Know.

Quick. Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. So I think it's the mindset of like, what I said before. Literally no one cares what your product does. They just want to know if they, if they, if you can help them get what they want. And usually that's time back, more money in their pocket, or to solve something that like, is being talked about, but from their CRO or CMO every single week. And so that's what, like, what I would focus on is asking those questions. Like, hey, something my, my SVP of sales talks about. He's like, you're in a room with your CRO and he comes in with that red marker and he writes on the whiteboard, like, what are the three things that he is like, viciously writing on that whiteboard that he's talking about in your ear every single day? Because that's ultimately like what, you know, keeps him up at night. I hate that, that phrase. But when you're talking to a director, VP or someone like that, they're, you know, communicating with the C level and they're hearing that feedback and they're being tasked with solving it. And so if you can help, then they're going to resonate with that rather than like, yeah, like outreach. We help you send more emails and make more calls. It's like, cool. Everyone does. They don't care about.

That. Yeah, it is to a degree, I guess. Is it okay if I give you a specific prospect without saying a name, Please. So I've got a prospect who's a decision maker for one of my largest accounts that I've been delegated. She has no Facebook presence, her Twitter, like, last post was four years ago. Yet she's a director of marketing for a large org. And the only piece of information I have is an article that she posted in Q3 stating 23% year over year growth in the core products. And then Most recently in Q4, they bumped up another 3%. So from a relevancy standpoint, that's like literally the only information I have. And then the college she went to, there's nothing else personal. So how would you pick up the phone and what would you say to her or him if they picked.

Up? Yeah, just because I don't know what your company does, I would first understand competitors of theirs that are your customers. Okay. Then I would figure out, why did they buy?

And then if I get them on the phone, I'd be like, hey, listen, sounds like you're killing it.

You know, like, sounds like everything's going great. Like, sounds like everything's perfect and usually that like, you know, well, it's not, it's not all perfect. And that gives you like an opportunity to dig in. But I think you need to because you don't have a lot to work with. You need to really dig around and figure out like what other competitors of theirs are using your, your solution and why they bought and then use some of that to formulate your messaging and ask how are they going about solving those problems today? Because they may be like on paper crushing it, but they're still looking out six months for something that you know at the end of the day what you're going to sell them isn't going to solve their problems that they're trying to solve. Next week it's going to be three, six months down the road usually. So trying to figure out future state. What are they really focused on? I think is where you might get a little bit more information that will resonate. I don't know if you, Scott or Richard have thoughts on.

That. No, I think that was.

Great.

Great. Thank.

You. All right, thanks, Giovanni. Let's go to Sean. Sean.

Kermath.

What's up.

Scott? How's it.

Going? Going great. Healthy. Family's healthy. Like I said in my slack. Been following and listening to you forever. First time calling in, I want, I'm using some pretty old school methodology for qualifying holds for STRs.

What is the state of the art, state of the art methodology for, you know, qualifying A meeting held for STRs right.

Now.

For qualifying a meeting held. Anthony, you go.

First. Yeah, I don't, I don't need. I think we're still trying to dial. I think everyone's trying to dial that in and what that means, it's like, I think it's a moving target, to be honest. But for me as an ae, the things I look for, like, is there a problem that I know that we can solve and is there urgency? Like that's really that simple. Listen, if, if they say they don't have the budget, like that's just like such a loaded.

Objection. They may not count for me. Yeah, so they mentioned, you know, do they have a problem that I can solve and do they have a sense of urgency behind it? So to me, we've skipped over just one thing and that's do these people truly understand the importance of solving this particular problem? This goes all the way back to like my sales philosophy. I wrote about this in my Addicted to the Process book. But it's like I need to get somebody to admit to me they have A problem, that's Anthony's thing that he just said, do they have a problem I can solve? Now I need to get them to understand and agree that this is a problem worth solving. Right. So this problem. So Anthony's selling enablement tool, so he might try to pitch me and quantify everything for me. And I'm like, okay, you've identified like $100,000 problem for me. But you know what? I have $100 million problems. So this hundred thousand dollar problem is meaningless to me. I had a conversation with somebody earlier today that tried to tell me they could find me $900 a month more. And I'm like, I don't give a shit about $900 a month. It doesn't even register. So there's no value to me. And even solving this. So they have to understand the importance and agree that it's important enough to do something about. And then the urgency part kicks in. And if an SDR to me has done their job, a true qualified SDR meeting that gets set and held when Anthony goes to take that meeting or you go to take that meeting, Sean, they have pain, they understand the value and they have a desire to do something about it more or less right away. That's a super qualified meeting right there. And every AE on planet Earth wants those all day.

Long.

Yeah.

Lfg. Yeah, it's the, it's the confirmation of their, like if they don't do this now.

The implications and they fully understand it and it's a big problem. So completely.

Agree. Good stuff. Dylan got Dylan done.

There he.

Is.

We unmuted now. Thank you. Richard or Scott, if that was.

You. That was me. That was me. We don't allow Richard to touch the buttons.

Anymore. Yeah, yeah. I'll change the narrative a little bit. First time listener, but also first time caller here. Love this so far. Appreciate y' all putting it on. Anthony, I just had a question around a couple of things that you've been talking about as far as how you're defining prospecting to strategic accounts, also with teaming up with the SDR once that account is essentially penetrated in some. Some sorts of getting a win there or you've identified those decision makers, are you owning that account kind of full through as expanding the web with new departments, new teams, or are you kicking that to an account team to take over and you're off kind of hunting and gathering in other.

Places? Yes. Are you asking like if I were to close an initial deal, do I keep.

It? Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. So outreach. We don't we have a dedicated growth team because we have multi product and that's just the direction the company wanted to go. But for me, knowing that, like, I'd rather the deal be a little bit longer if I can grow it, knowing that I'm going to lose it on day one. So it really depends on your situation. So I try to, I try to do my discovery and figure out beforehand, like, hey, I know the people that are typically involved in these evaluations and I'll call it out point blank, like, hey, should we involve Scott and Richard on our next call? Or I'll just recommend it. And I always like to have them tell me no. I'm not asking, I'm telling. And then they can tell me.

No. So would you delay a close just a little bit to expand to other teams and kind of grow licensing, grow product? As far as the initial.

Sale? Yeah. Like at the end of the.

Day, every VP of sales dream to hear that answer right.

There. Ask the question again. Say it one more.

Time. Yeah, Richard. So the question was as far as that goes, knowing that you know an account will be passed off, but you can initially grow the initial ACV or total contract value there, would you delay a sale or delay the closing or the signature if you know that you're able to penetrate maybe an additional team to grow licensing or an additional team to add products into.

That? Yeah, if there's another fifty to a hundred K ARR, like all day long that I want to make sure that I, that initial land is going to be.

Bigger.

Awesome. It's the, it's the, it's the classic version of like that instant gratification that some reps just want. They want to make sure that they're, they're making a mark. And a lot of times that's clouding their judgment of missing out on a larger opportunity for the.

Organization. Let me do my imitation of Scott because he literally leaned in. He almost leaned all the way in the camera and might have even tried to choke Anthony. Scott's response is, are you kidding me? I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. I need that commission. I'm going to close it. And if I can close it, why would I think I can't go expand it anyway? Scott, am I.

Right? Yeah, of course you're right. But he's answering from an AES perspective. And I totally understand the AES perspective. And my answer and thought process is from a VP of sales perspective and overall business perspective. And this is one of the challenges that you have with creating incentives and Comp plans and creating this type of structure. The business is incentivized to get the deal in. Now Anthony is incentivized to get the deal in when it's in his best interest to get paid the most. So this is, it's a tricky topic, to be fair. I'm kind of dramatizing things a little bit, but it's not super easy. And Dylan, you've hit on a problem that everybody has had who's been sales leadership before. It's like, I do not want my reps sandbagging ever. Every rep in history has found a loophole and a reason to sandbag so they get paid more. It's a tug of.

War. Yeah, I think too. It's like you have a conversation, your vp, like, listen, it could be just putting round numbers like, hey, it could be 10k this quarter or if we like push it out to next quarter, it's going to be 60K. I don't.

Know.

Yeah. And that VP is going to look at the scoreboard and be like, we're at 102% right now. Go ahead and push that one off or you're going to be at. We're at 98.6% right now. I really need you to close this one right now, Anthony. Sacrifice your own commission for the team. And this is where problems and dilemmas.

Begin. Yeah. The fact that there's no clear cut answer means It's a.

Problem. 100%. It's a great question, Dylan. Thanks for asking it. Jonathan. Jonathan Ng, we'll go to.

You. Perfect. Hi, Anthony, it's nice to finally meet you. I'm pretty new to the LinkedIn community and I'm learning from Senior SDR right now. I was wondering, when it came to new AES, when you guys were new, what did you guys overlook in prospecting, especially in your first two weeks to a month? Because prospecting is a little difficult for me right.

Now. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate the question. Nice to meet you as well and put a face to the name. I'll say you're not alone. Prospecting is difficult for a lot of people, especially for newer SDRs. And it could seem like a mountain that you can never climb. I think one of the things that SDRs that are new or even AES that are new to prospecting make is that like you think you just gotta make a hundred dials or make a hundred calls or send a hundred emails and that's gonna get your results. I'm a firm believer in more quality touches rather than quantity. So that would be, my advice is focus on, less on hitting your activity number and more on what do I need to do to hit my number number that I'm gonna get paid on.

I think that's also a discussion with sales development leadership. It's like, why are we so focused on activity metrics if that's not truly yielding like pipeline generation or quality meetings being held? That's just my opinion.

Though.

I think one of the things that gets overlooked the most is training and onboarding. I think so many AES who are new to the field, like perhaps you, Jonathan, just get kind of thrown out there to the wolves far too fast and you're just truly not ready. You might not understand the industry enough, you might not understand the product enough, you might not understand the tools and, you know, the things you're using there to find account information and log all this stuff and set up sequences. If you're brand new and you haven't had enough time to practice, rehearse and role play your pitch, whether that's a cold call pitch or a demo or whatever you're doing, so you're truly just like not ready most of the time. And this has been a story. This has been that way for as long as I've been in sales. I got four hours of training, my very first day in sales and that was it. And then I was given, given a phone and told to go make it happen. That was it. I didn't know shit about anything. Anything at all. Right. And that's a bit of an extreme version. And hopefully that extreme version doesn't happen today. But it's still, I see companies all the time rushing people through after one week, Two weeks, Two weeks maybe, you know, you barely had a chance to like, role play with your, with your new colleagues. Right. So I think what gets overlooked is.

The amount of time and energy and rehearsal and practice it takes to get really good at the beginning. And I think we rush people onto the phones too.

Soon. Scott, how do you, how do you solve for this? This is a question coming out.

Of the chat, how do I solve.

For what specific question is how do you solve for this? For this, that you're rushing people too.

Soon?

Well, it can't be. It can't be solved by the ae, really. There's only so many things, there's only so many times somebody can say, well, you know, Jonathan, you should do some study at home and you should find other people to role play on the weekends and all that. That's not where it gets solved. That's A band aid. Where it gets solved is the VP of Sales having a difficult conversation with the CFO and the CEO saying, no, Jonathan's not on full quota starting day one. Jonathan has no quota for the first month and the second month his quota is 50% of a mature rep. And the third month his quota is 75% of mature rep. And the fourth month he's there now will give him 100% of a full, you know, reps quota, something like that. So there's a ramp, there's a buildup and people have time to learn and develop and acquire the skill. It starts there.

Unfortunately, you know, that conversation is not had enough and it's certainly not won enough. But that's one of the ways that you solve for.

It. So we're going to. We got to move to a wrap up. Anthony, as you ever pay attention to our podcasts and bonfire sessions, a couple things. One, we're going to ask you, Anthony, what question you want to ask us. We'll gladly offer you some advice. You've been so kind and generous with yours. We want to give some feedback to you if you so desire. If you haven't noticed, check out serpentsales.com we still have one or two slots left for May, by the way.

We're excited about that. November's first session is sold out early. Right.

Scott?

Yep. We have a second session in November. For those of you who haven't done this, go pitch your leadership that this should be an amazing spiff, particularly one now. But certainly the ones in November, they could have like a six month contest so they can certainly make their money back and ROI it. So obviously shout out to our sponsors of Sendoso Scratchpad, Outreach IO qlik, Outreach IO forward slash surf. Tell them that Anthony, since he was the guest, said you get 50% off if you buy before the end.

Of the day today and 90% off if you buy from Anthony.

Actually.

Right. 90% off if you buy by end of day Wednesday, March 16, 2022.

And then also Vidyard, our good friends at Vidyard are sponsoring our bonfire sessions. We really appreciate their support. Anthony, what questions you got for.

Us? Yeah, this was awesome. Cool to be here. Appreciate it. One of the things that, you know, I struggle with is not so much tactical, but it's more foundational. And I think a lot of people struggle about. It's not talked about enough. There's a lot of ups and downs as sales professionals, SDRs. There's days that are very high, very low and it's very hard not to let those control how you show up. So in your experiences, like, what are some of the best ways to deal with that.

Roller coaster sometimes of emotions that one may get when you get an email or you have a bad call, how you bounce back and stay even keel and hold your.

Composure. Well, to me, the best medicine for that is having such a large pipeline that I could give two shits about who buys from me and who doesn't. That's literally my defense mechanism, strategy, right? So I really don't care. Let's say I have 10 deals in my pipeline. I can operate with a mindset of I don't know which one of you 10 is going to buy. And I really don't care because I know three of you is going to buy because that's my close rate.

The problem is when you desperately need this one deal you're trying to close now, you're so emotionally invested that when they don't buy, it shatters your heart and you're a mess, like being dumped by your significant other, right? You don't want to be in that situation. So the best defense is to have such a large pipeline that it just doesn't matter one deal to the next. And so I'm not going to get too upset. And when I close a deal, I'm really not going to get that excited because I'm not super emotionally invested in this particular deal. It's just like that was one of the ones that was going to close and that's how I operated. Second point, which is very specific and tactical. I don't use passive language when I sell. I notice people all the time use phrases like, would this possibly be interesting to you? Might this be worth your time? Do you think that maybe you would want to talk? That's all passive language. Passive language sets up a power dynamic where their time is more valuable than yours and they're more important than you. So psychologically, if you're doing stuff like that, you're telling yourself that this prospect is better than you, more important than you, matters more, their time is more valuable. So you're basically belittling yourself over and over and over. So if I belittle myself over and over and then that person tells me no, I've confirmed that I'm worthless. So I am very, very cautious about the words that I use. To me, nothing else matters more in sales than how I feel about myself. Nothing. So I protect that at all costs. At all costs. So if I have a difficult prospect with me and they're giving me Hell, I've punched back. I try to be goofy. I try to be silly. I have to have fun with it. I challenge them. I try to disrupt their patterns of thinking. I don't. I personally am liable to suddenly become emotionally invested in it and feel the pain and the sting of a rejection. But if you're giving me hell and you're like, oh, we're cool. We've been doing this for the last 20 years. Nothing's changed, I'm going to fight back and be like, let me ask you a question. Do you have an iPhone? Did you have an iPhone 25 years ago? No. Oh, that's interesting. Do you have a laptop? Oh, you do? Did you have a laptop 30 years ago when you started this business? Oh, you didn't. Okay, come on, man. So we can agree that you have evolved and changed your strategy. This is no different. Right? I have to do something like that because if nothing else, I feel better about myself when that call is over. And that, to me, is how I protect against this more than anything else.

Go ahead.

Richard. Yeah, no, I'm going to. I'm going to let that sink in. I thought that was brilliant. I know Scott, so I work with him and hear these things a lot, and every time I hear him tell that story about the iPhone and the laptop, it's like he's saying it the first time. It's really, really cool. So I love that. Only thing I'm going to suggest is it is a mindset. It is about how you show up. I read a quote the other day, and it's really been sticking with me, which is that our mind is like Velcro to negativity, and it's Teflon to positivity. We will let this shitty stuff stick to our brains forever. And the good stuff, we're like, oh, well, you know, I can't be brag. I can't, you know, oh, I want to be humble. You know, like, we don't allow ourselves to enjoy that moment. And there are times where you can and should maybe do some of that so that you can learn if something bad happens or when, you know, if you. Look, if you win the super bowl, you want to be excited, but you want to be, like, you know, you know, too much. But that's the big piece is just making sure you understand and protect that mindset. To Scott's point.

All right.

Cool. I know Scott.

Helpful. Anthony, did we answer your.

Question? Yeah, I'm just soaking it all in. I appreciate.

It. Yeah, no worries, man. Appreciate everybody taking the time with us today. Take it on home.

Richard. All.

Right. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Anthony, very much. This was a lot of fun. I've gotten to know you over the last month doing this. Thank you to the crew and the crowd for great questions. Really makes it easy for Scott and I when people bring in good questions. We appreciate it. And again, thanks to Outreach, Sendoso, Scratchpad and Virtual for supporting us and sponsoring us. We will be doing another live bonfire session in April with Max Alt Schuler. So be on the lookout for it. It's coming up, I think, April 11th or twelveth. So we'll get some some word out to that. And don't forget, still a couple of spots@surfing sales.com we would love to have you there.