Empower BDRs to Close Deals with Saad Khan
31 Jan 2026 · 41 min
Podcast interview (June 3, 2022) hosted by Kevin 'KD' Dorsey with guest Saad Khan (BDR manager at Duly) focused on tactical BDR/SDR leadership. Topics include creating full-cycle BDR roles, onboarding and 90-day ramp plans, coaching versus training, discovery frameworks (three layers of pain), conversational tactics (give-and-get, mirroring/labeling), pseudo role‑plays and daily call blitzes, hiring and compensation choices, and culture/work-life integration for sellers. The episode is practical and example-driven (Clio and Duly examples).
Chapters
Every company has breakdowns in their revenue process. Sure thing. Deals slip into next quarter, competitors creep in and swipe deals away at the last minute, and deals getting single threaded that don't get to power. These are just a few examples of revenue leak, but there are a ton more and they're preventing your team from reaching their sales targets. That's why I'm such a big fan of Clary's Revenue platform is the only tool that actually helps leaders take control of their revenue and thrive through any market conditions, especially when things get tough. You can't afford to miss a single detail, but you also can't be leading by gut. Clary combines the science and the art of sales and sales leadership. So go to clary.com if you want to answer the most important question in your business. Are you going to meet beat or Miss on revenue? Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready and let's dive into the good stuff. What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And today we are going to be talking about a topic and a title that most of you all know I'm incredibly passionate about. We're going to really dive into some of the tactics and topics and theories around BDR leadership. I myself am a former bdr, sdr, adr, whatever you want to call it. I have led multiple multiple sales Dev orgs over 70 to 80 people. I love it. I will forever be passionate about the sales dev role, but a lot of people seem to be passionate about it, which causes a lot of advice to be given out there and a lot of different things that are preference not proven. There's no backing to it and you can tell. And that is why I'm so excited to have Saad Khan on the show with me today. He's a BDR manager over at Duly, just an up and coming org team and product and we're gonna be diving into what's really working out there, right? What's really working in the trenches, how to onboard, how to train, how to hire, how to fire, and also how to get your BDRs to close deals, which is something I'm super excited about. So, Saad, my man, welcome to the show. Let's dive in.
Yeah, let's do it. I'm very excited.
Very good. So when you. We were talking just before we hit record here and you said something really interesting that I wanna just touch on real quick. You said a lot of people are talking about how to get out of the BDR Org, how to get out of BDR leadership, how to get out of this BDR track. And you said, I'm trying to stay in it. Man of my own heart there. I love this. Talk a little bit more about the why behind that.
I'll take a step back and share something that I didn't give you. While we were talking. Previously, I worked at a company called clio. They were leader in the space for legal software. They didn't build their BDR team till they were a company of 12 years old and got their 2.5 billion valuation. They had three AE teams. One was a full cycle AE team, the other was round two of that full cycle AE team with a higher quota. Third was a full inbound AE team. What Clio decided to do, they started their BDR team. They gave those bdrs webinar leads and gave us training that, hey, these people aren't ready to buy your product, but they are ready to learn about your organization and your tech. So what they did was they moved six of those full cycle AES into the BDR team and they hired four BDRs from outside. Now those full cycle AES were, I would like to think they were not just selling the meeting, but they were selling qualified meetings. You know when people say BDR should just sell the meeting. We had closing experience, so we're doing things a little bit differently versus the other BDRs. This is on my LinkedIn. Anybody can go and see it. The entire company, the entire BDR team was converting at a 2.3% conversion. And me having been in AE. And you know what, Sometimes you gotta give yourself a pat on the back. I had my own process. I was converting double at 5.6% and in six months I broke the company's comp plan. Now anywhere you tell people that you went from an AE to bdr, you'd be like, that's a demotion. They paid us the exact same money. I had less stress, I had more money. I Learned the process better before 100% of me was getting split into cold calling, demoing, closing. Now that 100% is being split in one less bucket. So I was able to master that bucket. I would like to hope so. And then Dooley came calling after I went to another company as a manager. And then Michelle basically presented me this opportunity that hey, we have a lot of inbound. We are not one of those companies that are going to hire a lot of people and fire a lot of people. Would rather get few people in, give them the right tool, right? Resources, enough opportunity to win at enough at bats and get them going. I was like, okay, interesting. And she said one other thing. She's like, I want our BDRs to close deals. I was like, ooh, that's powerful. And asked her why. And then what follows after is just some of the most real and eye opening conversations. Because it went against everything generic that the industry tells you to do. Every single thing generic that the industry tells you to do.
Let's keep going. Why? Why? Right. Why did you and especially her believe in that so much?
You know this better than I do, Kevin. Like, I don't mean to be cliche and cheesy about it, but BDRs are working really hard. But it's not hard work for the sake of hard work. There's a lot that goes into it and then there's always people are just like, oh, BDR Appreciation Week. This, that, etc etc. I think that damages it way more than it's reinforcing that negative stereotype. I've gone on some next level rants and tirades about BDR Appreciation Week. So instead of BDR Appreciation Week, I'm giving my bdrs the opportunity to come start closing deals. I'm not promising them to become an AE in six months. I'm giving them the right tools and the right training and the opportunity to make things happen.
I've never participated in BDR SDR Appreciation Week. Either you're appreciating them weekly or you're not. You don't need a week to call them out. I don't even know who started that. I'm going to be careful because I don't know who started it. It might even be someone that like I like and respect. But I don't know where BDR Appreciation Week came as an idea and so what I love there and that you mentioned this. So because training BDRs on how to be a closer is important, right? So for my BDR Org once you had like triggered Right. So, like mine, like, you were either a closer or you were not. I didn't, like, I didn't call you a BDR if you were closing. If you were closing, you're closing. You're. You are an ae or an ae. One Junior ae, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. But when they qualified for the promotion, they went into a closing boot camp. Right. Because just because you were a great SDR doesn't mean you'll be a great closer. So talk to me a little bit about how to help them with that transition, because I think that's a very classic. And I can say this personally, because I was in SDR too, at one point where I'm going, oh, just give me that. I could have closed it.
Yeah.
Oh, I could have closed that instead. And there's always this idea that they could do it. A lot of times they do fail in that transition. So talk to me a little about the training. They're getting to be a good ae.
Thank you for asking me that. So something that I'm very passionate about, and I know you are too, is the. Is coaching and training your reps and not being a super rep, not being a super leader, not being, oh, I'll close this for you. I'll convert this for you. You can't scale that. I also think that's what creates the hiring and firing model is. Hey, okay, let me just say this. This is probably all a lot of my friends, but not all great reps can be great coaches, even in sports. You know, Jordan is not going to be the best coach. Now, again, it's not an absolute. It's not black or white. It's nuanced. But a very basic example is the other. So I personally was not a great rep to start with. I had to build up to a certain level. I had to learn break process and stuff like that. The other day, I was in a meeting with one of my reps. I'm a tab hoarder. I love tabs. I like. I treat them as tasks. I cut them off. We were on a call. He closed the page, opened the page again, and then went back. I was like. And it really just tweaked my. I was like, why would you do that? Let's close. Open three tabs and close. Just. Just close them one by one. That's a micro example. But now imagine leaders that don't understand their rep struggles, that haven't been through that struggle. I don't know. Sometimes something has to be there. I'm just going off of What I personally experience. So what I believe in is this. There's a difference between training and coaching. Training could be. And Steve Schmidt said this, he's a title and this is not my original thing but just clicked training could be just showing people how to use a tool, how to use Salesforce, how to use dually, what to do on a day to day coaching is. Is you're on the trenches, you're on the field with them. You're working on plays every single day. You're executing plays. I do call blitzes with my team almost every day. So I'm using the same talk tracks they're using and we're optimizing on the call. We have a three so I'm a firm believer in Sandler. So we do three layers of pain activity that a pain point is built off of three layers AKA the business. The technical layer which is hey, Salesforce is messy. The business level they Salesforce messy is impacting the team, closing deals and capturing data. And the personal level is that because that is happening personally the BDR manager is stressed out, the VP is stressed out, stuff like that. Because one of my reps asked me how does these pain points fall into one? I was like, you need to understand this for yourself. So we do that activity. I don't do role plays. I give them scenarios. I'm like fill in these on a sheet. I'm like fill these in. Come up with your pain points yourself. So I've always been told that the way you become a great AE is by being very good at discovery is finding pain and you solve problems you don't solve for feature requests and stuff like that. So that a lot of, a lot of, a lot of call reviews, a lot of weekly training. Now kudos to Michelle. She treats the AES like she treats the BDRs like AES. So you know that psychological thing that she'll monthly when she's messaging people, hey, what's in your pipe? She'll message BDRs as well. So she's making them feel like they're AES and not just BDRs. She's asking them, hey, what are you committing? What's in your pipeline? Now somebody asked me how are the AES and BDRs not cannibalizing themselves? Well this way I am grateful that I work at a company like Duly where we have it's good demand and the AES don't have the time to manage all that demand. So the BDRs are not pressured to close any deals. They don't have a quota to close these deals. So they're given a little less percentage on the acv. Now what this allows them to do is gets them some act bats. It also takes pressure away from the AES to just chase small organizations. So the bdrs, it's like training wheels for them and they're getting ready on the job. And the BDRs are also doing qualification discovery with the A's for the bigger account. So that, that training, that discovery training, the conversational training is going to. It's just always happening. I would like to think. And the one last thing I want to add is I want them to talk a certain way. I want them to think a certain way. So I put them through an initiation. In my initiation is I talk about three concepts. The first is give and get. People are always going to have objections. You can address an objection, get something else in return. Very basic example, somebody says at the end of a call, hey, just send me something. Okay, hold on. What can I send you that's not going to get deleted? How can I stay top of mind without being annoying? Get something in return. Hey, if this makes sense, I'll share this with you, like just to make sure this is appropriate to you. Whenever I share things, they create more questions than answers. So let's just put some time tentatively to make sure we address those things as well. This way I've given you everything and anything you need to make an informed decision. So it's a step in the right direction, not a jump. First, give and get. Always think that way. Second, how to turn a I conversation into an R conversation. Mirroring Chris Voss. Labeling somebody is always on the other end of the mirror. Like find a way to just, just, just, you know, even if you have to pretend to be a little dumb, like get them to open up and like really be a part of this conversation and really address what they're talking about, what you're thinking about. I went on a bit of a ramble, but talking to the reps a lot, actually taking it, putting a lot of attention onto their coaching. And this is where I take responsibility. I'm not calmed on meetings booked, I'm calmed on close one revenue. So when they're acting as AES, I'm the sales manager. So it's, it's, it's the right, I would like to think it's the right behavior. And then I would hope the way it's helping our VP is when there's board meetings happening, there's additional logos and additional ACV that was Unaccounted for.
So one thing you said that actually surprised me, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna poke at this a little bit, is you're not practicing with your people. Practicing. You said, I don't do role plays. And I was surprised by that because if you think about all the things you're talking about here at training, messaging, filling the blanks like, and you, because you use the coach example, right. The coach is on the field. It's true. But the coach isn't on the field playing the coaches on the field, running practice. Funny enough, the only time the coach is on the field.
Yeah.
Is practice. They're never on the field in the game. So talk to me a little bit more about that one. I was surprised to hear that.
Yeah.
So.
Can I. Does this capture a screenshot as well?
I don't know. Let's try it.
We can disregard that, but I'll go. I'll go into it further. So when I say we don't do role plays, you can call it a role play. But what it actually is going on is this. We have three, four Personas. One is rev ops. One is talking to AES. One is talking to sales leaders. I'm not going through like, hey, pretend like you're calling an ae. What we're actually doing is like, hey, think about the problems that the AES is going through. I'm not going to pretend like I'm an AE on the call, but how would you call an ae? What would you talk to them about the problem that duly solves for. And how in that moment would this problem go from the business level like, hey, salesforce is messy to an AE just being like, oh, wow, my, my butt could be on the line right now. So instead of creating scenarios where you're calling somebody, I'll just start off with like, hey, you're about to talk to an AE right now. Why would an A want to talk to you? Why would an A want to take a meeting? And they go through the full pathway of. You know, when people say jargon terms like, hey, my salesforce is messy, I just go like, okay, what does that mean? What does that mean? Keep. Keep going. What does that mean? What does that mean? Like, make it so simple for me that a five year old can understand it. The reason why I say that is this. We're creating a new category for dually. There aren't budgets for dually in the industry, but there are budgets for salesforce optimization. There are budgets for moving your deals along for note taking for Efficiencies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm not getting them to call people and talk about the pain. Duly solved for. I'm getting them to call and talk about the pain that's already there. For example, six hours back to back calls, man. Like, my manager tapped me on the shoulder. This happens, that happens, et cetera, et cetera. What is the impact of that? How is that actually affecting you? So the coaching and the training that we're doing, maybe it's pseudo role play. Pseudo. It's not. What I'm focusing on to get out of them is like when you talk about Dooley, the actual problem, not its features, it just hits. It just resonates. We sell to sale leaders. So the way I think about it is if selling is a video game, then sales leaders are the final boss battle. We can't master all tactics. There's so many out there. You have to master relevance. You have to master problems that already exist. How can you say this in one sentence or 2? 3 lines, and the other person goes, okay, you know what, there's something over here. And then you continue to drill on it. So maybe it's not perfect, but trying to build up to it, I guess.
Okay, cool. No, that's it.
I just.
I just heard that. I was like. Because practice is where you get good, right? Like practices where you take the things that you're teaching and bring them to life. And so, so it's interesting there. And so. Okay, so if we think about then the SDR closing, I wonder if some people actually take it the other way and they're going, well, does that distract them from prospecting? So talk about that real quick. Right? Like if I'm an SDR and I know I get to close now, I get to go some deals, does that take me away from the prospecting action that maybe the company or the AES are expecting?
Yeah, so they. I would hope not. So far. It's so good because they're not getting that many of those at bats. Those just, you know, SMB inbounds. They are. There's a decent amount. So that's also where kind of like one. The other thing that I also believe in is give them a structure, but leave it a little wishy washy. Where they can also use. Not wishy washy, but where they can also just, you know, flex their muscles a little bit. You know, if they're at an 80%, then can they configure things out and get to 100% smooth seas? You Hear this all the time. Smooth seas don't make great sailors. So to answer your question, the way their quotas are set up, it's not aggressive. I want to get. I want them to get quick wins to, you know, give sharks blood to, you know, all that stuff. So they're working. I guess the reason why this is helping is because Dooley's brand is enough. That the reason why I joined Dooley, I was like, you know what? I'm actually excited to call people and say that I work at Dooley. So that's one part. We have a decent bit of engagement on. On the socials. We have a lot of webinar leads coming in. And what we're also doing is. So all these webinar and download leads that are coming in, we're not treating them as inbound. We're so, you know, the buyer's consideration journey. People say the buyer's consideration journey is made of three. Three phases. Awareness, consideration, purchase. I disagree. I think there's one other phase, which is the unaware phase. The standard model suggests that the awareness phase is where people are downloading blogs, webinars and articles. I disagree with that. If people are aware, awareness to me is that you're not just aware that my company exists. You're aware of the problem that is solved. For if you were actually aware, you'd be MQL ing. So we're treating those unaware leads as basically ways into the door. Like, hey, they're not ready to. It's the same thing that we did. I kind of did at Clio. We're not ready to buy. This is not about the product, but this is about a topic. Hey, how to ramp new reps faster. Okay, Katie, why did you attend that webinar? How to help your manage your team's time. Katie, what prompted your interest? Why did you want to. Why did you want to attend? And then in conversation, you can just, you know, you can find things, pain points and hopefully move things along. So making those conversations easier for them by providing them those kind of leads is also helping us keep the activity going. They have target accounts that they collaborate with the AES, and AES are actually giving them the right contacts to reach out to. While the BDRs are doing that as well, they have all their sequences going. So outbound is getting hit. They're not. They're tied to 40 dials a day, which is not that much, but they're almost always, you can do good. I would hope if you have a good list ready, then you can do good. 20 dials in an hour. Obviously accounting for just, you know, people not connecting. Yeah, they. And I'm also obviously I have ownership for the pipeline so I'm making sure that at times I'm taking some stuff away from them, giving them more at bats so managing that function as well. So yeah, it's good. It's not, it's not getting impacted. We are optimizing every two weeks we're on, I like to say we, we work on two week build cycles. No analysis paralysis. Let's put a version one out and let's build from there. It's pure startup 101. There's a lot of growing pains. It's something interesting we're hitting on, but it's probably one of the most fulfilling work I've ever done my entire life. It's not perfect, by no means, but it fills me with a lot of joy. Yeah.
I mean that's what it should be doing. Leadership sometimes can go the wrong direction where it's like we do it because we want to be helping people, we want to grow, we want to scale, we want to do all those things. They just become a slog that's good for nobody. Right. To go through. And so I love that because I mean I do, I agree BDR should get to close a lot earlier than a lot of them do. I believe a lot of companies that don't have full cycle roles should create them.
Yeah.
Because you just built this entire base of team that knows how to prospect and then you're just going to let that talent stop is just foolish. Like full cycle is more efficient. It keeps you close to the game. Right. You're going to close those deals better. Which it sounds like you did when you moved into the, the BDR role for a little bit. Like once you have that closing experience and you know how to prospect, that's the holy grail.
Yeah.
And I wish more teams would create those full cycle roles for SDRs to step into earlier. Yeah. Maybe you sell enterprise, that's fine. You can sell some SMB deals just for shits and giggles. You can go sell some. Right. And let your SDRs BDRS work their way up a lot earlier.
I have to, I have to say it's, it's still a lot of kudos to. And not just giving the shout out for the sake of giving a shout out, but to Michelle because she literally poked at me two weeks ago. I'll tell. So when I started, I asked, I was, I, I asked her the question. I was like, Michelle, how many BDRs do we want to hire? I was literally expecting her to say 20, 30. She said 8. I was like, huh, interesting. Then I asked her, I'm like, when do we want. When do you want them by? She said, when you find the right model and the right people. I was like, okay, that's interesting. And then she was like, go play.
You sharp. I was on a webinar with her last. Last week, two weeks ago. Now she's incredibly sharp. Like really, really sharp. And I love that. And so let's go now to the other side of the BDR spectrum, right? Because you're talking about BDRs. You know, they've been in the role for a little bit. They're starting to close. Let's talk about getting BDRs started. Right? What is that onboarding? What does that ramp process look like for a BDR do?
Like the first week they're not doing any work. It's light reading and I'm getting them to make friends. Nice. We have really good synergy in the company. People are always telling me we love do these content. It's so sales oriented. Our marketers could be sellers. Like, think of this, who's writing? It's marketers who are writing for sellers. And they just get it. There has to be something happening in the back end. So I tell my team, I'm part of the marketing team. I have a BDR manager title. I would be very easily on the marketing team. So I get them to do that exact same thing. Go make friends, go go talk to marketing, go talk to data. Because we're kind of like a PLG company, so we do need to track product usage data, which we bring up to leadership and AES to start convincing them. So long story short, I tell them in week one to build your roster, build your internal roster, the marketers, the product team, engineer, just like, also importantly, go just make friends. Like so just when you're stressed out, don't just call me all the time. I'm always gonna be there. But like, actually the culture at Dooley is we feel like fourth year university kids who just got a brilliant idea. They all love working with one another and obviously we poke at one another out of respect. But what ties us together, respect and just, you know, cliche as it sound, fight for the cause. But then at the end of the first week, the expectations are, they know that they're about to go on a call on Monday, they're about to start calling leads on Mondays. So by this point in time and it's designed to. And I tell them, I'm like in the first week, they always tell me like saad, like this is a little chill or like what's happening? Where's the discovery question? Like this is. It's designed this way. On Friday, that Friday, I'm walking them through my initiation where I covered the concepts of give and get. I cover the concept of mirroring, labeling, and I walk them through my own cell discovery pathway that I've built out that everybody calls it San Lynn. Three layers of pain. We've kind of optimized it for dually which we were talking about earlier. And so that's week one. So now ultimately what I want to think of is this. It's as much as it's for the BDRs, it's for me to just get an idea about what their understanding could be by that week without them feeling like it's a final exam. It's pressured, it's stressed out. I want to give them the most, but the most that could be digestible for them. Then on Monday, wheels are off. We start a sing in the Monday morning and we go through that three layers of pain activity where hey, if you're talking to an ae, if you're talking to leader, why would they want to talk to you? Why would that. So you were asking about the practice side. So it's not role play, but it's like it's conversational play. I don't know exactly the word for it. Like why when you call somebody, what would hit? What are you going to say that's going to hit? What's going to resonate? I don't believe in it. I should be careful. I believe in personalization, but I think personalization could be done better. Personalization cannot scale relevance can scale what if you can talk with mass relevance, but problems that just resonate. So we do that in the morning and then right then and there. The very next thing is the one hour call blitz and I'm dialing with them and we're on the zoom call together. Just go, just do it. Fail if you have to, it's fine. And within that we're optimizing the talk tracks. We're just getting into it. So that is the second week, first week, second week, continuing to do that. And basically within. And in the second week now they have dedicated meetings with the marketing team. So they're learning what marketing is all about, what the product strategy is. They're meeting with their CEO, there's full act, they, there's no doors, there's no, you can go talk to Chris, book Chris, CEO, coffee, chats with Chris, everything. I want them to feel like that this is for you, this is your place to be. And that's basically month one. Month one is about just seeing what the reps are good at. Because this is also what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to build a process for them, not put them in a process. When I was a rep, my.
Real quick. I want to build a process for them, not put them in a process. Yeah, but isn't that putting them in the process that you built for them? Break that down for me real quick.
Yes. Okay, so I could be a little messy with my words, but let's. So companies or sometime leadership will sit in a room. Okay, this is what we're going to do with the team. And they put expectations on this. Well, did you just come up with this or is it meant for the reps on. A very basic example is this idea. When my business at Clio, they gave me sequences, I was like, I don't talk like this. It just does not sound like me. So I would take that framework of what that message deliver and I would make it my own. So in the second week, at the end of the second week, in the third week, they're building the sequences. All our sequences are already there. Thank God. Again, not to knock on what there's duly blogs on webinars. We have 80, 60% open rates, close to 20, 30% reply rates and decent interest rates. Now that could very easily be based on Duly just being product that sells itself. I'll take a little bit of credit and be like, no, it's actually my reps because Sam is talking like her, Daniel is talking like her. By the time they convert that email into a phone call and zoom meeting, people are just so floored. I get emails all the time and I've made LinkedIn posts about it. People shouting out my BDR saying, hey, this level of empathy and care is not even. I don't get this with season A is like what is going on over here? So something must be happening. You know what actually is happening. They're so comfortable with what they're doing. They're very comfortable with the process, whatever that word is. And then second month is where we start tracking activity. Second month is about building pipeline for me. You've given you, we've done all this work. You understand this. We're going to continue to optimize on the second month. I'm doing call. I'm doing call. Blitzes with them. Well, I'm on there twice a week and not consistently. Why go like, go do you a little bit. Like, I need to see what you're good at, what you're bad at. In the second month, they're also going through a lot of ups and downs in the confidence.
Some downs in the what, sorry?
Ups and downs in their confidence. Like, some reps are. Yeah, some reps are really hitting it out the gate. Others are. Others are just, you know, getting up to it. And psychologically, I know what's happening. You're competing as much as you're competing against yourself. You're also just looking at what everybody else is doing. So in that month, I'm talking to them a lot. I always talk to them a lot. But I'm just like, look, you were hired because you're great at cold calling. He was hired because he's really good at cold outbound emails. And now there is an enterprise rep, so his activities is always going to be high. You need to just stop competing and put yourself in this seat. I'll share the screenshot with you. Yesterday. So we did a call blitz. One of my reps, Kofi, his confidence was a little up or down. He booked two calls on the call blitz. He was the only one to book, and then I messed him. Right now I'm like, dude, this was for you. He was like, I'm feeling the energy right now. Thanks for doing this. So I'll send you the screenshot for that. It just picked up and Michelle asked me about that. I was like, michelle, this is my. This is the, this is what we achieved this week. Yes, he might have less ops, but, like, that's where he should be. He should be feeling. So that's the second month, Sorry, second month is all about optimizing. And this is also what's coming up. They're telling me how our integration is broken with our, with the tools that we're using. I'm not going to name the tool that we're using, but now they're helping me optimize the process where some of the ops that are coming in are just dead. Some of the companies are coming. We also tweaked some of our inbound demos that we're taking more demos. Now we're hitting up Gmails and Outlook and stuff like that. And it's, it's. It's not working for them right now. They're basically getting bogged down by unnecessary meetings. So we're. Now we will have to optimize that. We Will have to change that. So that's what I meant about building a process for them versus putting them into a process. It's a version two of what was already built, but it wasn't an absolute. That's why I think we touched on this earlier. There's so much advice in sales that people just think it's black or white. No, you have to build for your business, you have to operate optimized for your business. And ultimately that's my third month for them is we're continue to do all the coaching, training, the talking, all that stuff. By this time. They're also building campaigns with marketing team. They're part of the socials. I'm giving them their clout. I'm tagging them in posts on LinkedIn, I'm making posts about them, making them feel like you know what you are part of duly, you're somebody, you're not just a bdr just you know, so third month is just tying all that stuff together and then just letting them fly.
And I think that's key. And also like I love that you look at onboarding as 90 days as kind of phase by phase because a lot of companies onboarding stops at two weeks. Okay, you're. Can I go? I go goodness gracious. Like no, like that's not, that's not where it goes. And so I love the build up and also too that you're focused on the customer more because that tends to be missing a lot in truly, I mean just sales in general right now where it's like, okay, they all onboarding is focused on the product where it sounds. More of your onboarding is focused on the Personas, the prospects, the ae, the ops, the VP to understand that. Cause I feel like that's gotten lost in SaaS because I know like my first sales job, the first binder I got was about the industry and the prospects. It was nothing to do with the products because you can look at the product and feel like it was more on the customer. So I really love that you focus there, which is good. Yeah. And then last part I'll touch on here before we kind of start to wrap up is you know you mentioned right before recording then you got into it here. There is a lot of bad advice out there. There's a lot of things that get said that are just garbage. And I see them all the time and I used to like fight them and now I'm just like, all right, whatever. Do, do what you got to do. What are some of those things that you would like to call out. You got the platform now, you got the stage right now. Like, what are some things that you see getting set out there that you'd like to be like, you know what? I don't know about that, y'. All. This is something. A different way to approach it.
Yeah. So the very basic one is this the most basic one. I get messages all the time from people. Saw this. He's trying to break into SaaS. Give him a shot. I'm like, wait, hold on. A company of 60 people, a lot of times they would have the same target as a company for 120 people. Just depends on the organization. The 120 people company have 20 sellers versus our 10. Where do you think they'd have more support? It's not that I'm not training them or supporting them. Don't go into startups like it's a recipe for disaster if you're breaking in. Just, just, just on my, just, just purely my opinion, a lot of people are probably managing this better than I am. The other. Sorry, let me just. The other thing here is, you know when people say, again, no disrespect to anybody, I've hired with degree, without degree, I'm just sharing what I know, what I believe in. You know when people say, don't hire without a degree. Look, I didn't crush university, but what my degree taught me was a discipline, a way to work, think about problems, stuff like that. I want to. I. Look, I. When I'm hiring, I'm hiring for myself and my team. So I need certain things I can be comfortable around. Some things I can think about on a. Not that having a degree somebody makes me comfortable, but that's how. Kind of how I've always lived my life. And I associate that to problem solving skills sometimes. So I'm a little comfortable with that. So I hire for my needs. The third part is I am actually hiring experience reps and I'm giving them more money. I'm hiring BDRs and I'm giving them more money. I'm hiring BDRs that are at a level two for at least for what I need right now for dually getting BDRs to come close deals. It's not very easy to just do that for kids right up university. As of right now, I haven't. And I'm being very honest with y'. All. I am not following all these advices because my target is what the company needs to do. I'm not on a hero binge over here that, oh, I'll Hire anybody and I'll make them an str. I'll get there someday. I'm not Kyle Coleman yet. I'm not Kevin Dorsey yet. So for now, for my building step, that's where I'm at. So if there's any advice that I'll give is don't follow advices. It's like, don't follow generic advice. Sorry, my bad, my bad.
Like, wait, you can't say that. If I could give any advice, it's don't follow advice.
I'm a talker and, like, sometimes I lose my own thought process. No, I disagree. Look, I guess the actual advice is this is if some. Just because an influencer or Sat Khan said this, doesn't mean it's true. Doesn't mean it's real. I'm also. I'm not trying to be an influencer over here. I'm just trying to. We figured something out. It's working. It's different. It's not perfect. And the way it kind of clicked for me is I can share this. He's a friend of mine, Elric laguard. He was the SDR manager, Chili Piper. He's reached out. He's like, hey, man, how do I get our BDRs to close deals? I had a SDR manager from Clue reach out as well, and they were like, hey, man, how do we get our BDRs to close deals? This conversation is happening. People are talking about it. Somebody is going to take this playbook and optimize it. And that's what I want.
I'm still confused why that's even a thing.
You.
You train them. That's it. Like, that. That's not that hard of a concept for people, I feel like, to figure out of. Like, if you want your BDRs to close deals, train them how and then let them do it. This is not a complicated concept here.
Literally, I said this to my friend. I'm like, you do realize I'm not a genius, right? Just right place at the right time. I was. We were brave enough and had the resources to do it. We just had the reason. Hey, we didn't hire 10 people. We hired three and we gave them the at bats. Simple. Very simple. And just a lot more training.
It is what it is, my man. So, okay, before we wrap here, last question, man, name of this podcast is Live Better, Sell Better, right? Because I also have this weird idea that maybe sales would go up if we took better care of ourselves, if we had more energy, if we had more positivity, Health, happiness, fulfillment. All of those things. What would your live better advice be for people listening it.
Man?
Well, hold on, let me rephrase that because you don't want them to follow advice. Your live better suggestion be to the.
People, be fully you. So look at this. I dj, I work out. I have, I, I have a one hour block in the middle of the day to go work out. And then I get a message from Jess, my bdr. She's. I saw them going for Pilates. I'm like, you do you my friend, you do you live your life in middle of team calls there. Ask the companies like start DJ for us and stuff so you can have fun. It's okay. I'll say this work life balance I think is dead. I think it's about work life integration. My boss follows me on Instagram. My entire company follows me on Instagram. They know my life. I'm comfortable being me. I'm not chaotic or whatever, but I'm very, I'm dedicated. I'm comfortable being me. And by doing that, I'm just trying to show my team that hey, you can be you, you can live your life. You can have good days, you can have bad days. I'm here for it all. So just that I think the titles are you, you like poking. The titles aren't dying, but the personalities behind the titles are, are becoming more evident.
No, for, for sure. It's like I wish people did have more fun in salesman because it really could be fun. It really can be fun when you allow it to be. When you're intentional with that. To bring your whole self to have fun, to laugh, to joke, to try things. Just try things right and have some fun with it. So this was, this was fun. My man. Where can people get more of you? Where can they find more of your content? Where are you putting out the good stuff? Like where can they get more sodcon in their lives?
Yeah. Please follow me on LinkedIn. We just released our BDR closing deals in 6 months playbook. Weirdly enough, that's kicked my imposter syndrome into next level. So please give me more imposter syndrome. And if you like, you can follow me on ig. I share sales content. I share fitness content. I a r e saad I r sad and follow duly. We're trying to do some really cool stuff. We're trying to help sellers just take the issues with Salesforce. Just all the data entry, moving your deals, all that good stuff. Not going to pitch. That's what our mission is. We're just trying to have fun with it. And, yeah, sure, follow along.
That's how I came to know Dooley was from the fun y' all bring to the market and the fun y' all bring to events and how you communicated and all of those things. So awesome. I do. This is fun. I appreciate you. Keep those SDRs closing, dude. Keep those.
Appreciate it coming from you. I appreciate that.
Hell, yeah, my man.
More from Kevin


E74: Your Agent Isn't Broken. Its Foundation Is. | Jonathan Moss, EVP Growth & Partnerships @ Experity


E73: The AI Enabling 600 Customer-Facing Reps | Lauren Hughes, VP Revenue Effectiveness @ Justworks
E68: Are You UNINVESTABLE? The New GTM Reality | Cassie Young, General Partner @ Primary Venture Partners
E67: Your Buyer's AI Is Pitching YOUR Product (Badly) | Adrian Rosenkranz, CRO @ Webflow
E64: My Team Drives 4x Revenue Per AE vs Competitors | Aviv Canaani, CRO @ Datarails
E64: My Team Drives 4x Revenue Per AE vs Competitors | Aviv Canaani, CRO @ Datarails
E63: A Product-Informed Approach for Go-To-Market (Usha Iyer: Chief Customer & Growth Officer @ Hivebright)
E62: CRO Life: from a $20B Exit, to a Hyper-Growth AI Org (Michelle Donnelly, CRO @ Crescendo)
