The SDR Defender with Nikky Ivey

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What is up, man? I feel like you just shot me out of a cannon just then. I am in love with that intro and I'd like to steal it for my bio.

Well, luckily it's recorded, so you can play it any day. Any day. You've got a couple days of extra rejection. You're like, I need a little something something. Let me listen to KD's intro.

My new alarm clock. Done.

But with all that, the reason why people even listen to the show, it's not for me, it's for the guests. But it's because we get right into the good stuff. No fluff, no nonsense. So I'm going to start with this. Why do SDRs need defending? Right. Like you created the SDR defenders. Why do SDRs need defending?

So originally it was that I was seeing a lot of posts on LinkedIn that were basically shaming SDRs. Right. And it was what confound. Yeah. What perplexed me about this was that the people who were often the ones shaming the SDRs are people whose company employs SDRs. So there was a disconnect. And then I thought about my own career and how you really just can't count on the fact I've been lucky, but you can't count on the fact that there will be a leader in the building that gets you, that understands how. What you respond to and how to help you get to where you want to go. And so if most of the stuff that's out there is not really speaking to SDRs in that way, Right. About how we can. How we can support their careers, there was a gap. Now, this is before, just before the throes of COVID Right. And right when we started SDR Defenders, you started to see these other ones crop up. And I think that those might have come out of, you know, a lot of out of work SDRs just needing community. And I'm here for that, too. But for us, that first reason. And second of all, like, the numbers bear out the fact that SDRs need defending. Right. Topo says anywhere between 60 to 80% of pipeline at world class companies is generated by SDRs. Why then do they tend to be the least paid folks on. And I get it as entry level. Right. But independent of how long they've been at the company, a lot of the time they're still by salary, the least paid. And if we're being real in terms of sales culture, it's a less respected role. And so listen, I don't have a cape or anything, but I was like, somebody's got to do something. And I happened to have a lot of time on my hands because I was one of those out of work due to Covid. And rather than cry and lick my wounds, I got out there to see how I could lift people up.

And so if you think about this, go a layer deeper. What are some of the very tactical things organizations and leaders can do to better support their SDRs? Right, because you know, my style, and we've talked about this offline too, is like, all the rah rah's great. All the we need to stand up for them are great. But what should they be doing that would make that SDR role either feel more defended or more supportive?

I think it comes down to making sure that you, from the time that an SDR starts at this job, that you put things in front of them that help them understand that there is purpose to the work that they do. It's very easy, both as an SDR and one who leads them to write this work off. Right. As something anybody could do, just part of an assembly line. And if that's how the business is structured, then it's really difficult. It's a heavy lift to get yourself to a place where you feel purposeful in the work. So I'd say start there. Like, really drill that in to people. Like, we're not just here to make phone calls. Yes, there is an activity metric as a minimum. Right. But that's just so we can justify you still working here. Other than that, like, the point is these outcomes and we are entrusting you to make those happen. Right. I had one of the best examples of this. I worked at this company, and the CRO just had, for whatever reason, a really close relationship with the SDRs. He understood that we were pipelined, and he just brought in a tank of oxygen and just sat it in the middle of the sales floor and it lived there for his entire tenure. And the point that he would make to the entire company is that pipeline is oxygen. And if pipeline is oxygen, then these SDRs are the life of this sales team. Treat them as such.

I love that. Let's go one layer deeper. How should they be treated? Right. How should a company treat their SDRs?

Number one, don't treat them subordinate to AES. I happen to see these as lateral roles, which is why another thing. Why the pay structure thing is so problematic for me in the worst cultures, right? You have AES referring my SDR. My SDR. And it's like, not exactly. Right. That's another person equal to you employed at this company to make results. And if they're making their results, there's just. It's not acceptable to treat them that way. Another thing is to proactively put projects and opportunities in front of them to help them get to understand if AE is even the next step that they want. And, you know, help them open their mind and think about this. Right. Again. One of the things that really worked well for me early in my career was we had webinars that were geared at our ICP. Mostly our customers showed up, but the SDRs had the option of sitting in on these webinars so we could hear exactly what was being said to our customers and our prospects and then have more informed conversations. This differs very much from an SDR not watching the webinar, but a prospect or customer does. And then they go into my bucket that says I have to call them. So now I'm calling them without purpose. But if I was just on this webinar that they were on and I allowed myself to put myself in their shoes, right? Now when I call them, I'm like, hey, I saw you showed up to that webinar day where we talked about syz. I thought blah, blah, blah was so super compelling. But I don't want to, you know, go off on everything. I loved what, you know, what made you stick around, and now we're in a conversation. So one thing, when you put things like that, them putting that in front of me helped me understand a little bit of marketing. Help me understand more specifically where leads come from. And understanding that, again, reinforces this sense of purpose in the work that I was doing. And I was right. It's this term. I learned Chris Beal from Connect and Sell. I interviewed him on B2B growth a long time ago, and he said SDRs, sales rep, prospecting reps suffer from, you know, conversation scarcity. But so, so, so Chris Beal was saying that SDRs and prospecting reps suffer from conversational scarcity. Right? That's what makes the job Such a grind is the calling. The calling and never actually talking to someone. So if you can figure out a way to get them conversational abundance, they'll at least be having more fun. So for me, right, finding these little points of commonality, these little places where I could identify with the prospect, a, made me more excited to reach out to them and B, made it easier for me to have more conversations because that's how I treated it. I went into the call looking for a conversation, not this meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting.

So actually, I'm going to take this a different direction. Right. Just based off what you said there is why do we let, and why do strs let something that's actually so easy drain them so much? And you'll see where I'm going with this. How draining is it to actually make a phone call?

That part's not draining.

And then how draining is it to not talk to someone?

It depends on how many, I think, times in a row that happens.

Well, I guess this is where I'm, this is where I'm going with this. All right. If in terms of effort wise, the amount of effort that goes into not Talking to someone 10 times is very low, but we let it weigh on us. We let it feel like it was that much more. So like, I guess where I'm going with this is like, what can you do? Or what can we do to help them get through that? Right? Because if you think about the actual, the things that are deflating is when you do talk to someone and they reject you. But we let something like the action of picking up a phone drain us when nothing actually happened. I guess how do you encourage SDRs to push through that or not get fatigued by, truthfully, a not fatiguing exercise.

What really helped me with just outright call reluctance was a manager telling me, there is not anything that you're going to do or say in these prospecting phone calls that's going to shut the doors to this business. So get in there and break stuff, right? Like, believe in why we hired you. You're winning. But I think what happens is, especially when you're new, when you're in training and you're looking around at all, yes, your colleagues, but also your competition, and you start to compare yourself with how quickly, how much more quickly they appear to be progressing or ramping than you, you know. So it's not the phone call or the lack of conversations in this case alone. It's how you feel about the lack of conversations, how that makes you feel, especially when other people around, you seem to be having success. So to couple that with another reason why I think SDRs need defending is that in a lot of places, sales culture, from the time an SDR or prospecting rep walks through the door, they're being told, if you don't do XYZ in X amount of time, you're fired. Now, that can be a standard to which you hold people, but there's a much more positive way to frame that, and you have to have the coaching along the way. It cannot just be. And I've seen, I've been a part of this before. You tell us when we walk in, if we don't sell one thing of your transactional SMB150 call a day thing in our first week or in our first month, then we're fired. I don't know that you get the best out of anybody with that. And so it's just. Yes, there is something beneath just the phone call that is causing that reluctance. And I think great leaders are able to identify that because they've seen it before. Maybe they've seen, oh, okay, you know, this person has this aptitude. This person is in their same training class is doing this. So I can sort of figure it out. But most of the time, you can't count on that to happen. So you either conclude that you're not good enough for sales and leave, or. Or stay and be miserable until someone fires you.

Well, hopefully there's a third option in there, and this is going to lead to the question here, like, what can the SDR themselves do to stay in the right mindset? Right. Because both of those options were kind of dependent upon someone else leading them properly. You opened up by saying most SDRs aren't being led properly. So hopefully there's a middle ground here of what are some of the things that an SDR can do to stay in the right mindset to get over call reluctance. Right. Because if it's always dependent on someone else, well, then you got blind leading the blind there a little bit. What are tactics an SDR can use to power through that?

So I think, and you may have been going to get to this later in the conversation, but I think it first starts with how you pick where you're going to work in the first place. If you're looking at jobs just based on a leader that you put on a pedestal that you want to go work for, a title that you put on a pedestal, a, you know, name of a company. Right. So it's one of these tools that we all use Every day. And it's like a big marquee thing to have on your LinkedIn, right? If you set that aside for a second and just really try and understand what you enjoy doing all day. Does this sound familiar? You said this sort of thing to me, but you're right, right? What do you enjoy doing all day? So start there and then is the group of people that you sell into are these people whose success you can care about. Can you get excited? Can you get excited about talking to these people first of all? And can you get excited about helping them? If you can't, don't force it. But it's like there is this machismo, for lack of a better term in sales culture, right? It's like the Jay Z lyric, right? I'm a hustler, baby. I sell water to a well. But built into that is like, okay, so you don't care what you sell. I thought in the beginning of my career that that was how you're supposed to be. I'm strong out here. I could do whatever, I could sell anything. But no, I cannot sell to subcontractors in construction. I found by failing. That's not my audience, right. So it depends on that. And then once you get there, once you're in the building, all those chips pieces are in place, what you must do is come to your one on ones prepared. That is how, that is how you get the respect. You decide coming in that you value your leader's respect over their attention. This is a pitfall I fell into very early in my career. So if you're seeking their respect, you're going to go into that meeting in a totally different way than if you were seeking just their attention. The victim mentality goes out the window. You're not going in there to cry to them and ask you ask them to help you get this one one over the line. No, it's none of that. It's here are the things I'd like to do in my career. Here's how I'm thinking I'm going to get there. Can I do that here? Can you show me how to do that here? Now your purpose is not just for the job. It's not just for the phone calls. It's for yourself. Like those are the things. And I want everybody listening to know, like that stuff comes from falling and getting up. For me, I don't, I'm not sitting here saying this because I walked through the door, you know, as an SDR or full cycle rep, already coming to my one on ones prepared No, I went in there and cried to Scott Lee several occasions. I'm probably telling you. But that was because I didn't understand that, you know, to get respect, you do the work, you talk about the outcomes, and you be consistent. You do what you say you're going to do.

And so I think that's such a good little segue to kind of growing. Right. So you said you've grown and you've learned, I guess, what would be some of those key growth moments. Right. So the beauty of sharing failures, I try to share, I know you share as well, is like, hopefully someone doesn't have to fall on their face. Hopefully someone hears and goes, okay, I can avoid that. So actually, let me rephrase it. What are some things that SDR should avoid doing? I do want to make sure that we're talking about the things they can do or can't do as. As well. So, like, what are some of those mistakes you see a lot of SDRs making? Maybe ones that you made as well that they could avoid making that would help them on their journey?

Definitely comparing themselves to other reps. That's a little bit easier now in a remote environment for a lot of us, because, you know, you're there on the sales floor, they got hoopla or something, you hear somebody's victory song and you ain't heard your victory song in a week, like, that'll put you in a hole for a little bit. So avoid comparing yourself to other people. That is something I did very much. And it was like. It was ugly. I'll tell you the truth, it was really ugly. It was. I came in, it was my first B2B sales job. But I had been slanging in whips for a while. And so I was like, I know how to do this. I know how to talk to people. I'm a great communicator. And there was this girl, this young woman, who I guess if you gave us both a standardized test, my score would likely be higher. But when she was on the phone with people, she had a way of getting into conversations. And I'm sitting there on, no. I was so focused on why is she winning and I'm not, that it held me back. I should have been asking her. I should have been listening to her calls. I should have been taking her calls in my one on ones and saying, this is what's working for this person. I'm unsure if that works for my tone or communication style. Can you help me tailor that? But so that's what I think people can avoid first of all, avoid comparing yourself to others. Avoid putting your career in other people's hands, and avoid talking to yourself negatively or telling yourself that you're doing everything you possibly can be doing right now and it's just not working out. Like, no, you're not. So those are the things I would avoid.

I like it because it's true. Something that took me a while to learn but was a big shift is, like, there's no shortness of success, like having that scarcity mindset that because someone else is succeeding, that you. Right. That comparison games, like, all y' all can succeed. That's fine, right? So I think that's a really important thing to talk to. But you touched on it very briefly there. Imitate first, innovate second. I think it's where a lot of STRs go wrong early in their careers. They step in and they think they. It's almost like that they feel like they have to be different. Like, oh, this person over here succeeding. So let me do it differently. Let me show that I can figure it out versus doing what's working. When I came over to Patient Pop, I interviewed every single sales rep there in my first three weeks. Every single one sat down 30 minutes and went through it. The number one commonality between every single top performing rep, they learned from the top performing rep. They stopped them out, they sat down with them, they listened to their calls, and they sought it out. Right. Imitate first, innovate second. And so then we'll segue from that when we think about messaging, because you work a lot with SDRs and helping them kind of like, break through and go through it. What are some of the things that they should be imitating from you or imitating from other SDRs that are seeing success in the role? But it actually now comes down to it. Okay, cool, Nikki. All right. Got my mindset.

Cool.

I'm not comparing cool. Nothing but positive talk.

Cool.

I'm doing the things. Oh, shit. I've got someone on the phone now. What? Right. So what are some of the things that SDR should be imitating in terms of best practices to then get better results in the role?

Well, first, you kind of just said it, right? So imitating other reps who were doing well, I don't care if the rep don't even work at the company anymore. Like, I'm walking in, Tell me, who is the best that ever done it at Patient Pop? Those are the calls I'm listening to first. So there's that element. But I think more than that, and we're talking about how SDR is what they. What we can do, right? There's a step you just went through, like, okay, I've got my mindset. I've got this. There is this step that I think that I know for myself, I was really reluctant to do in the beginning because it asks for vulnerability. You have to be doing role playing sessions with your people. Yes, you have to. My first experience in a role play session was back when I was in training at Outbound Engine. And I thought, right, all right, we're going to do this thing. My partner was this woman named Lashana. Shout out to Lashana if you're listening. But so this woman named Lashana. And I thought, okay, I'm going to be the caller. She's going to be the prospect. We're just going to get through the script so people hear how it goes. When I tell you Lashana lit me up. I mean, I was sitting there in that training room. I mean, we had. It was a big training class, like 30 people. Gentleman named Roosevelt Hawkins was the trainer there. And he was. At that point, I'd never seen anything like him. So it was embarrassing for me to get shredded in front of him as well. But she was just like, every single time that I tried to, like, get by on cuteness, right? Like a little giggle and oh, but what about. Nah, she was challenging me, right? Like, because the script's right there. It was a great script. All I had to do was look at it and get back on track. I couldn't do it because I was, so, I'll be honest, angry. I was fucking livid. How dare she? How dare she embarrass me in front of all these people? You know, I mean, it's ego. I'm so much smarter than her. I talk better than her. Lashana went out there and called circles around everybody because she wasn't scared. And what she did, that growth moment for me was like. Because I talked to Roosevelt about it, shout out to Rose. I was like. I was like, you know, how do I move forward from this? Like, how do I recover from such humiliation? And he was like, you just get on the phone, Nikki. Like, if you hate the way this feels and you know that on the other side of it, if you just push through, if you do the thing you said you came here to do, if you do the thing you tell yourself you're super good at, you don't really have to feel this way very often. And so that motivated me. Part of our training, we had to come in on A Saturday. All the rookies had to come in on a Saturday. The first. At the end of the first week of our training, maybe the second. And I wanted to come in on a Saturday. At that point, I wanted to never feel that feeling ever again. Not on the phone with a prospect. And so, yeah, it wasn't like. And then I, like, never had that kind of interaction again. But I understood now what it meant. It's not personal. Number one, Lashana did not hate me. We had lunch together. She's great. And it's not permanent. It's a feeling. It's a feeling. I'm a woman who's had, like, four people have exited my body, okay? So one person coming at me like that in a training setup, even I didn't even. I wasn't losing money. Nothing was on the line, and my ego couldn't handle it.

So then do you know what I guess caused that shift or willingness to. Not phrasing this the right way, but is how did you move your ego aside? Like, what became more important than your ego? Because a lot of reps don't respond that way. They get challenged and the ego takes over. They allow the feelings, they allow the emotions to go. So I did something shift. Like, how did you push your ego to the side and go, you know what? This is still worth it, or this is still important, or something along those lines. How did you make that.

More pain? I got sick of losing to people I thought I was better than. Because at a certain point, you've got to put your money where your mouth is, right? Nikki, if you're better than them, what does that mean? Does that mean that you think you have more natural talent than them? You're a better sales artist, right? You're an exemplary communicator. All of that can be true. But if you're not willing to make the 150 phone calls, which is what it was in that environment that the person next to you is making. Nikki, you're not better than them. You're not. So losing to people that I thought I was better than was one of the most instructive experiences in my sales career. So it was just getting sick of that and then going and tried to figure out, like, what do I have to do to not again, to not feel that way again, to really be the best, worst case scenario for me is to be a mascot. I want to be on the court. I want to be in the game. I don't want to be like, oh, she's so. Look how funny Nikki is. Look how fun she is to have on the team. No, ma', am. I want you to look at the scoreboard and see me. I want to make my impression felt, as the saying goes. And that doesn't happen when you live in your failures. You know, this is all in retrospect, right? This is all things that I had to experience and recover from and experience and recover from over time. I just made the conscious choice of letting these be lessons or else I would have exited the profession a long time ago.

And I think. And that's one of the things that I think actually comes. It's almost built into the sales industry a little bit, is like, the types of people we try to target. High performers, hyper competitive, athlete, whatever, gritty. But what we forget is that a lot of those people don't know what it's like to fail. They don't actually know what it's like to fail. And especially to fail on a daily basis. And something I hope people caught that you mentioned there is like, she went internal to get better. She didn't look external. A lot of people when they're failing at one job, think it's the job, and so they go try to find another job as opposed to getting better. Now, is every job good? No, it's not. Are there horrible jobs that you should get out of? Yes, there are. But you need to be able to answer the question of, like, was I at my best? That's a question that I love to ask my reps and my managers. Is this you at your best? Not, is this you working your hardest? Not, is this you giving all your effort? Is this you at your best? Because if the answer to that is yes, that's all I can ask of you. But the answer to that is no, then we got to try to get. Get there. Because if this is you at your best and you're still finishing at 30% of your quota, then I owe it to you to find something for you. Like, I owe it to you to get you out of that role into something different. If that is you, it's your best. And people don't always think that way. And so I'm glad you're sharing that growth story, because most people are like, oh, this was the problem, and we never take it on ourselves to improve. Right? And so that's kind of like, if you think about. We've been talking a lot about some of the challenges of the SDRs. I want to flip this real quick. Why should someone be an sdr?

Why?

Damn, Nikki. Like, this rejection and failure and no support and lowest paid role. And that doesn't sound good. Let's flip this though. Why should someone be willing to take this on? What does this open? What does this provide? What can this do for someone if they do it the right way?

Well, it's character building, like you said, right? If you're like me and everybody your whole life told you, right? How, you know, most likely to xyz, right? And you, you know, you were the star of this and I was the star of the High School Musical, whatever, right?

Were you though?

Yes, super proud of it. Lost the talent show though, was pretty painful anyway, so I think that the opportunity, in a fairly low stakes situation, right, it's an entry level job at a startup, right? You can get another one. If you fail, it's fine, don't fail too many times. But like, I think what, everybody should do it for at least three months to find out what you're made of. Don't judge yourself. But I think that there hasn't been. And I've done competitive things in my life, but there was nothing that challenged me to really look at myself and stop telling myself all the time that I'm the best, smartest, whatever, when I haven't really substantiated that with any effort or any impact on the business. So the opportunity as an SDR is to impact a business in the most, in the most obvious way. So if you have aspirations, whether you want to be in the C suite someday or you want to be an entrepreneur, this is a muscle you must build. You must learn how to overcome rejection. You must learn how to become intrinsically motivated. You must learn those things. And when you do and you build this confidence, that's when, that's what makes the job easier, you know, other than that, and here, here are some of my reasons. If you're in A, there was plenty of industries right now that were disproportionately affected by Covid, right? So if you worked in hospitality, if you worked in any of these surface industries, then you likely lost your job or if you sold cars, whatever it is, that's what I was doing. And the, a lot of the time, the hours in retail are not conducive to raising a family. The pay is typically lower, right, for the entry level anyway than becoming an SDR. And the culture, even though, you know, B2B sales culture, there's a host of things, and you hear me talk about it all the time that need to be addressed. But I will tell you, it was 10 times better than what I Experienced selling. So. So those are the reasons, right? The opportunity to impact a business in a meaningful way. The opportunity to set yourself up for success in your longer career. Take the long view of your career by learning, building that muscle, building that, I guess, tough skin, just learning about yourself. Why does someone rejecting me on the phone trigger me so badly? Why did it make me so sad? Right? Figuring that out before the stakes become high and it's your own business or the stakes become high and you're leading a team, that's a great opportunity. And then besides that, because you are learning about the customer, that's inherent to the SDR role. You are typically, if you're doing it right and going to the meetings prepared, you're managing up right, you're learning how to have conversations with leaders. And you are, if you're like me, you're making some of the best friends in your life. Like, there is just. I can't think of right now, maybe because I haven't experienced it, a comparable environment where all of those things are available to you. And when you're in sdr, the stakes are also fairly low. So I say get out there and do it. And if you want to learn how I've created a course STR Defenders Transitioning into Tech Sales. And it is really in depth, I go into, you know, what my reservations were and making the transition. What were some of the. In the interview, some of the objections that I had to overcome and how. And then what I, in my case, should have done in my first 90 days to become successful is what I do now to be successful in the first 90 days in a role. So if that's something you listen in, I can help.

Let's give them a little teaser here. Let's talk those first 90. What should. Okay, I did. Nikki's got me fired up. Just right. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna go. I'm give it 3 months run as an SDR. I landed my job. I walk in. Oh, shit. Now what? What should a new SDR focus on in their first 90 days? Give them a little teaser here.

So I like to segment this into three categories, right? People, process, and product. I start with people, not meaning the people at the company. You'll have time to make friends and usually there's some kind of meet and greet. But I mean, the people you sell into, right? And the people who are your customers, make yourself immerse yourself in their world. Do not succumb to the pressure that you will feel when you know the person next to you is already set a meeting, you know, or maybe you got that talk like I mentioned, where if you don't make a sale within the first week, whatever, right? Immerse yourself because you've done this, right? Embedded the company, and there are people you can care about in the world of those folks. I mean, attending their events, I mean subscribing to their content streams. I mean listening to the calls once you've got, and also reviewing your ICP docs that your company should have. And then once you've gotten through and you feel like, okay, as a foundation, I understand the people I'm going to be talking to now. You. You understand the existing process. You mentioned this earlier. Imitate, don't innovate. There is an existing process that your company through which someone has been successful. Successful setting meetings. Find that person, okay? Get on a Skype call or a zoom call with that person and ask them how they did it. If they don't want to share it with you, fine, you can just go listen to their call. We can do this the easy way or the hard way, but, you know, this is, this is where we learn the process. How is this person applying? Because my sales leader told me, we do this, we do that, and here are the tools, right? But how does this person apply the process for the outcomes that I want to have? And then once I've got a handle on the process, then I start to look at the product. And when I look at the product, I am not spending that time, my first 90 days, trying to learn all the bells and whistles to this thing. Because typically the people on my buyers, they don't care about all bells and whistles. So what I'm doing is I'm taking what I learned when I listened to those customer calls, right? And those prospect calls, and I'm keying in on their use cases. So I learn the product based on the customer and prospects use cases. That's all I need to be able to speak compellingly about in order to be successful setting meetings. What many SDRs do, what many new sales reps do in general, is put themselves in a position where all that is likely to happen is a feature dunk. Because they're so excited. I've been there. Qualia. I was so excited about that product. I was like, oh, my God, it's gonna revolutionize. I was right. They were right. But anyway, so that I would get on the phone with people and just be talking about like that. What I didn't understand was their specific applications buy Persona because not all the Personas are going to have the same use case. I think folks would do well to avoid starting with product and getting to people last, which I guess is a life skill as well.

I think that's so, so valuable. And I hope people got that because looking at the prospect, like I'd say prospect first, learn the prospect. Right? And I hope people caught the way she said to learn it. Yes, you listen to the calls, but you listen to the prospect side of the call, not just the rep. Right. So many sales reps, when they listen to calls and only listen to the salesperson, they're not listening to the prospect. Listen to what the prospect says, what they like, where they say, wow, the questions that they're asking, the objections that they give, you start to pick up on that. And that can change your messaging overnight, which is so, so important and valuable. And there's one that I really wanted to touch on because we've been riffing on this a little bit. So I want to get towards the end here, but we've talked a little bit about video and I know, I believe you're a big proponent of video in sales as well. So how do you take some of what you learned? Right. You said, okay, learning about the prospect. Okay, now I know a little bit about the prospect. I have a little bit of product knowledge. How do I take that and craft a strong video prospecting message?

Now it really depends on, obviously, right. If you do an SMB or enterprise, I think that dictates how much time that you want to spend on these. So for me, I'm in enterprise and so, you know, it's fewer accounts and I'm able to justify spending the time. I take a really off the beaten path approach to this. So it used to be as simple as I would go to. Let's say they were on a podcast. I go to the page of that podcast that they were on. I had pulled some quote that they said. Right. That was compelling. And the video, Right. One of these tools, whichever you want, where you can have your face there and screen. And the video is me saying, like, I'm sitting here, Katie, I was listening to your podcast and you said this actually happened with you. Actually, I just didn't tell you. But what you actually said was if you have a rep that is at 50% of quota and you want to help them improve, it's a mistake to say improvement means next month you're at 100. Right. Because the deal is if they went from 50 to 80, that's successful. So of course I wouldn't be as long winded about it, but I would tell you how compelling I found that. And I would say, I think we, I think we think about this the same. Are you open to having a conversation? And so. Or that could just be the connection request video, whatever it is. So that's one way what I'm actually doing right now to success is I'm going to these webinars that are geared at my icp, like I mentioned before, but I'm doing it more strategically, so I'm looking at ahead of time, who are the speakers? Are the speakers also potential buyers? If they are, and in my industry, they tend to be their experts and their practitioners. If they are, then what I have done is send them a video before their session. I said, hey, Katie, I see you're going to be talking at Sales Success Summit, Right. I'm really excited for your session and just wanted to wish you luck. And so now, now and then, and then I go into the event and I do watch the session and in the chat because I'm in a webinar geared at my icp, those are also potential buyers. So I'm actively participating in the conversation that's being had in this webinar. The person that I sent this happened in real time this last week. The person that I sent the heads up to, right. Recognizes my name in the chat and so they send me something afterward. And I'm like, that was really sweet. Thank you. Yes, I'll have a conversation with you. And then at the same time, like, let's say there's 100 attendees, right? 100 DEI leaders have come. That's who I sell to, have come to this thing. If I'm in the chat section contributing thoughtful and valuable pieces to the conversation, I'm getting inbound connection requests from my ideal prospect. So the answer to the question is. Right, Unscalable things.

Oh, thank you. Right. Like, how do we do personalization at scale? You don't. How do we do video at scale? You don't. You have impactful connections and things there now. So she just. I'm going to take it one level up on this here, y'.

All.

If you are in a webinar with your icp, one of the best things you can do outside of what Nikki just mentioned, if they're at a webinar with me on it, let's say this, go get some of my old stuff and share it with them. If they're on a webinar with a certain presenter, it means they value that presenter. So go get other things that presenter has done. Now you've got content drips and drops to put in front of those prospects. Like, oh, you were on Katie's webinar. Did you see his conversation with Nikki? That might be something else. Now you've got something to give people follow ups to so you can splinter content out of that webinar, which is a gangster move. It works really, really well because they signed up to see Nikki's one thing. Go get some of her other stuff and share it with them. They'll love you for it. So, okay, so we're going to wrap on this because we've been talking about a lot here. I have two questions left for you. So the first one here is like we've covered a lot. We've covered how to treat SDRs, what SDR should look for, how they should behave, like across 45 minutes. Though, if there were three things that you'd want people to remember from this conversation, what would those three things be?

I would want them to remember to seek their leaders respect before seeking their attention. Or instead of seeking their attention, I would want them to remember that their career, your career, is in your own hands. And that waiting for not just, you know, an invitation, but even for validation from anyone external. You can like external validation, but looking for it, that's a mistake. And I think the third thing is, you know, just not internalizing. Not internalizing really anything good or bad that happens at a sales job as a referendum on who you actually are. You, you've looked at my LinkedIn, KD. That doesn't tell the story of who I am. One might have looked at my LinkedIn and been totally shocked that I came here to this conversation knowing the things that I know. So I see it as cool. I cause dissonance. It's fine, it's fun out here. But that's the thing, right? You have to know that you got the goods and keep on acting accordingly.

I love, I love it. And let's wrap on this, right? The name of this podcast is Live Better Sell Better, right? This weird idea that if we took better care of ourselves, if we took care of our minds, if we took care of our bodies, our hearts, our souls, that sales would also improve from it. What would your live better advice be? You've kind of dabbled with it a little bit throughout the theme of this. But like, what would that parting Live better advice be to everyone that's listening?

I'm challenging myself not to say anything cliche or fluffy here because I do Think it's really important. I think you really have to be careful of the stories that you tell yourself. I have, you know, at my lowest times in my career, it's been the result of, you know, this about me, Katie. It's been the result of me telling myself stories about myself that weren't in line with who I am or what I want to achieve. It was living in failure. So, you know, that's the. That's the way that I, once I started to live better. It was once I stopped beating myself up for every little failure and stopped letting a sales failure mean a Nikki failure. I hope that's helpful.

I hope that it is, too. Because if people really paid attention to the language they use with themselves, and you and I have had some of these conversations, right, of, like, paying attention to how we talk about ourselves, how we think about ourselves, and where we allow our internal conversations to go, right? We say things to ourselves that we would never let someone else say to us, and we let other people say things to us that we would never let say to one of our best friends. And we internalize that. And so I hope people grab that because I think it's phenomenal advice. Like, we talk a lot about storytelling. We don't talk enough about the stories we tell ourselves. And so. So I think that's a really, really good piece of advice. And so, Nikki Ivy, how do people get more of you? Where can they find you? What do you got out there? Like, how can they get more? This was 45 minutes. Where can they go get Nikki at high level, high scale, in depth, where can they find you? What do you got out there? You got a book, you got a movie? Like, where can people get more Nikki Ivy in their life?

I got a couple chapters in that course I mentioned. It's just me telling you these stories. So SDR2Finish.com is how you find that sales for the culture, if you happen to be a black seller, no matter where you are in your career, looking to start as a salesperson or looking to mentor salespeople or hire them, you can find me in there at the cookout. And you can obviously on LinkedIn, maybe that went without saying, but I'm ubiquitous. I'm out here like Twitter, Instagram, and typically there is this same candor.

And.

There is this same, I think, sort of student lens that I take to sales, that if you like that sort of thing, come see me, come follow me. We'll have some fun.

As Nikki has said many times, we out here, we out here, come find us. Nikki. Ivy, Long time coming. Long overdue. Thank you so much for your time, energy and insights today, girl. Appreciate you.

Thanks, Katie. It's fun.

Oh, yeah.