Unlocking Your Potential: The Importance of Proper Training and Mentorship for SDRs

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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 talk about one of my favorite things, quite literally in the entire SaaS space. The SDR role. The sales development, business development, market development, whatever you want to call it. I've even had teams called XDR because we had so many different versions of them. This role is the foundation of the SaaS industry in terms of generating pipeline. In fact, I recently wrote a post and I don't even like the title so Sales Development Rep because people treat it like a title instead of a skill. But this is a lifelong skill that if you build, can absolutely change your career. But what's interesting is you don't hear a lot about sales development leadership. How do you lead SDRs? How do you build SDRs? How do you format an org? How do you go global with an SDR team? And that is why I'm so excited to have Carmela Kettner with me on the show today. She's the VP of Global Sales Development at Cato Networks, but has also done it at clickt Panaya Imperial. She's been global forever now, and she knows what it takes to not only build SDRs the role, but build SDRs the people. So we're gonna dive into all things SDR today. Carmela, welcome to the show.

Glad to be here. Thank you very much for the warm introduction.

Absolutely, absolutely. So I'm actually going to start just kind of on the experience side of here is like, you have. You've been leading sales dev for a while now. What has kind of kept you in that track? You see a lot of people sometimes try to get out of it. And what I love in your career is you're specialized, you are nailing this. Like, what's kind of kept you in that track?

So probably let's start with the ancient history. When I started off as an SDR myself, there was no title for it, so we were looking for one. So we called it Business Development Coordinator, and then we said Business Development Manager, and then we said Inside Sales Specialist. Inside Sales Rep. They're like a zillion names, as you already said. And I kind of started off with a very small project for two weeks, and then I stayed in the same company for almost three years because I had real fun with what I did. I didn't even know that I was so great in opening doors, but I just had fun at what I did and that's why I did it so long. And I became very, very good at it. And kind of that's how I developed that skill. And I have to say, I never had to look for a job even once here in Israel because it's like people hear about you and there are not many like us, and then they want you to come to their company and kind of replicate that. So that's what I did. And that's how it evolved. First being an SDR myself, like leaving that role and then becoming a manager. This very small team. Talk about one or two persons. So it's kind of growing into it. And because I so much enjoy what I'm doing and what I did, and I think when you have fun with what you do, you want to stick to it. Right? Because life is all about enjoying it. And when you can work and enjoy what you do, it's a win, win.

I love it because I'm a former SDR myself as well, which is also rare. Like, most people don't, like, realize there's actually not a lot of VPs out there, CROs out There that did the SDR role, but they're building out these orgs, and so you used a keyword that is a perfect segue of where I want to take this conversation. So, like, as it's evolved, so you've done it, you've led it in multiple companies. How has the SDR role evolved in your mind over the last, you know, call it really, like seven to 10 years, that it's really started to gain traction. Like, how has it evolved, in your opinion?

I think that the techniques have changed, also the prospects, because once there have been only a few SDRs that have been calling into prospects, and now they get, like, calls every day. So you have to be very smart about how you approach. You have to come with something that adds value to them and not waste their time. So I think that that's kind of the thing that everything evolves. You get more technology to help be more productive. You don't have to work as hard. You know, people used to use the Yellow Pages once or, you know, like Google searches and all that stuff. LinkedIn wasn't so evolved like it is today. So there are a lot of things that just weren't there, and now they are. So that's how it really evolves. The opportunity to be more successful.

Yeah, definitely. It has changed so much. I like the call out. Like, the prospect has changed too. You know, you could. You could just email, hey, point me in the right direction. They're like, sure, let me point you the right direction. Now it's like, absolutely not right. It doesn't work that way. And you still see people running that same playbook. That's what's so surprising to me is like, people still think the playbook from even four years ago works and it doesn't. And then they think SDRs don't work when really it's the playbook that they are following there. And so one of the biggest shifts, in my opinion, of this evolution of the SDR role has been this remote environment, right, where, you know, used to come into the office. You were there with your peers for the good, the bad, the ugly, the coaching, everything around it. Talk to me about this a little bit. So, like, one, like, is your team fully remote or is it in office? But talk to me about this hybrid remote environment, because there's been a lot of things, especially with SDRs, that I think has made it particularly challenging.

So while a lot of companies just started to have remote SDRs during COVID I've been doing this for a very long time. Also at Imperial Even where I was seven years. So part of the team always has been remote philosophy behind it, hire great people wherever they are, if you have an option legally, you know, to have an entity or give them a contract or kind of find a way to employ them. So I think that was my philosophy behind it. I used to manage an EMEA team in the beginning. So, you know, in Europe, every border is a different language. So you have to have people with those language skills, you have to have the cultural fit because only they understand how to. Only a British person knows how to speak to a British person. Same with the French, the Germans and so on and so forth. So I was kind of borderless in my approach with we had to hire. So I always had remote teams and it worked out pretty well. I directly manage them. So I know the thing is with remote, you kind of have to find a way to also have them get that feeling that they belong to a group, that they're not alone out there, you know, that's kind of. You have to be capable of motivating them to work from home. And nowadays most of my team is remote. I do have a team here in Israel, in the office. We don't have everyone coming to the office. We ask them if they can to come twice a week, so that's fine. But in the rest of the world, everyone works remotely. We trust them, we give them equipment, we give them all the possible tools to make them happy and successful as the artists and we give them managers, great managers. So we have an APEC manager, she's amazing, she's managing her team. And we have two managers for the us. They split up the team between them. We have people everywhere. And in Israel we have people in Europe, uk, we have quite big team as well. We have someone in Spain, in Italy, so we are almost everywhere. So. And those are all great SDRs that we hired because we are kind of very hard for qualification here at Cato because we want them. So that's kind of the thing, to find those great people wherever they are.

And so a few things I want to go deeper on there. One, I want to take it back to something you said at the beginning of like, let's go a little more specific, like, how do you help the remote team feel like they are a part of something? Because that is something a lot of teams struggle with and in my opinion, oftentimes it's like, it's too surface level, where it's like, yeah, like we do shout outs or they have a buddy, like, what are the things that you're doing to help make them feel like a part of a team. Because it can be hard, right? You got that one person in Spain and one person in Italy and three people in Germany and four coming in the office in Israel. Like how do you kind of try to form that culture, that connection with everybody spread out?

We do a few things. So starting with a morning coffee together over zoom. So we connect over zoom. People come with their drink and we talk about not necessarily even work related stuff just to meet up in the morning. You know, people can hang out here in the kitchen, but what about the remote people? They don't have that kitchen. They don't have that interaction. So we do see each other a few times a week. Then every other week I'm making a global team meeting. So everybody sees everyone. Also the new ones get introduced and so on. So all this communication, we have Slack channels. There's a lot of buzz going on in our Slack channels about kudos to the producers and it's actually amazing to see how much they give kudos to themselves, to each other. So there's a lot going on. We have all kinds of channels. By the way, we use Slack very extensively. We have groups for almost every tool that we are using. So if someone has a question, we have a group with marketing and sd. If someone has a question, their product marketing and so on related. And yeah, so then everyone, every manager has a channel for himself and his group without me in it. So they are also having their own communication. And you know, once a year we are meeting for a sales kickoff meeting and we bring everyone also the SDRs. And we just met in Berlin and we had one day only dedicated for the SDR. So an extra day training and also having fun. And yeah, we work them, we reward them, we have speaks like we kind of try to have a community here that works together and has also fun together and gives kudos to each other, you know, so it's kind of nice. Very nice.

And I think that's just so important because those are the little things that like in the office were easier. You know, you heard someone book a call, you could give them a little fist bump or the high five. Right. Like it was right there, you know. But also on the flip side, if someone was having a tough time, I felt it was easier to pick them up. So how do you handle that side of it? Right, because the SCR role is hard. It's a challenging role. There's, you know, the highs are highs, but the lows are, are lows. Like, what are some of the things that you do to either prevent burnout or to pick people up when they are kind of getting into the low side of things.

So naturally, what goes up must come down at some point. You can't always be in the clouds, so it's natural. So I'm always saying everyone is entitled for a bad period. It's okay. Everyone gets there at some point. And you know, there's something called life in the middle that happens to everyone and you just never know when. So we try to pick them up before they are in the too low position. So we do a lot of things with them. We coach them. We also look at their data and we kind of pinpoint for them where they could look out for some improvement. We help coach them with calls, something. We send them just back to the basics because if you get too much stress to yourself, you just want to go back to the basics. We have actually an external coach we hire because sometimes you want to give some reinforcement through someone that's not your manager, you know, and this guy is really great. We love him. And he works with a few SDRs that really need that reinforcement to give them a little bit of different perspective of what they already know. And sometimes it's that little fine tuning that makes all difference. And just giving you examples, we had a few people on pips here. You know, that happens in all companies. More than half of them are still around. So a pip at Cato doesn't mean you're out. You know, we try to keep people in. We want them to stay here, we want them to be successful, and we try to lift them up.

So I love that. A topic for a different day on, like, pips have gotten such a bad rap because a lot of companies do, they treat them like, you know, that's the end. Like once you're on a pip, there's no coming back. It's like, no. Like, it's an improvement plan, not an exit plan, it's an improvement plan. And if it's built the right way, it should actually be helping a rep improve and actually get back on track. And I think that's where too often that message gets gets lost in all of this. So I like that a lot now switching gears to something said around, like regionality, because like, you said it just perfectly of like, you know, knowing the region you're calling into the cultures, the demeanors, the tone, like the language, I do think is very, very important. Right. So is that how you structure your sdr? Org so like you have A rep in Spain called the Spain accounts in Germany. Is that how you're placing people is kind of region?

Absolutely. So we have even three people in France that we split up by zip codes, but they're all French. So we have someone in Italy, we have a few people working the German speaking region. They all German native speakers and we have Dutch and we have all these languages. It's also the culture and it's also the language. It's just, it's like when you send out a webinar invite and it's in local language, people tend to read it. If it's in Italian, they would open it up. So. And it's the same with the SDRs. When you get a call from someone in your local language, you just don't have to kind of break your tongue, as we say in Hebrew, you know.

So I think that's so important because that, you know, I've worked with quite a few companies that are trying to, it's called like cross the border in some way. Whether they're either they're trying to go overseas or they're trying to come to the States, they're trying to break in, but they don't do that. They use their team wherever they are. And then, you know, say, okay, now you're calling into, you have emea. Because they treat EMEA like it's all one place. Just like, no, this is not just one place. Like it might be a zone, but there's so many different countries there. And then they really struggle because they don't know the subtleties, they don't know the language nuances, they don't know the differences and then they really have a hard time. So let's actually keep going down this then. Like, how do you manage the different cultures? Right, so that is also very different. Right. You've got someone in Spain who's different than someone in Italy versus the three in France. Like how do you, as the leader of that org, kind of run, I'll call it like a multicultural, multinational, multi regional team. Because I know that's something that I see companies struggle with all the time, is like they're based in the US and they go hire to SDRs in Germany and they have no idea like how to manage that. So talk about that a little bit.

First of all, I'm multicultural. Originally I'm from Austria, Vienna, but I live in Israel for a very long time. So I'm a little bit of both and had friends all my life all over. I do speak some French. I do understand very well, Italian, so people have to be careful when they talk next to me. So and my managers, they are pretty much the same. So I have managers here in Israel, but one of them was born in Belgium and one of them was born in Brazil and then she grew up in Italy. So they have those local languages, they understand those cultures. So when they are managing the people, they are also managers that fit the regions that they are managing. And I think that's kind of key to really get into the region the right way, because you don't only manage your teams, but you also manage the salespeople that are behind because they are our clients. So you have to be able to kind of also understand their culture, you know, And I think that's kind of the way we did it over here in the us we have US managers because it's the best fit for a US team. And in apec we have a manager from Singapore and she's managing the team and she understands the Asian region is completely different animal than US Europe. It's something else. And she knows how to kind of handle that culture because it's her culture. It's like it's not only the language, but it's also the way you talk over there, the respect. There are a lot of things that you have to take into account. Even when you call someone, we have a rep in Japan, when she calls, she has to be very, very respectful, otherwise it would be perceived as rude. So expecting someone from the US to call into APEC region, it's difficult. It's very, very different. Okay, so.

And I think that's just like in all things in life, it's understanding the reality is the first step. It is different. And to think that you can execute the same way or speak the same way or write the same way is, in my opinion, it's ignorant, honestly, to think like you can just approach a different country, a different region, even different parts of a country. It's that nuanced understanding that I think is so, so powerful. So then the next big thing I would love to talk on is then you mentioned growth and you know all that. How do you onboard remotely? So is that something where you bring people in? Is it onboarding remotely? Because in transparent and I shared this, when my teams went fully remote, the only metric I could not get back to where it was previously or beyond was ramp time. It was the only one I got everything back to where it was fine and dandy, but ramp time I could not get back to the in office numbers. And I tried everything right I love, like, coaching onboarding. It's a big part of who I am and what I do. I believe how you start is how you finish, but that I saw about a 50% increase in ramp time once remote. How do you tackle that? How do you get people up to speed remotely versus being in the office?

Fully ramped at Kato is 180 days. Okay, that's a long time. And why is that? Because, you know, you have to give a person that comes on board. You can talk about the solution only if you understand it really well. And what we sell or what we position actually we don't sell is very complex. So you have to give people time to get into the technology and understand it really well. And it takes time. I can tell you from experience, even if you're very, very good at what you do as an sdr, complex technology requires time to be understood. So we have a very, very good onboarding process in regard of the technology itself that anyone can finish within three, four days, but you can repeat it as often as you want. You can always go back there. It's recorded by our product marketing. They did a phenomenal job. It has quizzes in between, so you can really test do I really know what I'm talking about? So we have that. On the other hand, we have our managers doing all the tools, training, the pitch training. So we certify the SDRs before we let them out on the phone. We have a really great and fantastic SDR pitch that is more of a conversation flow that covers all the use cases. So we give them the tools they can have on their desk to run a real smart conversation in a very short period of time. And we give them ramping targets. So we don't expect them to deliver the same as someone that's really here already for some time. So, no, until they have a full target, they are here for 180 days, so they have enough time to build themselves up and also the pipeline that we expect them to have, and that's about it. So our ramping is actually very methodological. So there's a lot of methodology behind it and a lot of support from the managers. We allow the SDRs to listen to each other's calls. We let them do a weekly highlights sheet where they fill in some highlights and also put in links to a good and the challenging call that we can discuss on one, on ones and things like that. And, you know, you learn. And I always say to everyone, stick to the top performers, see what they are doing and try to do the same and so far, it worked out well for many of the SDRs.

So, no, I love that. I'm glad you called it. I was on a webinar a couple of months ago. They're talking, like, ramp, right? Like, how to speed up ramp. And I was like, y'. All, like, okay. And it was funny because they used two data points. They showed one data point that showed, you know, only, like, you know, 40% of SDRs were hitting quota, and then another data point saying that it took, like, three months to ramp. And I was like, y'.

All.

So, like, this is when I know you don't lead teams, because if only 40% of SDRs are hitting quota, that means only 40% of SDRs ARE ramping. This isn't about when they have a full quota. This is when they hit. A full quota is ramp time. And if only 40% of them get it, I mean, 60% are never ramped. They're never getting there. And so similar in office, my sdr, ramp time, like, two full quota productions, about three and a half months. Remote went up to about five and a half. Like, that was just how much longer it took to get them up to speed. But I also love that you have ramping targets, because it's like, I love to make my, like, month one and month two, like, laughably easy to hit, because I want them to be succeeding early. I want them to get a habit of winning, not a habit of missing, because now they're already behind throughout this whole process. So I really, really like that because it's key. And so then talk to me just a little bit about that certification, right? She said they're doing quizzes. They're doing, like, you know, kind of, like role plays. Like, how do you certify? So I loved how you said it, right? It's like, we certify them before they're on the phones, where so many companies just put them on the phones and hope that they figure it out. Which to me is just backwards. Like, what's that? Like, certification process.

So besides all the tools that we are, we have a lot to teach because we. Our salesforce is set up in a specific way, which is actually a very smart way. All our tools, the way we're using them, and then we have the pitch itself. So before they do even all the pitch training, we go through all the tools, and then we do the pitch. So they have to do those pitch sessions with their manager. They're literally sitting with them and let them pitch. They will just say, that was good. That was not good. Let's do it again. And then sometimes that takes like two or three days alone. And once they're really comfortable running a conversation over the phone, because the conversation is bidirectional, so you can't call a director of it and then not be capable of answering any of their questions. It's not a monologue that you are running there, it's the dialogue. So. So we want them to feel comfortable, to have a smart conversation. And you know, I always say also when someone's on the phone and you don't have the answer, you can say, I'm new, I don't know the answer. I take this as an action item. What's the problem? You know, so it's okay.

Yeah, I think that's key. Especially as the product gets more technical and the buyer gets more advance, like you really do. You have to prepare your SDRs to have real conversations. Like, you'll actually hold their own with a vp, a director, a cto. Like, they need to be ready, ready. And I've just never understood why companies think two weeks of onboarding prepares any rep, SDR or AE to have a conversation with a career individual. Like, your SDR is not ready to talk to me after two weeks. There's no way, like, I've been doing this my whole career. They just started and so I think bridging that. So just keep going there. How do you help them get up to speed with that? Right? So like, are they talking to customers? Is that in a sales playbook? Like, what are you doing actually to prepare that SDR to have some of these heavier conversations?

So let's start somewhere else because we already hire very experienced SDRs. So that's the starting point. We only have a couple of juniors that we took a chance with because they came with the right DNA. And we said we're trying, but they are here in Israel. They are not remote. All the others are career SDRs. Very, very seasoned people that do that for a very long time. So all we really need to do is to fine tune them on the technology of kt. So, and that's when you know what you're talking about, you can have a smart conversation. So we try to give them as much training as possible. We do listen to calls and give them some coaching, of course, on where to improve, but that's how we do it in general. And for the remote SDRs, we also assign bodies. Not everyone needs one, but if someone needs one, we do. And we have a few Very, very good by the SDRs on the team that are really great and happy to help. So here, everybody's nice. We have a nice team. They try to help each other, so that's okay. And you don't want to talk to your manager all the time. You want to do that sometimes with a peer, you know?

Yeah. That was what led me to roll out. What we call, like, tribal training is like, peers teaching peers as well. Like the tribe teaches the tribe. It's not just the tribal leader. Like, tribe teaches the tribe. So now talk to me about these lifetime SDRs, because I. Oh, yeah, just a gold mine. Just a gold mine. When you can find people that are like, call it career SDRs. Right. So how do you go about sourcing? And if you're comfortable. Only if you're comfortable, how do you go about paying career SDRs? Because that's one area that I've run into for sure here in the States is eventually there's a ceiling in terms of what they're able to make. And so most people want to move out of the role not so much because they want to get out of the role, but because that's the next level of compensation to go through. So, like, can you talk about that a little bit?

So from a sourcing perspective, we really made a very clear outline of whom we're looking for with our talent acquisition team. And I have a dedicated talent acquisition person for the US or for international. And we have also someone here in Israel for the local SDRs, and they know exactly what to look for, how much experience, which companies we are preferring to hire from, like, which industries, and so on, of course, so language skills, of course, and so on. So that's one thing. And then, of course, we have very thorough interview process with a professional test in the middle. We want to make sure that everybody's comfortable, not only us, but also the candidate. As you said, you want to set up people for success and not for failure. So that's one thing. And, you know, from a payment perspective, it's not a big secret. So anyone starting in the US would get a pay of 110 OTE. It's a good salary. But I have to say that we don't cap anything and we have crazy accelerators on top of it. So that's the upside. So we have a few SDRs that are heavy over achievers. They can literally double their comp.

That's the move. And, like, that is something that I've only had the opportunity to do once in terms of, like, compensation. And it worked where I did. I had SDRs making 150 close to 2. They're like, why would I move up to that next role? I'm like, exactly like. That's what I'm trying to create is a way for you to stay within a role that specializes. Because not every SDR makes a great ae, just like every AE maybe isn't a great sdr. Like, they're different skills. And I still just don't think people have wrapped around that there. And so. So as we wrap this up, this has been phenomenal. It's what I was hoping this would be, right? But we got to pivot here as we end, right? Because the name of this podcast is Live Better, Sell Better. Because I also have this weird idea, right, that if we did, if we lived better, if we had more energy, more joy, more happiness, more fulfillment, that the sales would also be better as well. What would your live better advice be for people listening?

Live better. I would say when you work, then be 100% at work. But once the work is over, live your life. You know, exercise, go out, have fun, meet family, have friends, kids. You know, there's so many things that people can do to have a joyful life. It's not a 24, 7 work relation that makes a person happy. There's so much about life, you actually working to be successful so you can spend all that money that you're making, you know, go on vacation, travel, buy something that you always wanted, have a car. You know, all these things, they cost money. That's just how it is, you know, and have fun at what you do. Because if that's not the case, don't stay at that job. You have to enjoy what you do.

Yes. And I think that's so key. It's like in leadership and sales, like, we should be having more fun now. Does that mean every part of your job is fun? Of course not. There's always going to be parts of the job, but it's tougher, it's challenging and all that. But, like, enjoy what you're doing and who you are doing it with. Because what I say to my team all the time is money is not your motivator for most of you. But the things that do motivate you require money, right? Like, if money's your motivator, that's easy, right? But if you want to have that car or have that apartment or take care of your parents or put your kids through private school, those require money, but that's the motivator there. So awesome. So, Carmelo, this was phenomenal. Where can people get more of you? Where are you putting out content? Where can they get more. More of your insights? Because this is really, really good stuff.

So you can all feel free to go to YouTube and find the crushing it as an SDR. That was actually a very nice expert panel, not only with me, but with other experts from the industry. So feel free to go and look at that. But also I'm posting a lot of things. There's much more to come and we are having a meetup here in Israel. It's going to be recorded next week and we will also post it on YouTube and we will let people know about it. So you can follow me on LinkedIn and keep yourself up to date.

I said I need to go on YouTube to find this because I want to get started on YouTube. I just still haven't. But I love, like the video content because it does. You can just share so much there. So, Carmelo, this was phenomenal. Thank you so much for your time, your energy and insights. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.