SDR & BDR Level Up Prepping for Outbound Part 1

So we'll start doing introductions, and other people can kind of start filtering in.

At the start of every class, we're just gonna kick things off with one win from the last week, and it can be anything.

It can be personal, it can be professional.

Just one positive thing that feels like a win for you from the last week. So my personal win is that I got through the airport from Massachusetts to Florida without any major incidences, and I kept my cool when the parking attendant tried to not give me my car back. I'm gonna pass to Megha.

So I've shifted to this new place which is in mountains, and due to heavy rainfall, it's risky here, but apparently, like, you know, we are being safe, so it's good. I'm like, you know, surrounded by nature and just Just enjoying the weather. Pass it to Wes.

Wes, we're kicking off with one win, personal or professional, from the last week. And you're muted.

Yeah, my headset wasn't working. Sorry. Yeah, I had a good weekend with family. You know, got to see some family that came in town from Kansas. down here in Florida. So it was a good time. And yeah, just enjoyed my weekend, took some inbound leads, and for the most part, you know, hit the beach. So who hasn't gone yet? Have you gone, Megan?

I did. Let's pass to Ralph.

Hi, good morning. Let's see. Well, I think the, the From a business— well, yeah, kind of a company win. We have actually, we have some folks coming in from the northern office, and I was tasked with making sure that things were going smoothly with all the events and things that we were planning. So we got all that done, got all that accomplished well ahead of time. So very, very happy with that.

Awesome. Glad to hear it. Tyler, why don't you go next?

Yeah, absolutely. Just got back from Podcast Movement. So I would say that was all a success. We flew home safely, met some companies. It was interesting. A lot of people backed out last minute because of COVID but at least we still got to make some meaningful meetings.

Awesome.

Good morning. Yeah, Ralph and I have both been tasked with the social register for our Northern Office visit, and that was part of our weekend. week and weekend activity. And also now preparing for— I've got one of my colleagues that's off this week, so I'm getting ready to receive an influx of support email and the like.

Fun time.

All right, let's pass to Mark.

Good morning, Megan, everyone here. Thank you for setting up the call. I'm not sure if there was a question asked. I apologize, I just logged in.

No problem.

If you're filtering in, we're just sharing one win from the last week, personal or professional, just one thing that felt positive to you.

The Metropolitan Opera has been a long-term client of ours here with StreamGuys, and due to COVID restrictions, the New York area, the musical and performance industry has been heavily, heavily hit, probably all aware of that. Another of our clients, the New Orleans Jazz Festival, is canceled. They are going to try and push forward. So that's exciting, getting that, getting that back together again and trying to hopefully expand some of the subsets of service offerings we provide for the Metropolitan Opera.

Awesome, glad to hear it.

Mason, you're last but not least.

All right, no amazing wins for me, I guess. I said in my introduction, I'm still pretty new to sales. Um, not a formal position at StreamGuys in sales. So, um, just doing minor tasks. Um, but just, yeah, getting more responsibility, um, working on more lead gen, uh, getting more emails out.

Awesome.

Sounds good.

All right. So it was great to kind of meet you all just so that everybody knows this first class is actually just StreamGuys and Cashfly.

So, um, that'll make it really easy for us to work through this first piece, because I think we can find something that everybody would be targeting.

And so that'll be really cool. We won't have to talk generally, we can really get deep down into it. I'm going to share my screen and work through it for you guys.

Anybody that didn't look through it when I sent it out, we're just prepping for outbound messaging, going to prepare your outbound strategy, because everything else we're going to do is going to kind of build Off of that.

So this is starting at the beginning and funneling down.

We'll work through kind of the whole sales process and try to keep it relevant to everybody. Each week I'll ask—

I'll send a follow-up email and find out, you know, what, what you took away and what you'd like to focus on next week, so I can continue to focus this around what you guys are focusing on and what's important to you.

So we're not talking about things you already know. Um, so the first thing about outbound messaging that's really, really important is to focus your ideal customer, um, and define it. I think one of the key mistakes that SDRs, BDRs, anybody who's doing outbound messaging can make is not being specific enough when defining the ideal customer. So you're going to want to go through this separately For each product that you have, and each time that you're defining a new persona, it's not like a one-time and then you're done type of activity. So why don't I ask one of the Stream guys, where do you feel like your portfolio case studies or success stories are the strongest? Like, in what vertical are you guys really just kicking ass right now?

I would say sports is a good vertical for us.

And cash flow people, what's working for you right now?

Video on demand, um, streaming as well, and then, um, gaming companies.

Okay. And in the last 6 months, where have you gotten the most wins, DreamGuys?

I would assume probably inbound leads, upsells, account management.

And do you think there's one particular vertical that's stronger than others?

Anyone on the team have any other feedback on that? We could probably stick with sports, possibly.

And so I think with Rewind, maybe talk radio, we're seeing, I think, some pretty, some pretty significant lead and traction there.

Cashfly.

Go ahead, Micah.

I think outbound or doing some own research.

I'd say as well as the podcast movement, events really helps having meetings and warm connections.

Absolutely.

When I was in SDR, events were my bread and butter.

Which companies have had the shortest sales cycles for you, StreamGuys?

Maybe it's—

yeah, I don't have a— my opinion is open here. I don't speak for everyone. Potentially religious broadcasters sometimes seem to really have like a very strong opinion and an organization that makes quicker decisions.

They're not as big.

I was definitely experiencing that too.

The sales cycles for religious companies were just Really, really quick.

If they saw the value in it, they just moved forward. Anything else you guys feel is closing quickly for you guys, faster than the other companies you're working with?

We're good. Cashfly, what closes the fastest?

You guys are strictly SDR, so you might not have a ton of insight. Into this.

Yeah, I was gonna say if you had any insights. I've only been here 2 months, 3 months.

Lucky for you, I do, and it's video. Um, and religious is definitely like a big chunk of that, but just video, video in general. Okay, so we already know you guys are all B2B.

Nobody's selling to consumer. Industry-wise, you guys are gonna be pretty similar. You're selling into a lot of the same verticals, but it's a lot of like gaming, entertainment, video, audio. That's all overlap. You've got religion or specifically podcasts, VOD/OTT. Anything else in particular you guys are working on that I'm missing?

I think that covers it pretty well.

News.

And then, yeah, news would be another possible one for us.

And then, so your niche is much more about where you are strong. So is there a specific niche where you feel like you have an edge on the competition where you're more likely to win over other people?

Say religious. Um, we seem to do pretty well in that category. Um, we typically do pretty well in the sports category. And then I would say our independent talk stance, you know, we're pretty independent in terms of how we host things. You know, whatever they may— that may mean to them.

So, Casla, do you guys want to tell me your niche?

I'd say right now Latin America, any company in Latin America.

Asia Pacific.

What'd you say, Megan?

Asia Pacific and EMU.

So you guys are strong in support and like fast turnaround on things and flexibility. Employee count.

So we're talking about the employee count of the companies that you're trying To target? Do you find that you have more success with small companies, big companies, mid-sized companies?

Both.

It's just some, you know, larger companies take more time, smaller companies take less time to close.

Yep, absolutely.

I think Shorter sales cycles for the small companies.

How about you guys, StreamGuys?

Any, any particular size company that you guys are really winning a lot of deals with?

Say medium to large is usually what we're going for, or at least gunning for. Try to steer away a little bit from the really small orgs who just have like 1 or 2 people.

Departmental headcount.

So typically, when you're targeting a company, is there one person in the department that you're targeting, or are there 5 people?

How about you, Cashfly? You know, off the top of your head?

Uh, I mean, it's kind of a wild goose chase sometimes, but most of the time, you know, CTOs, Infrastructure, site reliability, things like that.

You're looking at like 5 to 10 people in the department average. Now, sometimes you're going to come across countries that—

companies that don't fit this.

But when you're selling into like an infrastructure team, Wes, usually you have at least 3 people on that infrastructure team, up to 10, 15, even in the larger orgs.

How about you, stream guys?

I'd agree that 5 to 10 number seems about right.

How about geography? Geographically, where do your decision makers usually sit?

I might be misunderstanding that. I would say North America, I think, are the vast majority of our clients. Are we talking in like the the org hierarchy of the chart.

Oh, so I'm saying where, yeah, where your decision maker is seated.

Although you could also come at this question from the headquarters of the company. But I think it's more important, the culture of the person you're actually talking to.

Yeah, I think like directors of digital, I think are ultimately, although they might talk to a CFO or CTO, the digital directors are probably who we're Cool.

How about Cashfly?

Where are most of your DMs sitting geographically these days?

When I reach out, mainly North America, and then I'm sure it's different for Mega as well.

I think there's also a lot of Europe for Mega, but Cashfly, I know, is stronger with English-speaking Countries slash people because Cashfly is an English-speaking organization.

And then the number of locations. So that's just kind of like when you're reaching out to companies, do you find they're usually they have one headquarters, or you go into their website and they have five, ten offices around the world?

For us, I think both.

Yeah. Okay.

So anywhere from one.

I would say 5 is probably the upward limit on the Cashfly side.

We don't tend to do a lot of business with companies bigger than that.

And then how about you, StreamGuys? Are you similar?

I think we're similar depending on vertical. I know when we work with station groups, we might kind of get in the range of talking to a lot of individual stations, but 1 to 5 would be like headquarters type. Yeah.

Yes, uh, yeah, definitely. When you're talking to like radio stations, TV stations, they end up being a conglomerate that has a great deal of them spread out. Um, so then we're going to define the persona.

Now the persona, we're specifically talking about the decision maker that you want to target. When you do this activity separately, you may also want to drill down and find your influencer personas.

When I map out an account Especially if it's a key account, something that I really want to get into, I'm going to have what I consider to be my DM targets.

And there may be, you know, 3 or 5 of them depending on how big the organization is.

If you're going after something like, like Warner Brothers, for example, there's a lot of different DMs in different parts of the organization. You're going to have to define that persona a couple of times.

You're going to probably have a technology decision maker.

a financial decision maker, you might have an executive decision maker, and then you're going to replicate that for all of the different companies that sit inside of that Warner Brothers umbrella, right?

And then you may also want to go back and map it, especially if you're sitting in an SDR seat where outbound is your primary job. You're going to want to go map the influencers who has those people's ear. So if we were talking about Warner Brothers specifically, maybe we're targeting A VP of digital, then you're going to want to sit and ask yourself, well, who does that VP of digital listen to? How is that filtering up?

Because a lot of times, especially in an SDR role where you don't have a big title that's going to make somebody want to talk to you, you have to start low and build your way up. So for this, I think we'll talk about the final decision maker that you're trying to target. And since you're both kind of similar and have a lot of overlap, we'll talk about technology decision makers because I think that'll give the most value to everyone. So when we asked, who do you typically interact with during the sales process? What titles are you usually talking to, Wes?

SRE, or anybody with backend engineering infrastructure as well.

Engineers.

I know how to spell infrastructure.

I've been in CDN for 10 years.

And then even sometimes, you know, people have CDN in their title and that makes it a million times easier.

Yeah, I love it when you can just search for CDN.

Um, so on the Cashfly side, these are definitely all accurate. You also get some people in distribution, and like that, that key term digital is definitely also big for Cashfly, depending on the type of target. Dream Guys, you guys mentioned that you're talking to people in digital as well.

Who—

what other titles are you typically targeting and interacting with during the decision-making process?

I think our number one search is going to be for someone with digital in the title. We work with a lot of like head of engineering, so anything in the engineering department. You could do business development. Sometimes we interact with people on the business development side.

People with audio in their title?

Anyone with audio in their title would be big. And then occasionally, not necessarily our top one, but we occasionally work with someone on like the marketing department side.

Yep.

Okay. Our program kind of defined this.

Now, are you guys specifically looking at director and above for decision makers specifically, not necessarily the influencers you're trying to get an introduction from, but is your DM usually director or above?

Yeah, we would need someone pretty high up in the org to actually approve of the idea.

Okay. And are they primarily in operational, technical, and engineering roles?

I think they're usually on the business side roles more than the engineering strictly. I think we don't typically get sign-off without speaking with the engineering roles, but typically the actual end decider is the business side of the organization.

Yep, your signer is going to be someone executive.

Yeah.

All right, awesome. So who's typically the champion, the one who's batting for you and bringing you to everybody and saying, you guys need StreamGuys, you guys need Cashfly?

Who are your champions?

That's usually technical.

Yeah, just spoke with ABC, uh, at the Podcast Movement, and he said, oh, our engineer loves you guys.

Yep. That's perfect.

They don't know who we are.

That's no, that's great. Um, I would say from like a long history of being in technical sales, getting tech sign-off early is probably one of the most important things you can do because it can hold up your sales cycle at the end.

If you don't get that right, you can end up going all the way up.

You're talking to the CEO and you think you have a close. And then all of a sudden, it's like, oh yeah, we really like you, but I need ABC technology person to test you. So getting ahead of that, getting in with the technology people early and having them bring you to their C-level, to their executive decision maker, is a really good strategy. Because ultimately, in any organization that's functional, which presumably you're targeting functional orgs, the executives are listening to their technology people. Those are the experts. They're going to listen to their internal experts about technology. And then what role is typically the final decision maker?

StreamGuys, I know you said it's usually like a business side executive. How about you, Cashfly? You know who the final DMs usually are on those contracts?

Usually like lead engineers, lead infrastructure, you know, or even VPs as well.

Yep. Your user, usually your final signer is gonna be a VP or C-level in technology or business.

When we, when you do small business accounts, so anything that's like under 100 headcount, it's usually the CEO that signs.

Anything bigger than that, it's usually someone who's like the VP of technology, VP of engineering, little bit more niche.

And what roles influence the decision? So this is where we're gonna go long and try to get everybody that you wanna talk to. So if you've got a deal running and you want to make sure that you have the highest win rate possible, you want to talk to as many people in that organization as you can. Who do you need to talk to? You gotta get finance in.

Gotta get engineering/technology, right?

You need someone from business development. To say that there's a good use case for you.

We're usually running into advertising directors now.

Okay. Yeah. I would say for influences, you want to go bottom up, which is kind of the opposite of decision-making where you want to go top down. Basically, whatever product you're trying to sell, ask yourself the question who this benefits the most. Like, whose job does this make easier the most?

And that's all your influencers, right?

So if you're selling CDN, for example, while the CEO might sign off on the decision, It's not actually making their life any easier, right? Like, it might be saving them money.

They know it makes the website faster, but that's not their day-to-day. They're not sitting there on a computer trying to figure out how to make the network faster on a day-to-day basis. That's someone with a title like SRE. All right, so going deeper, this is the part where I think you really, really start to build a strong outbound strategy. So we need to define what is a persona worried about.

So if we're talking about, say, a director of digital, right?

Stream guys, tell me, when you call a director of digital, what are they stressed out about?

Downtime, security. Operational efficiencies. Those are a couple of words, key terms.

Awesome.

Now, what about Cashfly?

If you call an SRE, what's got them up at night?

What are they worried about?

Kind of same thing, downtime, outages.

Security too, for sure.

Reach as well for areas that they're targeting.

Sometimes cost as well.

What are you interrupting when you call or message them? So for a director of digital, ring, ring, ring, they're answering the phone. What is it most likely that you've interrupted in their day?

Their workflow, too busy to field the call, or you know, yeah, it's being cold called is just you know it's inconvenience to anybody, right? You're being solicited, so it's not a warm feeling. It's cold.

No, it really depends on who you're targeting, and this is why we ask this question.

Question. Because there are people whose job is basically to check their email and answer the phone, right?

Especially in bigger organizations, when we're talking about an org that has 3,000 headcount, there's headcount who's just sitting there, they're not really doing anything, they're just waiting for the phone to ring.

That is a completely different call experience than when you Call somebody and you're interrupting a workflow where they're head down at their desk, they're trying to fix the problem.

And there's also a difference between calling somebody who's trying to fix a problem that exists and calling somebody who is working to just make things better. There's a different level of stress and anxiety in your workday. When something's down, something's not working. Your job is to fix it when it breaks versus calling into somebody whose job is literally to make it better, and you're calling them to tell them how to make it better. How about you, Cashfly? When you call an SRE, what are you interrupting?

Maybe they're working on Helping their site reliability, or they're taking a lunch.

Taking lunch.

Oh God, don't call me at lunchtime. Um, when are they the happiest?

When does the director of digital feel fulfilled and happy?

Oh, let me go.

They come up with a solution, solve a problem. Got it.

Director of digital, when are they happiest?

When things are running and they don't need to pay attention to it, or they're making money off advertising. That's usually what we see.

Or they're making money. That's it, money and things are going well.

Um, how do they accomplish their job? So in here is like, what tools are they using? What skills do they need/have? And you probably want to ask this each time you're doing reach out for a new person, not just these questions here. The go-deeper questions are really person-to-person, right?

It's what you want to ask yourself before you dial.

So you're sitting there, you have a list of people that you're going to call today.

These would be the questions I would ask myself before I picked up the phone. What am I interrupting? What are they worried about?

Um, when are they the happiest?

And some of that info, it doesn't have to be related to work because we work in B2B sales.

A lot of times we get hyper-focused on their business day, but just because you're selling a business solution does not mean that you are selling only to the business. You're selling to that person, right?

If someone is the director of digital and you check their LinkedIn and you find out that they haven't taken a vacation in 2 years, That makes selling to them so much easier because all of a sudden you understand more about this person. They need a vacation. They just had a baby.

One of the things we can get stuck in in B2B sales is selling the solution without really understanding the problem.

If I'm an SRE and I haven't taken a vacation in a year and a half and my wife is pregnant, for me, the solution is not. The CDN is fast.

The solution is the CDN works and I don't have to check on it.

And if I have redundancy in my solution and we are multi-CDN, I get to take time off and be with my wife when she has our baby without worrying about a call from my boss because the site goes down.

A lot of times the personal sale is what will close the deal. Well, and before the business use case, because at the end of the day, all of us that are sitting here, right, when you think about something that truly makes you happy, is it really closing the deal? Or is it the fact that, you know, when you meet quota, you can go out for lunch, take time off, your boss doesn't care if your butt is in a seat because you're the hero of the team and you get to relax?

Compelling, right?

Like, I get to take time off and be with my family because I closed the deal.

Um, where do they spend their time?

With this question, I mean, where can you find them? Right? So these days, probably 90% of B2B decision makers— I'm gonna let Megan answer this because I know she knows.

Where do they spend their time? Where can you find them, Megan?

I think LinkedIn and email.

LinkedIn, that's where they all are. I think it's like 90, 91% of B2B decision makers are on LinkedIn today.

So that's definitely one answer.

What about you guys, StreamGuys? Where are you finding your people?

It's a great question. We've underutilized LinkedIn in the past, so we typically reach out on email. The majority of the time, or we give them calls.

So fun statistic from a recent sales development study. It goes LinkedIn is the top, you're gonna get the most responses on LinkedIn.

Then you have text messaging, which is hard to do, but really great response rate.

Then you have calling, which hurts us all.

I know if any of you tell me that you really love cold calling, you're a robot.

And then email.

Email is the least effective form of reach out right now.

A lot of that is because our inboxes are overflowing, and some of it is just that it's, it's old, right?

Like, it's old tech. Had email for a long time. Nobody cares anymore.

So the other one that I think has been underutilized this year because it hasn't been happening is events. And I have a gut instinct that that's going to be killer for the next 6 months to a year, because everyone that shows up to events is there to do business. They're not flying out and risking COVID or risking getting in trouble with their wife or whatever just to drink, right?

Like, they're coming to do business.

Um, what are they interested in outside of work?

Don't spend a ton of time on this, but if you spend— I set a timer for 5 minutes before each time I call, and I do research on the person that I'm calling. If you can find something key about them that you can connect with, and there's an important caveat here, which is it can't be forced.

Don't pretend to like sports if you don't like sports.

Don't pretend to play video games if you don't play video games. But if you can spend 5 minutes researching somebody and find something that they're interested in that you connect with, You're gonna start the call off stronger, the email off stronger, whatever it is.

Wes is like the king of this. He is really, really good at reaching out to people and connecting with them personally and being like, hey, I actually played the game that you designed.

Let's talk about it. And I'm gonna get in your Discord chat. And that's how I'm gonna get the meeting.

Um, it lowers their guard substantially if you talk to them like they're your friend.

When you dial, when you call somebody, the call should feel like it's coming from somebody they know.

Like, hey bud, I was just checking out Dying Light, and I realized that you worked on that. I'd love to hear about how you did XYZ, and then smoothly transition into a pitch.

This is particularly helpful when you're connecting with people on LinkedIn, because it's going to be an ongoing conversation. A little bit different on a cold call when you know maybe you have this person for 30 seconds before they're going to hang up on you, and you have to find a way to To get in the door. But set a limit for yourself.

5 minutes is max for me. Less is even better if you do like 2 minutes figuring out what they're interested in outside of work.

When they aren't working, what are their hobbies? Very similar question.

And when they are working, what's their least favorite part of their job?

This is so incredibly key to sales.

So let's say—

Director of digital.

They've got a bunch of job duties.

What makes them just so sick of it?

Like, I just want to go home.

I don't want to do this anymore.

Dream guys, what's, what's bugging them?

I would say the day-to-day operations not functioning properly. Um, personnel issues.

People problems.

SREs, what's their least favorite part of their job?

I think finding some better solutions than their current one.

Yeah, so SREs, they hate spending time with vendors. Unfortunately, you are one.

And they hate paperwork.

RFOs, requests for outages. They hate it. They want to be tweaking the network, making it faster. They don't want to be researching and figuring out what happened and writing an RFO.