Why I Chose School of SDR Over Self-Paced Courses | Ritu’s Story

Hi, Ritu. How you doing?

I'm good. How are you doing so far, Rahul? It's been a great week.

So far, so far fantastic. I think I'm living the life. Yeah. How's, how's Sprut Automation treating you?

Pretty good. It's been 2 weeks since I've gone live. And in my first week itself, I booked my first meeting and maybe, I don't know, you could say luck or I think it just turned into an SQL. So I was really happy. So I got my first SQL as well. And then I've got 2 more meetings scheduled. I'm looking to schedule some more today. So yeah, it seems really fine so far and the team is fantastic. Working with Shayan is great and all the other BDRs as well. You know, I got introduced to them even though it's like a remote sort of a setup. I think I feel closer to my colleagues than I would feel in probably in-office sort of a setup. Cause you know, you can easily communicate to everyone and everyone's so friendly and they're always helping you out if you have any doubts, whether it's the LDR team or, you know, whether it's your colleagues. They're all like very willing and they're always ready to lend a hand to you. So that's really nice. I really like that.

Good. Good. Happy that, you know, things are going well for you. And yeah, Scott has a great team. Sayan and I go way back. I've known him for years. I recorded his testimony a couple of days ago. Yeah. Great guy, great team for sure. And I think it met your objectives. So for the audience, you know, who's probably watching you for the first time, Ritu, tell us what were you doing before you joined School of SDR?

So before I joined School of SDR, I had like a around 2 years of experience in the sales, uh, domain itself, but mainly it was in the Indian market or it was in the, you know, uh, the Middle East market. So that was something I was not really interested in. And then I think I was working prior to this, I was working at GP Worldwide, which is— I think this was a risk that I took because I realized that, you know, working in the Indian market or for the Middle East on clients was not for me. I wanted to work in the US market and see, because I felt like that's a more mature market and I feel like That was some, that was where I could like probably shine better. So I thought I should just take a, you know, jump. But for that, I needed to upskill for that because what was happening was I was coming from a very unstructured environment, like whether it was in the Indian market where I was working on the Middle Eastern markets, most of the things that we do over there is very unstructured. Like you make phone calls with your phone. You don't really track those calls that you make. It's all like manually, or it's probably you track them on a spreadsheet and even the emails that you send out is all like on spreadsheets. So. I was really disappointed with that and I said that I want like some kind of structure in my life. And then I, you know, ventured into that and I took a risk and I, you know, uh, went for the US market even though the timings were like from 6 to 3. That was something very new for me, but I was like, this seems like where I could probably shine because I do like talking and I think my communication skills were fairly decent and I come with a kind of neutral accent. Maybe I speak a little fast. That's the only thing. So I thought, why why not let me try this? And then when I tried it, I felt, okay, this is, uh, so I tried that by, you know, jumping into GEP and working the night shift. But the problem that I encountered there was I felt very technically unsound because over there they were using multiple different tools that I've never used before, like Apollo or HubSpot. And everything was tracked, like probably the calls you make, the follow-up calls you make, the emails you're sending out, you're enrolling them into cadences. So I felt very technically unsound and I felt very lesser compared to my colleagues there because everyone were coming from the US background. So they were very familiar with those tools. So I felt, oh my God, this is not the place. Like it is a place that I want to be. And I kind of felt like, okay, this might be my niche. I can probably focus on this, but I need to step down and probably, you know, focus on upskilling and then probably reentering the space again. So that's what I did. That's why I joined School of SDR. And I'm so glad I did that because I love the structure of your program, whether it's like It's so structured, like whether it's the competitiveness that we have on the boards or like, you know, we have expert guidance from you and, or whether it's the, you know, course, like whether it's the assignments we have to do, you know, they give you extremely the assignments, they help you understand the B2B space better. They, you know, you can find out what your target personas are within the company. What is a buyer persona? And, you know, the ICPs, everything's so well defined. So I think you can nail your basics really well. And I think it's very important before you join a US B2B space, you need to like enroll into a program. You need to have some kind of hands-on guidance. Otherwise you shouldn't be doing this. And even the competitiveness, it's highly competitive. Like when you like work in a B2B SaaS space, it's really, really competitive when it compares to other sales environments. So that was something that I felt even in the cohort, like every week the pressure was like increasing. I feel in our cohort, it was probably more because everything was so cut to cut. Like it was always like, I'm like here and then the first person's also there. And then the third person's also just a little bit behind. So I'm like, I cannot slack. That was also very much mimicked the competitiveness of the space. And then, you know, whether it's, uh, make, uh, like focusing on your cold calls and your objections with Amir, we were able to really understand how to do that better. And it was really nice. I'm glad that I enrolled into, and I think it's a great course. And I think anyone out there, I totally recommend it to them.

You did mention that how you used to prospect in India and how you did realize after you went to the US market that things were different and you felt the need to upskill.

Yeah. So on the top of my head, I remember like, uh, mostly I was just using LinkedIn Sales Nav. And most of the times it was just, you know, your sales head, he'd be telling you, reach out to this person, reach out to that person. So you don't know anything. You're like, why am I reaching out to this person? You're so confused. So I think one thing that I was able to nail when I came to your program through the assignments was understanding the buyer personas that you should be targeting from your company if you have to sell your product there. So you understand your product, then you can understand who you want to target, the buyer personas. And you know, you, you'll be able to nail down what your ICPs are, your target ICPs. You probably have HubSpot, you have some contacts, so you got to call on them, but your sales head isn't going to come and tell you, reach out to this person, reach out to that person. You have to do it yourself. And I really like that part because, you know, it makes, it shows that, you know, you're taking the initiative and effort and you're researching about that person and then you're reaching out to them. So that was something that I felt really helped with School of SDR. Like I said, because when your sales head comes and tells you, You don't know, you probably just know, okay, he's an IT person. You have to reach out to them. He's the right point of contact, but you don't really know what to say. So you can't even structure your cold calls and you don't know what type of objections you would probably face. Sure.

So let's assume that, you know, there was a self-paced course out there. I'm sure there's a lot of YouTube material out there, which you can watch and probably get to the same conclusion, which you reached. Okay, here is why I need to reach out to this person. What aspect of School of SDR training you feel Where I could have not learned this online, or I could have not learned this probably from YouTube.

Yeah. So I think before I joined your course, I had Udemy on my laptop. So I did not know. I was like, I did a comparison. So I said, should I do a self-paced course or should I enroll into this workshop? I did it on, I did a comparison on Claude. And they said that if you want guidance and expertise, you should be joining a course. Otherwise you can totally do a self-paced course. But I think the thing that I really like about School of SDR is how intensive the course is and how it's just so structured. Even the assignments you do, everything, it leads up to you learning your product better and making those cold calls better. So, you know, in the end of the day, you're going to have expert guidance as well. Plus your cold calls are better. Plus you know what you're doing. I think that's why I realized that, you know, I had to enroll into School of SDR. Otherwise I was also planning to do something self-paced because even I was short on money and I was thinking. What should I do? Confused a little bit right now. But then afterwards, I was like, I know I need expert guidance right now. I need mentorship. You've been so great with that, Rahul. Like, I mean, I can't even like say. I don't even know where to start.

Don't say it.

No, because you've been really nice. Because I still remember when you had one when I had one-on-ones with you, I told you all my problems. I said like, you know, this is what is this what I'm facing and this is what I want. And you were really helpful over there. You listened to me. You never interjected. You never told me, oh, you should do this better. So that was really nice. And I knew just if anytime I was going to face any problems, I could come up and reach out to you. You're like very approachable. You're not intimidating like most sales leaders. It was really nice to have that sort of, you know, safety net to fall back into. That's definitely what School of SDR gave me. So I really liked that.

There is somebody out there who is of course evaluating School of SDR. Perhaps comparing with Udemy or comparing with another tech, compare with another course. What would be the one thing you will tell them? This is why I think you should invest in School of SDR.

So I really think that if you want to jump into the B2B SaaS space, I think the best thing you could do is join School of SDR. First of all, like whether it's a 4-week intensive course and each week the intensiveness, like the intensity increases. So the first week, you know, you're doing your assignments. In those assignments, you are understanding so much about the competitive SaaS space, like, you know what SaaS is, you know what are the different types of companies out there, you know what your ICP is, you're able to nail down what your buyer personas and buyer personas are. Then there is also like hands-on experience with different kinds of tools, how to send out email cadences. So like everything's very structured and each week the competitiveness that's there within the cohort is also something that you need to like master as well, because that's how competitive the B2B SaaS space is. So if you want to be in the top 5 or top 3, at least you need to keep pushing yourself each week and you need to put yourself out there. Another thing is if you are, you know, you find yourself lacking in the space, like, you know, in terms of objection handling or the structure of your cold calls, you could totally like nail it over here, you know, because you could make your cold calls much more better. You could handle your objections much more better. And then another thing that I really felt helped me a lot was making those dials on Udemy so many times. I was very afraid of cold calling. I was not afraid anymore because like at one point I made like 400 calls and then I was like, and I remember we used to have those calls with, uh, Ahmed, like where on Fridays he was like, you have to enroll, you have to like raise your hand first and then, you know, we'll have like a one-on-one, like we'll, we'll do a cold call. I used to be so afraid. I used to be like, I can't do this. But then by the end of the 4th week, I did so many role plays on like Noodly around 360, 370. I said, I did 370. My throat hurts now. Come on. Now you can totally do this. I remember like raising my hand first on the first, fourth week. And I said, I don't care if I sound stupid or if I'm not able to do it, but I'm just going to do it. Because at one point my complete fear was erased too. So that was also really helpful. And then the guidance that you get from the experts in the field, like you have worked in the SaaS space for so long and whether even with Aamir, he helps you so much. Everything's so great. Like I think it's a perfect course that you could do. There's nothing else. And I did evaluate another person in the B2B space. But, and then when I spoke to you, there was a clear, there was a very big difference. And I just knew.

What was the difference?

The difference was that first of all, it was a fairly newer course and fairly newer person who had started this. He said he was a sales leader for the past 15 to 16 years. But when I spoke to him, I just felt, I mean, I got an intuition and I think female intuition is pretty Bang on. I felt like this guy is not going to be able to, you know, help me. And I want a structure and I wanted some kind of, I wanted to upskill and I wanted it to be a certain quality and level. I just knew that this wasn't gonna, you know, help me out that way. So then when I spoke to you, I felt a clear difference and I felt like, okay, I think I can do much better here. And I felt like you could offer me what I exactly wanted. And that was exactly what it was. And I was glad.

Besides the gut, what did you feel we were able to offer before you even think about, or even thought about enrolling?

Before I thought about enrolling, I saw your LinkedIn presence and I actually did not speak to anyone from the cohorts. I should have done something of that sort, but like, I felt that, you know, you were a B2B SaaS leader in this space for such a long time. When I spoke to you, you detailed what we're going to do throughout the 4 weeks. When I spoke to him, he did not do that. And he just told me a rough overview and I was just like, if I'm going to pay money, I need to know in detail what I'm going to do. So you told me that, you told me what tools we're going to be using. And then, you know, I think I was very technically unsound when it comes to using AI tools like Claude or ChatGPT. Even that I was able to do much more better. And then there was, I think, an AI tool making cohort competition that you had kept. In that also, I was able to make a really cool tool and then I felt, wow, okay. This is not that intimidating considering I'm not an engineer and I come from like a bachelor's in management space. So I thought, okay, this is something I could totally do. So I was not even afraid of that as well. So yeah, a lot of things, I think, whether it was you providing hands-on, the tools, or the tools that we could have used, or like Udemy and a lot of things. I think the expert guidance that we had, I knew that I couldn't get it with a person like him. So that was for sure.

Appreciate that, Ritu. This was This has been a superb testimony. I can tell you that because I feel, I can feel that I would not have to edit any of it. I can just put it right there. I asked, like, I spoke for like 10 seconds and you spoke for the most, which is exactly what I was hoping to get. So thank you so much for being here and I wish you all the best.