You’re Training SDRs All Wrong – Here’s How to Fix It? | Wyatt Hill

From account executive to manager and my, my boss at the time, he said, like, how are you going to replace your production? More so today because of how remote we are as a new SDR or new account executive. Maybe not. Every day am I sitting next to the best account executive. Any longer I have to be listening to my cell phone.

Our today's guest is Wyatt Hill, senior sales development manager at Cvent and a leader who has mastered the art of building and coaching high performing SDR teams. Wyatt brings a wealth of experience in scaling sales teams, optimizing outbound strategies, and most importantly, coaching SDRs to success. One of the biggest challenges sales managers face today is how do we structure an effective coaching cadence that actually makes an impact, that actually drives improvement. Rather than just filling up the calendar with meetings. Today we are going to break it all down. What a great coaching cadence looks like, how to balance accountability with empowerment, how to personalize coaching for different SDRs without overcomplicating it. And of course, where AI fits into all of this. If you are a sales leader looking to level up your coaching game or an SDR trying to get the most out of the coaching sessions, this episode is for you. Without further ado, let's welcome White Hill. Hey White, welcome to the show.

Hey Rahul, thanks for having me.

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean I couldn't resist having Walter White on the call.

Yes, I've gotten Walter White and Austin Power was Dr. Evil from Austin Powers. Yeah, Mr. Clean. They all come my way.

No, I mean you have to definitely tell us the story. First of all, I would love to know, I'm sure audience would love to know who you are. Where do you work?

Yeah, so my name is Wyatt Hill. I work at a company called cvent. It's a leading event management software tool. Been around for 25 years. What I do there is manage a team of enterprise level SDRs and been there for just over a year and a half. Before that I come from a couple other software companies managing AES, SDRs and prior to that selling myself.

That's an impressing background. But please tell us. I mean, I'm sure, I'm very curious to know what I mean, which is your actual look? I mean is it the Walter White or is it the one you have right now?

No, I know my, my LinkedIn photo has the mustache. I'll say the mustache comes and goes. As my wife says it comes and goes. I'm truly beholden to her. Whether I can get away with a mustache or not.

Is it too much to manage because I can never grow a mustache and I come from hotel management background, so there has not been more than two days when I can't, when I don't have to shave. It's just this, an impulse habit.

We have the opposite issue where like I can't grow hair on my head. You have the best hair I've ever seen. But yeah, I just can grow on top of my life, apparently.

That's amazing. I mean, I'm sure we all have our own gifts. Thank you so much once again, Vaij, for being here. I think based on a previous chat, we decided we are going to talk about how can we teach a first time LTR leader, or any LTR leader for that matter, how to really run effective coaching. At the same time, I'm thinking I'm going to wear the hat of somebody who is stepping into the role for the first time, where in most likelihood I was either a top performer and my company has not promoted me, given me the responsibility to coach. And there is a chance that I never had an opportunity in the past to coach anybody. So I would recommend if you could, you know, please enlighten me in helping me understand first of all, why coaching is even important in the first place. Why can't we just run things the way that, the way they are?

Yeah, I mean, just to start there, I think it's just incredibly important. More so today because of how remote we are as a new SDR or a new account executive. Maybe not every day am I sitting next to the best account executive any longer.

Right.

I have to be listening to myself and listening to others to absorb. Just, just absorb and learn what is going on in the best phone calls? What are the best salespeople saying? What are the problems that we're solving? I have to listen. And so I think as a first time leader, providing a space where that coaching is found and given and received in a productive manner is so important to give your reps a platform where they can come to you for help. And it's not critical, it's just we're just trying to give back, get better. And I think that is so pivotal as a leader to be able to make your reps better. All right. We're not just always in the weeds with data and all these things, but I really, as a leader myself want to improve my rep sales skills. Ultimately that's going to help them convert more, sell more, add more to the pipeline, whatever the metric is, if they're having better conversations. So I use coaching as that platform.

That's an Interesting insight. And I'll tell you what. So one of the, one of the question which I have heard first, or I would say a challenge, first time SDR leaders probably face is because they are under so much pressure and they feel coaching has to take the back seat because they could either micromanage or they could just make sure every rep is just like them.

Yeah, right.

And I'm sure you've seen something similar. Do you have any stories around that?

I remember when I moved from account executive to manager and my, my boss at the time, he said, like, how are you going to replace your production?

Right.

You said it earlier.

Right.

A lot of times your top performers go and become managers. And now to be honest, I wasn't number one, but I was, I was up there and how did I replace my production? And it was through sort of a, through coaching. But then you say like you, you want, you worry about being micromanager, turning everybody in into yourself. And it has to strike a balance of letting the reps find their own voice, upskilling, rounding things out. And a lot of times, especially as a first time leader, you can just be that sounding board.

Right.

And I think we'll talk about this later. But like keeping things simple and saying, hey, this is what we're going to work on, going into it, having identified those, the problem or what we're trying to be better at, and then pulling up a call or three calls, right. And listening to them and just talking through it. A lot of time your rep is just going to meet you where you want them to be. Because we're, we're focused, we have intent for this. And as a leader, I'm not trying to create clones of myself. I'm hoping that rep realize, hey, this is where we could have improved or hey, this is what you do really well. Let's do more of it. And being able to identify those and reinforce those is going to reduce the amount of clones you're creating, but increase the amount of like positive changes you can make through coaching.

I mean, I have so many questions, but we'll, we'll hold on to that. But my first, most important question I have is how did you develop your approach to running a coaching cadence? I mean, was it through trial, error, mentorship or just, you know, you just stumbled upon it?

Yeah, I probably a blend of it all, but I think it starts with I, I had really good leaders. I was at a company called Network for Good, which is acquired now, is sort of part of this company called Bontera. And my leaders there Just were really good about creating a coaching culture where you listen to yourself, you listen to others. We listened in big groups, we listened one on one and that's how we learned. And so stepping into a leadership where that was already part of what was expected of the most senior accounting executives to the newest SDRs is really important for giving your, you know, especially you're talking about first time leaders. Giving those first time leaders a platform where they can be confident, comfortable in delivering this feedback. So that mentorship was a big, big piece. But if it's not that, how are you creating that? And how does this evolve over time? Because it certainly has, right? It's starting to feel your team, receive feedback, use it.

Right?

Don't just hear feedback, make changes for it. Stay agile. We talk about telling our reps to stay agile, especially on the phones. Stay agile yourself.

Right?

Change things up, make sure that there's a lot of alignment there. You're going to have some SDRs or account executives who want to become leaders. Well, if that's the case, then my coaching will be about, are you hearing this? Do you see where this is going to go wrong? And if I have people who want to become account executives and we're trying to create a pipeline or we've got a specific call over, a account executive is trying to hit quota for the year, we're going to be focused so completely on what are the, you know, business level impact questions we haven't answered. And so that alignment over, what are we after with our calls is really going to make your call coaching sessions more productive.

Right. So what I'm, what I'm hearing is, you know, having a mentorship of course helps, but you're saying that this is also possible even though you don't have a mentor, which could be a case in a lot of scenarios, right, where your mentor is, let's say, not available or let's say that you are a top rep and now all of a sudden you move to a new company where you're like, you're it, you are the SDR leader and then you have to figure out your own coaching mechanism and coaching systems where you don't have a mentorship. What is the first step somebody could take when they don't have a mentorship?

I think just, just go, especially if we're talking about a coaching program, just start it. Just, just run a session, whether it's one on one or with a group. Find a topic. Every leader, every rep out there is working on something. It could be really broad objection, handling cold Call openers.

Right.

It can be very broad or it can be something really specific to your industry, to a Persona, to a competitor. Whatever it is, pick it and start. I think that you're going to learn so much more inside those conversations than you are going to be just trying to write things on paper or. And put the perfect program together. I think start, Start small and scale from there.

Yeah, I think what might happen is I think a lot of time it could be inundated because there are so many things like you said, you know, pick opener, pick any. Objection. Pick any industry insight, pick anything. Right. But I think. And while I like the idea about starting small, I think what people might get and sometimes I do that too. Even today, you know, there are a few things where I would do so much analysis and there's a paralysis and I'm not able to even act on it. So while you're. While your idea is great, but could you maybe help somebody, let's say, who's not able to take those decision of starting small? Where can they start? Is there any particular way for them to pick? Okay, you know what, here are the top 10 areas where you can fix and identify those 10 areas for your company or for your reps and then start. There is any methodology behind this?

Yeah, I mean I try to make as many decisions that are data based as possible. So if you use some of your enablement tools and this could be about the length of your call. If you have a tool like GONG or Chorus and you can look at talk time or listen time and use data to find where are the gaps with an individual or with your team. And from there I would also really ask you to ask the people who are going to be receiving the coaching what they think are their gaps.

Right.

We're creating alignment again through this. So if we're talking about just starting, something that I might do would be to listen to a call and send some feedback along and say hey, what did you hear? And if we do this again, where might you want to focus? And that answer will give me the alignment that I need. Okay, I'll go here. We'll coach on this. If I hear something else or I read the data somewhere else, I'm gonna say hey, this is what you had asked for. I also notice this and we start. This is gonna help you like build and lift and you know, uplift rather than these coaching sessions seem like a tear down which we never really want.

I love that idea by it. However, I'm going to give you a counter to that. Okay, let's do it. So recently, what I read is most people misdiagnose the problems, right?

Yeah.

So it's like when you go to a doctor. I mean, think about this, right? Last time when you went, before you went to the doctor, you probably went to WebMD and there was a study which was done where, you know, somebody asks all these doctors how many times you think people have already diagnosed their problems. And the doctor said, you know, 95% of the time, you know, people already do it and how many times they're actually incorrect. So misdiagnosis, I feel, is a bigger problem. While, I mean, I think, I like the idea, I think that, you know, you should ask people what their problems are. I think that's, that's something even I did that back in the day. But this is, this is something which just came to my attention like probably six months ago when I was in a coaching conference recently, I think a couple of months ago where they, where somebody talked about this and this occurred to me. Yes, that could, that could actually be right. Do you have any thoughts on that? I'm sorry, I'm putting you on the spot here.

No, no, this is a really great question because you're absolutely right. Right. Somebody also could just use recency bias. They just got off the phone and received a tough objection and crumble. They're going to tell you, I want to work on objection handling. But that's not their, that's not their problem. So I'm with you 100%. I think it's right. It's, it's making sure that we are on the path to something. It's so easy for any level of sales to say, like, okay, we're account executives or SDRs. We're reaching towards quota that, let's use. That is the best example, you as a rep. The person that I'm coaching is trying to reach quota. All right, how are we going to work backwards from there now? Every suggestion that I make and I'm, like I said, I'm going to try and use data here is going to be aligned with getting them to their goal, making them look good in front of their peers, and hopefully making them a lot of money.

Right?

So, so now we're aligned with, with that end goal. And so if I say, hey, what do you think is holding you back from making a lot of money? You're right, it might be misdiagnosed. That's where either. If I'm new, right. If I'm new, I might rely on something that I had to fix, right. That. Rely on your personal experiences. You haven't been hired as a sales leader because you don't have personal experiences to go back on. Note. So use those experiences. Where did you struggle?

Maybe.

Maybe start there. Use data like I said. So, hey, you're an 85% rep right now. What is missing? Oh, our show rate is low. All right, let's listen to those first calls or let's listen to your voicemails and let's. Let's go review these. These other things. So I would highly recommend using, like, actual data. But it's all building towards something, right, that you're. You're aligned with. All that alignment, I think I've said multiple times already is so key with coaching, because if you're not aligned towards hitting quota or being promoted to become a leader yourself, the coaching is going to fall on deaf ears.

I love that, you know, and I think. I think most reps would definitely listen to you the moment you start talking about money. And I think I like the fact that, you know, you're hitting where it hurts. Another challenge I see is that consistency can be a challenge, especially when you're overwhelmed with so many responsibilities. And maybe in your first role, you're already overwhelmed because you don't know and you're trying to learn the ropes yourself. So how do you stay disciplined in maintaining that coaching cadence without letting it slip through the cracks?

Oh, it's tough. And just like it's really tough at the end of the quarter or the year when you're just looking at numbers and a deal specifically, you're trying to. You're looking ahead instead of. Instead of looking back. So I think it's important to have a regular cadence, right? Establish a cadence of coaching and stick to it. If we're just doing, let's say every other week, we spend 30 minutes or 45 minutes in a small group doing this at the end of a quarter, focusing that time to make people better and share learnings and even, you know, though we might not be doing a complete call breakdown, but we're going to be sharing, hey, look at this call that worked and things like that. Having that time set aside will also make a difference there when it's tough to set aside time for coaching. So my biggest thing is create a cadence, stick to it, make it a habit, make it regular. And if you need to, if you get distracted or there's a new company initiative or, you know, working at cvent, we've had a couple acquisitions recently. We've pivoted our Core coaching to some new products to be product focused. Like, how are we pitching some of these value props, Right, So you can pivot inside that. But the framework, the habits, that cadence of coaching, I think is really important to stick to.

No, this is awesome. I think I'm learning a lot myself in terms of, I think, structuring it. And now I can. Whenever I'm listening to you, I can. I can totally see the kind of mistakes I made when I was a 10 SDR leader. And there were not a lot of SDR leaders back then you could learn from. You know, there's a lot of materials out there, not a lot of podcasts you could listen to. So it was really tough back then. But I think now I can totally see now. I like the fact that you said, you know, put this in the calendar. Make sure, you know, you're sticking to it. One of the challenge, for example, I used to face is sometimes I was going blank into these coaching sessions. Is there any preparation which has to be done before you go into the coaching session to make it effective for both of both the parties?

I would say, like, probably one of the more common mistakes is not preparing.

Right.

Like, I not only want to identify the call that I'm going to be listening to, but I want to go in and look at that prospect or client, whoever we're calling, and I'm going to see what's going on recently. So I'm informed, because I might be giving coaching and saying, hey, why don't we talk about this? Just to learn that, oh, there's an open opportunity already there, or there was a past opportunity, so we're trying to steer it away. So I definitely want to make sure that I know what's going on going into the call, but also I want to hear what the reps hear as well. So I'm going to prepare not just with, like, here's what's going on with the account or the prospect, but I'm also going to prepare with, hey, this is. This is what we're listening for. This is our topic for today, right? So if I've created this cadence and we're focused on, we coach to spin at C. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the methodology. Situations probably, like, need payoffs. So today, if we're focusing on problems, I'm going to ask the people coming to the coaching session to listen to the call and hear a problem question or hear a problem question that was not asked and come prepared with that so that we can discuss and I think that will also make your coaching more interactive.

Right.

Everybody's prepared, everybody has questions, everybody's already listening to the call. We can do a lot more pause and, and conversation and role play on top of the call we're listening to rather than just hit play, hit pause, me say what I hear, hit play again.

Right.

I think that preparation is really going to help the sessions be effective with much more back and forth.

That's amazing. Now, did I hear that right where you were suggesting that before the coaching session? I expect the rep to listen to the call before they come on the call instead of, you know, hitting the press for play pass thing?

Absolutely. And especially because I don't want every session, my rep to be listening to just them.

Right.

I want them, I want some of these calls to be other reps. And I'm listening with my, my, you know, senior enterprise SDRs. And we're actually going to listen to an account executive call today.

Right.

So having it not be the first time they're hearing that is going to make a huge difference in the quality of conversation that you can have in that coaching session. And again, we're doing this on limited time. I mean, how much are we asking of ourselves as leaders and others asking of us and then are we asking of our reps? I have 30 minutes to an hour set aside every other week.

Right.

I want to make sure that I'm super prepared. And if I'm asking my team to spend a little bit of time, I'm going to send them something very specific. Hey, listen to minutes 3 through 10 and come up with a problem question that you love that was asked and a problem question that you felt like wasn't asked. But through the power of 2020 hindsight, you would have loved to ask. And now this 45 minutes of coaching is going to become so much more impactful. And they didn't spend too much time because I prepared and let them prepare. Very specific.

I can think of so many good things which could come up if people do this. For example, I'm going to distract my, distract me. If I, as a leader, I'm doing this. First of all, I'm telling my team continuously every week on week that, hey, when I am going into the coaching session for you, I'm not doing it for the heck of. I'm actually spending a lot of time listening to your tens and fifties of calls and I'm identifying areas where you need to improve. And we are, if we are in this together, you know, we have to act on this together. So you come prepared, I come prepared and that's how we move. And I think that's a brilliant idea where. And I think I used to make the mistake all the time where I would make them listen to their own calls. I mean, I think I was probably doing the same mistake which you said, you know, making them listen to their call, pause and ask them, hey, what would you have done differently? Why do you think I stopped and you know, make them stop. But I think that takes things on a different level. So, yeah, brilliant.

And I'll add real quick, there's space for that. There's space for the little, hey, did you hear this? Hey, did you hear this? And the culture of coaching that we're trying to create allows room for that. If as leaders, we're doing our listening on the side as well. And then I can just slack you and I say, hey, rule, I heard this call, listen how awesome this problem question is, you know, at minute 1:30, right? All right, so you just go to 1:30, you hit play, you listen and it's awesome and you're done listening. I took you 30 seconds. I'm doing, I'm doing my homework as a leader and I just send it, I just slack it to your, message it to you. So there's room for the, hey, listen to this. Hey, this is my feedback on this little pieces. But because I've established this culture of coaching and because we're aligned and the feedback that I'm giving you is going to help you make more money. And those little slack and emails that I send, when I hear something or see something, you're going to receive them as, all right, this is I'm on the right track or I'm doing the right thing or oh yeah, that was an awful, that was a 9am call and I just hadn't had my coffee yet.

Got it. I'm definitely loving it. So far, so far what we have done, Wyatt, is we've identified why do we need to coach. What are some of the mistakes to avoid before getting into the coaching session, how preparation is key. Are there any other mistakes you think first time managers or first time SDR leaders could be making when they have already established, when they've already done everything, which you just mentioned, but they could still be doing things wrong when they are in the coaching session.

I mentioned the, like, we want to be uplifting, we want, this needs to be positive. So I won't go back in to that. You know, there's space for the critique and it needs to happen. Hey, we Missed this and that. But we want overall there to be a positive, like a positive tone to these coaching meetings. The one that I'll mention right now though is keep it short and sweet. This is a huge mistake and what I am so guilty of. I have coworkers probably right now who are listening to this, rolling their eyes, notoriously long winded. But if we can keep these sessions short, If I'm. If we're in a coaching meeting and we're going over this and it's two or three instances where I said, hey, do we hear the space for a problem question right there? And you, it's like, yes, I heard it. And we role play and you get it. Cut the meeting, done. You, you got it. We've tried it, we've role played it, it's done. I don't need to show you the other five times different or deeper problem question could have been asked. You got to cut it short. So stick to your point. Once your point is made, once you've reached your goal, once it's being been received, just cut it short.

Right.

And I think that is a common pitfall where people will just keep going or stray from the topic. And the, the long winded, you know, myself, like, nature of it is going to distract from the one thing that you wanted your reps or that rep to get out of that meeting.

Yeah, I think they're all, all acknowledging I made that mistake multiple times. Another question which just strikes me right now is, would there be a difference in the way if you were coaching remotely versus in person?

I think that I want my reps to always have full, full wire, everything that I'm gonna offer. So like, yes and no, probably.

Right.

Like, I do think that there's a tone and a body language and all these things that can translate when we're in person that just get missed when we're virtual. So if I'm just slacking somebody a piece of coaching or it's a quick thing on a zoom, I am going to make sure that it cannot come across as like, hey, you really stunk on this call. I don't never want it. So I'm a little more cognizant of that virtual. But then like with, with a more remote company situation.

Right.

I also want to be cognizant of making sure that we're experiencing a whole breadth of calls as well, because without it being provided oftentimes by leaders, our reps are going to be zeroed in on the things that they're doing and they might be missing These other things happening around them.

I can see where you're coming from. I think another question which comes to me when you mentioned that is as a first time leader again, we talked about how things could be very overwhelming at times. And I'm trying to make sure first time SDR leaders or even experienced SDR leaders might be overdoing coaching sometimes. And that could also be wrong in so many ways. The question I have is how many calls, for example, do I listen to in a week? How many is enough? How much is enough? Because you know, you know, you, you can always get into the spiral of, oh, you know what? I'm not doing enough. I already heard like 10 calls for this one rep. And let's assume somebody has five reps. Okay, five reps. If I listen to, let's say just one call every day, I'm listening to five calls. And you know how the drill goes, right? If I listen to one call, which is only for five minutes, I'm definitely gonna spend at least 15 minutes in that call because I'm gonna note down the feedback. If I'm listening to the call on chorus or something like that, I'm gonna put a tag there, you know, tag the rep, talk about, you know, what happened and what they could have done better and then so on and so on. So how much is enough?

Wow, that's a great question. To quote one of my favorite movies of all time, the limit does not exist. But look, the limit has to exist for our time and sanity purposes. So how much is enough? And I think it's back to what we were saying. What we like expect for our reps, I'd expect of ourselves as leaders is like, I'm going to listen until I have an answer or until I can provide the coaching that I want to provide. I might strike gold and listen to two calls and have the exact example that I want to set to my group. Or I might listen to five voicemails, which are short and easy to listen to to and have enough to say, hey, I could just tell there was no energy into this. And we know that nobody listens to voicemails anyways. So like, if we're gonna leave a voicemail, let's make it impactful. So I think it's. It's listening till you can like have an answer or have something to, to coach on, but make sure that you're not just narrow, too narrow to the point where it's like, oh, I heard this one call and it was a terrible goal. Well, if I, if that's the case. I, I definitely don't want to just go coaching on that. It's the only call I've listened to for this rep and in a month and it could have just been an off day or the prospect could have been tough or what, you know, whatever. So like I think a variety wide enough cast wide enough net, but don't kill yourself in these for going in with the purpose of finding one thing that one theme. Problems. Objection. Handling. We should be able to skip around calls, listen efficiently, and be able to listen to 10 calls for a rep, 10, 15 calls for a rep. Because we're only listening to a minute at a time. And that I think should, should do it. I would also recommend just real quick, if you're going to be doing that, you're going to be listening for one rep. Go and click on last week's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then this week's.

Right.

And don't just pull calls from yesterday. If you're, if Your rep made 10 great, 10, 10 calls that connected yesterday, just don't just go listen to yesterday. Go grab a couple from yesterday, a couple from a couple days before, a couple from last month and you'll start to see changes and difference and that'll help you make sure that the coaching you're providing is, is relevant and needed.

That brings me to a very interesting point. Okay. And I think I'm pretty sure somebody is already solving for this right now. So like you mentioned, I need to maintain that distribution, right. So that I'm not listening to call from one particular day. It could be that, you know, one of my rep, let's say, have a bad fight with, you know, one of their spouse every Thursday. And I'm only, only picking the calls on Thursday and Thursday calls are all bad. So I don't want to do that. Right. In order to in and in order to combat that, use your suggested solution. Pick calls from different days just to have an even distribution. But one of the beef I have with this problem is because I used to work with American Express.

Yes.

And this is 2009 and 13, okay. Like 12, 15 years ago. And we used to have the same cadence where one of my trainer or one of my manager would come either plug in next to me or would listen to the calls remotely and would listen to three or four random calls and would tell me, hey, you're a bad caller. I felt that was, I had like, for example, If I had 100 calls and 96 were good and sometimes I would say I would be unlucky and some people might say no, you know, because we are distributing the calls so there is an equal chance of getting bad and good calls being picked. I still feel that the process is flawed. Do you have any systems today where for example, that system is listening to all your reps call and surfacing the insights to you where it says, hey, your rep A is struggling with the moment a pricing objection comes or the moment somebody brings up a competitor. Other than that, these are the areas where they are actually doing really well and you should probably, you know, fat on their back. Does this system exist like this or do you see the problem which I'm raising like a flaw? Do you think that that flaw still exists?

A flaw does exist and I probably always will. And I'll say before I give you like how do I maybe like what do I do like systems wise, let me also say like it's part of the reason why I ask for submissions as well. Catch the four bad calls out of a hundred, then ideally you've sent me the one good one or that's so that's part of it. But let me also say like, use your tools, use your resources. At cvent, we use Sales Loft and Chorus. And so between those two tools, most of our calls are going to record at some level, right? So in those tools I can narrow my search by keywords. We've built out those tools so that I can even search for objection handling as a theme and other other themes. I can search for products, I can search for those things. So that helps me make sure that the calls I'm listening to might I could search by have a good outcome, right? Have a meeting at the end of it or don't have a meeting set at the end of it. So I've narrowed through my tools and using the data and resources at my fingertips so that I know that hey, when I'm providing this feedback, I can say hey. Of the calls that didn't go so well for you this week, here's the thing that I noticed and all the calls that did convert for you or did move things forward, we did these things. So using the tools and setting those up appropriately I think is super key to having a like the, the feedback that you can say, hey, this is what we agreed we were working on. This is the problem question or this is the theme of the month. This is better. It might be more of a tougher conversation. I'm going to be sure to say like hey, I know we hit quota for the month. So all this is taken with a grain of salt. But here's the calls that did convert.

Right.

I'm trying, you know, the feedback sandwich, you know, positive, positive, negative, positive. The feedback sandwich, something like that. In, in your American Express example, I would hate to just say, hey, yeah.

We didn't have, we didn't have all these tools back then where, you know, it could surface all those insights. But I think I see where you're coming from and I know some of the tools which would be able to surface these, you know, based on competitors, based on the keywords. So I see now how you, how you're doing this now. Would you be open to sharing the names of the tools so that, you know, anybody who's listening to this probably can get a sense of, oh, I. To get those tools.

Yeah. Like I said, I currently use Sales Loft and Chorus and I really enjoy using both those platforms. And historically I've used Gong as well. Excellent tool. And then Clary, I think I didn't work with. I was at a company prior and they acquired a tool called Wingman, which I think they now call Clary Copilot, which is their call recording. Same thing though. And they're all excellent. They all allow you to do these things. Search for words, create themes, battle cards, scorecards for goals, all these things. I've enjoyed them all.

Awesome. Yeah, that's helpful. I think we just have a couple of questions left for you. Right. One of the question I've always had is when I used to be a trainer back at American Express, I used to have a session of train the trainer. Right. I used to have a training for myself where I was told how to conduct sessions, how to train the team as an SDR leader. If you're lucky, your company will probably send you, you know, bring a coach for you, but in most cases, let's face it, you're not going to have it. So one, how do you identify the coaching style you have developed, the coaching sessions you are conducting that's even working for you and your team? Do you simply look at the numbers? If the numbers are okay, everything is hunky dory or is there anything else to look at? And how, how do you, how do you basically go about this?

We're in sales, right? So the numbers are going to win, right? It's always about the numbers at some level. So definitely look at the numbers. Are we trying to influence the amount of meetings we set? Did the number go up? Are we trying to influence the amount of like our, our average sales price? You know, did our, did the numbers go go up? That is always going to be so important. But as a leader, especially a frontline manager, when we're getting into the time with our. Our reps and we have that time to experience their struggles and what's working and all these things, I think it's the qualitative side of this is really important as a frontline leader to measure. And this is going to come through things like scorecards. It's going to come through also just sort of sentiment. I just would recommend like taking a bunch of notes, writing down, hey, this is what they struggle with. Then the next time you do a role play or mock call or listen to a call, were those things present again.

Right.

Taking notes. And. And that is really going to be an important metric without as many numbers to it.

That's amazing. I really enjoyed our conversation. Right. I think the only thing we are left with now is rapid fire if you're ready for it.

All right. Rapid fire. Let's go.

All right. The only rule is you only get one second to think. Okay. Beyond that. If you take beyond than one second, then we skip and move to the next question.

Okay? Okay.

All right. Okay. Breaking Bad or Austin Powers?

Austin Powers.

Why? FBR leader? Wrong answer. Only.

Make a lot of money.

Best company you have ever worked for. What is one sales tool you absolutely hate?

Salesforce.

What is one tool that you absolutely love? Chorus all right, you have three wishes by Dreamy and you can only use it to make your SDR process better in 2025. You can take five seconds to think about it. This is the final question.

Wow. On the spot rule. I, like most of us, probably have been spending a lot of time. How are we going to better leverage AI? And I think the one thing, if I had a genie, this is what I would do. If I could just type into any platform that I'm on, like Salesforce or any of our tools and just say, can you create a report that shows me this? Can you create an alert that sends me an email when and if I could do that? If somebody out there can develop that tool that overlay onto Salesforce or any platform where it just creates reports for salespeople who aren't necessarily the like finding it the most fun to go and create Salesforce reports. That is just. That would make my life easier. That's my wish. And there's. And my wish three. I would just wish that for three different platforms that I have.

Okay. Yeah. I was about to say I think that takes. That wish takes care of probably all the rest. Three wishes. Yeah. This has been amazing by. Thank you so much for coming to this show.

Thank you so much for having me. And I'd love to come back if there's more questions.

Absolutely. Yeah. You thank.