Tara Jackson’s Post

The SDR -> AE Model s*cks 💀 Here is why ... ❌ SDRs are mostly considered as juniors and pushing to become AE. ❌ There is another layer of complexity (management, also for the client) ❌ You add room for conflict and blame game. f.e "SDR delivers bad leads" ❌ AEs stop making calls as soon as they get an SDR booking calls for them. Instead hire a senior full cycle AE: ✅ Full ownership of the prospects and leads ✅ 1 face for the client through the sales process ✅ AEs commit upfront to do cold acquisition and never ✅ Leaner career path and sellers not pushing for the "no dirty work" AE jobs ✅ Optionally you can give your AE a jr. rep that develops into a full cycle AE What do you think about the SDRs booking calls for AE model?

How much top performing AEs are making (SMB + MM + ENT) 💰 𝗧𝗼𝗽 𝗔𝗘 𝗘𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀: SDR = $100k (or more) SMB AE = $200k (or more) MM AE = $300k (or more) ENT AE = $400k (or more) 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗠𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆: Work at the right company. Must haves: 1. Strong product market fit 2. 70% of team hitting quota (or more) 3. Comp plan that rewards high performers 𝗚𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀: You can easily compare OTE, percent of team hitting quota and culture before you interview, and 86 companies hiring sales pros (and paying them well) here: https://lnkd.in/gUKiJhn9 There's no better time to get in the right environment, bet on yourself and realize your full earning potential. To getting paid what you're worth, - Mike G

Hiring an SDR without sales experience? Here's my take: It depends. First hire? No. More than 3 SDRs? - 1 front-line manager - With onboarding and training programs - The existing team consistently meets their quotas In these cases, yes, it makes sense. Why? Early-stage businesses lack: - An outbound process working - SDR management skills - An onboarding process - A training program - Defined your ICP - Buyer personas Expecting a newcomer with no outbound sales experience to just jump in and handle everything. And without any guidance from an SDR manager ... It's just not realistic. Often, we see these folks struggle for 6 months, and then, sadly, leadership let them go. But honestly, the problem isn't really with them not being able to do the job. It's more about us jumping the gun and hiring them without having the right support, and environment in place. As first hires, we should be focusing on bringing in people with experience, those who can shape and build up the SDR function. With outbound experience, they're going to get up to speed much faster and start delivering business results sooner. 3 months ago, I decided to go for candidates with a solid track record, even though there weren't that many to choose from. These folks have been absolute game-changers, despite being pretty unhappy in their previous gigs. Now that we've laid down the right groundwork, we're in a good spot to start considering people without sales experience. PS: No, we're not hiring at the moment. 👀

How do you hire an SDR (Sales Development Rep)? I don't have a sales background, but here is advice based on what I've seen working with dozens of amazing sales people over my career. General skills: 1: Avoid people with any red-flags you'd use for any role: Being rude, saying inappropriate things, making people uncomfortable or being hostile. 2: Punctuality: If anyone for any type of sales role is even 5 minutes late for anything it's a red-flag. If they are 5 minutes late to their interview they are going to be 10 minutes late to every customer meeting they ever have. Sales skills: 1: Optimism: Sales people have to walk on the sunny side of the street, they tend not to be . moody and brooding like engineers 2: Competitive nature: You get 99 losses and 1 win as salespeople and the high from that 1 win has to keep you going through the 99 losses. This has a bias towards people who have been in organized sports, they are used to competing/winning/losing. 3: Communication: Core skill for being successful for sales. 4: Intelligence or Product/domain expertise: How well does a salesperson know the space or are they smart enough to learn it? If you are hiring more experienced sales reps this is a more fair test, SDR's are usually new hires out of school and more jr. so you may want to give them an activity like learning about your company from your website and doing research before their interview. A relatively smart person can give you a 5 minute pitch on your company after reading your website and googling you and your competitors for an hour before their interview. Bonus points if they did this without you asking them! 5: Organization / work ethic: I think this will be key to someone's career success as a salesperson. I think you can teach these skills to people who have the above skills.

Transitioning from founder-led sales is tough. The failure rate is high. Hiring the right founding Account Executive makes all the difference. It can be the difference of making it to 1m+ ARR any beyond or not. But hiring that AE from a large company will not cut it. They need the scrappy startup experience, it’s a wide role that involves way more than just selling. The founding AE should be a hustler, and will have too: - Attend events - Run webinars - Create top of funnel - Close deals - Build playbooks, call scripts etc - Create forecasting/reporting - Carry a large part of the overall number Ultimately they will help the transition from founder led sales and repeatability. Often these profiles want to be entrepreneurs or VP’s of Sales and this role will give them great learnings by being part of the founding GTM team. I've been both a founding AE and founding VP Sales before. It's not for everyone you have to LOVE building at this stage. My advice would be to have a rigid interview process with a tailored final stage assessment along with a score card is key to mitigate miss hiring. What your advice be to ensure getting the right hire?

There’s nothing “unfair” about rigor in hiring - or expecting candidates to “show versus tell” skills. But be careful about the hoops you set up to get in your hiring funnel The best candidates may not be in the market, yet. Even if they know your brand, they may need to be “sold” first. And if you want to hire exceptionally, this should not be beneath you

Finding the right candidate for your SDR role is only 20% of the challenge. Here's 2 things you can do to improve successful SDR hires: 1️⃣ Have a strong training syllabus to equip your rep with the skills to succeed: • This must go much deeper than product knowledge and beyond the 4 week onboarding process; Scripting, role plays, copy writing, email safety limits, tools and time management etc. 2️⃣ If you haven't built a strong training syllabus or can't afford the risk of rep failure, you can hire a candidate with prior SDR experience: • The challenge here, is that rep will likely want a fast-track to AE, so tenure in the SDR role will be short. This may not fit the strategic growth plan. It's a real challenge. 👉 However, there is a 3rd option available 👈 🔥 Hire a risk-free SDR with a recruitment service that: 1. Splits the recruitment fee into monthly payments. 2. Stops charging you if the rep leaves. 3. Provides ongoing training and mentorship on outbound selling. 4. People say is "too good to be true" - Like Pointers recruitment offer. ------------------------------------- At Pointer, we do exactly that. Our success is your success.🏆 Follow, Connect or DM

Here's a very interesting recruiting technique. Mark Kosoglow is hiring an SDR manager and he's decided to take a very different approach. See the below post for more details. What are your thoughts about this tactic? Is it brilliant, or creating a blind spot in finding the best person for the job?

LI network - here’s a chance to work with one of the best in the game. Can you get to him when others fail to? Get creative. Side note: I’m obsessed with this job app format. It’s real. Practical. And necessary. SDR managers need to be able to do an SDR’s job. If the format alone tells you anything, it tells you this is the guy to work for. He develops world class sales org cultures.

VP Sales: "We're hiring 15 more SDRs to continue our incredible growth..." 𝟭𝟮 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝘀 𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿... → The newest SDRs are working non ICP accounts and not converting → The best SDRs hit quota but the team doesn't → SDR Managers have increased KPIs and stress levels → SDRs are panicking and mass-mailing everyone → Deliverability has tanked so cold call KPIs increase → The top performers are leaving due to no promotions → 50% of the team is made redundant to drive ''efficiency'' 𝗦𝗼, 𝗶𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗹𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 ''𝗵𝘆𝗽𝗲𝗿-𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵'' 𝗼𝗿𝗴𝘀, 𝗮𝘀𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: → How big is the TAM (total addressable market) → How many ICP accounts are there? → How many do you get to work/are available? →Where is the company already at its TAM capacity? ->What is the business doing to increase the TAM so you have more accounts? Just because they were successful last year doesn't mean they have the right plan to be successful this year. Do yourself a favour - check these details out before you ''take a seat on the rocketship''. PS. Agreed?