Join us in this exciting episode as Jeff welcomes David Dulany, the Founder & CEO of Tenbound, a leading Research and Advisory firm dedicated to B2B SaaS GTM Sales Development. With years of hands-on experience, shared through his podcast, social channels, website, and book "The Sales Development Framework," David's unique perspective has helped countless companies achieve unprecedented growth. Tune in to gain valuable insights, enhance your sales development strategies, and drive remarkable results.
🔗 Visit daviddulany.com for more information and resources to level up your sales development game!
Thanks for listening!
Join us in this exciting episode as Jeff welcomes David Dulany, the Founder & CEO of Tenbound, a leading Research and Advisory firm dedicated to B2B SaaS GTM Sales Development. With years of hands-on experience, shared through his podcast, social channels, website, and book "The Sales Development Framework," David's unique perspective has helped countless companies achieve unprecedented growth. Tune in to gain valuable insights, enhance your sales development strategies, and drive remarkable results.
🔗 Visit daviddulany.com for more information and resources to level up your sales development game!
Thanks for listening!
All these years blood, sweat and tears. I'm still here. Nothing stopped me. Running, running, running, nothing to stop me. Nothing could stop me, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another exciting episode of the gross show for those of you who are new, and for those who don't recognize my voice, and for those of you who are half listening,
Jeff Winters:I'm your host Jeff winters. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer of abstract Marketing Group and today friends. Today we have a true luminary, a true expert, a true Dare I say genius in the field of filling your sales pipeline. You will get more meetings if you listen to this episode. Lots more. His name is David Delaney. I'm super excited to have him here. David is the founder and CEO of 10 bound, a research and advisory firm focused and dedicated to b2b SaaS, go to market sales development, performance improvement. That's a lot of words, let me tell you talk to you about, he's going to talk to you about how to get more sales through the most important activity you can do to get more sales, filling your sales pipeline, he's got all sorts of other experience and kudos. He's an author, but mostly, he's going to help you fill your sales pipeline and sell more customers. I love it. David, welcome to the show, my friend.
Unknown:Thank you. Well said I appreciate it.
Jeff Winters:So David, you know, high level because we we got listeners that are across the entire spectrum in terms of the maturity curve on SDR sales, engagement video, can you just talk about SDR BDR? What's the difference? How it works? Give us give us the high level?
Unknown:Yeah, I mean, really high level, it kind of goes back even before but salesforce.com is really the where it started in this current iteration. So essentially, what they did was they were selling a software as a service, subscription. And they broke out the sales, you know, job into three major parts, the front end, prospecting, following up on inbound leads, etc, the closing role, and then the customer success to make sure that you never cancel your subscription. And so they had a lot of success with the that front end process and really focusing on that and leveraging their technology, obviously, to make it successful. And then a book came out that documented that process called Predictable Revenue. And so anybody has been around for a while. Yeah, probably remembers that. Right? And it documented the success that Salesforce had. And essentially, you know, they they're called different things but but the sales development rep is usually the ones doing the inbound lead qualification and making sure that they're following up on anything marketing generated. And then business development wrap the BDR is purely outbound, you know, cold calling, cold, emailing, all that all the that activity. And you know, some companies obviously, blend the two, you know, depending on the size of the company. Yeah,
Jeff Winters:but some some companies call the SDR, the outbound rap and the BD Why do we have this?
Unknown:That's a really good question. And we've been talking about that for years and there it came out for a while that they just had XDR, you know, and then you could put in, is it lead development rap? Is it business development, rap sales development rep. So you always kind of have to ask what their main job is, and not necessarily take it by the title. The other quick thing is, a friend of mine is has actually started a wiki glossary where we're, you know, he's crowdsourcing standardized, you know, definition of all these things and, and then locking it and this is going to be what we're going to call him from now on. So I should be interesting to see how that that comes out.
Jeff Winters:I love it. Well, David, look for my money. You are the authority on this subject. So are you here today to declare that BDR shall now and forever be outbound only? Can you say that?
Unknown:Yes, I will say that and, you know, everyone could disagree with me forever. But let's go ahead and call it that.
Jeff Winters:Let's go ahead and I we're making we're making news here on the podcast. It's been so declared, If your SDRs are doing outbound, change them ASAP. So let's let's dive deep on the BDR. Again, newly newly named now mminton Never to be changed. Let's dive deep in the BD. Can you tell us in general what's what should the BDR day look like?
Unknown:Yeah, and we're talking outbound right. The cold callers,
Jeff Winters:dude, you said it now. It's definitely you can We're talking about now everybody's going to be talking about that. Tell us what the BDR does when they come to work and today's insane in 2023?
Unknown:Yeah, wow. I mean, it's, that's a good question. It's because it's changed and why I mean, even in the last couple of years, right, the work that you guys are doing so, so a day in the life is, they spend a lot of their time in a sales engagement platform, which is like your, your outreach, or your sales, loft, and all the other different ones. And essentially, they're kind of morphing into the the one stop shop for outbound. And in there, you've got your emails, you've got your phone calls, you've got your social touches, your video messages, you know, all the different messages that you're putting out every day. And it's organized by where you are in the sequence of touches on the prospect. And so, Day in the Life is the first things, first, you go into your sales engagement platform, and you see your task list, basically, of where you are, and what you should be doing for clearing out that list of activities that are up on the queue. And then at some point that runs out, and you've got to go out and start finding new prospects to reach out to. And that's when it comes into more of the afternoon research section of, you know, finding the right people finding their contact information and putting it into the sales engagement platform and starting to reach out.
Jeff Winters:Alright, so if you're if you're starting a BDR team, you get your sales engagement platform. And then in general, the BDR is coming in there. They're doing some combination of emailing social touches, phone calls, video messaging, and, and the like. Let me ask you, in terms of those channels, right now, what what do you see it's got a green arrow going up in terms of effectiveness, and which has a red arrow going down in terms of effectiveness channel by channel? Yeah,
Unknown:I mean, and not to give you a consulte type answer. But it really depends on the market that you're calling out to, and doing some experimentation. And that's, that's something we talk about a lot, there's not a lot of, you know, regular project managed experimentation that happens in the BDR, outbound world, they just kind of go from thing to thing without thinking about is this working or not. And so you, you'll have like, a top down approach from the VP of sales, who is like, just make cold calls, I just want you to make, you know, 100 cold calls every day. And we know that some percentage of those will convert, and the s the BDR is like, I've been doing this and I'm not getting any results. Well, you know, it could be that your particular market doesn't answer cold calls, and you should actually be spending more time writing emails and following up on social channels as as an example. So, you know, I would say that the short answer to that is, know your market and how they tend to communicate, and then index on that as much as possible and run experiments to see what's working and what's not. You know, and and you got to figure it out for yourself.
Jeff Winters:I love that. I think that is a very it is a little bit of a consulting answer, which we don't love. But I wait also is right, it has the convenient quality of also being correct, in that you really need to think about who is the recipient? And are they more likely to respond via a particular channel? It makes a lot of sense.
Unknown:Yeah. And, you know, and I say this a lot, but a lot of where sales development comes down to is, is project management being really, really good project manager, it's probably the most boring topic on Earth, that doesn't get a lot of clicks and stuff like that. But, you know, setting up an experimental process to see what your market really reacts to in the best way. And really tracking that project and reporting back on it and, you know, changing up your approach based on what you're learning. I mean, that's, that's hard, and it takes time and you got to really stay on top of things. It's much easier to kind of bounce around to the next silver bullet or the next tool and stuff like that to try to fix things.
Jeff Winters:We're gonna go to the next Silver Bullet because boy, do I have a few. We're very lucky for our audience. I had total silver bullets, but let me let me stay linear here. So we talked about what the BDR is you've coined the paint the name the debate has been ended. We made some news, and we talked about what the date is Looks like you come in, you're doing some combination of email, social touch, maybe there's some gifting in there even many different vehicles, you figure out which vehicle to over index on based on your market, some recipients may respond better to one or the other, or inevitably will, and you want to track that. Okay, so let's talk expectations. And I know you're gonna say it depends. So I'm going to ask this question in a way where you can't, can I have a range of appointments scheduled? And meetings held? For a BDR? Give me a range? In a month?
Unknown:Oh, yeah. You know, okay, let me you're gonna have to hire me for six months. And then oh, no, I'm just kidding. So this is a very expensive 800 number on your screen. Oh, my Lord. Sorry. So yes, definitely, I mean, so and I would look at it this way, enterprise, it's going to be a smaller number, mid market is going to be larger, and then SMB, you should be able to get more. So enterprise, let's say, you should be able to set up at least one to two meetings a week. And, and have at least one of those hold. I mean, you know, that's kind of the minimum that I would look for an enterprise mid market, it could go up to eight and four, perhaps, and then small business 16 and eight, you know, just depending on what the, what the cost is of the product that you're selling.
Jeff Winters:Interesting. So you think SMB? You can in a in a month, you can hold? 32? Like, that's a reasonable expectation?
Unknown:I think so. I mean, I, you know, and I'm not gonna say it, but but there's a lot that goes into that. Right? How well is your brand known? Do you have any marketing? Are you just relying on inbound leads is 100% Outbound, and stuff like that? But yeah, that I mean, you know, I want to do that as a small business, you know,
Jeff Winters:I'm gonna make a bold statement. I think one of the biggest hindrances to the entire BDR community, is the expectations are totally wrong, are totally wrong. We've got STRS here, David, who will set 300 meetings a month 300. And we've got many of them. And I'm sitting here looking at my Bruce chinos. And I think that and prior to me being in this business, I was in a different business. And I read all the research and all the research said, you know, exactly the numbers you said, and I, I am convinced that this industry is plagued by the what's the the anti gift, the anti gift of low expectations? I think if you told people that an actual expectation is they should hold 150 meetings a month, they'd be shocked by what they get. Tell me I'm crazy.
Unknown:No, I, I say go for it. I mean, and I mean, probably looking at things from a different perspective, because usually people call 10 bound when there's something wrong with their SBIR program, and they're trying to get it back on track, like the manager left, or there's been no manager, they just hired a bunch of STRS. And it's not working, and stuff like that. So if I if I went in and was like, You should add a zero to the number. Isn't that what consulting is? Yeah. I mean, I'll try it. I'll just send them to you and you guys. Right. Yeah, that's an interesting point.
Jeff Winters:Oh, my gosh, let's I said we were going to talk about tools and silver bullets. And and some of that, I must say, is the advent of some of these new dialing tools. I mean, I'll I'll shout out Oregon is as one I mean, as we move sort of, from expectations to technology. I mean, these dollars making a difference, right.
Unknown:Yeah. I mean, and that's a perfect example. Like, one time. I don't know if I started working there. I just went to a, an interview, but I went into Trulia, which was like, like 15 years ago. And Trulia was the Real Estate Software. Their job was basically to call every licensed Realtor in the United States. I mean, a huge tam tons of people and they all answer their phone, you know, so it's like, you plug in Orem or connected cell or any any of those, you know, super dialers, you're gonna crush it with that, right? Hopefully, you never, it's always a silver bullet, but, and then on the flip side, I did a Couple of years in the cybersecurity business Oh, yeah. And, you know, no offense to those guys, but their whole job is to like air gap against the outside world and be in a little tiny, you know, black box where nobody can reach him right now. Yeah. That was different. You know, I mean, and I think we experimented with power dialers and everything. And I don't remember it making a huge difference at that time. So yeah, again, it really just depends on your market. That's what I think.
Jeff Winters:Yeah. And we're, we keep coming back to this. But I will say just on the dialer, side, I mean, relative to even three years ago, I mean, really, these have been popularized over the last week and three years give or take just, yeah, it's It's nuts. The amount of reach, I mean, provided your prospects pick up their phone, and some don't, to your point, like you just said, cybersecurity could be more challenging, especially up market cybersecurity, but only I mean, it's just it, it is it can be silver, bullet it for some companies.
Unknown:Yeah, definitely. I mean, if your market reacts to that, and you can have more conversations, I mean, that's what we're all trying to do, right, and be able to talk to somebody, I mean, first of all, and even better, a prioritized, you know, account and the right person at that account. Oh, my God, you know, that's, that's the dream. And then hopefully, the SDRs or the BDR is know what to say. They've been trained, they've been coached and they can have a decent conversation. That's that's the, the standard, you know. Yeah. And the other quick thing, Jeff, is there's there's the data is like the lifeblood, and I don't know if you wanted to talk about this, but but having having vetted you know, data that even has been reclaimed before it's put into the dialer. And you've got a better directional target on having good phone numbers that are actually attached to good names. You could be golden there. Okay, so let's,
Jeff Winters:let's talk about this. Because, again, we're going on a journey here the other day, but first, we named the term then we talked about if you're going to start in a BDR. Team, here's what they need to do every day, they got to be in a sales engagement platform. Maybe there's a power dialer, here's how many meetings they should be scheduled. You said they should be scheduled 32. I said it should be 160. Minor gap there. But neither here nor there. Now, I'm curious as we, as we as we roll into this subject of data, any any I'm sure you'd agree, any direct marketing campaign data is at the heart of it? How do you get them in this day and age? How do you get the best data? What do you recommend?
Unknown:Yeah, I mean, so there's the three or four big players that are in the SDR data space, I think that's a good place to start. What I don't see a lot
Jeff Winters:of so hang on. So just just to be clear, for the audience, you're talking about zoominfo, you're talking about seamless, you talking about Apollo, you're talking about am I missing any? Any other players
Unknown:lead IQ? Is elite IQ, you know, for certain workflows? Yeah. And, and, you know, so those are great. And you look at that, like, I always equate it to water. And you have sort of a glass of water that's sort of tinged and maybe a little bit muddy, at that point. And it's, it needs like one more filtration before it can actually be drinkable. And a lot of companies, that's they use the SDRs to essentially figure out whether the data is good or not. Yeah. And, you know, over the years, I've seen adding a layer of, you know, cleaning to the data before it goes into the dialer, or gets in front of the STRS. And actually, a friend of mine, this isn't an endorsement or anything but a friend of
Jeff Winters:not a plug. This is just a personal friend of David, but it should be noted, David has a lot of friends in this industry. A good friend, all right. There's your
Unknown:investor, I wish I was he, he created this thing called Phone ready leads. And it's essentially exactly what it sounds like he took the we have the 10 bound, I probably got it from him, but we got the 10 bound, lead quality cleansing process, which is just a slide with a bunch of boxes on it. And and he essentially has, like, automated this into a company where they take the major player data, phone numbers, and they make sure that they actually connect before they put them into the list that they then give to you. And it's just the having that extra layers. It's more efficient.
Jeff Winters:You know, it's interesting, the metaphor of of water and dirty water, and then you have to cleanse it. And there's different ways to do it to your point, I think what conventional wisdom or what the conventional industry workflow is, is you rip data out, and then either it goes one of two paths, either the STRS, cleanse it manually, which is good for accuracy bad for efficiency, right? Or you put it through a cleansing tool. Maybe in the weeds, maybe wonky, might even get cut. But can you talk for a second, just about the cleansing tool experience?
Unknown:Yeah, I mean, it's so it's just putting another another layer. And you know, this is this is, say, you've got like four STRS. On the team. I've seen, I've seen companies actually just put someone in charge of the data to make sure that that they're going through and making sure that it's vetted before it gets to the STRS. And, you know, it just depends where you are in the as far as how big is your team and how often this becomes a problem. But if you think about it, you want the SDRs to be connecting, and having conversations and not necessarily sitting there all day, dialing bad phone numbers, and getting fax machines and stuff like that. Not that anybody knows what that is. But
Jeff Winters:you asked it, David, our listenership just went down by like 80% on your fax machine, and
Unknown:you've got a Google fax machine. But long story short is it's it's taking the data, like one of the one of the vendors that you mentioned, you get a lot of feedback that their phone numbers are not very good. I won't say which one, but having somebody go through
Jeff Winters:it and you thumbs up or thumbs down right now I'm kidding, go.
Unknown:Can somebody go through and validate the phone numbers and make sure that they're good. And give them a check, a check box in the in your sales engagement platform that says this is vetted and good. Like I called this within the last week and somebody answered, Go for it. You know,
Jeff Winters:I as I look into my crystal ball in the future, I see a world where you're not going to be able to compete in this game, unless you have not good data, not great data, but perfect data. And I've been saying that for a long time. You agree with that?
Unknown:I agree. I agree. And even you know, we will probably be talking about this. But with the rise of the AI and the applicability of all the AI out there. I think it's a double edged sword and that we'll be able to do more in an automated way, but at the same time, it'll be more competitive because everybody's using AI to test their data and make it better. So so it someday it won't just be some person who has to go through things. You know, check by check and do it. But it creates a competitive environment.
Jeff Winters:Yeah, it does. I try not to like derail every single conversation with the rise of AI but let's talk about it for just a second since you brought it up. How close are we to AI making through cold calls? For us?
Unknown:Outbound? Yeah, it's because the SDR Yeah, I would say you know that the days are numbered there on the inbound side outbound, I think it's probably going to be a little little bit longer to be completely replaced. You know, but you can see it coming in from the periphery with especially with deep fakes and, and the ability to write like what Reggie does, to write emails, you know, appropriate to an individual automatically you know, you take a voice you take a deep fake and you take it that kind of capacity someone is going to mash them together to the point where you can actually make an effective cold caller
Jeff Winters:just I wish someone would deep fake me a because it would be flattering but in a good way not nefarious and be so it could like call people I'm sort of close to on their birthdays. That is what I want the deep fake for I wanted to like call my aunt and not that I don't love her. But if I could deep fake call my aunt, she would never know. All of our text threads are Happy Birthday Happy Birthday, whatever the if someone could deep fake call my cousin. huge victory for me on the deep.
Unknown:Right? Yeah, it's coming. I mean, not to go sideways. But it's kind of scary in that if you have elderly parents or family members like I think there's a big soft spot right now of a deep fake calling up and going. I mean, jail. Send me send me some money. So it's just for every benefit that comes out. It seems like we got to look at the flip side and go holy crap, you know Yeah, yeah, that
Jeff Winters:that would be bad and you took it negative. But on the other hand, I don't want to have to call my cousin found that that is a huge one. So you gotta there's very deep fake community maybe? Well, I'm sure many, many followers in the deep fake community, please don't hold my hand. Yeah,
Unknown:I do have to say there's not. I mean, there's, there's a few out there. But there's not a lot of people that love making cold calls, like, that's their whole, the favorite thing that they have to do every day, correct me if I'm wrong. And if, if you're one of those people that love it, I'd love to talk to you, because it's a skill that is in demand. And it's, it's a really hard thing to do. But I think a lot of people, if they could figure out how to make an AI cold collar, they would be down for it. And, you know, take that one job off their plate,
Jeff Winters:you know, it's it. We do have people here so you know, we we run a big agency, we got hundreds of people on the phones, we've got people here that love it, I think they really do and it's it's their gift, you know, we found people where it's their gift, and if it's your near sphere of genius and celebrated right and career path, right. And they can be they can can be a love, love thing. I mean, there is nothing better than getting a great sales point, I have not found it. It's like that's a mad Yeah, like making a game winning shot, important sporting event, or putting on the best performance of your life and a play. Like it's up there with those things.
Unknown:I mean, you guys, you know, and just a plug, if you've got people that are long term, they're doing it, they're enjoying it, and then you're having results for your clients, you've done something that is really special with in the agency world. And kudos to create a process and an atmosphere like that, but lets people shine. Because, you know, as you know, there's a lot of companies out there that just they look at it like a churn and burn position as entry level and, you know, stuff like that, where and people are not not as happy.
Jeff Winters:So, so so we've got the BD Rs, we got them set up. They're not deep fake, and they're real common. They're real email, and they got the best possible data. Who's got who, who's the right person to manage this this bunch? And what should that manager do? And not do your BDR? Manager? Tell us about this person?
Unknown:Oh, man. Okay. So that's a really good question. So so the main thing that that I see happen in that world is that someone's been a BDR for a while, and they really want to become a manager. And the first thing they do is like, Oh, I never have to, you know, make another cold call again. Or I never have to write another cold email again, thank God, you know, I can sit here, refresh this dashboard and like, drive people crazy. And it's, it's not like that at all. It really, the team is looking at you to be the most successful, cold caller and cold emailer and meeting center. And so that they can feel like you're somebody who is demonstrating the right behavior and attitude and ability that they want to aspire to, you can imagine, like, if you went out on a sales call with a sales manager, who was just like a horrible at selling, you know, your trust and respect would go down pretty quick. And you see that a lot in the, in the BDR. World. So it's just really important to you have to be able to demonstrate what you're teaching to people, and then be able to train and coach them. Versus the ivory tower type of mentality.
Jeff Winters:All right, so BDRs should have meeting clothes. Breaking this.
Unknown:The manager? Yeah, the manager? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, maybe, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be a quota. But but it's, it's got to be leading by example for the team and showing them that it can be done. Because they're usually and you know, I'm curious to get your thoughts but usually what I see is their quota is the whole team, like six people and the number of meetings so you know, if they're coming up short, or their pipelines not big enough, then yeah, the manager that are bringing it home.
Jeff Winters:You know, I don't love that. I'll tell you why. Because if they have the team quota, then they're going to kick it into high gear late MONTH. That's a late MONTH reactive measure. What I what I recommend and see work best in our world and again, this is our world but I would equate it to anyone world. I think I think the sales the BDR leader has to have core absolutely has to go and 100% needs to be calling ideally calling early in the day. Get people started get people moving like in my ideal BDR manager playbook gets we get in, we fire up a team, we get it everybody going in our morning huddle, boom BDR sets, the first couple appointments that are BDR managers have the first couple appointments of the day gets the momentum going and sort of rolls through their day does the admin stuff does meetings isn't one on ones, make sure everything's cooking, and then maybe sets one or two at the end of the day. That's, that's where I come down on it.
Unknown:You know, I, that's a great process, and it prevents that. Hail Mary, it's like, you get into that Hail Mary. Two more meetings, and it's on the 31st. And we're not going to make our number. So, you know, and in the agency world, I think that's a great way to
Jeff Winters:do it. Alright, so we got the we got the manager, we know what they're doing. You know, there's people love contests, and nobody loves contests, I would argue like the BDR, more the BDR world loves contests curious, have you seen anything good? What do you what do you like? And what are the new invoke prices, the BDR is one, this is what people care about, David,
Unknown:this is what they paid. You know, I, it's interesting that a couple of things that come to mind is the experiences that they can get not necessarily there's always the the cash and the gift cards and you know, the trophy and stuff like that, which is great air pods, don't forget the air pods, you gotta, you gotta have the air pods at our community is
Jeff Winters:responsible for like 5% of Apple's market cap on Airbus.
Unknown:The big ones the over air wants to amount I mean, that could be like a monthly wine. So you got to keep those going. But I also see experiences and there's there's a company I think it's called BlueBoard. That essentially it's a it's a sales contest, or employee reward contest, fulfillment, where they actually get experiences so they can go out and zipline and you know, bungee jump and do all this cool stuff. Because after a while, you know, how many air pods can you actually get? If you're the top thing, but you bet you bet you can rack up all these experiences. The other one? That's really I mean, if it's possible, is promotion, like micro promotions throughout the organization. Yeah, and, and, you know, even if it's just going from BDR, one to two, and getting a small bump, and like, an extra couple hours a week of training or something like that, and being able to set that up. So it's like over the course of a 24 month period, you can potentially get promoted, you know, two or three times. And, you know, that's super motivational for people that are high achievers, and they want to keep going. They like to see that progression.
Jeff Winters:Without question I, if I was writing a book on VDRs, and how to get VDR to stay and to perform at a high level, that's chapter one, to me is these these micro promotions or progressions, or whatever you call them. They're, they're awesome. But what about contests, though? Not just, hey, who gets the most meetings? Have you seen anything? Good, short term motivational?
Unknown:Oh, man, I mean, well, activity is always one. And, you know, if you guys were hooked up to a dialer, and you're already making 1000 calls every day, that that one, that one probably won't work, but I mean, you know, definitely, everything's downstream from doing more activity and doing the right activity. So, you know, we were just running one with one of the clients where we just wanted to see who could do the most per day. And, and literally, from an activity perspective, who could make the most calls. And that was as simple as that. And it was actually really fun because they, they were more of an email shop, and they hadn't done a lot of call experimentation. And we've got people on the phone, you know,
Jeff Winters:it's awesome. Um, speaking of, you know, I'm curious as you're, as you're managing folks, often you're being managed to activity and that activity creates meeting scheduled but not necessarily meetings held so I'm curious any good tips for the audience on how to get meeting to how to get a meeting to hold
Unknown:Oh, yeah, I mean, I I'm more obsessive about it then I probably most people because especially that outbound, you might have just been like a blip on the radar screen of the prospect and they forgot about you, you know, before, so try to set the meeting for later in that same day or the next day. same day or next day, really important, same day or next day and then obsessive follow up and not not like being a stalker or anything but literally reminding them about the meeting every De with the agenda until the actual meeting takes place. And so just that little, you know, you get those reminders from chili Piper and the automated calendar things. But one of those every day leading up, even if it's like five or six days out, saying, we're meeting on Thursday, here's the agenda, here's who's going to be there. And here's what we want to talk about. And just pinging them. You know, because the one it's something I see all the time is there's no follow up between setting the meeting and actually sitting down with the person. So like, five days will go by the executive will just pull up the meeting and go, I don't even know what this is for decline it. And that BDR is going, Hey, what I didn't even what? What gifts, what gifts, right? So I'm a little bit more obsessive about it, then I think most people,
Jeff Winters:well, I am totally obsessive about it. So we are two peas in a pod there. And I think, as I as I think about a couple of things that plague this world, number one is the gift of low expectations, which we explored. And the second is that when when revenue leaders are doing projections, they do not include no shows. And I think that is a huge and I've seen it time and time again, you go oh are so and so can schedule 30 meetings, and that'll be great and 30 meetings will convert this many proposals. It's like wait a minute, 30 meetings could result in 15 meetings, or 12 meetings, or if you're an enterprise SDR. And at some companies, your expectation is two meetings a month. I don't know how you deal with the rest of your time, but you'd get two meetings a month. And two of them don't show. You know, I'm talking about David, you know?
Unknown:Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think just, you know, like a sales leader, who you would talk to who would hire an your agency, they might may never have been an SDR or BDR. That, you know, and they came up as a renaissance rep doing everything to a sales manager, which is a completely different job. Now, they're managing a bunch of directors, and they've got this huge number over their head. So I think it's a lot of education like that, in that, you know, they might not really know what it takes these days and 2023 to get a meeting and to get people to show up. It's it's a different world.
Jeff Winters:It's a miracle people take meetings. I always say that. I mean, it's not that it's impossible. But yeah, I mean, seven years ago, eight years ago, getting the meetings, nothing people were happy to take your meetings and never been called in from an email and urban head on LinkedIn. Now it's like, is your is different one. And speaking of which, given the degree of difficulty, our videos need to be compensated correctly compensated fairly. Number one. I'm curious, what do you hold? BDR is accountable to is in meetings? How is it proposal SQL as a Oh, and then how much? And how's that structure? Look?
Unknown:How much do you pay him? Yeah, that was a three part. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so and so think of it this way, you have to have a meeting to get pipeline, and you have to have pipeline in order to get revenue. So those are really the the main metrics that I look at, and are most important. And you can always back reverse engineer how many activities and everything that they're doing in order to get the meetings, but but nobody really wants to talk about that the activities, whether you do 5000 activities or 10 activities, they just want to talk about did you get the meeting? Was it the right person? Did it did it hold? And is there any pipeline, you know, created from the meeting? And then, you know, to your point, how's the pipeline converting to revenue? And I think, without getting too far away from what's in the control of the BDR, its meetings, set, meetings held, and then even pipeline created, you know, through the meetings that they actually held, I think that those those three, you can pay them on. Going further away. If the pipeline converts, and it actually creates a sale, I look at that more of a bonus, especially over a certain level, if it makes sense financially for the company. Because we want them you know, to have that longer term vision of what their activities are actually leading to, but it can get a bit wonky if they have really no control over that. So
Jeff Winters:yeah, um, I couldn't agree more. I think that is exactly what I think where people go wrong is they do meeting set or they do meetings held or they do pipeline and they Don't do all three. And so it's how do you how do you make that happen? Let's talk about let's talk about compensation. Let's talk about base salaries, bonuses, what are you seeing across country?
Unknown:Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's still inflated on the coast. It's been a weird last six months or so in the tech industry. You know, I mean, the first part of the year that everybody was laying off, you know, half of their SDR team, and it got pretty dark there for a while, and I haven't heard that as much. But on the coast, you're looking at like, probably 65 days to 85 on target earnings, and then in the interior part of the country. You know, it could be 45 to 65. You know, just really depending on the company. And and then, you know, it's like that 6565 35 split, base and, and commission based on the meetings in the pipeline.
Jeff Winters:I love that you say the interior part of the country is supposed to fly over. That's sometimes, you know, we love the interior flyover is a little offensive to people in St. Louis.
Unknown:All right. I mean, dude, we're all moving out there. Retire, you're all coming? Back? are you ruining your states?
Jeff Winters:I know, they're so clean, and the stars were so bright. And here you want?
Unknown:I'm sorry, on behalf of my state, but you know, it's, it's, you can you could probably buy a house and make a decent living on an SDR BDR salary. Versus out here, it's like, you can maybe rent a closet. You know? Yeah.
Jeff Winters:All right. So if you're gonna, if you're going to spin up a BDR team, ladies and gentlemen, he just gave you the keys. He just told you all the secrets. So you go off and enjoy and sell, sell, sell. But but let's say, David, you didn't want to do it internally. Obviously, you know, full disclosure, I have a vested interest, I'm totally biased. What do you think about outsourcing?
Unknown:I think it's good, it's a good option. If you know, say you're, you're an engineer, and you have a product that you want to bring to market and you've never sold anything. Like, yeah, you're trying to, you're trying to, you know, you have to do the initial sales yourself and get your friends and family to get involved. But at some point, you're going to need meetings, and you're going to need new pipeline opportunities. And you at that point have like two routes, you can build it yourself, or you can use an expert agency. And and in some cases, people do both, you know, and they cross pollinate the ideas. But it's, you know, if an agency does this for a living, do or die, working with clients every day, and if they can't deliver, then they're not going to be around very long. So you know, it can shave off time and learning and really help people to get get that part going.
Jeff Winters:That is the thing with the agency, and I'm just gonna take my agency hat off and just be trying to be objective. You know, the thing with agencies, the barrier to entry to being an agency is like having a computer and saying you're an agency on LinkedIn. That's it. Yeah. But truly, if you're vetting agencies, those that have gotten dis getting hard, it's hard to get to scale in any business. But gosh, in this business, its customers in and out, if you're not doing well, I mean, customers are getting to scale as an agency real scale. It's like almost your guts like a stamp of approval, almost, because so many are so small, we can't do it.
Unknown:I completely agree. And, you know, with with companies that are thinking about getting involved with it, you know, the more the more involvement that you can have with the agency to help them. It's not just a, I'm going to hire you, I'll pay the bill, you guys just take care of everything, you know, which which I've seen, that's sort of a recipe for disappointment. You really got to get in there, meet once a week, find out what's working, what's not, what are people saying, you know, what's the feedback? Does phone work better than email, et cetera, et cetera, and like really work with them. And you can have a, I mean, I know there's some companies that have been working with their agency for like five years. And they're almost just like a, an extension of their SDR team, and it's great. So you got to do the work.
Jeff Winters:Yeah. do the work. All right. We've set it all. You've heard it all. As I told you in the intro, David is going to instantly give you the tips to fill your sales pipeline. David, you have not disappointed my friend. Thanks for coming on.
Unknown:Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. Anytime I love talking about this, and, you know, it's really hard what we do and, and any any advice that you can get us great.
Jeff Winters:Awesome. And for more advice, David, where do we go? Tell us where can we find you? Yeah, you
Unknown:know, just jumping on the newsletter at 10 bound. Te N Bo und.com. We put out research reports and podcasts and and we're doing conferences on this very subject, quarterly so it's a great place to keep up.
Jeff Winters:Get in touch with David get on the newsletter. gems for 45 minute flew by gems for 45 minutes. I'm looking at my producer she's nodding her absolute gems David, thanks.
Unknown:Thank you appreciate it. The gross show is sponsored by abstract talent solutions, recruiting for the modern world.