Have you ever felt like you missed a fantastic opportunity?

Like you really thought a meeting or conversation would turn into a bigger opportunity but it never did?

Odds are, you have a list of people who’ve interacted with you at some point and then…it went completely dark. They didn’t necessarily give you a hard no, they just never moved forward.

There are several reasons this could have happened - maybe they weren't interested. Maybe they found a different offer that suited their needs more. Or maybe they simply forgot to get back to you.

Whatever the cause, taking some action and doing something about it is the only way to revisit the conversation.

If that list of people hasn’t been touched in a while, use this article as an excuse to reach out and “unfreeze” them with our lost opportunities script.

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Let's take a deeper look at what's going on in this script, why it works, and how you can replicate it for your own needs.

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Step #1) Revisit the conversation.

Remember, we’re reaching out to people who we have a history with. Sure, it might not be a lot of history…but we’re not total strangers.

This makes a huge difference in our approach to having a conversation with them, and it makes this list look like a bunch of low hanging fruit. Your cold calling/emailing skills are fundamental, but your follow up game is just as important.

Think about how your last conversation went and what you could potentially say to remind them who you are and what you offered them.

Creating a personal connection and making sure they remember your previous interactions is key to getting them to listen to you.‍

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Step #2) Reframe from sales to service.

You want to show them that you're not just trying to make another sale - you actually care about doing business with them.

Take a look at the script above and you’ll see that we’re putting on our “customer service” hat. This is important, because the aim is to shift your prospect’s inner voice from:

“Oh no, another sales call?” → “Oh, you’re actually listening to me?”

You're asking for a second chance at doing business with them, so really put an emphasis on their needs and wants, and frame the conversation so that they know that you're here to listen to them, not just pitch them your product.

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Step #3) Request a specific reason.

If you can get the person to identify a specific reason why they went dark in the first place, it’ll make the next steps much, much easier.

It’s almost like getting them to tell you exactly how they want to be sold to.

👉 Was the issue timing?
✅ Great, let’s nail down a timeline that’s good for them.

👉 Was the issue pricing?
✅ Great, let’s walk them through a pricing/value path.

👉 Was the issue that they just forgot?
✅ Great, let’s just pick things up and get on a call.

This could also be a window of opportunity for avoiding lost opportunities with future clients - once you know why it didn't work out the first time with one specific client, you'll be more mindful of it in the future.

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One easy way to remember this is the 3 Re’s:

REVISIT -- REFRAME -- REQUEST
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Here’s a scenario that’s surprisingly common:

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→ A startup establishes some traction with a solid product.

→ The founder is good at sales and seems to close easily.

→ They want to scale, so they hire a bunch of salespeople.

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…but, the new sales team massively underperforms compared to the founder’s track record.

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So, why does this happen?

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It all comes down in how quickly and effectively you can train the new team and get them to really understand the product and how it relates to specific buyers.

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It’s pretty easy to throw a book at someone and ask them to memorize a bunch of features. In fact, that’s what many teams do.

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But, product knowledge alone will not translate into sales.

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Instead, you’ve got to give your team a crash course in your market, your target customers, and what the product means for different buyers.

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The funny thing is, many founders have never really written this out anywhere - it’s all stored in their brains. They find it hard to explain because it’s sort of like second nature to them.

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That’s why it’s incredibly important to move this understanding from a founder’s brain into a digestible, learnable resource for new hires.

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This is the framework we use:
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We use this with all of our clients - it’s a powerful way to draw the most important information out of one person’s head and present it in a useful way to new sales hires.

If you want to grab a printable copy for yourself, click the link below:
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​VOURIS MARKET MAPPING TEMPLATE​ (PDF)
VOURIS MARKET MAPPING TEMPLATE (GOOGLE SHEET)

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2-3 years ago, you could get away with a connection request straight into your prospect’s inbox and a good chance of getting a reply.

Now your prospects' inbox is jammed with spammers trying to get their attention.

We’re going to break down 6 important things to think about before you start prospecting on LinkedIn to make sure you don’t just get written off as another piece of junk mail.

#1: Create long term quality instead of short term hacks. 

LinkedIn isn’t cold calling.

You don’t want to be dropping in unannounced into your prospect’s inbox and pitching your solution straight away.

It doesn’t work.

You can use LinkedIn easily to grab attention and engage a prospect in a meaningful conversation.

This means sometimes sending less messages but putting in more thought.

At any given time in the B2B sales space only 3% of your market is ready to buy.‍

Which means the more times you speak to them, the more likely you will be top of mind when they are ready to buy.

Get away from the inbox graveyard and by creating longer term content on LinkedIn with these 4 steps:

1. Create regular content that delivers value to your industry and potential prospects with thoughtful posts 
2. Please the LinkedIn algorithm by getting your colleagues to like/comment on your post when it goes out
3. Start conversations with people in the industry who comment on your posts
4. Direct message potential customers who now already know you and start a conversation, rather than being just another sales pitch

#2: Your LinkedIn target audience is your business’ ideal customer.

Your ideal customer is your target audience.

Not everyone who likes and comments on your posts is going to be a potential buyer.

Vice versa your potential buyer may not be that engaged. They are a LinkedIn lurker who reads your posts but never comments or likes.

You want to be targeting an audience that is relevant and engaged. Do this by being smart with your connection requests.

For example if you were selling a marketing automation tool you would:

1. Send 80% of your connection requests to Marketing Managers and 20% to Chief Marketing Officers.
2. Write actionable posts and produce videos that help Marketing Managers do their job better.
3. Message the CMO’s directly to engage them in conversation and solve their problems.
4. Engage with them in the comments and through direct messages.
   

#3: Create engaging content by using repeatable processes.

How do you make valuable content that’s going to make those potential sales conversations happen?

High quality content is a big time commitment, so how can you shortcut using your existing resources?

Here are four time-saving ideas to get you started:

1. Interview your CEO and ask for their opinion about something your audience cares about.
2. Write posts about recent discussions you have had with product/ service users that give actionable insight.
3. Ask questions directly to your audience that they will reply to and are curious about how other people will answer.
4. Summarize industry podcasts into bite-size actionable lessons.

#4: Use triggers to prospect more effectively.

A trigger is something that prompts your audience to take an action. 

Your audience is constantly interacting with other people and posts on LinkedIn. You can piggyback off these triggers to put yourself in front of them..

By using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can see what your audience is liking and commenting on in your home dashboard. Or you could manually search through each prospect’s feed.‍

What happens when you see a trigger?

• They Post > You post a thoughtful and relevant comment
• They Like a Post > You connect with them
• They Like a Post > You email them and open with “I saw you liked [post]
• They Comment on a Post > You reply to them with something thoughtful
• They Comment on a Post > You email them and open with “I saw you comment on [post]

At every turn you deliver value and engagement to your target prospects and it will pay off handsomely in the end as you start great conversations that help them.

You can simplify this by setting aside 10 minutes each morning to engage with your audience's triggers.

#5: Focus on adding value, not asking for sales.

Don’t be the person who's always trying to sell or book appointments in comments and messages.

People will catch on real quick that you are someone to avoid.

But if you’re the person who is always providing value and asking great questions, you could soon find yourself as someone that people turn to, not only for your solution but also your opinion.

Take the time to build trust and it will pay off big time. Here’s how you can do that:

• Help them learn something
• Ask them about their problems
• Offer solutions to their pet peeves
• Provide bite sized actions they can take

#6: Drive inbound leads by building a strong reputation in your industry.

Imagine your inbox full of leads who want your service, and you didn’t have to lift a finger?

Great brands and influencers have people flocking to their banner, because they take the time to build real value and reputation as a solution that works.

Take the time to build a reputation in your industry as someone who can be trusted and really help by:

• Creating thoughtful content.
• Engaging your audience daily.
• Providing encouragement and support.
• Giving generously without the thought of instant return.

Put all these thoughts into action and turn LinkedIn into a prospecting gold mine.

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Want to know a secret?

To have the best response rate, you’ll need to make your follow-up emails as personalized as possible.‍

Personalized vs Automated

Sending personalized emails is the best way to have a high response rate.

The problem is that it takes FOREVER to create personalized emails.

When sending follow up emails, ask yourself what can be automated and what cannot be?

In other words, finding a healthy ratio of automation to personalization is necessary to have great results with your follow up emails.

Using a template and personalizing a few sections is the best option to automate without sounding automated.

For example, if you frequently go to networking events and follow up with prospects I recommend you have one template for each networking event.

Now that you have a template that will work for the prospects from that event, personalize the email before you send it out.

In this day and age, we can find out more about a person on the internet than ever before.

So do it!

Then add some juicy and specific words in your email to capture the attention of your reader.

The shorter, the better

As a general rule, less than 50 words is best for emails, which is harder to achieve than you might think.

Jeremy Donovan studied 4 million emails and found that the highest reply rate is 25 words.

It is ok to go a little above 50 words. But the goal is to get your point across with as few words as possible.

Back up anything you claim with the statistic

Using data to express how helpful your services can be is a great method. But you need to make sure that you have a quality source that proves you are right.

If you are talking about your own data, then a screenshot will likely be sufficient.

This is an email I have been using that has recently made my pipeline explode.

This works great because the prospect can see how big of an impact I have made for other people, giving me social proof.

(I call it the extreme weight loss email because of the before and after pics 🤣)

Track your results and figure out what works the best

Just like all areas of sales, it is best to track your analytics and what results you produce.

Every industry will have different ways of generating results, so it is best to track what works for you so you can continuously improve upon your efforts.

Some of the best email tracking software are Outreach.io, SalesLoft, Lemlist, and Hubspot.

Subject lines

Since subject lines and the first sentence of any email is the first thing the reader will see, it is one of the most critical parts of an email.

In general, good subject lines are:

• Personalized
• Include An Offer
• Use Odd Words
• Spark Curiosity
• 2-3 words
• Urgent

But for follow up emails, it is best to reply to a previous email of yours.

Some other emails you should be sending are touching base emails, but I won’t cover that here.

Is your team meeting your expectations?

If you have a sales development team and are interested in learning how we can help you dramatically increase their results, talk to me here.

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A highly effective sales team is necessary for growing — and maintaining — a profitable business. Learning how to hire a salesperson is vital. This process requires planning, critical evaluation, and firm decision-making. 

Before posting your first job, figure out what kind of sales candidate you want. You will need to hire multiple salespeople, including account executives and sales development representatives (SDRs). Your company's age also influences whom to look for when hiring a great salesperson.

When hiring a salesperson for a startup, look for dynamic generalists. These hires can adapt to and help shape new processes. Established companies can hire non-dynamic generalists with high work ethics — team members ready to operate within existing guidelines.

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How to Hire a Salesperson: Step-by-Step

Once your job posting begins attracting applicants, start narrowing down your candidate field. 

The Pre-Resume Test for Hiring Salespeople

A pre-resume test is an essential screening tool when hiring both SDRs and salespeople. The average corporate job posting receives up to 250 responses, so narrowing the field saves you time and resources.

Reply to each applicant with the following email:

Dear [name], 

Thank you for applying to work at [company name]! I wanted to let you know that we got your resume and will be getting back to you shortly.

Here are some helpful resources you can use to learn more about us.

• [Resource 1]
• [Resource 2]
• [Resource 3]

Talk soon,

[name]

PS. Please reply to this email and change the subject line to your name so it is at the top of my inbox.

If a candidate is not reading the email closely, it will appear to be a simple update message.

Only review the resumes of candidates who follow the instructions in the postscript — they've passed the first test. If a candidate does not follow instructions, it is unnecessary to send a rejection email. The candidate has effectively rejected themselves through lack of response. 

Be Critical When Evaluating Resumes 

After you've used the email test to reveal candidates who pay attention to detail, it's time to review resumes. Before getting started, outline what an ideal candidate will look like on paper. Each company's needs can vary, but for every job, you'll want to consider: 

How Much Experience Should a Sales Candidate Have?

Unless you're hiring entry-level candidates with the intention of investing in training and development, some prior experience is preferred. These candidates will need to learn your company's processes and have a solid foundation in sales tactics and customer communication. Consider how many years of experience you'd like every candidate to have — a range is typical.

Is Job Hopping a Bad Thing in Sales?

When considering experienced candidates, you're likely to encounter some who have a wide variety of employers listed on their resumes. This type of "job hopping" is often a red flag to hiring managers, but candidates may have legitimate reasons. If the job hopper meets other qualifications, it can be worth moving forward with a phone screen and using your judgment.

Do Sales Professionals Need a College Degree?

It's common to see job postings requiring a bachelor's degree, even though many great sales professionals went directly into the workforce. By eliminating candidates without a degree, you may be missing out on some great, highly driven professionals. 

For candidates who did go to college, involvement in collegiate athletics can signify that they have a driven and team-focused nature. If a college-educated candidate wasn't involved in sports, consider if they:

• Worked their way through college
• Started a business or side venture
• Graduated with a GPA of 3.5 or higher 
  

These factors can also signify a driven personality focused on achieving goals.

Don't be afraid to get specific and eliminate candidates in this round. Resume review is the last step before embarking on the interview process, which can be time-consuming. Ensure you're only advancing candidates who have strong potential to succeed on your team. 

Formal rejection notices are not requisite at the resume review stage. However, if you prefer to let candidates know, a simple email will suffice — no phone call necessary.

Conducting Phone Screens for Sales Jobs

The phone screen is a crucial midpoint when hiring. This stage is your first opportunity to assess how the candidate presents themselves over the phone. Hubspot reports that it can take up to 18 calls before a salesperson connects with a buyer — so a professional phone presence is a must.

It's best to schedule phone screens in advance with a quick email. Using a universal scheduling system like Calendly can help you avoid a back-and-forth email chain. These programs work similarly to the availability feature found in Outlook and GSuite but are compatible across platforms. Set up an account and include a link in your emails. Candidates will see your availability in their time zone and receive a calendar invite.

Questions to Ask When Hiring Salespeople

There are three core questions to ask every prospective account executive and SDR during the phone screen. These questions will provide critical insight into the candidate's mentality and approach to sales. 

"Why do you want to be in sales?"

This question will reveal whether the candidate is more of a "farmer" or a "hunter" when cultivating new business. If the candidate's response mentions a personality trait, dig deeper with follow-up questions and ask how they came to that conclusion.

“If sales were not an option, what would you do?”

The candidate's answer to this question will reveal more details about their personality and interests. Does their alternate career path require any of the same traits that a sales job does? 

“Why do you want to work for our company?”

This question will tease out how much research the candidate did before the call. 

Feel free to add more questions to your phone interview. Remember that this is a prelude to in-person interviews, where you can dig deep.

It can be easy to forget that job hunting is a two-way street. You need to sell your preferred candidates on the company just as much as they need to sell you on themselves. 

Role-Playing for Sales Interviews 

Studies show that role-playing is a valid predictor of job performance — and sales interviews lend themselves perfectly to this practice. 

During phone interviews for sales positions, ask the candidate to engage in a mock cold-call scenario. Use this exercise to evaluate how well the candidate can contact and convert new leads. 

Setting Up the Role Playing Experience

Candidate: acts as your company's representative — the role they want.

Interviewer: plays the part of a cold lead. 

Scenario: The candidate must convince their "lead" to take a meeting with your company and learn more about relevant solutions. 

While playing the cold lead, give each candidate the same three responses. It becomes easier to compare candidates against one another by remaining consistent.

1. In response to the candidate's call: "Where are you calling from?"
2. After the candidate asks to set a meeting, say: "We already work with a company helping us with that, but thanks for reaching out."
3. If the candidate persists and can, in your eyes, overcome objection #2, say "email me with more information."

Providing Feedback on Sales Role Playing

End the role-play at a natural stopping point. Before providing feedback, ask the candidate how they feel they did. Is the candidate able to offer an honest, self-aware evaluation, or do they display bravado? 

Finally, give the candidate your notes on their performance. Highlight one thing they did well and one thing to improve on. Explain a bit more about how your team is currently handling cold calling and repeat the role-play if time permits. The ideal sales candidate will:

• Receive feedback positively 
• Express a desire to grow 
• Process any advice quickly and attempt to act on it in a repeated role-play scenario 
  

The activity itself doesn't need to be perfect. How a candidate accepts and uses feedback is essential.

Expect Questions from Sales Rep Candidates

Before concluding the phone interview, allow the candidate time to ask any final questions of their own. If an applicant has no questions prepared for the interviewer, this can be a red flag signaling lack of preparedness or engagement. An ideal candidate's questions should be well-thought-out and more profound than the typical "what does the average day look like?"

Advancing to the Next Stage in Hiring a Sales Rep

If the candidate has wowed you, wrap up the phone screen with details on the next stage. 

For candidates who've missed the mark, let them know you'll be sending follow-up via email. Send a professional rejection email later that day or by the end of the week if you prefer to update candidates in batches.

Written Exercises for Sales Development Representatives 

After the phone screen, send any strong SDR candidates an email requesting they prepare a prospecting plan for you, including:

1. Details on a company that fits the prospective lead profile, with an outline of their industry.
2. Two or three prospects at the company who may be buyers of a relevant solution.
3. An explanation, directed toward one of the people selected in step two, about why your solution is valuable to them.
4. An example of a cold outreach email for this prospect.
   

This exercise will allow you to judge how well the candidate communicates in writing.

If your SDR candidate performs well on both the phone interview and written exercise, it's time to move to the in-person interview.

Using Mock Presentations to Evaluate Account Executives 

The ability to develop and run a successful presentation is essential for account executives joining your team. It gives a firsthand glimpse at how sales reps may perform from day one on the job. 

Send candidates an email outlining instructions for the exercise: 

Here is what we need from you:

• Send us what company we will be playing the role of.
• Give us a quick overview of the solution (so we have context).
• The goal of the presentation (next step or a sale).
  

We look forward to your presentation!

Best,

[Name]

The Interviewer's Role

As the interviewer, you'll be playing the role of a business owner who can benefit from your candidate's solution. Throughout the presentation, act as if you are a potential client — give objections and ask clarifying questions. 

Role-playing tip: act confused about something in the presentation to see how the candidate handles the situation.

Keep an eye out for these factors that indicate you have a high-quality candidate on your hands:

• A professional looking calendar invite
• A reminder email before the presentation
• Good discovery questions
• Well-researched and prepared for the call
• Ties their solution to your specific challenges
• Provides insights and makes an effort to understand your business
• Interactive presentation style
• The candidate gets buy-in throughout the presentation
• They handle questions well
• They are comfortable with objections
• They ask for the sale or next step
  

Up to 48% of salespeople never even attempt a follow-up — make sure you hire one of the dedicated 52% who do!

Stop the presentation at a natural point and provide feedback. If the candidate responds well and is engaged in the process, ask them to redo their presentation. Watch how they implement your advice. Successful candidates can now advance to the final, in-person interview stage.

Using Topgrading Principles to Hire a Salesperson

Topgrading is a multi-step interview process that uses a scoring system to identify top-tier talent. We’ve developed a system based on the core tenets of topgrading to help you effectively identify and hire only the best sales talent.

Each interviewer should assign candidates with a score. These scores reflect the candidate's suitability compared to high performers you know or have already hired.

4 Points - The candidate is in the top 1% of people you know.

3 Points - The candidate falls within the top 10% of people you know.

2 Points - The candidate falls within the top 20% of people you know.

1 Point - All other candidates who do not fall within the top 20% of people you know. 

By basing your interview process around the core scoring principles of topgrading, you can compare each candidate's abilities, competencies, and potential for success.

Interview Questions for Sales Candidates

Each candidate should meet with several managers, recruiters, or leaders at the company. The hiring manager should be last. This way, they can assess the candidate's emotional intelligence and self-awareness using a straightforward question:

“You have spoken to person A and person B. I'm curious, from your perspective, what do you think they will be most excited about with you as a candidate, and what do you think their biggest concern will be?”

Because this question involves self-introspection, expect the candidate to pause, think, and answer articulately. 

If the candidate only answers part of the question, ask again. 

• If the candidate does not answer in full, it can indicate a lack of attention to the conversation. 
• When a candidate only responds with what they think other people liked, it can indicate a lack of self-awareness. 
• Candidates who only answer with their biggest concern may be suffering from low self-confidence.

Evaluating a Sales Candidate’s Experience

After the candidate provides a self-analysis on their interview performance, proceed by reviewing the candidate's job experience. Don't hesitate to repeat some questions asked in previous interviews or during the phone screen — this provides an opportunity to verify consistency. 

Move through the candidate's resume and ask the following questions for every relevant position:

• Why did you decide to work there?
• What were your goals?
• Tell me about some of your wins?
• Tell me about some of your failures?
• Tell me about the strengths and weaknesses of your boss?
• What do you think your boss would say were your strengths and weaknesses?
• Why did you decide to leave?

Dig Deeper with Topgrading Questions

Interviews based on topgrading rely heavily on questions that require the candidate to be honest about their inner motivations. 

Topgrading Interview Questions to Use When Hiring Salespeople 

1. Who influenced you while growing up?
2. How did that influence have an impact on your personality and your values?
3. What do you like about yourself?
4. What do you dislike about yourself? 
5. What motivates you?
6. What was your biggest disappointment to date, and how have you grown?
7. Tell me about a time in your sales career where you needed to start a territory from scratch. What did you do for the first 30 days? What would you have done differently?
8. If I hire you, what will you do at this company?
9. Can you introduce us to one of your former managers?
10. What are your long term career objectives?
11. What do you want to get from your next job?
12. Why did you choose a career in sales?
13. What does achievement look like to you?
14. What do you think achievement looks like to us?
15. What do you think our company could do better?
16. What is something interesting that you have learned recently?
17. Where else have you recently applied?
    

Provide the candidate with another chance to ask any final questions. An ideal candidate will come to the interview prepared with a notebook and ask questions throughout the interview process. 

The Peer Interview

After interviews with managers and decision-makers are complete, the candidate should have one final conversation with a peer. This conversation is not meant to provide a "yes" or "no" answer regarding hiring. Instead, the employee should look for the following traits in their potential future colleague: 

1. Does the candidate like to learn new things?
2. Is the candidate a good listener?
3. Does the candidate have strong relationship building skills?
4. Is the candidate tech savvy?
   

Ask the employee to score the candidate between 1-4, based on their impressions.

Post-Interview Evaluation for SDRs and Account Executives

Take 24 hours to reflect on the interview process before debriefing with all parties involved. When all interviewers reconvene to discuss, you should be able to answer each of these questions. If not, don't hesitate to call the candidate for a quick follow-up conversation. 

1. Does the candidate have a growth mentality? 
2. Does the candidate possess a desire to add value?
3. Is the candidate company centered? 
4. Does the candidate handle criticism well?
5. Does the candidate make decisions or gets convinced?
6. Is the candidate’s personality unique?
7. Does the candidate have a high work ethic?
8. Is the candidate a curious person?
9. Is the candidate an optimist? 
10. Does the candidate focus on results?
    

Every interviewer should now be prepared to give the candidate an overall score between 1 and 4. 

A bad hire can cost your company up to 30% of that employee’s salary in the first year alone — be firm in your requirements when reviewing candidates.

Ultimately, you are looking for candidates with an average score of 3-4. Higher is better, but investing in training may be a suitable choice for some candidates with high potential.

• It's easy to train someone to align with company processes.
• It can be feasible to improve someone’s hard skills for the job.
• It will often be more difficult to change a candidate’s soft skills.

Conducting Reference Checks When Hiring Salespeople

Before making an offer to your preferred candidate(s), conduct reference checks. Candidates should provide references as part of the application process. 

• On a scale from 1-10 how likely are you to recommend this candidate?
• What do they have to do to become a 10?
• If not sales, what do you think this candidate would be doing?

How to Make a Sales Job Offer

Call the preferred candidate(s) and make a verbal offer before sending a formal offer letter or contract. Offer calls should provide an overview of the salary, compensation and benefits packages offered:

1. Let the candidate know you are calling to make an offer and highlight a few positive factors that drove the decision. 
2. Tell the candidate you will send a full written offer package, and provide the highlights: Benefits available to employees, equity (if relevant to the position), Base salary, variable compensation.
3. Ask the candidate for their thoughts on the offer. 
   

Many candidates will ask for time to think about the offer. Give them an exact time frame in which to respond — three days or less is ideal. Follow up with a written offer that the candidate can e-sign when ready to accept. 

What to Do When Sales Candidates Negotiate 

Before making an offer, it's important to decide how far you're willing to budge if the candidate pushes back with a counter-request. 

When negotiating compensation, it is preferable to adjust the base salary within set ranges. Leave variable compensation at a fixed rate equal for all team members. If equity is part of the job offer, this can also be a strong negotiation point. 

Tip: When a candidate requests something you're willing and able to grant, tie it to offer acceptance. Ask the candidate, "if we provide X, will you sign the offer letter tonight?" If they say yes, agree to the request.

How to Reject Candidates for Sales Jobs

Keep rejections clear yet professional. By taking care not to burn bridges with candidates, you can build a pool of pre-vetted salespeople. Tap into this pool when hiring for new roles in the future.

Rejecting Candidates After the Phone Screen

Email is appropriate for rejecting candidates who do not make it past the phone screen stage.

Dear [Name],

I want to personally thank you for your time the other day. I appreciated our conversation. 

Unfortunately we decided to move forward with a different candidate and we will not be scheduling next steps.

I wish you the best of luck on your job search.

Best,

[Name]

Rejecting Candidates After In-Person Interviews

When rejecting a candidate after the exercise and in-person interview stages, it's best to make a personal phone call. Let the candidate know that it was a hard choice, but keep specifics vague by saying “not a perfect fit”. This way, a disgruntled candidate cannot push back against your choice with a legal change.

Hi [Name] -— I wanted to call you personally and say I enjoyed meeting you and want to thank you for taking the time to interview at [company name]. Unfortunately, as a team we made a tough decision and decided it wasn't a perfect fit and chose to move forward with a different candidate. 

Next Steps: Training and Onboarding Your New Salespeople

After completing the lengthy interview process, it's tempting to jump right into day-to-day work again — especially on small teams juggling busy workloads. However, taking the time to properly onboard and train your new salesperson will benefit everyone. Utilize existing resources, training materials, and senior staff's experiences to help new hires acclimate to your company's processes and products. 

Training doesn't have to stop after the first 90 days, either! Encouraging professional development can keep the whole team's sales effectiveness score high. 

Not sure if you have a strong sales process, or unsure how to begin onboarding/training your new sales team? Vouris can help. In one 30-minute session, we'll evaluate your operations and provide three key insights you can use to improve your team's focus and results. Let us help you sort through the data in a complimentary call — and ensure your growing sales team is headed for success. 

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Resources

https://www.topresume.com/career-advice/how-to-explain-why-youve-been-job-hopping 

https://www.ignite.digital/topgrading-talent-acquisition/ 

https://www.lever.co/blog/topgrading-interview-guide/ 

https://www.palarino.com/topgrading-interview-questions/ 

https://zety.com/blog/hr-statistics 

https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-statistics 

https://www.invespcro.com/blog/sale-follow-ups/

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It's not an enjoyable topic. It's a discussion that is happening behind closed doors that no one wants to talk about. The majority of SDRs are replaceable.

Are some great SDRs getting laid off because of the current situation? Yes.

But that is only AFTER a decision was made on which SDRs are worth keeping.

So let me repeat it.

If you're an SDR who is average or below, your job’s on the line.

This is not meant to be a doomsday announcement, because it’s not. I am going to outline exactly what you should do, over the next 6 months, to be as valuable to your company as possible.

You cant control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond

Activity. Activity. Activity.

When things get tough and conversion rates drop there is only one cure, increase the inputs.

For example...

If you're cold calling and your connect-to-meeting set rate drops by half, you need to double the number of calls you make.

Sometimes the activity input isn't possible. For example, there are only so many calls you can make in a day.

But there is always more you can do and when times are tough you have to max out your capacity, even if you have to temporally sacrifice work-life balance.

The SDRs who will survive this crisis are the ones who get very focused on what they can control.

they do NOT throw their hands in the air and complain...

Action Tip: Calculate how many calls/emails you have to make in order to get 1 meeting. Look at historical data and recent data in order to see if that number has changed. Using the recent number, calculate how many calls/emails you would have to make in order to hit your quota. That’s your new activity number!

People trust transparency, so over-communicate to your manager

The most important relationship you have as an SDR is the one you develop with your prospects.

The other is the relationship you develop with your manager. During times of crisis, you're not the only person who's work is being severely impacted. They too are experiencing a lot of unknowns and will appreciate your transparency.

This is why it's so important to communicate effectively with whom you report to. Do not stop at effective communication, but over-communicate. Do not leave anything left to the imagination because your boss won't know your efforts if you don't tell them... Shocking I know.

Below are a few things you should cover in every one on one.

• Activities you've done since your last one on one - Calls, emails, etc.
• Meetings scheduled
• Updates on completed meetings
• Progress on your accounts

One more thing to add and this is an important one. Any bad news or lack of progress must be followed by what you are going to do about it. Then, during your next one on one, you should share the results of the actions you took. Never tell anyone a problem without having a solution and never propose a solution and neglect to take action on it.

Action Tip: Give your manager a call and update them on your progress for the week. Do this outside of your one on one and make sure they are aware of your activities and what success you have had. Moving forward, follow the structure above during your one on one meetings so that your manager and you are always on the same page.

Grab your streamers and party hats and celebrate the little wins!

Times of crisis are stressful and it's helpful to adjust your success criteria to match the times.

You may not book as many meetings but that doesn't mean you shouldn't celebrate what progress you have made.

You didn't book the meeting but your prospect told you to reach back out in a month? Celebrate - They didn't ghost you.

You finally spoke with the decision-maker of one of your accounts and they said they don't have a need for your solution? Celebrate - you don't have to waste time prospecting into that account.

At this point you may be saying "Kyle, are you saying I should be delusional?"

no.

If all you focus on are the negative aspects of what happens you're in for a long ride. Find the good in everything and take action on what you can control. That's how you avoid getting derailed in times of crisis.

Action Tip: Look at your progress for the week and find one thing that has gone really well. Post in your team slack channel “Hi team! I know things have been challenging lately and I think we should all celebrate the little wins, so let me kick this off. [Insert your little win here]. What little wins do you all have so far this week?”

You're part of a team, be a star player AND supporter

There is being a team player and there is BEING A TEAM PLAYER. Make sense?

As sales professionals, we often get very tunnel-visioned on our own efforts and neglect the needs of our colleagues. I don't just mean other SDRs, I am talking about every person across all departments.

The COMPANY is the TEAM. It's important to be helpful to everyone across the organization.

The more value you provide to the organization, outside of your day job, the more valuable you are to the company. Diversify the value that you provide.

This does not mean slacking on your daily work, far from it. Outwork everyone AND be helpful to other departments. Doing so shows that you not only care about doing a great job but also about ensuring that the company is successful.

Action Tip: Reach out to one person from outside your department and ask them if there is anything they need help with. Repeat this until one person takes you up on your offer and do a great job on the project.

There is no doubt that the current climate has complicated the lives of many. There are a lot of great SDRs that have lost their jobs and will continue to. All you can focus on is what you can control, specifically the actions you take. As an SDR community, we had it good. There were more jobs than we knew what to do with. Now, in order to survive, you must be in the top percentile of SDRs. I believe everyone is capable of being in the top percentile if they put in the work. Check out “15 Traits of Highly Effective SDRs” (scroll down, its free).

TL;DR

If you are an average or below SDR, your job is at risk. There are a few things you can do to improve your chances of making the cut.

1. Increase your activity to the highest output you're capable of.
2. Over-communicate to your manager and make sure they know your activities and progress. Also, make sure to provide solutions when things aren’t going well and take action on those solutions.
3. Celebrate the little wins to keep yourself in good spirits during challenging times.
4. Do a great job at your day job and provide value to other departments if needed. During hard times companies are typically doing the same amount of work with fewer people. Help those stressed departments by offering your support.

Action Steps

1. Calculate the number of activities you need to do in order to hit your quota.
2. Keep your manager up to date on your progress, roadblocks, and solutions.
3. Reach out to your team and celebrate the little wins!
4. Ask members of other departments how you can help them.
5. Download “15 Traits of Highly Effective SDRs” (see below, its free)

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The role of a sales team is tough -- it is full of rejection, aggressive metrics, high stress, and intense pressure. 

Needless to say, keeping morale high is a must if you want your team to be high performing. 

In this article, I’ll share with you all of my BEST tips on how to inspire a sales team. 

Know What Motivates And Inspires Each Sales Rep 

Understanding your team is the first step towards inspiring them. Obviously, we all enjoy money, but there is a lot more that can inspire people. 

Every person is unique and will need different rewards and recognition to inspire them towards the goals at hand. 

Listen to this: I was the 24th hire at a startup company and was the first sales manager. My role was to scale their SDR team. 

The first group of SDRs I hired all had their own tactics for becoming inspired. My team was made up of an international policy expert, an Alaskan snowmobile racer, a capital investment analyst, and a kid who almost flunked out of college because his kidney exploded.

As you can imagine, each rep needed something different from me.

The best way to find out what motivates each of your team members the most is to understand their personal goals on a deeper level. This will give you insights into who they are as a person, and what drives them. 

I find that directly asking each team member what their personal goals are during a one on one meeting is best. Most of the time helping to hold a team member accountable is all that is needed to achieve their goals. 

That said, crossing the bridge between work goals and personal goals is a great idea because team members will be significantly more motivated at work if they are in a positive and uplifting environment that supports both their in-work and outside work lives.

A positive and uplifting environment is exactly what your team needs to align with your company culture and stay for longer. Think of it this way, if an employee of yours has a goal to show up to the gym 4 days per week consistently, helping them achieve that equates to a better and healthier life. 

A better life outside of work means a better life inside of work. 

Action Step: Understand your team member’s personal goals and what motivates them at work.

Rally The Sales Team By Inspiring Them To Achieve Big Goals In Small Bites

As fun as talking about big long term goals can be, focusing on them every day is not helpful. This is because the size of massive goals can be intimidating. Let me explain.

One month with this same SDR team, we had a week left to hit our quota, and we were super far behind. Morale was down and despite my efforts of cheering up the team, they felt down on their luck. Then motivation came in the most unexpected way possible...

In an ‘all hands’ meeting, my boss was giving his update and said: "As for the SDR team, they are not going to get close to hitting quota this month."

After picking my jaw up from the floor, I said "Don't count us out! Does it look like we will hit quota? No. Not even close. But what I can tell you is that if ANY team can do it, it’s this one. Do NOT count us out."

The next morning, I called a team meeting with all of my SDR’s and discussed what had happened the day before. 

After this 10 minute meeting, we decided that we were going to make them eat their own words.

Never have I ever seen a team so fired up! We were laughing, cheering, and booking more meetings than ever before. On this day, we set our record for most meetings booked in a day, then the next day we booked even more meetings!!

So get this, on the last day of the month when the final bell rang, we were all fired up, happy, and celebrating.

Guess what? We were short 1 meeting. It didn’t matter, against all odds we had come back from a losing streak and demonstrated what we were made of. 

After this experience, I realized the value of knowing how to inspire a sales team by sitting them down for 10 minutes each morning and reminding them why we are doing this. I would point out previous successes and potential successes in the near future. Then we discussed how many cold calls and emails we were going to send that day. After each 10 minute meeting, they had small and actionable daily goals. 

Think of it this way, if I sat my SDR team down every morning and told them that today’s goal was to grow our revenue by 600%, they would have been intimated and not productive. 

How are you supposed to accomplish that? If we focus on solely growing 600%, we would not have any action based goals to strive for.

Action Step: Never stop motivating the team, remind them of recent accomplishments.

Break Down Quarterly Goals Into Daily Activity To Focus On

The daily goals that I discuss every morning in our team meetings lead to the monthly and quarterly goals. 

This makes each SDR and sales person able to understand what needs to be done for the day. And when you consistently hit your daily goals, you are able to achieve astronomical results in the long run. Like growing 600% and raising a $21M series B. (the full story of this impactful experience)

But doing that would have not been possible if we were focused on large audacious goals in the short run. 

Your big goals can be broken into smaller chunks to show the importance of hitting all the numbers each day. Also, it is a lot more motivating to know that each small goal we are hitting will be a stepping stone towards hitting a large goal. 

Action Step: Take whatever your quarter or annual goals are, and divide them by the number of days in that time frame. 

I know this sounds obvious, but it is easily overlooked and can have a tremendous impact. 

Celebrate Accomplishments And Redirect Focus On The Next Goal

Accomplishing anything feels great! 

But what makes accomplishing your goals feel even better, is to celebrate when they happen. It is completely OK to stop working early on a Friday to take the team out to dinner. Spending $30 per person on dinner can go a lot further than giving each person that same $30 bonus in their paycheck. (more on this later)

Celebrating is an important step in accomplishing goals. But taking advantage of the excitement and energy that comes with accomplishing a goal, and redirecting this energy towards the next goal is how to inspire a sales team.

Don’t allow the momentum to die down!

When your team is together and celebrating about how “we did it!” toss in the idea of “if we did this, what else are we capable of?!” 

Action Step: Carry the energy of one accomplishment onto the next goal. 

Use Stretch Goals With Prizes Attached (Not Cash)

A stretch goal with prizes attached is another way to motivate a team, but does not replace true inspiration. 

Also, using prizes instead of cash is more affordable. 

When a team has a tangible prize to accomplish something (like a dinner) it is more motivating for them to strive towards it. 

Taking the team out and spending $30 per person on dinner can go a lot further than giving each person that same $30 in their paycheck. Who doesn’t want to cut loose and party with their co-workers?

Here’s the catch, most prizes will give you twice the bang for ya buck. Seriously! They give a reason to push harder in the short run and the experience of winning the prize will create more comradery between the team in the long run. 

Dinner is always an easy and fun prize to strive for, but the best ideas of prizes to strive for come from the team. 

So ask your team, “what prizes make you the most excited?”

Or send out a survey and allow your team to create their own rewards. This will go a long way. 

Action Step: Let your team pick their own prizes that are attached to stretch goals. 

Highlight All Success Publically 

Don’t let any accomplishment go unnoticed. 

Did a new sales rep hit their quota for the first time? Congratulate them in front of the rest of the team during the next meeting!

When I hold my team meetings, we always highlight recent accomplishments, regardless of how small. 

I did this so each and every team member feels a large sense of accomplishment publicly when they achieve something. This will not only give more motivation to the accomplisher but also give the other team members more motivation to push themselves harder. All in all, this creates a productive and positive environment. 

After this experience, I always discuss recent successes and what is possible to accomplish in the near future. I never stop reminding the team of what we accomplished and challenging them to repeat it.‍

Action Step: Each day, point out recent accomplishments to continuously inspire your team.

Set Realistic Goals

Shooting for the moon sounds cool, but having goals that are unrealistic is the enemy of inspiration. 

On the flip side, your team will know if you are handing them a goal that does not require much effort. 

*Imagine achieving a super-easy goal.*

What a letdown! Who wants to achieve something that is easy and not worthwhile? Not your sales team that’s for sure.

Don’t do this, they will see right through your unrealistic goals and not feel any sense of accomplishment. 

Instead, push your team to hit something that seems hard but is within reach. This will give them a larger sense of accomplishment when they reach their goal. 

Once you hit a realistic goal, you can use that momentum to continuously improve each quarter. 

But here’s the thing, if your team is striving for a goal that they will obviously not reach, set a new goal that is possible, but still challenging. 

You gotta be real with yourself and your team, if you need to lower the goal for this month, lower it. 

Action Step: Set realistic goals (don’t be afraid to change your goal!)

Summary of Action Steps

Action Step: Understand your team member’s personal goals and what motivates them at work.

Action Step: Never stop motivating the team, remind them of recent accomplishments.

Action Step: Take whatever your quarter or annual goals are, and divide them by the number of days in that time frame. 

Action Step: Carry the energy of one accomplishment onto the next goal. 

Action Step: Let your team pick their own prizes that are attached to stretch goals. 

Action Step: Each day, point out recent accomplishments to continuously inspire your team.

Action Step: Set realistic goals (don’t be afraid to change your goal!)

That’s A Wrap!

If this post helped you to learn how to inspire a sales team, let me know! Making sure my team has high motivation is one of my favorite things to do -- it’s both fulfilling and enjoyable.

And of course, reach out to us to discuss how to help your sales team sell more!

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I've interviewed hundreds of SDR candidates and some have stood out, those are the ones I hired.

Many have not stood out to me. Not because they weren't great candidates, I'm sure I have missed a few. Its because they failed to convince me that they were outstanding candidates.

Right now a lot of great SDRs are looking for work and are asking how to stand out from the crowd.

In this article, I will outline exactly how you can position yourself as the most desirable candidate, even when you have a lot of competition. Also, at the end, I will share with you how to negotiate for a higher salary.

Let's dive in! First things first...

Do NOT wait until unemployment ends!!!!!!!

This is a big one... I can't believe that so many SDRs plan on taking as much employment pay as they can. If you think it's competitive now just wait until the last month of unemployment.

Of course, if you lost your job you should go on employment to support yourself during these difficult times. That being said, don't use it as an excuse to do the bare minimum job searching required to keep the checks coming.

The type of SDRs myself, and other sales leaders, are looking for are the ones who want to work hard and provide massive value to the company. NOT people who want to take advantage of unemployment for as long as allowed before looking for a job.

Action tip #1: Start applying for jobs now, do not wait another day.

Tailor your experience to the company you are applying for

In your previous role, you had specific tasks that you would do in order to schedule meetings. This worked for you and for the company you worked for.

Here's the deal.

Even though the role is the same and you are most likely doing similar tasks, it doesn't mean the person interviewing you sees it that way.

The person interviewing you has a deep understanding of their product and the value it provides. They are looking for someone who can understand this quickly and is comfortable reaching out to prospects in the industry they serve. If they don't believe you will be able to fully understand the value proposition or prospect into the industry they serve than they will choose a different candidate.

Want to know what they use to determine this?

EXPERIENCE

If you have experience prospecting into the industry they serve or selling a similar product then you have a leg up. Here is what you need to do if you don’t.

Understand their product, industry, and prospecting process and tailor your experience to that. Do not let them connect the dots on their own, they never will.

Action Tip #2: Tie your experience directly to the company's value prop. like "You primarily sell to b2b SaaS companies that have sales teams of 10 or more. I used to prospect similar companies when I worked at ABC Company. What I learned is______. (see the job search bundle below for more examples).

Don't just focus on your work experience. Share who you are as a person!

People want to work with people that they like. The HR-approved phrase for this is "culture fit."

No one wants to work with a robot and a lot of SDRs come across as robots during interviews. They talk about their daily workflow at their previous company and how they made cold calls, emails, etc. Few SDRs find a way to talk about their life outside of work. The part of them that makes them unique.

If you want to stand out as a top tier SDR candidate you must communicate what makes you unique.

Action Tip #3: Write a list of your unique qualities, skills, and best stories to illustrate them. That way you'll be ready to work it in during an interview and be engaging and memorable.  

Ask REAL questions!

If another SDR asks me "What does the day look like?" or "What do your most successful SDRs do that makes them great?" I am going to smash my laptop.

The questions that you ask the person interviewing you is half of the interview.

I heavily weight the questions an SDR candidate asks me because it helps me understand where their heads at. The generic questions don't cut it.

Ask questions about the product, market, value prop. Its an interview, they don't expect you to know everything. Make sure you have a strong understanding of the product and the problem it's solving. Know the competition and ask what differentiates them. Ask what their prospects are doing to try and solve this problem without their solution.

There are so many questions that are thoughtful and show that you are curious and smart. Don't settle for scripted throwaway questions like "how many of your SDRs hit quota."

Action Tip #4: Research the company you're interviewing with and the interviewer. Write down some unique questions that you are genuinely curious to know the answers to and that are specific to them and their industry.

Make them worry about losing you to another company

If you have spent any amount of time in a sales role you know the power or urgency. Saying "FINAL DAY FOR 30% OFF" has always produced results.

This works when you are interviewing too, which is why it is important to interview with as many companies as possible as quickly as possible.

Let me tell you the dirty little secret of hiring SDRs... Great SDRs don't come around often.

That's not to say most SDR candidates don't have the potential to be great. They absolutely do. But often during an interview process, a small minority of SDRs stand out as truly outstanding because of past successes and/or terrific interviewing skills.

When you apply what I outlined above to demonstrate to a company that you are an outstanding SDR candidate, you must use that to your advantage and negotiate.

ALWAYS NEGOTIATE. Even if you like the initial offer.

Negotiating shows that you have high confidence. See the Job Search Bundle for a script, its free.

Hiring managers are going to hate that I am telling you this, by the way.

Action Tip #5: When you get an offer, don't say YES right away. Politely let them know that you've got multiple opportunities and make a counter offer. (See the Job Search Bundle for a script)

Action Steps

• Start applying for jobs now, do not wait another day.
• Tie your experience directly to the company's value prop.
• Write a list of your unique qualities, skills, and best stories to illustrate them.
• Research the company you're interviewing with and the interviewer. Write down some unique questions that you are genuinely curious to know the answers to and that are specific to them and their industry.
• When you get an offer, don't say YES right away. Politely let them know that you've got multiple opportunities and make a counter offer.

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There are a lot of ways to forecast sales and they all vary in accuracy and complexity. In this article, I will cover the two methods of forecasting sales that I like. One of them is what I use when I need a quick number or am creating a dashboard in a CRM. The other is one I use when I am trying to get the most accurate number.

Let’s dive right in!

To forecast sales you must choose between speed and accuracy.

As a general rule, the quicker the forecast the less accurate it is. With the exception being if you have a tool that does all the hard stuff for you. If you are reading this… I’m going to assume you don’t have a tool.

As mentioned above, there are two primary methods that I like to use when forecasting sales. The ACCURATE method, weighted pipeline and the QUICK method, deal stage forecasting.

The weighted pipeline method is my go-to when I need an accurate forecast. It takes longer but takes more variables into account.

The deal stage pipeline method is my quick method to forecast sales. It’s less accurate but can be good enough depending on how strong your historical data is.

Because you are reading an article about how to forecast sales, let’s cover the more accurate method first. 

How to forecast sales with the weighted pipeline method (The ACCURATE Method)

The weighted pipeline method of forecasting sales requires you to have data on the different types of deals, how long they take to close, and their close rates. This calculation is longer because it requires you to consider more variables.

Let’s dive into the information you will need.

Deal Categories

This is the most important aspect of this calculation. You must segment the deals that the sales team in working into categories. Sometimes this is obvious, you may already have the pipeline divided by company size, industry, or solution. If you don't, here is how you do it. 

First, calculate the close rate across all of the deals. Do this with a previous month or quarter that is long enough in the past that most of the deals that are going to close would have closed already. 

Now that you have that number, categorize all of those deals by company size, industry, or solution being sold. Whichever categorization has the most impact on close rate should be how you categorize the deals for the weighted pipeline method.

Example

In Q1 there were 100 deals in the pipeline and 32 of them closed over a 4 month period. Giving us a close rate of 32%.

Let's divide those deals and calculate close rate by industry and see what it looks like.

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Notice when we organize the deals by industry there is not that large of a difference between the close rates. The most notable is Ecommerce at 30% but with only 4/13 it doesn't tell us much. 

Let's try dividing those deals and calculate close rate by company size and see if that gives us better categories. 

Notice the clear segmentation here. Under 100 employees clearly has the highest close rate with 101-500 11% less and 501+ another 7% lower. This is clearly a better way to categorize our deals for this analysis. 

Time frame to close a deal in each category

Knowing your categories is a great first step but in order for us to create the most accurate sales forecast possible, we will need to know how long a deal in each category typically takes to close (we call this “sales cycle”).

This is a simple calculation. Take your historical deal data and look how long it took for a deal to go from “created” to “closed.” Most CRM systems allow you to run a report to tell you this but you can do this in excel if yours doesn't.

Example

We take our closed deal data, categorize it by company size, and calculate the average amount of days it takes to close a deal in that category. See below

Percent of deals that close in each category

We calculated the close rate in our example of how to identify your own categories. If you already had your categories you will need to calculate that now. 

Calculating the close rate is simple, but you must decide what to use as a starting point. I like “deal created” as a starting point for calculating the close rate. 

Simply take how many deals closed and divide it by how many total deals there was in the pipeline during that time frame.

Note: Make sure you choose a time frame that was far enough back so you have an accurate idea of the close rate. If you choose a recent month or quarter you may be looking at a lower close rate because there are still active deals in the pipeline. 

Example forecast calculation

Here is the scenario. It’s halfway through Q4 and the CEO wants to know where you think the sales team is going to land against their quota. Let’s use the example data from above to forecast Q4.

Historical Data

Using that historical data and some sample data, let's calculate a forecast.

Example Sales Forecast

If you would like the calculator seen above, fill out the form below.

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As you can see in the spreadsheet above, we calculate the estimated sales with the specific close rate for each category. After calculating forcasted deals we multiply that by the average deal size and total all of the categories together to get our estimated revenue.

Note: This is estimating revenue from your existing pipeline. It does not take into account any new meetings that will be booked between the date of the analysis and the end of the quarter. If that would influence your sales forecast, take it into account.

How to forecast sales with the deal stage method (The QUICK Method)

This next method of sales forecasting is quick but lacks the number of variables necessary to be as accurate as the weighted pipeline method. That being said, depending on the accuracy of your historical data, this method will get you close.

Let’ take a look at the information you need for this calculation 

Deal Stages

To use the deal stage method you must assign a probability that a deal in each specific deal stage will close. You should have this built out in your CRM system but let’s use the following stages for this example.

Close rate by deal stage

Ah, more math… fun! The next data point you need is the probability that a deal will close thats in each deal stage. You can find this by looking at historical data and calculating how many deals were won vs. lost at each specific stage. 

Here is some sample data we will be using.

That’s all the data you need for this! Simple, I know. Let’s run this forecast method with the same example data we used in the weighted pipeline example.
Example

Active deals in the pipeline: 230

First, we must count how many deals are in each one of these stages.

Now let’s calculate the expected wins (how many will close).

Finally, let's put in the calculator to get our forecast.

The process of forecasting sales

Forecasting sales is an important part of business planning. It is also a very stressful part. Nothing is ever guaranteed and when forecasting sales and that’s ok. Your job is to give leadership the best possible guess that you can muster. There are a lot of ways to do it, some are better than others. 

The two methods of forecasting sales we covered in this article are both respected ways to forecast sales. Give them a try, report your forecast to leadership, and get back to running an effective sales team. 

Forecasting sales doesn’t make deals close. Effective leadership and sales process does, so focus most of your energy on that. 

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It is no mystery that your sales pipeline is a VERY important part of your business. 

The catch is that 63% of companies have ineffective sales pipelines.

*Why?*

Because they don’t take the time to learn how to improve a sales pipeline.

If you don’t want to be like these companies, keep on reading!

Analyze Your Current Pipeline To Find Inefficiencies

Look at your current pipeline, and figure out what stages are the most inefficient. Specifically, you’ll want to find where your deals are falling off, and why this is happening.

Once you know which stages are inefficient, you will be able to create a plan on how to improve each individual stage. (I cover this later down)

Calculate Funnel Conversions

The conversion rate of your sales pipeline is the percentage of leads who close. 

Beyond that, you will also have conversion rates that represent the difference between each stage in your pipeline.

But when calculating your total funnel conversions within your sales pipeline, I am talking about the leads at the beginning of your sales process to the number of deals closed. 

You can figure out your funnel conversion rate by dividing the total number of conversions by the total number of leads who enter your funnel, finally multiply this by 100 to make it a percentage. 

Another important aspect to calculate is every single conversion rate in between the stages of your funnel.

This will help you understand which stages need your attention. 

Pro Tip: Another great aspect of calculating your funnel conversions, is to be able to compare each member on your team to the company average. This allows you to give more personal feedback to each and every sales rep, and to understand what they are good at on a deeper level. (more on this later)

Think past the numbers

Keep in mind that some drop-offs between stages are warranted. Here is an example: if your largest drop off is between the discover to demo stage because 50% of discovery meetings don’t qualify, the demo stage likely isn’t the problem. The real problem is the quality of prospects (the stage before the pipeline). 

So before you can decide if a stage is underperforming, ask yourself, “should this be higher?”

And once you have a proper analysis of the stage(s) that need the most work, it is time for the next step!

How To Improve a Sales Pipeline

Daily Activities

Just like building a sales pipeline, the key here is to do a ton of activities. 

The top three revenue increasing activities are cold calling, cold emailing, and LinkedIn outreach. (Make these your primary activities!)

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of tracking everything that is going on in your sales efforts. This is the only sure way to learn how to improve a sales pipeline.

Consistency is another great aspect to keep in mind. All too often revenue starts to increase and then reps decrease their activity. Don’t do this!

Ability of Each Sales Rep

Each rep has their own skill level that acts as the building blocks of your sales team. 

As I mentioned in the ‘calculate funnel conversion’ above, the best feedback comes from understanding the team averages and how each rep measures up to it. 

This is because the best way to improve each rep’s skill level is to give them the most specific feedback possible. 

Giving blanket feedback to your team will only waste time, not help them to improve.

Here are some metrics from an imaginary sales team. 

Psst. This is from our metric analysis template, download it for quick use!

As you can see with these SDR’s, #1 focuses primarily on emails, #2 & #3 are mostly focused on calls, and #4 is in the middle. 

This allows me to understand a few things about this team’s performance, but the biggest insight is how reps #1 and #4 have a lower total activity conversion rate. Helping them increase their activity conversion will have a huge impact on their overall performance.

Now that I know which reps need help with one specific task, I can coach them accordingly.

Sales Training Programs

There are two simple questions that will let you know if you need sales training (or any training) for your team.

1. Is your team meeting your activity expectations? 
2. Is there a clear process that your team follows?

If you answer no to one or both of these questions, you want to get that handled first. Training programs are designed to help organized teams that have tracked their efforts and results. If your team does not have a clear process nor expectations, then these programs won’t be as effective.

After you know what exactly needs to be improved, it’s time to consider sales training. 

The best programs have these aspects in common: 

• Remote support
• Live sessions 
• Reinforcement  
  

In another post, I cover the 10 best sales training programs.

How to Increase the Quality of Your leads

One of the most common inefficiencies in your conversion rate is when the team is targeting the wrong prospects. This decreases the time spent with sales-ready high-value leads.

Imagine this: you have enterprise deals on your prospecting list, but your product isn’t mature enough and doesn’t have a complete product-market fit. The odds of your team closing an enterprise deal is almost impossible. This would be the wrong type of prospect.

I find the best way to increase the quality of leads is to organize my sales dashboard by highest to lowest priority, instead of by date. This allows your team to instantly see which leads are the most likely to increase revenue.

On the other side of things, it is just as important to let go of the dead leads.

It can be frustrating to wave goodbye to a lead that you have nurtured a relationship with over the last few weeks or months. 

Although, once they have stated they are not interested, or if they won’t move to the next stage of your pipeline it is best to stop spending time on them. 

This takes an experienced eye, but learning to identify dead leads will save you time. 

How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle

It is no secret that B2B companies can take a long time to close -- in fact the average time to close a B2B sale is 4 months!

This is a problem because the longer your prospect has time to change their mind or find another solution means the less likely you are to close with them.

The best ways to decrease your sales cycle time is to:

• Reduce time between follow-ups
• Give your prospects more information upfront to reduce their decision making time

Call "lost opps”

One of the lowest hanging fruit of easy prospects to close is lost opps. 

Lost opps are when a prospect has seen your demo or had an intro call but never closed. This group of people already knows about your offer and have had some time to think about its benefits.

In a nutshell, these lost opps are the lowest hanging fruit on your list of prospects.

Hire more people 

That way you can go sit on a beach in Thailand and drink mai tais all day!

Hahaha ya right, I wish it were as easy as it sounds…

The truth of the matter is that building a sales team is quite difficult and time-consuming. 

But once you have a fully functioning team, the results will be astounding. 

So to hire the best sales reps, first make sure you know what type of sales rep you are looking for. 

The best sales reps are emotionally intelligent and have a high work ethic. 

Not only that, they should have a track record of success.

Beyond that, look for candidates who believe they are capable of great things but acknowledge that they haven’t done it yet. 

Aside from asking specific sales interview questions, take your top candidates out to dinner to get to know them as a person, and look for past experiences that demonstrate these traits. 

Implement tools to boost your team's productivity

Collaboration tools and CRM's are a must for any sales team. Not only that but as your team scales, you will need a stack of tools to keep productivity up. 

It is hard to recommend tools without knowing the full situation of your company because each team is a different size with unique problems across an array of industries.

But the most popular CRM’s around are Salesforce and Hubspot. 

And the most popular collaboration tools are Slack and GChat.

Be careful though, it is easy to get ahead of yourself and try to use 50 new tools in a single day. 

The best way to do this to make sure productivity doesn’t halt is to only add 1 tool to your stack at a time. This gives your team time to figure it out and utilize 1 tool to its fullest capabilities before starting with the next tool. 

Execution And Metric Tracking

Once you are confident that you have identified what needs to be improved, and how to improve it, it is time to execute. 

Like all areas of business, tracking your inputs and outputs is the only sure way to improve. Because in the future this will allow you to analyze how you accomplished your results and why.

A great way for your team to hold each other accountable is to be able to see everyone’s metrics publicly. Most CRM’s have this option. 

Making your metric tracking public will give each team member more motivation to improve. 

What Is A Good B2B Sales Conversion Rate? 

It is important to pay attention to the B2B conversion rate within your industry. Otherwise, it is just not a relevant comparison. 

But to give you an average number to compare to, Salesforce found that “Conversion rate from opportunity to deal is 6%.”

In other words, the average conversion rate of a B2B sales organization is 6%. 

I’ll say it again, only pay attention to the B2B conversion rate within your industry!

That’s a wrap!

And finally, the last thing I’ll say is:

Never.

Ever.

Under any circumstances,

Make excuses.

There is always a way to increase your revenue, it just takes work. 

If this post helped you learn how to improve a sales pipeline, let me know!

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From our experience at Vouris as experts in the sales space, we know a particular struggle as old as time itself:

The Sales Representative vs The Gatekeeper.

Okay, so maybe that’s a little dramatic, but getting repeatedly stonewalled by gatekeepers is a real issue that salespeople face, and it can get incredibly frustrating.

There’s a key problem with how many teams prepare their representatives for gatekeeper conversations:

→ They give them a basic cold call script with loose pointers about handling gatekeepers.

But if you boil it down to blindly relying on a standard cold call script…the gatekeeper is going to win.

That’s because their script is quite literally built to handle your team’s script.

So, what do you do?

Here’s our approach:

Define your order of objectives.‍

1. Get transferred to the decision maker.

This is the number one priority. Without reaching the decision maker, you’ll just be wasting your time and won’t be able to have a productive conversation.

2. Get a time to call back to reach the decision maker.

You should always ask for a better time to call back if you aren’t redirected to the decision maker right away. Leaving a message with the gatekeeper may result in your message being lost in translation, or never being delivered at all.

3. Ask qualification questions.

These questions tell you whether the person who answered your call is qualified to use your tool. These questions help you get more context to determine your next steps.

4. Ask discovery questions.

These questions are used in the conversation in order to position your product as the tool for them. These questions are only useful if the gatekeeper knows the answers.

5. Use a script

Always be one step ahead of your gatekeeper by preparing a script beforehand. Luckily, we’ve got you covered in this department.

Use a script that’s designed specifically to handle gatekeepers. Like this one:​​​

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Gatekeepers’ scripts are usually designed to quickly take control of conversations and funnel callers into a couple of categorical brush-offs.

So, how do you get past that?

The magic of the script above is subtle, but very powerful - it’s all about the tone and keeping conversational control.

In the intro, you’re asking for the decision and introducing yourself like a friend.

When the gatekeeper starts to run through their script/initial questions, your next level is to regain control by asking specific questions.

Remember, these are your objectives (in order):

• Get transferred to the decision maker.
• Get a time to call back to reach the decision maker.
• Ask qualification questions.
• Ask discovery questions
• Use a script

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It is safe to say we all know that:

Consistently closing deals is impossible without a system in place. 

Worse of all, it feels like you are accomplishing nothing because the metrics are not tracked. 

Organizing thoughts without structure doesn’t help anyone, that’s why learning how to build a sales pipeline is a necessity for any sales team. 

So if you want to increase your revenue, then keep on reading.

What Is A Sales Pipeline?

The goal of a sales pipeline is to increase revenue by tracking the buyer’s journey. This is effective because you can cater your efforts to best match which stage a lead is in during your sales process. 

This pipeline allows you to see where each lead is within the stages of your sales process, and track every relevant metric. Knowing where deals are slowing down and which actions are bringing in the most revenue is the only sure way to increase the bottom line. 

Another advantage of a sales pipeline is to be able to breakdown goals into smaller manageable chunks. This allows reps to have daily goals that are the building blocks of larger goals. 

Different companies have their unique sales process, and their pipelines reflect that. It is common for a single company to keep track of multiple pipelines for each different product or service they sell. 

Common Sales Pipeline Stages 

Each industry has its own standards for what is common and can produce the best results. 

To provide a consistent and quality experience, practice taking each and every lead through the stages of your pipeline. Although on infrequent occasions, a prospect will jump ahead some stages. If this happens, make sure to cater to the prospect. If they are hungry for your offer do not make them wait. 

Here are the most common stages that I see time and time again.

Prospecting (the stage before pipeline stages)

Before a deal is added to your pipeline it will be in a prospecting stage. This is where marketing and sales will be working to build interest in your product or service. To do this, you are going to need a prospecting sequence. This allows you (or your SDR team) to focus on the most effective activities by prioritizing them. This is super helpful for prospecting across multiple channels.

(If you don’t already have a prospecting sequence, check out our ultimate sequencing guide)

Note: Prospecting is separate from your sales pipeline stages. It's what I call "pre-pipeline."

Now that we have differentiated, lets get into the common sales pipeline stages.

Discovery 

This stage is for when there is an initial meeting is meant to learn more about the prospects needs, and give them a high-level overview of what your product/service can help them with. 

This is a great stage to do s deeper qualification for each lead. This way you know if they are a good fit before going through the entire sales process.

Operations: A deal should be created and put in the Discovery stage when a discovery meeting is scheduled.

Demo 

This next stage is when there is a scheduled meeting to show the prospect the capabilities of your offering. If you are selling software, you’ll want to give them a demo over Zoom that showcases how your product/service can help them. 

(Depending on your product/service, you can combine the discovery and demo meetings)

Pay attention to your client's pain points and what is most interesting to them. 

Operations: A deal should be put in the Demo stage when a demo is scheduled.

Proposal 

Provide your client with a plan to address the price and implementation method of your offer. 

Powerful proposals are created around how your company can aid your potential client’s problems. This can be done by comparing your price to the amount of value the potential client will receive. It should also answer this question: "Why will your offering be better than the other vendors your client has seen recently?"

Operations: A deal should be put in the Proposal stage when a proposal meeting has taken place.

Negotiation 

The negotiation stage is useful if you sell a more complex product that requires back and forth negotiations on contract terms, services, and price.

Operations: A deal should be put in the Negotiation stage when the prospect indicates intent to move forward and has brought up potential changes in the original proposal or a contract has been sent.

Closed Won

Congratulations! Now it’s time to complete your side of the deal. (and of course, send over a contract that reflects the negotiated deal.)

Operations: A deal should be put in the Closed Won stage when the contract is signed.

Closed Lost

Don’t worry if this happens, it is inevitable to have some lost deals. Ask for a referral from everyone, regardless if they buy or not!

This stage is important because it will give you information on why a deal didn't close which you can use to improve the product, or your process. For this, make sure you have a "closed lost reason" field where the sales rep indicates why a deal was lost.

Operations: A deal should be put in the Closed lost stage when the prospect tells the sales rep they are not going to move forward.

How To Build A Sales Pipeline From Scratch 

Define the stages of your pipeline

The key is to start out simple and not overthink things. Once you have collected data you can finetune your pipeline.

At this point, action is more important than planning too far ahead into the unknown. 

To start out, use the stages I gave you in the previous example or study the pipeline stages of other companies within your industry that closely resembles what you want to become. This is better than starting from a blank doc, because the other companies will have the knowledge and experience that you do not have. 

Action Step: Study the pipeline stages of companies within your industry to determine your own stages. 

Goals

Define your target market and set goals for your company. 

What does your pipeline need to look like to have a healthy revenue flow? This is so you can start to build your goals out backward.

Narrow down what your target market looks like to be able to provide the best experience for them. 

In the beginning, this might be a little bit of a shot in the dark because too many variables are unknown (like your close rate). That’s ok, but as time goes on you will be able to perfect your goal setting, so it is important to start now. 

Action Step: Define your target market and set long-term goals that are tied to daily activities. 

Keep activity consistent

The fact of the matter is that when you are learning how to build a sales pipeline from the ground up, you are going to have to do a lot of activities. 

At these early stages in your business’s sales process, it is crucial to build momentum by keeping your sales activity consistent. 

The top three revenue increasing activities are cold calling, cold emailing, and LinkedIn outreach.

Once again, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of tracking everything that is going on in your sales efforts. This is the only sure way to learn how to build a sales pipeline that is outstanding.

In another article, I cover the best sales development metrics to be tracking. 

Action Step: Keep your sales activities consistent and track every metric.

Perfecting Your Sales Pipeline 

Once you have a nice track record of deals closed, it is time to analyze your metrics to understand what your most important priorities are, and what priorities are less urgent.

Analyzing your metrics is without a doubt the best way to increase your sales pipeline.

The quick rule of thumb is the revenue goal divided by the close rate.

For example, if you have a $1M quota and a 10% close rate you need $10M in the pipeline.

A common problem I see is when a sales rep (or team) slows down the actions at the beginning of the pipeline (prospecting, inbound lead conversion). This typically happens when a sales team is busy closing deals. The team will have a great month followed by a slow month because new pipeline dried up.

Without engaging with new prospects, there will be fewer leads coming in to close. 

Action Step: Analyze your metrics to understand how to perfect your sales pipeline.

Hire more people 

Scaling, scaling, scaling. The three buzz words of today!

But here’s the thing, hiring at the wrong time can be detrimental.

Hiring too late can seriously slow down the growth rate of your business. Hiring too soon can take your business into debt.

You should seriously consider hiring your first sales rep when:

• You close at least 10 deals, each with at least a LTV of $5k
• You have been handling all of the sales yourself successfully for 90-180 days
• You have a clear sales process that is working

Implement tools to boost your team's productivity. 

A CRM is a must for any sales team. Not only that, but your team will need a stack of tools while striving for maximum productivity. 

It is hard to recommend tools without knowing the full situation of your company because each team is a different size with unique problems across an array of industries.

But the most popular CRM’s around are Salesforce and Hubspot. 

Action Step Summary

1. Study the pipeline stages of companies within your industry to determine your own stages. 

2. Define your target market and set long-term goals that are tied to daily activities. 

3. Keep your sales activities consistent and track every metric.

4. Analyze your metrics to understand how to perfect your sales pipeline.

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Becoming a successful sales development representative (SDR) is a fantastic journey that will stay with you through life. You'll learn all kinds of essential skills connected to sales, communication, relationship building, and many others. You'll also learn how businesses work and why prospects react to certain features and benefits.

To start as an SDR, you need ambition and drive to learn from the bottom up. You'll need to work hard, stay organized, and learn to deal with rejection while staying positive. If you want to stick around for the long term, you'll have to develop resiliency, calmness under pressure, and be able to think on your feet.

To become a successful SDR, you need these key traits:

• Work ethic 
• Lifelong learning
• Resilience 
• Positivity
  

To make it big, you have to be ready to work for it. Relying solely on personality and natural talent to carry you through is not a strategy for consistent success. Instead, you must be humble and take each day as an opportunity to learn and improve. 

This is easier said than done, especially during the repeated blows from a prospect saying “No.”

As a new SDR, success is learning and development.

In the first month, your main focus will be onboarding and training. In these onboarding and training sessions, the average SDR will ask a few questions and take some notes. At the end of the day, they shut their laptops and go home. Given that most people forget 50% of what was presented within 60 mins, this is the first opportunity for a successful SDR to distinguish themselves by staying sharp and demonstrating the ability to internalize what they learn.

If you want to be a successful SDR do what successful SDRs do:

Successful SDRs don’t “shut their laptops and go home.” They take time to revise their notes and do deeper researching. Even after working a full work day, the most successful sales development reps prioritize learning quickly.

Part of learning quickly is asking questions. When being trained, there is a common fear of asking ‘silly’ questions. The average SDR does not want to put their hand up for worry of embarrassing themselves with something they think everybody else already understands. 

Don't be average.

Successful SDRs are the ones who are quick to ask a question and are always proactive in identifying and filling their knowledge gaps.

Action Tip: Dedicate time each week to review what you learned and read or listen to a sales book.

What should you spend your time learning to help you be a successful SDR?

It can be easy to go down rabbit holes on topics that don't have that much impact on your success.

Instead of wasting you time on things that don't really matter, try prioritizing your learning in these four areas:

#1: Learn the Product 

Learn WHY the product you're selling exists, not just how it works. Spend your energy developing a deep understanding of the problem your product solves and how your prospects may be trying to solve that problem without your solution.

The more you understand the product and how it solves customer problems, the better you'll be able to hold an intelligent conversation. You'll come across as someone who's well-versed in the area, understands problems and solutions, and "deserves" to be there!

#2: Create Customer Case Studies

Do you use case studies in your sales? If not, you probably should consider it.

Case studies and other forms of social proof can be incredibly helpful when you do them right.

If you're wondering, "OK, but which case study should I sent to the prospect?", all you have to do is look for the most relevant customer story you have on file. If you study case studies, you'll quick see a pattern in various prospects' experiences, problems, and the solutions they're most excited about.

Lastly, make sure you memorize customer names & job titles (make sure you have permission to share) and drop them into conversation. Learn to tell a story about why somebody like the prospect you are speaking with is already benefiting from what your product/service does. People are curious about what their peers are up to, so make sure you know.

#3: Identify Your Target Market

Immerse yourself in the world of your prospects. Read their industry news. Go to events. Join all the LinkedIn groups and follow the hashtags. Use the knowledge you gain to think about what the prospect is likely to be doing before they pick up your phone call and how this might affect your approach to them. A successful SDR is informed, empathetic, and can put people at ease (quickly).

#4: Develop Your Sales Skills (Forever!)

An average SDR will occasionally read sales content to help them learn, most likely on a Friday afternoon as they procrastinate, waiting for the weekend. 

A successful SDR identifies their strengths & weaknesses and creates specific development goals. They are not afraid to ask their manager for role play practice, or pitch family members.

What should you do to ensure consistency as an SDR?

Being a top performing SDR requires consistency in your activity and consistent growth. If you don't develop the right skills, you'll feel like you're constantly juggling chainsaws.

But if you work on the right things, you'll turn into an appointment setting machine! Instead of feeling the pressure of your quota and frustration from a tough stretch, you'll know that you can fall back on the right habits, tactics, and systems to be a high performer.

Here are three skills to pay attention to while in the SDR role.

#1: Develop Great Time Management

Prospecting is always the priority. But, if you're expected to hit aggressive activity numbers, you can't afford to approach your job without a clear plan and structure for your daily wok.

An average SDR starts work by checking their email for 30 mins before making a call. This might work from time to time, but it's not the best way to approach things.

Instead, a successful SDR blocks out the start of every day to fill their pipeline with new prospects. Less important tasks are scheduled for the end of the day when energy levels are lower.

This is so, so important for SDRs. Your energy levels are critical for successful cold calling - don't take this lightly!

#2: Build Rapport, Ask Questions, Listen & Close

Sales conversations should be based on the needs of the prospect, not just repetitive script-based dialogues. This is the difference between creating engaging, interesting conversations versus situations where the prospect feels like they're being talked "at".

An average SDR will tell the prospect about their product or service.

A successful SDR will have a natural conversation allowing the prospect to speak freely and when the time is right, they will ask for a meeting to show how they can solve a relevant challenge.

This is one of the most fundamentally important differences between average reps and top performers, so make sure you learn to engage with the human being on the other end of the phone, in a way that's friendly, positive, and helpful.

Action Step: Use this 4-part cold call script builder to ask questions and lead a productive conversation.

#3: Know Your Conversion Rates 

You must know how many dials/emails you need to book a meeting, along with your other basic sales metrics!

An average SDR has a strategy of hope and gets increasingly desperate as the month goes on. 

A successful SDR knows their numbers and focuses on doing the daily activity to achieve forecasted results. 

Action Step: Do the math on how many calls and emails it takes you to book a meeting. Use that to set clear daily expectations for yourself that will lead to hitting quota!

Attitude > Metrics

Yes, metrics are important. That being said, having a poor attitude will make hitting your expectations near impossible. To be a successful SDR, here are a few things you should do:

👉 Be at your desk early. Take extra time to prepare your day, create prospect lists and read industry news.

👉 Keep your CRM up to date. You never know when senior management might dip into CRM to check the results. If your activity and metrics aren’t properly logged, even if you are successful, nobody will be able to see it.

👉 Treat your colleagues as customers.  Sales is a competitive environment, and passions can run high, but it’s really important to treat everybody at work with courtesy and respect. Having a good internal brand will contribute to your success.

👉 Have a hunger for success. Saying you want to exceed your target is one thing. Showing that you want to exceed it is another. Stay focused when prospecting. Go the extra mile and always make an extra call.

👉 Don’t just say you want to be the best, show it. That means being consistent and tenacious, day in, day out!

Longevity in the SDR Role

Writing an article about being a successful SDR would be incomplete without discussing what happens once you have been at it for a while. 

For the typical SDR, fatigue of the ‘daily grind’ will set it around the 10-12 month mark. It is not uncommon for experienced SDRs to expect a promotion simply because they’ve hit their number. If that SDR isn't promoted, they can become demotivated. 

Being a successful SDR requires you to keep your attitude positive. Stay well rested and take time outside of work to unwind. Start each day fresh with a positive attitude and conduct a high volume of work enthusiastically.

Context matters, so without knowing the situation I cannot suggest leaving a company because they won't promote you. That being said, here is my rule of thumb.

1. Keep a positive attitude.
2. Exceed expectations
3. Ask for a promotion
4. If it looks like a promotion wont come, commit to giving it all you’ve got for two more months. If the situation doesn't change, then start looking for a new company.
   

This process gives your company time to do right by you and it prevents you from making a reactionary decision.

Action step: Ask your manager for an opportunity to take on more responsibility and some clarity on timeline until you could move into the next role. 

You have everything you need to be successful! 

You will become a successful SDR by never giving up and always working hard. Within the profession you will have tough days, weeks and even months. It happens to everyone, it is unavoidable. The true marker of success is not how you manage the good times, it’s easy to do well when you’re on a high, it’s how you deal with the tough times that will really set you apart from others.

Action Steps

1. Dedicate time each week to review what you learned and read or listen to a sales book.
2. Write up a list of your strengths and weaknesses. Seek material & opportunity to enhance your strengths and firm up your weaknesses.
3. Do the math on how many calls and emails it takes you to book a meeting. Use that to set clear daily expectations for yourself that will lead to hitting quota!
4. Ask your manager for an opportunity to take on more responsibility and some clarity on timeline until you could move into the next role. 

In the meantime, if you want more free sales resources, grab our library of tools, templates, and more below:

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So, you’ve decided you’d like to become an SDR. Congrats! Welcome to the club. 

Did you know you can (roughly) predict and control how long you’ll be in the role? Well, you can! That’s what we’ll be exploring today, as well as the different paths possible for you to climb.

(To refresh for anyone who needs it, SDR= Sales Direct Representative, or someone who is responsible for reaching out to potential customers and scheduling sales meetings. How? Cold calling, LinkedIn outreach, curating and sending emails to the right recipients.)

How long should you be a Sales Development Representative? 

Let’s start with the market, which can vary pretty broadly. You’ll find opportunities in a plethora of industries (think anything from finance to food and wine) - but once the industry and its corresponding company is chosen, your longevity within it can be roughly predicted.

Before we cover the length of time you can expect to be on the SDR team, I want to define a few company categories for you.

• Small Business (SMB) - 0-100 employees, $1M-$5M in annual revenue.
• Mid-Market (SME) - 101-500 employees, $10M-$1B in annual revenue.
• Enterprise - Over 1000 employees, Over $1B in annual revenue.
  

Here is the general overview of how long you can expect to be an SDR at a company based on its target market (the type of businesses they are selling to).

• Small Business (SMB) - 9-15 months.
• Mid-Market - 12-24 months.
• Enterprise - 18-48 months.

SMB SDR

As an SDR selling into SMB, you can expect being promoted faster. This is typically the lowest paying SDR role and requires a high volume of activity. This is because SMB sales follows a more transactional process with less complexity the you’ll normally encounter with a larger company. 9-15 months is typically how long we see SMB SDRs in the role.

Who is the best fit for an SMB SDR role? You if you...

• Have a high work ethic.
• Don’t like managing multiple priorities at once. 
• Want to close deals quickly.

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Mid-Market SDR

SDRs who are selling into the Mid-market typically are in the role for longer. This is because mid-market sales cycles tend to be longer with larger deal sizes. As a Mid-market SDR, expect to earn more money but wait longer for commission payouts. You will also be responsible to managing a more complex workflow because you will have to reach out to multiple prospects at each company you are targeting. 12-24 months is typically how long we see Mid-market SDRs in the role.

Who is the best fit for an Mid-Market SDR role? You if you…

• Are very organized.
• Comfortable managing multiple decision makers at a company.
• Want to be involved is more strategic selling. 

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Enterprise SDR

SDRs selling into enterprise are both in the role for the longest and the highest paid. Deal sizes are high and sales cycles are long, 12-18 months to close a deal is common. You’re amidst the largest, most profitable companies. Expect a complex and strategic workflow with lots of internal and external stakeholders to manage. When it does come time to get promoted into a closing role, you will be among the highest earning sale people. 18-48 months is typically how long we see Enterprise SDRs in the role.

Who is the best fit for an Enterprise SDR role? You if you...

• Are incredibly organized.
• Can keep track of multiple stakeholders within one company.
• Are good at leveraging internal resources.
• Are patient.

The SDR Role is a Journey

The path you will take as an SDR varies from person to person. Some SMB SDRs get promoted to AEs and after a few years transition to an enterprise SDR position. Others start in Mid-market and stay there.

Don't get caught up in creating an exact plan for your career path. Things will always change, so treat your career as a journey!

That being said, make sure you have your direct next step in mind. For example, an SDR in their 7th month prospecting into SMB would ideally be planning possible moves to a closing role or a mid-market SDR position. Growth is vital as an SDR - no matter how long the actual growth takes. Keep your eyes ahead.

Choose your industry

One of the best decisions you can make early in your career is picking an industry you really like and deciding to become an expert. Having a strong track record of success in your role AND expertise in a specific industry will lead to never being out of a job. 

You will earn more, hold jobs longer, and ultimately be more successful faster. 

This is why I always recommend SDRs find an industry they enjoy and go all in!

Sales Development will build a foundation for your future success. 

Being in a sales development role at any company is challenging. You will have to work hard and have a thick skin to be successful in the role. That being said, its very rewarding and will help you build the foundation needed to have a wildly successful career in sales. 

Don't focus too much on “how long” it's going to take for you to get promoted from the SDR role. Instead, fall in love with the process and watch as your career progresses.

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I own a sales book that was printed 96 years ago. It's one of my favorite possessions.

It still smells like cigarette smoke. I can imagine the first owner sitting at a mahogany desk with a cigarette in his mouth while turning the pages.

There it is, right on the bookshelf next to some modern staples.

I bought this book on eBay because I was curious if any of the advice Ferris and Collins gives is applicable today. There is a specific passage that I want to show you, its really good.

Enthusiasm is contagious, isn't that some old sales wisdom. This really got me thinking...

I'm sick of watching SDRs water down their calls into these lukewarm, dead-on-the-inside, half-hearted pitches.

Why is this the new normal?

Personally, I think it's because most SDRs see themselves as significantly inferior to the people they're pitching to. This results in:

• nervous behavior (shaky voice, dry mouth, stuttering)
• negative thinking
• a terrible call

Well guess what - I hate seeing this happen, and it happens all the time.

When I train SDRs, here's my ONE quick fix for all this weakness. I tell my team:

For the next week, do not look at the title of the person you are calling. Just focus on discovering if they have a problem that we solve and get excited that we can solve it.

The interesting thing is when you don't but the prospect on a pedestal you can wipe away the scared thinking and you're free to speak more naturally. WITH enthusiasm.

The amazing thing is you will find yourself disassociating with someone's pedigree and start focusing on what's on the other end of the phone, a human being.

Combine that with enthusiasm for your product or service and you have a recipe for success. For example

Remember that cold call you got a month ago?

Probably not...

Remember the ShamWow guy???

Everyone does.

How could you not remember him?

To be clear, you don't have to be corny like Mr. Shamwow to show enthusiasm. Here is what you can do to be more enthusiastic and prevent yourself from feeling inferior to your prospect.

• Educate yourself on the industry so you can speak their language
• Speak to as many strangers as you can to hone your skill of connecting with anyone
• Learn what about your product delights customers the most so you can use that to excite both you and your prospects
• If you're hesitating to ask a question because you feel inferior to your prospect just ask it #NoPainNoGain

Enthusiasm, what a fundamental concept that I hadn't thought about in a long time. It took a 96 year old book to remind me of the importance of being excited about what you are selling. I knew it was important, but it was knowledge locked away in the back of my brain, hidden behind email "tricks" and cold calling "sequences." I'm happy to have it brought back to the forefront and I hope you are too.

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Our backs were against the wall. It was my team of 12 sales reps and I at the company standup, and I was shaking. We’d just raised a big Series B, and everyone was expecting big results.

But the team was struggling.

We were way behind quota with just a week to go. It basically wasn’t going to happen, and my team and I felt down on our luck. Something needed to happen. My team needed a spark, and I’d been racking my brain for days to figure out what that’d be. But up to that point, I’d drawn blank...

Find yourself in a similar situation? I feel for you. Being in charge of a struggling sales team is never fun. You’ve got the weight of everyone’s expectations on your shoulders, coupled with this almost panicked urge to hop on a table and give some sort of epic ra-ra speech that motivates an amazing comeback. 

But like anyone who’s been in this situation will tell you, motivating a sales team isn’t that simple. It requires leadership. It requires empathy. And it requires a lot of grit. 

After being thrown into that gauntlet more times than I can count, I learned that it can be done. In fact, anyone can do it. There’s a science to it. A repeatable system. And today, I want to teach it to you.

In this post, I’m going to break down the sales leadership philosophy I’ve developed helping dozens of startup sales teams. Then I’ll give you some actionable tips you can implement right away to motivate a turnaround with your sales team. 

But before I do that, let me finish my story…

Chomping at the bit to get your sales team optimized? Let’s talk. 

How I Motivated My Team When Sales Were Down

The entire company was packed in our small conference room for an "all hands" meeting. There wasn't enough space in the room and 10 people had to stand outside and cup their hands over their ears just to hear. I was one of those people.

The CEO was giving his update and said: "As for the SDR team, they’re not going to hit quota this month. Not even close."

My jaw hit the floor. You never claim defeat before the final bell tolls.

"Hey!" I shouted a little too loud as I squeezed past my colleagues into the conference room. The entire company was staring at me and you could hear a pin drop.

"Don't count us out. Does it look like we’ll hit quota? No. Not even close. But what I can tell you is that if ANY team can do it, it’s this one. Do NOT count us out."

The next day I pulled my team aside in the morning and addressed what happened. We all agreed. We were going to make them eat their words.

What happened next was nothing short of amazing. I’d never seen my team so fired up. They were cheering each other on, laughing together, and booking more meetings than they even thought possible.

Over the next four days, they broke their "most meetings booked in a day" record twice.

And when the final bell tolled, we were short by one meeting.

You would’ve thought we’d beat our quota by 200%. They didn't care that we missed our team quota by one. They were ecstatic that when everyone in the company thought we couldn't get close, we did. And they kept it going, too. The next month was the biggest we’d ever had.

Now at this point you’re probably thinking, “Okay great Kyle. You pulled a Friday Night Lights and rallied your team. But how can I do the same for my team?” Well, there’s a reason I told that story. 

The experience taught me something very important. Something that’s come to form the basis of my entire sales leadership philosophy.

If your sales team is struggling and you want to motivate a turnaround, then the most important thing to keep in mind is this...

The Emotional Wellbeing of Your Sales Team is the Key to Success.

Yeah, we talk about metrics and figures and quotas. But when it comes to sales success, there’s really one factor that dwarfs all the rest: emotion.

You see, every single buying decision is motivated by emotion and justified with logic. Yes, even in B2B. 

When a prospect gets excited by the software you’re selling, it’s not really because it’s going to help their company be more efficient or profitable. They get excited because it’s going to help their career. It’s going to help them make more money or earn the recognition of their peers. Or, oftentimes, it’s going to make their lives easier by taking a frustrating process off their plates.

Those are all emotions.

So when your sales team members get them on the phone, it’s their job to find that emotion, amplify it, and direct it towards a buying decision. 

And in order to do that, they need to be in the right headspace. They need to feel confident. If they don’t, they won’t be able to empathize well with the prospect. They won’t be able to hype the prospect up and amplify their emotions.

And this’ll cause them to struggle.

This is the same phenomenon you see in professional athletes. 

We’ve all seen it. The death of a sibling ruins a rookie’s hot streak, or becoming a parent spurs an underperforming player to turn it around.  It’s the same with sales. It doesn’t have to be something outside the office - maybe the new software sucks and the glitches are making everyone stress out. 

My point: your team’s emotions affect their performance. So if you want to motivate your sales team, you need to build a culture that inspires your reps and makes them enjoy coming to work. 

If morale is low and you need to increase sales, improving the culture is the first place I’d look. Next, I’ll share some tips you can implement right now to do just that.

7 Tips to Build a Winning Sales Culture

1. Build Trust by Listening To Your Sales Team 

No, this doesn’t mean you need to acquiesce to every demand. It just means listen. The troops on the front line know how brutal the battle is - and you need to hear them out if you’re going to be their general. 

Communication with your team is the fastest and easiest way to get to the bottom of a sales slump. When salespeople know they’re being heard, it builds trust. 

So when your team is struggling, the first thing you need to do is ask for their feedback. You need to create an open dialogue, and make sure they feel heard.

So try asking them a few questions like...

- What are their biggest frustrations?

- What is the biggest barrier to hitting their quotas? 

- Who (or what) do they need more help from? 

- What can leadership do to support them?

- What solutions and resolutions are they expecting from leadership?

If you’re going to motivate your sales team, it’s important that they feel like they’re being heard.

For instance, I’ve seen a situation where one veteran rep got funneled all the best leads. Everyone else worked really hard, but even with twice the effort they couldn’t get the same results. 

Naturally, it made the other salespeople resentful, frustrated, and unmotivated. If they’d have felt comfortable making this known to leadership, they would have done it. But at the time, they didn’t... Turnover was (predictably) high, and performance (equally predictably) low. 

It’s crucial to cultivate an environment where everyone feels like their voice matters. Your team needs to see that their thoughts and concerns will not only be listened to - but actually taken into consideration. 

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2. Use Sales Contests to Boost Morale

You can’t have lulls on your sales floor. When there’s a lull, the energy is dead - the meetings don’t get booked and the deals don’t get closed. So when you see a slump happening, you’ll want to get that energy back up ASAP. 

One of the most effective ways to do this is by encouraging a sense of friendly competition. 

How do you do that? 

Have the AEs, sales managers, or even one of the founders come in and do cold calls vs. each other. Let the reps bet on them. Make it a spectacle. 

It’s no secret that sales professionals are competitive, so spectacles like this can be a fun way to shake things up when the mood is getting stale.

I did this once during my startup days.

It was one of our slowest days in an already slow month. One of our founders, a self-professed cold-call wizard, had been giving our Sales Manager a hard time for a couple weeks. 

It was all in good fun, but one day, the Sales Manager wasn't having it. When our founder wandered onto the floor and made a little remark, he threw down a challenge. 

“Cold call contest. Me vs. you. Right here, right now.”

And that’s what happened. Our sales leader and our founder, battling out their professional beef on the phones. Everyone on the floor was silent, watching with bated breath. 

Our sales manager was the first to book a meeting, and the room erupted in cheers. The energy was totally renewed. It’s not just about entertaining people for a moment. We were given a masterclass in cold-calling and a dose of inspiration all in one go.

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3. Make Team Motivation Part of Your Daily Routine

Spectacle is useful, but big flashy moments are for short-term boosts. Pulling the “SALES ARE DOWN” alarm and deploying the motivational posters every time your team’s mood drops is tiring.

That’s because motivation is a lot of work to get going. Jump-starting a dead battery takes a lot of juice. Doing it every month is unsustainable. 

Luckily, motivation also has inertia.

Once you get it going, it’s a lot easier to maintain momentum than if you’re starting and stopping all the time. That’s why I made a point to motivate my team every day.

When I ran an SDR team for a startup, I began each morning with a brief team meeting. I’d point out the previous day’s wins, and talk about what to improve upon today, and check in with my team.

I’d also set a daily objective, and rally everyone around it. But there was a catch - every SDR had to be 100% on board.

If even one SDR didn't think the objective was reasonable we’d stop and discuss. Sometimes, their concern was valid and I’d adjust the objective. Most of the time I would explain my reasoning, usually backed up by math, and end up getting the SDR on board. 

This works only if you foster a culture where SDRs feel comfortable disagreeing with management. If they don't, this feedback loop won't occur and your SDR team will be average or below... Not what we are striving for.

After the daily morning team sync, it was off to the races. The SDRs would go into their days aligned around the objective we’d set and motivated to attain it. 

The takeaway? Motivate your team on a daily basis.

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4. Foster a Good Relationship Between SDRs & AEs

The SDR and AE teams should work together as a cohesive unit. But at a lot of organizations, this isn’t what happens. Oftentimes, there’s a lot of friction between these teams.

At many companies, you might see SDRs getting frustrated because AEs "can't close their meetings", and AEs getting frustrated because the SDRs "don’t send enough quality meetings". 

Not a good team dynamic.

And yet, you see this type of misalignment all the time. And it could be seriously hurting your team morale.

When this happens, your only recourse is to bridge that gap. Close the chasm and get your teams working closer together. 

For instance, when I saw that mutual frustration happening to my startup SDR team, I knew they needed help. 

They were working their butts off, but for whatever reason were struggling to book meetings. 

So I asked the AEs to work side-by-side with the SDRs.

“If the SDR team doesn’t move the needle better,” I told them, “nobody is making any sales this month - or next month. It’s in your best interest to offer a little help building back up your pipeline.” 

The AEs were great salespeople, and they stepped up. They sat down with our SDRs and made cold-calls with them, coached them on emails, and shared helpful tips and tricks from when they were SDRs. They’d started the week grumbling about the SDRs. Now, they were high-fiving them for every meeting booked. 

Their expertise elevated the SDRs, not only lifting their spirits with camaraderie and inspiration, but providing them with useful lessons and tools. They didn’t forget those lessons or how to communicate better with the AEs.

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5. Use Narrative to Motivate Your Sales Team

Startups change. A lot. 

This state of flux requires employees to adapt quickly and often. It can be exhausting. Building a narrative around each of these changes is how you can motivate the team and get them on board. 

Narrative (i.e. a story) provides essential context and structure for understanding change, allowing our brains to process new information faster and retain it more thoroughly. 

The result: employees adapt more quickly and are less burned out by frequent or major changes. 

Once, the founder of my startup dropped a huge change in our laps.

We decided to change our entire target market. Yeah. Big decision. 

Because of this, my team was going to have fewer leads and entirely different messaging. Needless to say, they were going to be less than thrilled. In order for us to be able to execute, I needed to get them excited about the change. I needed them bought in. 

The first step: Get the leader on board. Fortunately, that was easy. I was their leader, and already fully on board with our new strategy. 

The second step: Help everyone understand. The team needed to understand the reason behind the change and agree that it was necessary. Change is hard. Change that feels arbitrary is a lot harder. They needed context for the change.

The third and final step was the most challenging. The team needed a strong motivator to push them to execute. This is where narrative came in.

When it came time to tell my team about the change they jumped on board quickly. There were a few concerns that I addressed and then we shifted our focus quickly. I attribute how well received it was to the narrative I used to explain the change.

Here is the template I used to construct the message and successfully motivate the team to execute.

The "why" behind this change:

Why us:

What happens when this change is successful:

What this means for them:

How we can exceed expectations:

Now I use this template every time. 

You have to expect change, not just react to it. Create a plan that covers "what to do" and "how to communicate it" for major outcomes (new leadership, hirings/firings, etc).

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6. Make Sure Your Goals are Attainable

Setting goals is one of the greatest responsibilities of a sales leader. A general setting a goal for their forces to accomplish must think very carefully about if it is attainable.

Attainability is also about laying out the path to victory in micro-goals. Generals don’t command their soldiers to win battles, they give specific objectives which they know will increase the odds of success. 

This means breaking down your sales goals into attainable micro-goals, or KPIs. 

Maybe 100 demos as a monthly sales target is overwhelming, but you know your team can convert 30% of good conversations into meetings. Your KPI micro-goal could be: “Let’s just have 10 good conversations today!” 

Focus on the step in front of them - not the whole mountain!

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7. Care About Their Lives Outside of Work

I believe that your quality of life impacts your quality of work. If you’re killing it outside of work, your performance is also going to rock. If you’re miserable in your home life, you’ll experience burnout and your work will suffer.  

Pretty simple. 

It goes back to our “professional athletes” metaphor. Feelings affect performance. 

This is why I strive to help my team with their lives outside of work, and why I consider this an essential aspect of motivation. If you don’t invest in your employee’s general wellbeing and happiness, you’ll never be able to motivate them.

In addition to having more motivated and fulfilled employees, there is another benefit of helping your salespeople with their life outside of work.

They won't want to leave the company.

Companies that invest in their employees and help them grow as individuals retain those people. That's a fact. By investing in your team and helping them grow professionally and personally they will follow you loyally. Combine that with a team filled with the right people in the right role and you will have an unstoppable sales team.

Personal Goal Setting workshops were one of my favorite ways of connecting with and motivating my team. Once a quarter, we would all get together in a conference room and spend two hours going through a goal setting worksheet I developed.

Here is the high-level outline.

1. Past quarter reflection
2. Past quarter questionnaire
3. Life assessment
4. Future vision writeup
5. Current quarter goals questionnaire
   

The workshop was to help everyone on the team achieve something they’re striving for. Just because the goal isn't work-related doesn't mean the company won't benefit from that achievement. If one of my salespeople wants to lose 30 lbs, I am going to help them create a plan and hold them accountable. I will congratulate every milestone they share with me. I do this because I truly believe that when they are 30 lbs lighter and feeling fit and healthy, their work-life WILL improve.

It’s Time to Start Motivating Your Sales Team

Alright. Sales have been down for long enough. The team’s morale needs rescuing. Let’s put an end to this. 

As you’ve gathered from this post, leading a sales team is about more than just optimizing the sales process or looking at numbers in your CRM. You need to take care of your people.

Start by sitting down with your team and hearing them out - the first step toward an emotionally healthy headspace, and the foundation of high morale.

As Michael Jordan said, “The mental part is... what separates the good players from the great players.”

Now it’s time to lead your players to greatness. 

Ready to take the next step towards optimizing your sales team? Schedule a free sales assessment. We’ll analyze your data and provide you with a personalized action-plan you can use to improve your sales effectiveness. 

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Hiring a sales rep is no easy task, especially when you are growing a startup. 

To make matters worse there is a lot of conflicting advice out there on when is the best time to start hiring a sales rep. 

But don’t worry, I made this post to guide you through your hiring journey to help ensure that you add the absolute best candidate to your team. 

Know What Kind Of Sales Rep You Are Looking For

The first thing to understand is that sales reps are not one size fits all. Every company has different challenges and upsides. 

Especially in the remote world we live in today, a sales rep from ‘Corporate America’ with a great track record could be the wrong fit or a perfect fit. 

There is one trait that is common across all high performing sales reps. High work ethic. This is a trait that all of your employees should have. But it is even more important in your sales team. 

To break up the types of companies into two groups, we have:

• Early-stage companies without a vetted sales process
• Established companies with a vetted sales process 
  

These two company types need different sales reps. 

Early-stage companies need a more dynamic generalist who can help create the sales process and will be good at whatever you throw at him/her.

Your first few sales department hires are critical, because they will lay down the groundwork for the rest of the team. Not to mention, if you’re an early-stage company, you need more revenue and you need it now. 

As companies grow and mature, they create a sales process based on the results and experiences that have happened thus far. After plenty of time spent testing and tweaking the sales process, a company will only need someone with a high work ethic and experience. 

When a company has a vetted sales process, it is ok to hire someone who is not a dynamic generalist. The primary advantage of a non-dynamic generalist is they are more common and less competitive to hire. 

Someone with a high work ethic who is trainable will soon perform at the standard of the company. This can happen because the groundwork has already been completed, and the new sales rep just needs to follow rules, not create them. 

When Is The Right Time To Hire Your First Sales Rep?

The timing is always tricky, and the fact of the matter is that knowing the correct timing to hire your first sales rep is an opinion. 

But what most of the experienced salespeople can agree on are the bad times to hire your first sales rep. 

In reality, there are only two potential bad options, you can:

• Hire too soon
• Hire too late
  

At first, it is very important that one of the founders is the salesperson in the organization. There are simply too many lessons to be learned from being in direct contact with your customers.

This will help you validate that there are customers who are actually interested in your product/service. As time goes on, being the first salesperson will help you refine your target market, and give you insights on what their pain points truly are. 

In other words, being the first salesperson allows you to listen to the objections of the customers, and figure out how to deal with them. 

This will help you craft your offerings into a more desirable solution for the customers. As an entrepreneur, being in the trenches, chasing down leads, and tweaking your offering to match the needs of your target audience is a great way to create a successful business. 

Once again, knowing when to hire your first sales rep is more an opinion than anything else, but to give you some guidelines to follow,

You should seriously consider hiring your first sales rep when:

• You close at least 10 deals, each with at least a LTV of $5k
• You have been handling all of the sales yourself successfully for 90-180 days
• You have a clear sales process that is working
  

But here’s the thing, if you are able to close the larger accounts consistently by yourself, your resources may be better spent on hiring an SDR. This way you can have the SDR do all of the prospecting and set up meetings for you, then you come in and close the leads. Not to mention, SDR’s are more affordable than sales reps. 

One common problem startups face when hiring the first sales rep is that there are no previous sales standards set. This can happen when a founder has little sales experience or has not closed many deals in the business yet.

And since there are no sales standards set in the company, it can be difficult to tell if a sales rep is performing well or badly. 

To compensate for this, hiring two sales reps at the same time will allow you to better understand what the standard for a high-performing sales rep is vs a bad one. This consumes a lot of resources, and I only recommend this to startups with founders who have little sales experience. 

A common question that companies ask me is:

"Should we hire a group of sales reps, or one at a time?"

This depends heavily on the scale of your business. 

If your business is large, then you can easily hire a group of reps and onboard all of them at the same time. 

But if your business is in the start-up phase, then you won’t have the resources to hire that many people at once. Also hiring a bad sales rep would have a serious impact on your business during the startup phase. 

What this all means: If you have a vetted sales process and enough resources to hire a group of sales reps, then I recommend it. But if you are a startup without a vetting sales process, then hiring one rep at a time is the best solution. 

Make Sure The Sales Rep Has A Track Record Of Success

A proven track record of success means the person has a high chance of generating revenue. 

This is important because you don’t want to waste your time with people who cannot perform. If you are hiring some of your businesses first sales reps, this is even more important! 

Unfortunately, not everyone is telling the truth on their resume. Some of your candidates high performing sales numbers might be a little bit fudged, or an outrageous lie. 

85% of job applicants lie on their resumes…… Yikes!

If that doesn’t demonstrate the importance of validating a candidate’s track record, then I don’t know what will!

A few of my favorite ways to validate anyone’s track record is to reach out to their former co-workers and find other people who can verify the numbers for you. And while you’re at it, ask about what they thought of the candidate you are considering to hire. 

Another good way to validate their track record is to ask about the specific numbers that lead up to the total sales they claim they made. 

If a candidate tells you about how many cold calls they were making per day to get to $X in sales per quarter, ask them questions about how many prospects they looked at in a day, their deal sizes, and closing rate. Start to calculate the math to figure out if all the numbers in the steps add up to what they claim their sales to be.

Chances are if they are lying about their performance numbers, they will not be prepared with all of the numbers around how they actually got to the total sales. Look to see if they are nervous about answering these detailed questions. 

Not only will this help you to understand if they are telling the truth, but it also gives you insight into how thorough they are with their work. 

Look For Someone Who Believes They Are Capable Of Great Things But Acknowledges That They Haven't Done It Yet.

Mindset is everything in sales. Having confidence and believing that your companies offerings are valuable is the first step in convincing the customer that you can solve their pain points. 

The best trait to look for when hiring a sales rep is the “make it happen” attitude. Ask them about past experiences and examples that demonstrate how hungry they are. This “make it happen” attitude is the heartbeat of a high performing salesperson.

Candidates cannot be taught this type of hunger, and must create this desire on their own -- hence why it’s a great trait to look for. 

Get To Know Them As A Person

A great way to make sure you get the best candidate when hiring a sales rep is to ask the best sales interview questions. 

But to give you an overview of these questions, you’ll want to focus on learning the candidate’s experience, and who they are as a person. The exact answer they give is not what’s most important here, It is how the candidate answers your question. 

Some of the best ways that I find to truly get to know someone is to take them out to dinner, and to casually ask them personal questions.

A restaurant setting and aroma is perfect to get people to relax and show you who they really are. Treat them like you would one of your friends.

Plus, who doesn’t like a good meal?

Be Quick To Fire

No one enjoys firing an employee. Not me, not you, not even the devil himself! (well ok he might enjoy it)

So think about it this way, if you keep a poor performing employee in your organization, then other members of your team will start to follow suit. Soon after that, the company culture has shifted in a negative way. 

One thing leads to another, and it is time for a round of layoffs that impact the lives of a lot more than one poor-performing sales rep. 

But all of this could have been avoided if the single bad employee was cut. 

Odds are if you are hiring some of your first sales reps your company is small and you know everyone on a personal basis. The good news is that this means it is a lot harder to hide in the company, and more people are accountable for the actions that they take. 

With a smaller company, it is easier to track the direct effect of an employee and to know their performance numbers. 

The bottom line is that if you can determine an employee is not the right fit, then you have to cut them loose. The earlier you can determine this the better.

I wish you the best of luck with filling your sales rep position! 

I remember my first time hiring a sales rep, and how difficult it was to finally select one of the candidates. I hope this post helped you make your decision.

But if you’re still stuck and need some help, check out what we do.

I look forward to hearing from you!

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The 3 Reasons Cold Calling Matters

#1) Cold calling moves the needle (immediately).

Cold calling is probably the fastest way to catch up to your sales quota over any other form of communication.

#2) Cold calling is the quickest way to get a response.

People ignore emails, but it’s hard to put the phone down to another human being. Cold calling allows you to quickly move through a list of prospects and get responses.

#3) Cold calling helps you build a rock solid pitch, quickly.

Reaching a prospect by phone is not only fast, but allows you to quickly learn about their wants and needs. Understand what kind of language doesn’t work and quickly refine a winning sales pitch.

The Cold Call Script Structure

Of course, every cold call is different, but here’s a structure which should cover most scenarios:

1. Introduction
2. The Path 
3. Finding a Gap
4. The Ask

Let’s break down those 4 parts with the script we use, potential responses and explain what we like about each part.

Part 1: Introduction

This section is all about starting the conversation on the right foot, with the right tone. Many people who are new to sales will default to a timid, apologetic greeting - don't do that. Right from the get go, you want to sound confident and positive.

Here's the simple way I like to start:

‍“Hi my name is <NAME> from <COMPANY>

How’s it going?”

There’s a lot about what to say once you introduce yourself (market research actually leans towards “How are you doing?”)

But, what really matters is energy and confidence!‍

If we come across as positive and upbeat, we are much more likely to get a response.

Part 2: The Path

Next up, you'll give them a quick introduction of what you do and see if you can buy more time with the prospect and start to warm them up.

They say: “I’m doing well”

You say: “That’s great to hear. The purpose of my call is <1 SENTENCE OF HOW YOU CAN HELP THEM> 

For Vouris it would be: “We help to improve the performance of inside sales teams with a proven strategy and process.”

I think we can help you, but I’m not 100% sure. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions and let you decide if we should chat?”

Cold calling is all about buying time with the prospect.

If they agree to continue the conversation with you then you buy more time to move towards an appointment or a sale.

At this point if they say no, you can try to see if there is a better time to call them, or get their email and send through some information or a link to book an appointment.

Let’s see what happens if the prospect agrees to chat

They say: “Sure.”

You say: “Thanks for the time. Typically we <2 DIFFERENT SINGLE SENTENCE VALUE PROPOSITIONS OF HOW YOU CAN HELP THEM>

For Vouris it would be: “we help start up companies whose inside sales teams are struggling with creating a predictable flow of opportunities. Or. they are producing a predictable flow of opportunities but the number of opportunities needs to be higher.”

I’m curious, which one of those resonate with you?

By giving the prospect two options, we can guide the direction of the call.

This part is called The Path because we are leading our prospects on a journey to find the best product/service for them.

Calling and just trying to book a meeting straight away will get a much lower number of people saying yes.

Once we identify the prospect’s problem, it becomes much easier to get them to agree to a meeting as we match our solution to their problem.

Part 3: Finding a Gap

These two value propositions now get a response:

They say: “Yes. We don’t have a predictable flow of opportunities”

You say: “Let me ask. Why do you think that is?”

Now you let your prospect talk.

We want to find a gap where we can get them interested in our solution and book an appointment.

After you let them talk about the reasons why they think that is, you can begin to drill down to what they really want and aren’t getting.

At Vouris, we help sales teams increase sales, so we would drill down into those numbers.

We say: “How many sales appointments are you getting a week?”

They say: “10”

We say: “What does that number need to be for you?”

They say: “20”

That’s the gap! Since they're at 10 appointments and they need to get to 20, you've just uncovered a specific gap between where they are and where they want to be.

This gap is where we explain our solution can be used, to help them get to where they want to be.

We can dig further as we prepare to make the ask with questions like:

• What have you tried? How did that work?
• What’s stopping you getting to where you need to be?
• Have you had any outside help to overcome this issue?

Part 4: The Ask

The answers to these questions will help you position your solution and tailor your ask to exactly what the prospect has said.

Now we can make the ask and set up a meeting.

You say: “Thanks for filling me in <NAME>. From what I heard, you are tring <WHAT THEY ARE TRYING> to get <WHATEVER VALUE PROPOSITION RESONATED WITH THEM>. Why don’t we do this. Let’s set up some time to have a conversation about our <YOUR PRODUCT/ SOLUTION> that will help you get <THEIR DESIRED RESULT>”

Does that sound fair?

They say: “Yes”

You say: “What’s your availability look like tomorrow?”

We love same day/next day appointments.

Not every company can do it, but the sooner the meeting the more likely you are still fresh in their mind, and they will actually show up.

Whatever your setup is, just make sure that you never end the call without booking the next meeting!

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That's it! That's the simple, 4-step script that I've used to book thousands of meetings and train over 75+ B2B sales teams.

If you'd like more free sales resources, you can grab our library below:

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Alright, chances are you know the importance of sending cold emails for sales.

But here’s the catch, it is more common to see a higher response rate from a follow up than the original email. 

Needless to say, a strong follow up email template will help you drive sales. 

9 Follow Up Email Templates 

Well, I won’t keep you waiting, so here are the templates! (I explain how to send them later) 

Example 1

Explanation: This comes off as personal and makes for a high response rate

Suitable Situation: After no response from a previous email

When to send: 2-7 days from the last contact 

Subject: Re (previous subject)

Hey did you get my last email?

-Sent from my iPhone, excuse any typos

Example 2

Explanation: This gives you the opportunity to find out whom you should be emailing

Suitable Situation: After a cold email sequence with no response

When to send: 5 days after the last email of the sequence

Subject: Re (previous subject)

Hey (Name)

I am sorry for bombarding your inbox like this. After doing some research I'm thinking you might not be the best person for me to talk to about (topic).

Could you please tell me who I should talk to about (topic)?

Thanks a lot!

(signature)

P.S. I promise I won’t email you about this again.

Example 3

Explanation: This allows you to move your prospect down the stages of your pipeline

Suitable Situation: After a positive first meeting

When to send: same day as the meeting

Subject: Re (previous subject)

(Name) - Thanks for sharing some insight into (Company) earlier today.

To recap, you’re currently (struggling with X challenge, trying to achieve Y goal). 

I've attached (Resource), which covers (Topic).

Here are our action items before our next call.

1. 

2. 

3.

(Name), I’m looking forward to speaking again on (date and time).

Talk soon,

(Signature)

Example 4

Explanation: This pushes them to take the next steps and allows you to stay top of mind. 

Suitable Situation: After a meeting

When to send: Same day as the meeting

Subject: (topic) meeting summary

Hey again (Name),

Great talking to you today. Here is the summary of our meeting from today.

SUMMARY OF MEETING:

• (Summary of meeting)
• (Resources used)
  

NEXT STEPS:

• (Step 1)
• (Step 2)
  

Let me know if I forgot something?‍

Thanks for your time!

(signature)

Example 5

Explanation: This reminds the prospect about your offer 

Suitable Situation: After a trigger event where you sent them a proposal and they asked you to circle back.

When to send: 1-2 months after the trigger event

Subject: Another look?

Last we chatted, you asked me to circle back in a few months.

We were discussing [solving x problem to achieve y result].

Is now a better time to discuss this?

(signature)

Example 6

Explanation: Great for making the first contact with a lead

Suitable Situation: After you leave a voicemail

When to send: Same day as your voicemail

Subject: I missed you 

Hi (Name),

I just left a voicemail to (explain your purpose).

Feel free to reach me whenever works best for you at (phone number) or shoot me an email.

Talk soon,

(your name)

P.S. I will circle back on (date and time). 

Example 7

Explanation: This gives you a reason to reach out and asks the prospect to set up a meeting

Suitable Situation: After a networking event

When to send: 1-2 days after the event

Subject: It was great to meet you at (Event)

Hi (Name),

What a wonderful event! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. 

After talking to you, it sounded like improving your (objective) is one of your top priorities, which is why I am contacting you now instead of later.

Let's set up a time to continue the conversation, are you free next week?

Regards,

Example 8

Explanation: This shows that you and your team will be helpful and can shape your offering around the prospect’s needs

Suitable Situation: After a demo

When to send: Same day as the demo

Subject: Re: demo with (product)

Hey (name),

It was great talking to you today!

After learning about your goals and workflows, I can customize the (product) so your team can utilize the features they want the most. 

We can get started next week, does that work for you?

(signature)

Example 9

Explanation: This shows that your team is willing to help them by shaping your offer to their needs

Suitable Situation: After a meeting where the prospect asked you a special request

When to send: 1-2 days after the meeting

Subject: Re (previous subject)

(Name), it was a pleasure to speak to you on (day/time).

I just checked with our software engineers and they would be happy to accommodate (special request).

In order to proceed we need to do (next step). Are you free at (date and time?

Thanks,

(signature)

How To Send Follow Up Emails

Optimize your emails beyond our template

These follow up email templates are a great start. But to have the best response rate, you’ll need to make them as personalized as possible.

Personalized vs Automated

Sending personalized emails is the best way to have a high response rate.

The problem is that it takes FOREVER to create personalized emails.

When sending follow up emails, ask yourself what can be automated and what cannot be?

In other words, finding a healthy ratio of automation to personalization is necessary to have great results with your follow up emails. 

Using a template and personalizing a few sections is the best option to automate without sounding automated. 

For example, if you frequently go to networking events and follow up with prospects I recommend you have one template for each networking event.

Now that you have a template that will work for the prospects from that event, personalize the email before you send it out. 

In this day and age, we can find out more about a person on the internet than ever before. 

So do it!

Then add some juicy and specific words in your email to capture the attention of your reader.

Shorter the better 

As a general rule, less than 50 words is best for emails, which is harder to achieve than you might think. 

Jeremy Donovan studied 4 million emails and found that the highest reply rate is 25 words.

It is ok to go a little above 50 words. But the goal is to get your point across with as few words as possible. 

Back up anything you claim with the statistic

Using data to express how helpful your services can be is a great method. But you need to make sure that you have a quality source that proves you are right.

If you are talking about your own data, then a screenshot will likely be sufficient. 

This is an email I have been using that has recently made my pipeline explode. 

This works great because the prospect can see how big of an impact I have made for other people, giving me social proof. 

(I call it the extreme weight loss email because of the before and after pics 🤣)

Track your results and figure out what works the best 

Just like all areas of sales, it is best to track your analytics and what results you produce.

Every industry will have different ways of generating results, so it is best to track what works for you so you can continuously improve upon your efforts. 

Some of the best email tracking software are Outreach.io, SalesLoft, Lemlist, and Hubspot. 

Subject lines

Since subject lines and the first sentence of any email is the first thing the reader will see, it is one of the most critical parts of an email. 

In general, good subject lines are:

• Personalized
• Include An Offer
• Use Odd Words
• Spark Curiosity
• 2-3 words
• Urgent
  

But for follow up emails, it is best to reply to a previous email of yours. 

Some other emails you should be sending are touching base emails, but I won’t cover that here. 

Is your team meeting your expectations?

If you have a sales development team and are interested in learning how we can help you dramatically increase their results, give this page a read.

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Everyone likes finding easy actions that result in BIG wins.

But sometimes, we overlook what these easy actions could actually be.

From reviving lost opportunities to writing follow-up emails, we’ve addressed it all, and now we’d like to highlight something you may not be giving enough attention to: the deal stages we use to build pipelines for clients (and ourselves).

Now, you’re probably thinking:

“Deal stages? So what? I already know how to structure my pipeline and use it.”

And you know what? I have no doubt that you do.

Here's how we do it, for reference:

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The real problem comes up when you hand the pipeline to your team.

This is where miscommunication and misdirection can mess up the entire process.

In our experience, many companies actually don’t have clear rules about moving from stage to stage.  

The founder (or whoever’s set up the pipeline) assumes their team will use the deal stages like they do. 

But, that’s not usually what happens.

And the effects of seemingly *small* little inconsistencies here will have a massive impact on your sales. 

Here’s why:

If different team members have different ideas of the milestones a deal will go through before reaching the point of closing, there won’t be any healthy communication between the team.

This will make it impossible to accurately analyze your team’s data. 

And if you can’t analyze the data reliably, you can’t:

Identify bottlenecks.

For example, you won’t be able to identify which salesperson is botching up the sales process.

Isolate problems.

For example, when multiple people have different ideas of what the deal stages are, it’s hard to identify a common problem and find a clear solution because of the uncertainty.

Double down on strengths. 

For example, if you can sit down with your team and break down the sales process in a cohesive way, it allows true strengths to be identified when the team works in synch and is on the same page.

How can you fix these problems?

Define the exit criteria for each stage. Our template above can help - want your own copy? Fill out the form below and get it delivered straight to your inbox:

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Here’s a question every salesperson should consider:

How well do you know your competitors?

When we speak to sales teams, we tend to hear 2 answers:

A1: I know who our 1-3 competitors are.

A2: I know who our 1-3 competitors are and exactly how to handle conversations with their users.

That’s a big difference.

People who answer along the lines of A2 tend to have a deep understanding of the subtle differences between their company and their competitors, like:

• What their competitors’ users are still frustrated with.
• Their competitive advantages.
• Their competitive weaknesses.
• Their users’ dealbreakers.
• Their users’ green flags.
• (Most importantly) What will get the prospect to happily choose you over them.

The more of these you know, the better you’ll be able to think on your feet during a conversation and the better you’ll be able to actually help your prospect.

Here’s the tough part - many companies expect their teams to just work all of this out on their own.

There’s a much better way to do this, though.

We like encouraging sales teams to use battle cards.

The aim is to create a one-page doc that’ll organize your competitor research and give you and your team a visual tool to use on calls (or while writing emails and messages).

Here’s what our battle card template looks like:

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Get a copy

If you’d like to use this template, feel free to click the link above. It’s a view-only doc, so just hit “File → Make a Copy” to get your own editable version.

Here’s how battle cards can help your sales:

• They’ll help you think faster.
• They’ll help you have better conversations.
• They’ll help you have more specific conversations.
• They’ll help you know exactly what to follow up with.
• They’ll help you have a better understanding of the market.
• They'll help you get everyone on your team to use the best messaging.

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We’re excited for you to start working with this template, because it makes your comparison to your competitors easier to understand, leading to a well-built and thorough plan of action.

Step #1: Steal this template directly by opening the link and making a copy for you to use.

Step #2: Fill it out for your top competitors.

Step #3: Begin working with it to understand where you stand amongst your competition.

‍

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Cold Email Templates and Tips to Improve Your Sales Strategy

Cold calling is highly effective. It will always have its place in sales strategies, but understanding how to leverage cold sales emails can benefit busy and growing teams. 

A 2020 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 80% of Americans tend not to answer the phone when they see an unknown number pop up. Instead, people are employing a call screening system that relies on voicemail. While we can expect the phone is answered more in a business environment, it may still take hours of calls to land a sale. There’s no way around it — phone calls take time.

Why Send Cold Emails?

While cold emails aren’t quite as effective as cold calling, they’re efficient. Emails can be batched, templated, and scheduled in advance — making it particularly useful for small sales teams or anyone trying to reach leads in a different time zone.

You don’t have to choose between all phone calls or all emails. In fact, incorporating a mix of cold calls and emails is ideal for sales success. Well-written cold sales emails can be used as a standalone method of contact or as a lead-in to scheduling a phone call. 

Elements of a Great Cold Sales Email

Three key factors can help your sales emails lead to actual conversations and conversions.

1. Personalization

While you don’t need to type a completely new message for each contact, a personalized approach goes a long way. Rather than feeling like they’re one of hundreds on a list, your contact should feel like they’ve received a personal introduction from you, the person who understands their pain points. 

Always use your contact’s name — never open with a generic salutation.

2. Tone

Cold sales emails — especially the very first one — should maintain a personal tone. The first cold sales email is like the exchange you have when a contact picks up the phone. You’d never immediately hit the lead with a hard sell as soon as they’ve finished saying “hello,” and it’s the same for email. Great sales emails start a conversation that will be continued over a few follow up exchanges or be moved to a phone call. 

3. Length

You know what it’s like to skim an inbox full of emails — a few seconds’ glance at each one before moving on. The best cold sales emails are short and concise, ideally under 50 words. Chances are, you need less space than you think to get your message across.

Adding bullet points into your email makes it easier to skim and gets the key points across with just a glance. Limit each bullet to no more than five words. 

Writing Cold Email Templates for B2B

Your email prospecting sequence, or cadence, is a series of contact points that you’ll use to build a relationship with your prospective customer. 

While we’re focusing on cold sales emails in this guide, your prospecting cadence can include other forms of contact like phone calls or LinkedIn messages.

(Want to learn more about how sales prospecting sequences work? We put together the ultimate guide!)

Before sending your first sales email, take some time to plan out your overall sequence and write up a few cold email templates you can rely on throughout the process. 

Outlining a sequence in advance helps you to prioritize and plan your contact points, keeping communication efficient.

By preparing templates at the same time, you can:

• Leverage personalization and automation tools to reduce repetitive manual work 
• Incorporate elements of your cold call scripts to establish consistency across all touchpoints

Each cold sales email sequence should include several types of templated messages that create a journey for the prospect: 

1. An introduction to you and your company. This email may include a low-effort, simple first ask like scheduling a 15-minute phone call to share more details. 
2. Follow up emails to gently trigger a reminder for recipients who may be interested but were too busy to respond or forgot. 
3. Value proposition messages that clarify how the prospect can benefit from working with your company. These emails may include sharing resources and examples of other companies that have benefited from working with you (statistics are great!) 

Introductory Cold Email Templates

A well-crafted introduction is essential to successfully warming a lead or closing a sale via email. Because you’re emailing someone out of the blue, it’s a good idea to establish a connection between you and them. How is your email relevant, and why are you contacting them? Points of relevancy might include:

• They signed up for more information somewhere online (and may have forgotten about it)
• You have mutual connections on LinkedIn
• They posted relevant content on LinkedIn
• They attended an event sponsored by your company
• They fit a buyer persona that your offer is very applicable to

By mentioning this in your introductory email, you provide a reference point in the prospect’s mind and help to reinforce that this email is personalized just for them. Establishing this point of relevance may push your email over the 50-word mark, but that’s okay — the benefits of clarifying this connection go a long way. 

The Best Short Cold Email Template for B2B

This brief email template is one of our highest-performing messages ever:

(PROSPECT NAME) - I’m reaching out because I help (TYPE OF COMPANY) with (OBJECTIVE). 

I help with:

•  Offering 1
•  Offering 2
•  Offering 3
•  The list goes on…

Want to hear how I’ve helped teams in your space?

Talk soon,

YOUR NAME

Cold Email Template for Social Media Connections

This template references LinkedIn due to its focus on business use, but feel free to swap that platform out for another like Twitter or Clubhouse — wherever you engage with and identify prospects. 

Hi (NAME) — I noticed that you (LIKED/COMMENTED) on (POSTER’S NAME) post on LinkedIn about (TOPIC), and I thought I’d reach out. 

I totally agree with (POSTER’S NAME OR CONTACT’S COMMENT).

With that said, I’d love to get you on a 10-minute call to learn more about you, (PROSPECT’S COMPANY), and your focus areas. I would love to earn the right to talk through how (YOUR COMPANY) might fit in. 

Do you have time for a quick call this week or next?

Best,

(YOUR NAME)

Follow Up Cold Email Templates for Sales

If your introductory email doesn’t generate a response, it doesn’t mean you’ve hit a dead end. Just like with cold sales calls, sometimes your prospect is interested, but they:

• Get pulled in another direction and forget to respond
• Share the email with a team member for follow up that never happens
• Reply, but ask you to loop back with them at a future date

Follow up, or touch base emails, are a great chance to jog their memory and qualify some of the statements you’ve made so far.

Replying to your last email with a simple “thoughts?” is one of the most effective ways to get a response from a quiet contact. If you’d like to switch up your touch base email templates, you can also:

• Share statistics that back up claims made in an earlier email
• Provide a resource that you think they’ll be interested in based on previous communications or their social media activity
• Tell a quick story about a similar company that has seen success in working with you
• Repeat the ask for a meeting

Follow Up Email Template for Non-Responsive Contacts

If your lead hasn’t responded to previous messages, using a public event such as a product launch can be a great “reason” to reach back out. 

(Prospect Name) — (Company Event) looks like it went well! I would imagine more buyer personas can use your solution to (Purpose). Is that correct?

One of our customers, (Client Company), recently leveraged our tool for a product launch. It led to their most successful campaign to date.

By (Purpose of Solution), you can (Result). Does this sound like something you would be interested in exploring further?

Best Regards, 

(Your Name)

Email Template for Following Up After a Conversation

By keeping an eye out for content related to your lead’s industry or goals, you can establish an opening to re-contact them in the future. This approach is useful whether they asked you to loop back on a specific date or kept it open-ended.

(Prospect Name) — When we spoke in (Month), you mentioned an interest in (Topic). I read this article and thought of you: (Link)

We are helping (Client Company) track (Item), and they’ve seen (Statistic). 

You asked me to reach out in (Month) to set up a time to discuss. Are you available (Day) at (Time)?

Best Regards,

(Your Name)

There are a number of ways you can touch base with a lead after making initial contact. These follow up emails are so crucial to the sales cadence, we’ve put together two sets of templates for you to use — grab them here and here.

Craft a Strong Value Proposition

The value proposition is the meat of your sales email cadence. It explains why you reached out to your lead and how you propose you can help. Remember — you may be trying to close a sale to boost your business, but keep it all about the other person when it comes to the value proposition. 

Messages heavily focused on the value proposition are a great chance to include more statistics about how you have helped similar companies.

How to start and end your cold sales email

Perfecting your subject line

An email’s subject line is its first chance to get the recipient’s attention. While the effectiveness of a subject line often comes down to its actual content,  you can help it stand out by using the recipient’s first name and adjusting your sentence case (uppercase, lowercase, or title). Ideally, you want your subject line to catch the reader’s attention in as little as a second. 

An email’s preview text can be useful, too! The preview text is what appears directly under an email’s subject line in the inbox — a quick peek at the content within. Depending on your email program, your message’s preview text will either be the first few words of the email body or a custom sentence you can set when writing the subject. 

Build a Strong Call to Action

Every sales email should have some kind of a call to action at the end — the thing you are asking your contact to view or do. Calls to action may be: 

• Clicking a link to view a document or webpage
• Filling out a form to schedule a meeting
• Replying directly with more information
• Asking for a meeting
• Asking if they have interest in learning more
  
  

(See this article for more email CTAs!)

What to Do When a Sales Email Sequence Ends?

Eventually, your well-planned email sequence will come to an end — what then? It’s important not to let good leads slip away. 

Depending on how communication has progressed so far, you may choose to slow the frequency or increase the level of personalization each email contains. 

You can also explore adding your lead into a new sequence. If you’ve focused on email, add phone calls into the mix. If you’ve been heavy on phone and email, try a text message (even if you don’t have their cell phone number).

How Cold Sales Emails Compare to Marketing Emails

Cold sales emails are more personal than marketing blasts. While you may be sending very similar versions of the same message out to multiple contacts, it should feel conversational. 

Marketing emails typically focus on the company sending the message. Sure, it might be offering a discount or free download, but a lot of marketing email content is about broadly promoting a brand and its objectives:

• We want you to buy this 
• We’re celebrating our third decade in business
• We need to offload stock, so here’s a discount

Cold sales emails, on the other hand, should be very focused on the recipient. 

• Your ROI is important, and I know how to improve it
• You aren’t alone — we’ve seen this situation before and have a solution for you
• You can succeed, and I’d like to earn the right to show you how

However, while the tone may be different, there are still some great tactics you can steal from your marketing department:

Segmentation

Marketers use segmentation to sort subscribers by demographic and consumer behaviors. When sending cold sales emails, it can help to create a segmentation structure based on industry, company size, or stage in the pipeline. 

Variable Fields

Variable fields make email personalization exceptionally simple. While variables won’t allow for in-depth personalization, such as referencing a particular LinkedIn article comment, it does allow you to quickly swap contact and company names in and out of the same template. 

When setting up a template with variable fields, you’ll input specific words that your contact’s information will replace. For example, {{LEAD_NAME}} might become “Jim Smith.” Every email program has its own way of formatting these fields.

Automatic Sending

In addition to scheduled, unique follow up emails, many email programs will allow you to automatically resend a message if it is not delivered or opened within a specific time frame. If you’re already planning to send a variety of follow up messages as part of your cadence, this may not be necessary — but it is an option. 

How to Balance Personalization and Automation when Cold Emailing

In a perfect world, you’d only send unique, personalized emails to every lead. This approach, however, would take a lot of time that you probably don’t have. Striking the right balance between personalization and automation in your cadence is critical. Your contact feels seen, and you don’t have to spend all day retyping versions of the same email. 

Generally, devoting more time to personalization, such as sharing articles, is worthwhile when communicating with a high-quality contact. Because personalization increases the likelihood the email will generate a response, you’re investing in a lead that can have a high return.

When reaching out to a lower-quality account, it can be useful to rely more heavily on templated emails that swap out company names and dates. This way, you’re not spending too much time painstakingly crafting communications for accounts that are likely to have a low ROI.

Testing Your Sales Email Campaigns

Marketers know that slight differences in an email can influence how likely recipients are to click — from subject lines right down to the color and placement of links. 

A/B tests determine whether one version of an email is more effective than another. 

It is necessary to send a relatively large batch of emails — to at least 1,000 contacts — to conduct a true A/B test that generates statistically significant results. However, smaller-scale A/B tests can still provide useful insights.

At its core, the test is simple: 50% of contacts receive email version A, and 50% receive version B. By comparing metrics between the two groups, you can see what encouraged leads to open messages or take action — and what fell flat. 

When A/B testing, you should test one variable at a time. You can calculate your statistical significance with free online A/B test calculators made specifically for this purpose.

Variables to Test

You can run an A/B test on any part of your email. Common items to test include: 

• Subject line length and style
• Placement of personalization variables
• Length of message
• Day of the week a message is sent
• Time of day a message is sent
• Use of emojis
• Capitalization
• Type of call to action — response vs. link click 

Metrics to watch

Professional sales and marketing email platforms provide data about how recipients engage with messages. Compare these metrics as you evaluate how effective a message is: 

• ‍Open Rate: The total number of recipients who opened the email.‍
• Clicks to Open Rate (CTOR): The percentage of people who received your email and clicked a link.‍
• Bouncebacks: Undeliverable emails returned to sender.‍
• Unsubscribes: If your email contains a link for recipients to remove themselves from your contact list, those requests will be tallied here.

Best Practices for Cold Sales Emailing

A recent influx of privacy regulations like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) means that it is essential for sales teams to use and manage email leads responsibly. Simple best practices include: 

• Know where your audience is located geographically, as this can impact regulations around communications.
• Only send emails to business accounts (B2B).
• Be clear about why you are contacting a lead.
• Have a defined link between your business activity and theirs — don’t waste time and money sending mass emails to purchased lists that may not be relevant. This activity can also lead to your email account being flagged as spam.
• Let the recipient know how they can opt-out of future communications with your team.
• Periodically remove non-responsive contacts from your email lists.
• If a contact requests that you do not contact them further, immediately remove their information from your lists.

Will Cold Sales Emailing Work for You? 

Cold emails can work in pretty much any market. But, you've got to follow best practices and create messages that are foucused, easy to understand, and highly relevant to your prospect's needs. Use what you've learned in this article to create and optimize your sales emails - good luck!

In the meantime, you can grab more sales resources here:

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The best sales training programs have one goal. They help your sales team sell more. 

Here’s the deal: Every dollar invested in sales training on average returns $29 in incremental revenues, according to a recent report. 

With the thousands of options for sales training, it is no easy task to select the best fitting program for your team. 

Fortunately for you, we went ahead and listed out the 10 best sales training programs for your convenience. 

What Makes A Great Sales Training Program In 2021? 

After scaling an SDR team to 600%+ in growth, I learned that there are TONS of factors that go into a company generating more sales. Every team has a different list of requirements that they look for when selecting a sales team training program. 

But the best programs have these aspects in common: 

• Remote support
• Live sessions 
• Reinforcement  
  

With the world still in quarantine, remote support is more important than ever because live sessions are not always available. 

Reinforcing the material learned in a course increases the probability that each and every sales rep will be able to apply it every day in their work. 

In his book, Kevin Horsely writes about how the average person only retains 18% of learning material after 28 days.

What it boils down to: The average company loses 82% of every dollar spent on training programs in 28 days, if the information is not reinforced. Needless to say, reinforcement is crucial! 

Our Scoring Criteria 

Each program has different advantages and none of the programs will be a fit for every team. The best way to decide which program is the best fit for your team is to understand your end goal and what your team currently struggles with the most. 

For each of the 10 programs, we listed out these factors:

• Our Score: Our ranking of the program on a scale of 0 to 5
  

• Pros: What the program is great at
  

• Cons: The downside to the program (if any)
  

• Online Reviews: Helpful reviews I found
  

• Details: Other factors to help you select a sales team training program. Anything from the length of the program, to the price, to the intended audience. 
  

Now that we covered the basics, let’s dive into the top 10 sales team training programs!

2021 Best Sales Training

Richardson

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Our Rating: 5/5
Price: (varies by team size)

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Best for:

• Identifying your client's needs.
• Building stronger client relationships.
• Improving SDR performance on sales calls.
• Connecting your solution to a customer's needs.

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Pros:

• Includes both remote and onsite consultation.
• Led by an instructor with strong reference material.

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Cons:

(We couldn't find any!)

Details

‍This program focuses on identifying the client’s needs while building a relationship with them. It also helps sales reps perform better on their sales calls and understand the connection between the client’s needs and the company's available solutions. The price will vary depending on the size of your team.

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Hoffman Training

Pros

‍More than 20 years of experience. Both remote and on-site offerings. Between their blog, podcast, and videos, it is easy to tell if your team can benefit from their teaching style. The program is $595 per attendee, making it an affordable option. 

Cons

‍Only one day long. Not enough time to have continuous learning and feedback from the course instructors. 

Online Reviews

Details

‍This course goes over the entire sales process from start to finish in one day.

Hoffeld Group, Sell With Stories

Pros

‍Enables attendees to leverage the power of storytelling within their sales efforts. The course focuses on using stories to answer challenging objections and reduce the buyers’ perception of risk. 

Cons

‍Not much available information on their site about the program. Only two days long. ‍

Online Reviews

Details

‍This program is designed to help the attendees use powerful stories to answer challenging objections and reduce the buyers’ perception of risk. Everything from the four parts of a powerful story to a when stories can aid the sales rep in persuading the prospect. This hands-on program allows attendees to create their own stories for immediate use. 

JB Sales

Pros

‍Both on-site and remote delivery options. They have an on-demand "Netflix" style training program available for individual reps, as well as corporate training.

‍Cons

‍If you select the on-site version, it is only 1 day long. 

Online Reviews

‍Details

‍The remote delivery of the program has 3 two-hour sessions, and plenty of content to review over the next year. A perfect program for anyone who works with new and existing accounts. Filling the Funnel is another program that was created for anyone who schedules meetings with targeted accounts.

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Sales Readiness Group

Pros

‍Focuses on the skillset of reading your audience’s reactions, and how to answer their objections. Opportunity to buy the license for repurposing the curriculum of the program for your own team. Offers content to reinforce the learning material. 

Cons

‍Not as many reviews as other programs, nor a proven track record of testimonials.

Online Reviews

Details

‍Intended for B2B sales teams. Teaches attendees how to read the reactions of the audience to cater the presentation better to their audience. Everything from basic selling skills to sales team management training is covered in this course.

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Sandler Training

Pros

‍This ongoing program is designed to make concepts stick by using the principles continuously. The company has 50 years of experience providing sales insights. A lot of modern sales methodologies are built on Sandler's foundation.‍

Cons

Some of their materials feel “old school.” ‍

Online Reviews

Details

‍This program is great for companies of any size. At the center of their program, is ‘reinforcement training’ that allows the attendees to apply the course material in their work while still attending the course. The company has spent the last 50 years providing insights on how to selling more.

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RSVP Selling

Pros

‍The program is designed to craft a strong personal brand for each and every one of your sales reps. ‍

Cons

‍No reinforcement from the course after the 2-day training. ‍

Online Reviews

Details

‍$2,200 per day plus $395 per attendee. The course is 2 days long. This course is based on building quality networks online and creating a strong online personal brand.

Brian Tracy Sales Training

Pros

‍This course is customizable for you and your team. They offer 4 primary categories and will customize it further to your every need.‍

Cons

Some of the materials look old school but we didn't doc points for that. ‍

Online Reviews

Details

‍This 12-week course was created by Brian Tracy, a well-known sales legend. He has created many books and keynote speeches that serve as tremendous resources for anyone in sales who wants to improve. 

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Hubspot Academy Inbound Sales Course

Pros

‍A free course that covers everything from identifying potential buyers to creating personalized presentations. ‍

Cons

‍Only 3-hours of content that gives the audience an overview of sales and inbound marketing. ‍

Online Reviews 

‍Details

‍This program is not as in-depth as the other course options listed here. However, we do recommend this course as a starting point for newer sales reps. It is straight forward and free.

Marc Wayshak Sales Training

Pros

‍Custom training for organizations of any size and in any industry. Offers both remote and in-person training. ‍

Cons

‍After the initial course, there is no reinforcement material. ‍

Online Reviews 

Details

‍Marc identified the consistent struggles of sales leadership: not enough superstars, reps using different playbooks, and inconsistent results. The intended audience for his course is high-level salespeople and entrepreneurs who focus on sales.

How Do You Know If Sales Training Is What You Need? 

There are two simple questions that will let you know if you need the best sales training (or any training) for your team.

1. Is your team meeting your activity expectations? 
2. Is there a clear process that your team follows?
   

If you answer no to one or both of these questions, you want to get that handled first. Training programs are designed to help organized teams that have tracked their efforts and results. If your team does not have a clear process nor expectations, then these programs wont be as effective.

But if you answered yes to both of these questions, then it is time to select one of these programs to help improve your team’s sales!

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On Call Alarms

When you are in a conversation with the prospect, it can sometimes be difficult to know where to go next. This typically happens because the prospect is talking a lot and giving you a lot of information. Your challenge is figuring out what to do with that information, and how to capitalize on it to book a meeting. Regardless of how a call is going you must be listening for on call alarms. An on call alarm is a statement made by the prospect that indicates one of three things.

• They have identified that something can be improved
• They have taken some kind of action to improve something
• They need clarity on if a problem exists.

At first, it may be challenging to identify these, but as you practice, on call alarms will be so blaring that they will be like… an alarm! The first question we have to answer is how to identify on them. I have broken this down into a simple acronym, N.W.A. Those of you who are a fan of late 80s hip hop will have no 60  Cold to Committed problem remembering this one. However, my abbreviation is very different than what you are used to. N.W.A. stands for Need, Wish, and Action.

Need

Need is the most powerful word that the prospect can say. If your prospect needs something that you can provide, then you, my friend, are most likely booking a meeting. To be honest, this is the least common on call alarm. It also doesn’t always come up as the prospect saying the word “need.” Sometimes it is baked into the context of what they are saying. Take a look at the following examples.

Prospect: I need to figure out what has caused the MQL conversion rate to drop.

Prospect: I have spent a lot of time on this and can’t seem to figure out why the MQL conversion rate has dropped.

The first example is the easy one to identify—they said the word “need” and your alarm bells should be ringing. The second one, however, can be a bit trickier to identify. They don’t use the word “need,” but they are expressing the need to figure something out. “Need” is baked into the context of the sentence. You will improve at identifying needs as you practice and have more conversations under your belt. The next part of N.W.A. is the W, and this one can be tricky as well.

Wish

Wish is slightly more common than need, but a little bit harder to identify. This is because you don’t often hear a prospect use the word “wish.” Because the word won’t come up often, it will require you to get good at identifying it within the context of the conversation. Let’s take a look at an example of a prospect with a wish.

Prospect: I shouldn’t have to spend so much time in Excel, but it is what it is.

This falls into the wish category because there is no evidence that this is a need for the prospect. However, you can tell this is something that they simply tolerate...something that they wish they didn’t have to do. Wish is a powerful, because the prospect is admitting that they are frustrated with something and that frustration can motivate them to book a meeting.

Now let’s talk about the “A” in N.W.A. This comes up the most frequently.

Action

It is safe to assume that the decision maker you are speaking with has taken action at some point in their career. Odds are, they take action all the time to improve the business. Because taking action is required for growth, this is typically the most common on call alarm you will experience. Lucky for you, it’s also the easiest to identify. Take a look at the example below.

Prospect: I just started looking into the drop in MQL conversion last week.

The fact that the prospect has decided to take an action is important to us. It’s important because for action to take place there must be motivation. In order to book a meeting, we need to understand what is motivating the prospect and why it is so important. If the prospect has taken an action, it typically means that there is something that they need to accomplish, something that your product or service can help them with.

Ok, so you’ve identified an on call alarm. It’s ringing loudly and you’re excited because this is the moment that will change the course of the call and will lead to a booked meeting! What do you do? Well, it’s similar to what you would do if there was a fire alarm and you were actually on fire…

STOP, DROP, & QUESTION!

The reason why I call these on call alarms is because they alert you to ask a follow- up question. Your focus, after hearing an alarm, is to dive in and learn more about that specific part of what they said. The beauty is that this gives you a path to booking a meeting, and this is exactly what you need on any call. So, what follow-up question do you ask? Take a look at a few examples.

● Tell me more about that.

● What motivated you to do that in the first place?

● What are you trying to accomplish?

● Why is that important to you?

● Why are you trying to figure that out?

The simple way to think about this is that you are digging into the “why” behind their need, wish, or action. Your goal is to get the prospect to open up and tell you about their challenges. When you understand their challenges, then you can tailor the rest of the call and book a meeting on a solution. Let’s take a look at an example of how this might play out.

Prospect: I just started looking into the drop in MQL conversion last week.

SDR: What motivated you to do that?

Prospect: I had a conversation with some of the sales people and they said that the quality of the leads have gone down and I need to verify this.

SDR: What have you found out so far? Prospect: Nothing. Everything looks the same to me, but a lot of this data is hard to gather.

SDR: You said that you need to verify if the salespeople are right about the quality...why is that a main priority? Prospect: Because I need to know the cause, so I can fix it.

SDR: Is figuring this out still a priority for you? Prospect: Yes.

SDR: Since this is a priority for you, why don’t we set aside 15 minutes tomorrow and we can walk through how other folks have been able to improve their data reporting so they can more quickly identify problems and focus their time on improving their MQL conversion. Do you have time tomorrow at 11:00am?

Prospect: Yes, that will work

In this example we had two on call alarms. Can you spot them both? “I just started looking into the drop in MQL conversion last week” is an example of action. The SDR, in this example, asked a great question and the prospect said that they “need to verify this” which is another, stronger, on call alarm. Understanding what problem your prospect needs solved is how you are able to tailor the rest of the call in a way that positions your product or service as a solution. Listen to one of your call recordings and see if you can spot the on call alarms. Did you notice it when you were on that call live? Did you stop, drop, and question? Hopefully, as you listen to your call recordings and make listening for N.W.A.s a priority, you will improve on your ability to identify on call alarms.

Did you find this useful? You can grab our free sales resources here:

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Ever wanted to drop to your knees and do one of those old-fashioned “unleash your pain into the sky” type screams?

I have. 

Often, it’s when a rep just told me the person they’ve spent five weeks buttering up is ready to pull the trigger but  “...just needs to run the idea past their boss...” 

Sheer. Agony. 

Many B2B startup sales managers know this pain. With limited resources and rapidly vanishing runway, it’s crucial that you don’t waste time chasing prospects that have a low probability of closing. You need a way to keep your sales cycle as short as possible.

So here’s exactly that: Six tried-and-true steps to make finding exactly the right decision-maker into a repeatable routine. Let’s jump right in!

If you’re looking to improve your team’s prospecting results, feel free to reach out. We’re experts in all things sales, and we’d love to talk.

Create Your Ideal Customer Profile 

Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) outlines the firmographic and behavioral characteristics of the type of account which has the highest probability of conversion. 

Basically, what companies have a real need for what you sell?

No, this document isn’t a low-effort b2b buyer persona. Many companies have gone astray by treating it as such. This is going to be the core of your sales strategy, and even if you already have one, it’s probably time to revisit the details. After all, the startup game is one of constant iteration. 

The importance of nailing this down can’t be overstated. It’s going to come up in pretty much every one of the following steps. 

Your Action Item: Build an ICP

Startups need to create highly targeted ICPs that define the exact type of accounts that are worth targeting. 

Below are some of the key characteristics I include when I build an ICP with a SaaS startup. Filling out your ICP based on these should help identify your most valuable and easily won accounts. 

1. Industry - Be as specific as appropriate. “Law Firms specializing in media law with large newspaper clients” works better than “Legal.”
2. Size - This should approximate the size of the company that has the biggest need for your product. 
3. Budget - How much budget does the target account have, and what percentage are you asking them to spend on your services? 
4. Location - Geographical requirements can vary - maybe you can do business internationally, but only want to target NYC-based firms so you can do in-person relationship building. 
5. Position in the Market - What’s the ideal market situation for a company you want to target? Are they dominating, just filed for bankruptcy, came in under expectations last quarter?
6. Pain Points - What problem is your ideal customer facing? (This should be the problem your product solves)
7. Objectives - What are your ideal customer’s goals? What do they want to achieve?
8. How You Solve Their Problem - How is your service or product going to be the one to solve their problem and achieve their goals?
   

You might also consider factors such as technology usage, or organizational priority for a certain solution. 

For example, one of my clients sells software to data scientists. They tend to sell best to companies that view data science as an organizational priority, so one criterion of the ICP is that the business must have a high proportion of data scientists relative to their total workforce. This indicates that the business takes data science seriously and invests in these capabilities. 

Use this profile as the guide for the rest of your strategy. That’s the account you’re trying to get to buy in - now how do you get to them? 

Build Your Account List

Now that we have our ICP, it’s time to use those criteria to find the actual companies we’re going to be calling. This is where the semi-tedious lead generation work begins. Don’t worry, it’ll pay off when you get to prospecting! 

Start by using your preferred data provider to pull your initial account list. This list should be based on the firmographic characteristics you already pinpointed in your ICP. 

My Recommended Data Providers:

• UpLead
• D7 LeadFinder
• LeadFuse
• Seamless.ai 
• Apollo
• Zoominfo
• Infotelligent 

Though these are the data providers I most often recommend to clients, the one you opt for should be the one that makes the most sense for you. 

Once you have this initial list, your next step is to filter it further by the key behavioral characteristics that were identified in your ICP.  Data providers probably don’t have info on these, so you’ll have to do it manually.

Action Item: Manually Filter Your Account List 

Yeah, yeah, I know it sounds like a lot of work. But taking the time to create an airtight account list vastly accelerates your sales cycle and immediately improves sales performance. 

Filtering accounts upfront saves your salespeople from wasting their valuable time on people with no control over buying decisions and focuses their attention on prime B2B marketing targets. It’s no fun wasting three weeks talking to a company only to find out they don’t even use the system your software is compatible with. 

An example of this was a SaaS company I worked with targeting medical practices. The sales reps were frustrated by the large proportion of leads they were disqualifying during conversations. 

Their product is built to sync with another common medical administration software, and they were getting pretty deep into chats with decision-makers before they’d find out the office didn’t even use the necessary software. 

We altered the process to have the SDRs pre-screen each lead, calling each office ahead of any other type of engagement and just asking about their software - a question that could usually be answered by whoever in the office answered the phone. 

By adding this relatively simple step of fine-tuning the list, we saved the salespeople countless hours of fruitless activities and engagements. As you’re probably beginning to see, each of these steps is all about increasing the efficiency of reaching your B2B buyer. 

Enrich Your Account List With Your Target Decision-Makers

Once you have a solid account list, you need to determine who to target. This is where identifying key decision-makers come into play. You don’t want to spend a ton of time chasing prospects only to find out they don’t have any authority in the B2B decision-making process.

This step requires careful consideration.

As such, I always start with a top-down approach. Basically, target the job title with the highest amount of authority in the department you’re targeting. You’re trying to talk to the person who has the final decision in the whole B2B buying process. If you reach and convert your #1 DM on the ICP list first, you’re shortening the sales cycle by a big margin. 

For example, if you're selling marketing automation software, you’d want to start with the VP of Marketing or the CMO. They might not actually be that involved in the nuts and bolts of marketing software, but if they think it'd be valuable, they'll refer you down to the real decision-maker in their department. 

You may run into instances where there is no single person responsible for B2B purchase decisions. In some organizations, the decision-making process is spread amongst members of a decision-making unit. These influencers are high-quality leads and often result in high value conversations. 

This process takes time but pays off with each and every enriched account. I often recommend that my clients who are just starting out begin their enrichment on LinkedIn.

Action Item: Decision-Maker Due Diligence on LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator (and any other resources at your disposal) to identify the correct decision-makers at your target accounts to give yourself the biggest possible head start. Here’s the basic process:

1. Starting with the account, filter down to employees who work there based on department. 
2. Filter down further by Seniority. 
3. Identify the highest-up decision maker associated with that account.
4. Use your preferred data provider to gather contact information for the people involved in purchasing decisions.
5. Make any relevant notes and comments in the accounts as you go through this process (i.e This guy just started 6 months ago and he’s never been in a leadership role.)

With the hard work of enrichment done, you’re ready to dig into the details of each account and conduct research that will help you prepare for the eventual b2b sales pitch.

Conduct Research Efficiently 

Research is one of the trickiest steps to your whole prospecting process. Many sales teams get caught in the weeds and waste tons of time on overly detailed, largely unhelpful notes. It’s equally common that they just don’t bother with this step in the first place (or think a quick glance at the company’s social media counts as research). 

I don’t know which hurts me more. 

Faster and more effective research really accelerates your sales success. Don’t skip this step.

To avoid the common research pitfalls, it again pays to be prepared. When launching into this step, I first create a research “framework” to guide the process of information gathering. This guide lays out exactly what I’m trying to find out, and I can just fill in the template as I go. 

Action Item: Build A Research Framework (or Use Mine) 

I recommend starting with a simple research framework I’ve used dozens of times: C.O.M.P. 

C.O.M.P. stands for Customer, Organization, Media, and Product. These are the four pillars of effective research that will give you a holistic view of the target company. 

Below is a table that lays out the content of the C.O.M.P framework - but if you want to jump straight into this step, here’s a blog post where I share the whole C.O.M.P strategy (including my 2x4 speed research tactics). 

Feel free to use this information to create your own research template, or download one of mine. 

By actually putting the data you gather to use, you increase the odds of conversion with every interaction. Now, let’s get going with those interactions...

Set Your Sales Cadence

Tempting as it is to jump right on a call once you have a phone number, there’s one last step to launching a truly efficient sales process. 

Create your ideal sales cadence. 

A “sales cadence” is what we call all the actions you’ll take during prospecting, and the specific tactics that you’ll be utilizing. Crafting a sales cadence increases the efficiency of your prospecting actions by focusing on the channels and tactics which have the most impactful results.  

Action Item: Build Your Sequence

Your sequence is most likely to result in conversions when it is based on clear goals defined by specific steps, rather than something like “schedule a meeting with a DM.” For example, you might want a cadence targeting CEOs with the goal of getting them to forward your email to the person with real decision-making power.

Creating a successful sales cadence is a whole process on its own. I go into a ton of detail and walk you through the specific steps in this post, but here’s a quick rundown of the steps I take:

Steps to building a sequence:

1. Decide how long your sequence needs to be.
2. Pick how frequently you will be reaching out to the prospect.
3. Select what outreach channels you will be using.
4. Determine what messaging you will be using.
5. Decide how long you would like your sequence(s) to last.
6. Make the frequency of touchpoints within a sequence correlate to the urgency to make contact.
7. Create a plan for the messaging for each outreach channel within your sequence.
   

Now comes the part you’ve done everything else in preparation for: get out there and get selling! 

If All Else Fails: Bottom’s Up!

 No, put down the whiskey! I may have phrased that wrong. We’re not misery-drinking just yet. 

Top-down strategies are not the only answer (even though I always start there). If trying to get in contact with the decision-makers highest up the food chain isn’t working, you DO have an alternative - start searching for a way in at the bottom. 

This can manifest in a number of strategies: 

• Internal Champion - Sometimes, someone lower down is looking to make a name for themselves by being the agent of change - help them be that internal hero, and they’ll take you with them. 
• Befriend the Gatekeeper - Make friends with the one person preventing information from reaching your #1 DM, then get them to open the gate for you. 
• The “Mini-army” - Cause a mini-coup by getting literally everyone else except your decision-maker converted.  Ex: the whole dev team, all the science teachers, etc.) 
  

Often, there isn’t a pseudo-decision maker lower down, and you still need to find a way to get through to the top. That’s when you use a different approach to gather the information you need - bottom-up. 

Action Item: Prove There’s a Problem 

Sometimes, you don’t necessarily need the influence of the people in the rungs below your decision-maker, but you can still glean essential information from them. 

One of these "bottom-up" strategies I've used successfully in the past involves going all the way to the bottom. Essentially, it goes like this: 

Step 1: Talk to 10+ end users

Step 2: Gather details on the problems they report (and which your software will solve). 

Step 3: Present these problems to your highest-up decision-maker. 

Step 4: Follow up with how your product is the most logical and effective solution. 

Note that you still have to get approval from that DM, but the route you take there doesn't have to be a straight line. 

Conclusion 

Take a deep breath. It’s normal to agonize over the inefficiencies tanking your sales process, but now you have the tools to remove those roadblocks to success. 

This process for finding and reaching B2B decision-makers is designed to be repeatable, reliable, and most of all, effective - taking the stress and pressure out of one of the biggest question marks in the whole sales cycle.

In a nutshell, you're just being extremely thoughtful about every aspect of the sales process. You’re understanding the exact target account, cultivating an airtight prospecting list, conducting intensive research, and creating a finely tuned sales cadence.

That patience and precision will pay off. You’ll notice the improvement in every new sale. Trust me. I’ve made it happen dozens of times. Now you’re going to. 

If you'd like a leg up on getting your systems and processes in place, download our collection of free resources below!

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Hiring a single bad sales rep could cost your business $381,883.80. Use these 26 questions to find sales reps that will SUPERCHARGE your business.

BONUS: Here’s our CEO Kyle’s FAVORITE question to ask anyone he hires...

Here are 26 questions that will help you find your next sales superstar and avoid potentially bad hires.

1. How do you stay up to date with your target market?

Why it’s important: 

Do they keep up to date with industry news?  

It’s a lot easier to work with someone who’s already got their finger on the pulse of the industry than someone who doesn’t. 

As a follow up, you can ask them to tell you something they recently learned about their target market.

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2. How much time do you spend cultivating customer relationships versus hunting for new clients? What‘s the philosophy behind the breakdown?

Why it’s important: 

Great candidates can do both.

Super candidates can do both and explain why they balance nurturing and prospecting the way they do.

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3. What are your favorite questions to ask prospects that gauge their need and interest?

Why it’s important: 

The best sales people ask lots of questions. 

Keep an eye out for whether your candidate suggests open-ended questions or “Yes/No” questions. 

Open-ended questions are a sign that they’re already thinking conversationally, which is a great signal for future success. 

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4. Tell me about an uncomfortable situation you experienced during a cold call. 

Why it’s important: 

Being able to navigate discomfort is an underrated skill. 

Someone who can tell an “uncomfortable situation” story effectively is a great sign that they’re a natural storyteller and can engage on a personal level.  

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5. Tell me about a time in your sales career where you needed to start a territory from scratch. What did you do for the first 30 days? What would you have done differently? If I hire you, what will you do at this company?

Why it’s important: 

A challenge question like this will put the candidate on the spot and force them to:

• Tell a story.
• Think analytically + creatively.
• Present a structured plan. 

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6. What information do you look for when researching a prospect? 

Why it’s important: 

The best answers will give you insights into how they research and what traits they think are important in a prospect. 

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7. What do you think our company/sales organization could do better?

Why it’s important: 

Their answer will show how much research they have done on your company and how creative they can be on their feet.

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8. How have you handled customer objections in the past?

Why it’s important: 

You’ll find out if they have a process for preparing and handling objections. 

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9. How does [your company name] bring value to the customer?

Why it’s important: 

This gives the candidate a chance to put your value into their own words. Good answers will reflect their research, creativity, and communication skills. 

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10. Tell me about something interesting you have learned recently? 

Why it’s important: 

Can the candidate entertain you? Can they tell stories? Do they know how to be relevant and interesting at the same time, under pressure?

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11. When do you know it is time to stop pursuing a potential client?

Why it’s important: 

You’re looking for a few key markers of a great salesperson:

• Persistency. 
• Knowing when to stop. 
• Knowing how to manage their time and balance between pursuing potential clients and finding new prospects.

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12. Have you ever turned a prospect away? If so, why?

Why it’s important: 

This tells you about their understanding of customer fit and their willingness to turn away bad fits. 

Having the wrong customers is more harmful to a company than fewer customers.

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13. How do you keep a smile on your face during a hard day?

Why it's important: 

You’ll learn about how the candidate deals with rejection and maintains a positive attitude.

The ability to maintain a positive outlook is an essential skill in our field!

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14. What do you know about our company?

Why it’s important: 

This gives the candidate a chance to show off their research and present it in a creative and structured manner.

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15. Have you ever had a losing streak? How did you turn it around?

Why it’s important: 

Are they willing to get real with you?

Any good sales rep has had a losing streak - it’s what they did to turn it around that makes the difference.

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16. What was a mistake you made? What did you learn from it?

Why it’s important: 

Here’s another chance to learn how honest the candidate is willing to be.

It’s also an opportunity for them to tell a comeback story and present their mistakes as learning opportunities instead of purely negative moments.  

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17. Have you ever asked a prospect who didn't buy from you to explain why you lost the deal? What did they say, and what did you learn from that experience?

Why it’s important: 

Here’s a chance to see how committed the candidate is to improving their process. 

A rep who studies their losses has the potential to become a great salesperson.

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18. Explain the steps you take, from the beginning of the sales process to the end.

Why this is important: 

See how logical and thoughtful they are. 

Do they just pick up the phone, or do they take the time to do their research and prep? 

It’s also a good chance to see how clear they are in communicating their thoughts and ideas.

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19. How do you balance work and life?

Why this is important: 

Good sales reps work hard, but also have outside interests and will demonstrate a healthy work-life balance.

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20. What motivates you?

Why it’s important: 

This question tends to trigger some “interesting” responses, both good and bad. You’ll want to look out for signals like:

• Do you think they’re being honest?
• Are they identifying internal or external motivations? Good candidates often balance both.

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21. What do you do for fun?

Why this is important: 

Here’s a chance for the candidate to tell you about the rest of their life, outside of the office.

Their hobbies and interests can highlight a cultural fit (or misfit) with your team. 

Plus, it’s an opportunity for them to tell another interesting story. 

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22. Tell me about a time you had to adjust your sales strategy to reach your quota?

Why it’s important: 

This question is a great way to figure out what valuable lessons the candidate has learned. 

But the most important aspect to look for is how they respond to feedback and incorporate it into their work. 

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23. How do you establish trust with members of your team?

Why it’s important: 

This is a good question for a potential team leader.

It’s also important to know how a candidate goes about fitting into an existing team and a new environment.

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24. Why did you choose a career in sales?

Why it’s important: 

Did they choose a sales career themselves or did they unintentionally stumble into sales? 

This will allow you to gauge their interest in sales and if they grab life by the horns to take control. 

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25. What have you done that has beaten the odds?

Why it’s important: 

What does your candidate consider to be a challenge? 

How have they overcome adversity to get to where they are now?

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26. Tell me how you’ve incorporated storytelling into your sales process.

Why it’s important: 

Storytelling is one of the best ways to captivate and persuade a prospect. 

It’s crucial to find candidates who can tell stories and incorporate them into their sales process.

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Bonus Question

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Our CEO Kyle’s favorite question measures the emotional intelligence of a candidate, by asking their opinion of how their previous interviews went:

Question: “You have spoken to person A and person B. I'm curious, from your perspective, what do you think they will be most excited about with you as a candidate, and what do you think their biggest concern will be?”

This question should be asked by the last person in the interview process.

Want to print off a sheet to have all these questions in one place read for your interview? Print off the next sheet for your next sales rep interview

1. How do you stay up to date with your target market?
2. How much time do you spend cultivating customer relationships versus hunting for new clients? What‘s the philosophy behind the breakdown?
3. What are your favorite questions to ask prospects that gauge their need and interest?
4. Tell me about an uncomfortable situation you experienced during a cold call. 
5. Tell me about a time in your sales career where you needed to start a territory from scratch. What did you do for the first 30 days? What would you have done differently? If I hire you, what will you do at this company?
6. What information do you look for when researching a prospect? 
7. What do you think our company/sales organization could do better?
8. How have you handled customer objection in the past?
9. How does [your company name] bring value to the customer?
10. Tell me about something interesting you have learned recently? 
11. When do you know it is time to stop pursuing a potential client?
12.  Have you ever turned a prospect away? If so, why?
13. How do you keep a smile on your face during a hard day?
14. What do you know about our company?
15. Have you ever had a losing streak? How did you turn it around?
16. What was a mistake you made? What did you learn from it?
17. Have you ever asked a prospect who didn't buy from you to explain why you lost the deal? What did they say, and what did you learn from that experience?
18. Explain the steps you take, from the beginning of the sales process to the end.
19. How do you balance work and life?
20. What motivates you?
21. What do you do for fun?
22. Tell me about a time you had to adjust your sales strategy to reach your quota?
23. How do you establish trust with members of your team?
24. Why did you choose a career in sales?
25. What have you done that has beaten the odds?
26. Tell me how you’ve incorporated storytelling into your sales process.
27. You have spoken to person A and person B. I'm curious, from your perspective, what do you think they will be most excited about with you as a candidate, and what do you think their biggest concern will be?”

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As a sales person, mastering the skill of active listening should be at the top of your priority list.

1. It connects you to prospects.
2. It closes sales.
3. It's what separates the good from the great.

The problem is, it can be challenging to improve this skill without practicing it on a live call or in countless conversations.

Fortunately, I have some activities you and your team can do to improve in a safe environment, before getting on a live call.

Fun fact, most of these techniques I learned in improv class.

See, when I was in high school I was a drama geek. I was the first sophomore accepted into the highest level theater class and I was the Drama Club President my senior year.

The skills I learned in my high school's improv troupe are a big reason I advanced so quickly in sales.

Improv not only helps you with listening, it will help quicken your mind and reduce your natural "fight or flight" response to the unexpected.

In this article I am going to share my three favorite active listening exercises I learned in improve class. Practice these a couple times per week, and I guarantee you'll notice a difference on your sales calls.

Let's dive in.

Why you should do these activities.

It is not lost on me that there are a lot of things you can spend time on. In a world with so much knowledge at our fingertips it can be easy to jump from one educational pursuit to another. Improving your active listening skills should be on the top of your list, and here's why.

1. It helps all areas of life, not just sales
2. Active listening leads to more meaningful conversations. This impacts your sales conversations as well as your personal ones.
3. It directly impacts your income earning potential
4. The better you are at active listening the more information you will gain. That information, when used well, will lead to more sales.
5. You will never feel "lost" in a conversation
6. When you master active listening you will always be able to find something to talk about. This eliminates getting "lost" on a call.

Hopefully, I have convinced you to take these activities seriously. Now, let's dive into them!

Active Listening Activity #1: "You say I say"

Number of people: 2-7

Length of time: 10-30 minutes

Things Needed: Soft object for tossing

The Roles: There is one thrower and a catcher.

The Setup: Select one person to be the first thrower and everyone sits around a table.

The Goal: To be the last person "out."

How to play

• The Thrower starts by saying a word while throwing a soft object to someone else, who is the catcher.  The idea behind throwing the soft object is it adds just the right amount of pressure to simulate stress and cause the mind to work harder.
• The catcher must catch the object and say a word that's related to the word said by the thrower.
• Once they say their word they throw the soft object to someone else and around it goes!
• Example
• Person 1: House
• Person 2: Windows
• Person 3: Landscaping
• Person 4: Pluto
• Pluto is unrelated and player 4 would be out.
• If anyone says a word that isn't related to the previous word, they are out. Repeat this until someone is the last person standing.
• Advanced: Instead of a word try saying an objection you get on a cold call. The catcher must respond to the objection.

Active Listening Activity #2: "So what I heard is..."

Number of people: 1-5

Length of time: 30-60 minutes

Things needed: Youtube (if playing solo)

The Roles: Speaker and the players

The Setup: Pick one player to be the speaker and the other players sit across from him/her.

The Goal: To summarize what the speaker says and ask a relevant follow up question.

How to play

• The speaker pretends to be a prospect and talks about a pain point they're experiencing.
• After the speaker is done the other players take turns summarizing what the speaker said and asking a follow up question.
• No two players can use the same summary or follow up question.
• 1 player variant: Watch a ted talk and stop periodically to summarize what they said and ask a follow up question.

Active Listening Activity #3: "Continue the story"

Number of people: 4-5

Length of time: 20-40 minutes

Things Needed: Nothing

The Roles: One "pointer" and 3-4 players.

The Setup: Three story details (ex: Magic phone, the DMV, and a paperclip). Select one person to be the Pointer and 3-4 people to play as speakers.

The Goal: To continue the story without stuttering or repeating the previous speakers word.

How to play

• One person is the "pointer" and the other people stand in a line facing him/her.
• The pointer starts by giving the players three details to incorporate into the story.
• After the details of the story are reveled, the pointer points to one of the players who must start telling a story.
• When the pointers finger moves to another player, the speaker must stop and the next player pick up exactly where the previous one left off.

• If a player stutters or repeats part of what the previous speaker said, they are out.
• As the pointer selects different players to start speaking, the players must integrate the three story details.
• Remember, if anyone stutters or repeats a word, they are out.
• This continues until there is one player left. That person becomes the pointer for the next game.

Active listening is incredibly powerful but takes practice. These three activities are designed to help you improve your sales calls, personal relationships, and work life. I've used these activities with great success to help improve my own, and my teams, active listening skills. I am confident if you do these regularly with your team they will make a huge impact!

Here is what to do next. Take some time during your weekly training to try one of these activities. Message me on LinkedIn and let me know how it goes!

In the meantime, you can download our free sales resources here:

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Listening is as much as a learned skill as it is natural curiosity. If you want to be successful in sales, you must understand the needs of your prospects. It’s the same with your personal relationships, half the battle is being able to communicate effectively.

However, the most skilled communicators deploy active listening to better understand who they are speaking with and to better relate to them.

When it comes to SDRs many get caught in a “call dream.” This is when their thoughts are about what to say next instead of actively listening to whom they are speaking.

When this happens, the salesperson will miss important information about the prospect's challenges. This hinders the salespersons ability to align their solution with the challenge the prospect is facing and ultimately can lead to losing a deal.

Therefore the best salespeople use active listening to better understand their prospect's challenges.

What is active listening?

The simplest way I define active listening is the act of genuinely listening with the intent to understand. In order to practice active listening you must be fully focused on the person you are speaking with and ask questions that directly relate to what they are saying. It’s a great technique to learn more about the person you are speaking with and have deeper, more meaningful conversations.

What are you listening for?

There are specific things that should pique your interests when heard. I follow a simple acronym based on emotional cues for identifying what is important to the person I am speaking with and how to guide the conversation. This works great in both sales and personal interactions. The acronym is D.I.C.E.

• Dramatic language
• Irritation
• Confusion
• Excitement

Here are examples that come up during sales conversations.

Drama

Did the prospect use dramatic language?

“Running the analyses has become a burden for me…”

Is the prospect describing a dramatic situation?

“My boss was asking a lot of questions about one of my calculations and I was very nervous…”

Are they over-exaggerating or being hyperbolic?

“Our sales are in the toilet, I feel like every year we are losing money while our competitors are doing so well!”

Irritation

The prospect says they are frustrated by something.

“I'm frustrated by all the manual work that goes into onboarding a new hire.”

The prospect is describing is an obvious problem or frustration.

“When a new hire starts I need them to sign a document, I then scan it, manually add them to every system that we use internally, and add them to payroll. It's a long process...”

Confusion

The prospect admits they are having some confusion regarding a work arrangement, task, or duty.

“I am constantly helping my team set up our marketing campaigns because they have a hard time using our automation system”

The prospect explains a situation in which they are confused themselves.

“I don’t understand how to make changes to the marketing campaigns I have already set up, I know I can but the UI is so confusing.”

The prospect explains a situation that causes you to be confused.

“We download the CSV, edit it, upload it, and finally run it through activation. After all that we have to cross-reference with our CRM and finally execute.”

Excitement

Prospect explains or acts very excited about something.

“I am very excited about our growth, we will be adding 12 new people this year…”

Prospect tells you something that excites you.

“We realized we were paying way too much for our marketing automation software and we plan on making a change…”

When hearing the prospect say something that is part of D.I.C.E. your instinct should be to ask a related question. The goal of the question is to get them to discuss the situation in more detail so you can gain a deeper understanding.

When asking these questions and throughout the conversation, it is important that you practice active listening. Here are four tips for improving your active listening skills.

Here are four tips for improving your active listening skills.

Tip# 1: Never interrupt

When practicing active listening there is a very important principle, never interrupt. This is especially challenging if your mind moves a mile a minute, which is something I struggle with.

There are two main problems with interrupting someone. The first is that it comes across like you don't care about what they are saying. The second is that it shuts down the conversation from moving forward naturally. These both have a negative impact on sales conversations.

When you interrupt someone its typically because you have made an assumption of some kind. Either you are predicting what they are going to say, or you have assumed that you have a solution.

When having a conversation, assumptions block the natural progression of the interaction. What you will experience by not interrupting is that often the person you are speaking with will add more context than you were expecting, giving you more information. In a sales interaction this is great, the more information the better! In fact, all interactions benefit because that extra context allows you to better understand the person you are speaking with.

Action Tip: On your next sales or prospecting call give this a try. After you ask a question, hit the mute button. Only take yourself off mute when the prospect has stopped speaking. This will force you not to interrupt but also train you to get used to speaking after the other person is done.

Tip #2: Relate to the other person

When someone is telling you a story of something stressful, they are often looking to feel like they are not alone. Therefore relating to the person you are speaking with is such a powerful tool for building rapport and showing that you are listening.

There are two things I do to relate to the people I speak with.

The first is, I give them a quick example of a similar situation that I've gone through. I keep it very short because I do not want to dominate the conversation, I just want to give them enough context so they understand how the event is similar.

The second thing I do is tie how I felt in that situation to how they must be feeling and confirm that it relates.

Here is an example.

"That's a tough situation. I went through something similar when I was the top performer at ABC company and they passed me over for a promotion just because the other person had been there longer. I felt like my accomplishments were not being recognized. Is that similar to how you're feeling?"

Simple, empathetic, and takes the conversation to a more meaningful place.

Action Tip: Next time you are in a conversation try sharing an example of a similar situation that you went through and tie your emotion during that time to how they feel. You will see how it opens up the conversation and leads to a deeper connection.

Tip #3: Summarize what they just said

When speaking with someone, especially when having a sales conversation, it is important that they feel that you are listening to them. Many try and accomplish this by responding with "I hear you" or "I understand." This is level one active listening, let’s do better than that!

After the person you are speaking with finishes their thought, summarize what they just said. Once they confirm that your summary is correct you can move on with the conversation or suggest a next step if that's appropriate.

This helps you because it clarifies your own understanding and improves your retention of the information. This also helps the person you are speaking with feel that you understand their perspective and that you are listening to them.

Finally, it will increase your perceived intelligence level because it shows that you are tracking the conversation and are capable of understanding and distilling down complex situations.  

Action tip: When someone explains a situation during your next conversation, summarize it back to them. See how it impacts the conversations and improves your own retention.  

Tip #4: Make eye contact!

The simplest thing you can do to improve as a communicator is to maintain eye contact. Maintaining eye contact shows the person that you have confidence in what you are saying and that you are being honest with them.

There is an obvious challenge with eye contact in modern-day sales...

A lot of sales is done through web conferences. How do you keep eye contact with someone who isn’t in front of you?

Simple...

Look at the camera.

It blows my mind how many people don't know this. If you are looking at the video of the other person speaking it looks like you are not looking at them, from their perspective. They are looking at your video so when you look into the camera it appears to them that you are looking at them in the eye.

Action Tip: In your next video meeting look into the camera, not at the video of the other person. Do this for every video meeting to start building the habit!

Active listening is a learned skill and takes practice to do well. Follow some of the advice in this article to improve your skills and remember that the best way to be a great active listener is to be genuinely curious about the person you are interacting with.

Action Steps

1. Never interrupt: Use the mute button to keep yourself from butting in and speaking over the other person. When you're sure they're done with their point, unmute yourself!
2. Relate to the other person: Next time you're speaking with a friend, relate to a point they make by sharing a similar story and talk about how it made you feel!
3. Summarize their last point: Next time someone is explaining something to you, pause them and repeat their point in your own words.
4. Eye contact!: In your next video call, make sure you're looking into the camera - not at the image of the person speaking on your monitor.

Also, make sure to download our free sales resorces here:

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"Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply." -Stephen R. Covey

Listening is as much as a learned skill, as it is a natural curiosity. If you want to be successful in sales you must understand the needs of your prospects. Half the battle is being able to communicate effectively. However, the skilled salesperson knows that winning the battle requires acute listening skills.

Even the most talented salespeople get caught in a “call dream.” This is when their thoughts are about what to say next, how they will get commitment on a next step. When a salesperson is thinking too much about what to say they tend to miss important information about the prospects challenges.

Listen With the Intent to Understand

Let me tell you a brief story. About 2 years ago I was at a restaurant ordering a burrito. I asked for avocado and no salsa (I don't like my burritos soggy. I also imagine most of the comments on this post will be about burritos but I digress). The lady behind the counter was alone, she was very understaffed and had a long line of customers. She took my order while making the person’s burrito who was in front of me. She asked the next customer in line what they wanted before even starting on my food. When I grabbed my burrito and took a look what do you think I saw?

She messed up my order... shocker. To be honest, I can’t blame her because it was a lot for one person to manage. She did the best she could but at the end of the day, she didn't listen well. Have you ever been in a similar situation? Maybe the prospect is talking and you are worried about making sure you take the right notes. Perhaps you are focused on constructing the perfect response in your head. Maybe your smiling because you “got this one for sure!” Have you ever had a prospect that you thought would close refuse to sign? We all have — maybe we got excited too soon.

Never Assume

"Curiosity kills cats, not salespeople"

When discussing details, problems, and/or issues of a prospect, you will find yourself in a position where you will know what they are going to say before they say it. You have had 100’s of these conversations before, so why not skip ahead? This instinct will stop your momentum dead in its tracks.

Don't let what seems to be routine stifle your natural curiosity. Allow your curiosity to obtain more information from the prospect. Curiosity can help you to discover smaller details that can paint a bigger picture for you and your prospect’s problems. Letting the prospect paint this picture is incredibly important because it forces them to see the image clearly, something they might not have done before.

Curiosity might have a bad reputation because of the impact it had on the cat population. However, it can prove to be incredibly useful for salespeople. Stay quiet, Allow your prospect the time to discuss their issues thoroughly, and offer solutions only once you have a better idea of what they’re dealing with. It’s essential for you to NOT try to search for something that fits your agenda while listening to your prospect. Focus on their needs first and foremost, and then offer support.

What are you Listening For?

"Who needs an app when there's an acronym for that!"

Now that we’ve established a basis on how we should listen to our prospect, we need to start pointing out for a specific language, rhetoric, and the tone of voice the prospect might share in our conversation. By listening to specific emotional cues, we can further develop a better understanding of how to solve our prospect’s problems.

An easy way to identify clues on what to hone in on during your conversations is what I call D.I.C.E. If you didn't know I love fancy acronyms!

One of the techniques you can use is the D.I.C.E. Method. This method helps you identify clues on what to hone in on during your conversation. This method will also help assist you while you take notes, which we discuss more in detail below.

Drama

Did the prospect use dramatic language?

“Running ROI analyses is becoming a burden for me…”

Is the prospect describing a dramatic situation?

“The auditors came in and I was very nervous…”

Are they over exaggerating or being hyperbolic?

“Our sales are in the toilet, I feel like every year we are losing money while our competitors are doing so well!”

Irritation

The prospect says they’re frustrated by something.

“I'm frustrated by all the manual work that goes into on-boarding a new hire.”

The prospect is describing is an obvious problem or frustration.

“When a new hire starts I need them to sign a document, I then must scan it, I have to manually add them to every system that we use internally, and add them to payroll. Its a long process...”

Confusion

The prospect admits they are having some confusion regarding a work arrangement, task, or duty.

“I am constantly helping my team set up our marketing campaigns because they have a hard time using our automation system”

The prospect explains a situation in which they’re confused themselves.

“I don’t understand how to make changes to the marketing campaigns I have already set up, I know I can but the UI is so confusing.”

The prospect explains a situation that causes you to be confused.

“We download the CSV, edit it, upload it, and finally run it through activation. After all that we have to cross reference with our CRM and finally execute.”

Excitement

Prospect explains or acts very excited about something.

“I am very excited about our growth, we will be adding 12 new people this year…”

Prospect tells you something that excites you.

“We realized we were paying way too much for our marketing automation software and we plan on making a change…”

As always, have a wonderful day filled with success and self-improvement!    

Cold calls are hard, click here to read an article about what to do when a call gets difficult.

In the meantime, you can download our free sales resources here:

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Introduction

Are you looking for ways to build a positive team culture, improve your reps' skills, and keep everyone motivated? 

What if I told you there IS, in fact, one thing that can transform culture, skills, and motivation....and that you might already be doing a form of it?

If you're a sales manager, your secret weapon is your 1-on-1 meeting structure. Get it right and it'll help build trust and rapport with your team, identify and address challenges with your process, and set clear expectations and goals.

I'll also give you a foolproof template for running productive one-on-one meetings. It's what we use with our clients and it's been tested with dozens of teams.

The Benefits of One-on-One Meetings

One-on-one meetings can have a wide range of positive impacts on your sales team's performance and motivation. Firstly, they help build trust and rapport between managers and salespeople. By having regular one-on-one meetings, managers can establish a personal connection with their team members, making them feel valued and heard. They're a great way to create stronger interpersonal relationships and long-term loyalty.  

Secondly, one-on-one meetings provide an opportunity to identify and address challenges faced by team members. During these meetings, employees can openly discuss any issues or concerns they may have, allowing managers to provide support and guidance. By addressing challenges in a timely manner, managers can prevent them from escalating and negatively impacting team performance.

Lastly, one-on-one meetings help in setting clear expectations and goals for team members. Managers can use these meetings to communicate their expectations, provide feedback, and align individual goals with the overall objectives of the team. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and working towards a common purpose.

Building Trust and Rapport

Building trust and rapport is essential in any professional relationship, and one-on-one meetings provide the perfect opportunity to foster these qualities between managers and employees. During these meetings, you can establish an open and honest line of communication, creating a safe space for employees to share their thoughts and concerns. This trust-building process allows managers to gain valuable insights into their employees' needs and aspirations, leading to a more productive and collaborative work environment.

Regular one-on-one meetings also help in building rapport between managers and employees. By dedicating time to connect on a personal level, managers can show genuine interest in their employees' lives and well-being. This can include discussing personal goals, hobbies, or even sharing a laugh. These interactions create a sense of camaraderie and build a stronger connection between managers and employees. 

In addition, one-on-one meetings provide an opportunity for managers to actively listen to their employees. By giving undivided attention and showing empathy, managers can demonstrate that they value their employees' opinions and concerns. This active listening fosters a sense of respect and understanding, further strengthening the trust and rapport between managers and employees. Overall, building trust and rapport through one-on-one meetings is crucial for creating a positive and productive work environment.

Identifying and Addressing Challenges

One-on-one meetings provide an opportunity to identify and address challenges faced by team members. During these meetings, you can ask open-ended questions to encourage your team members to share any difficulties they may be experiencing. This allows you to gain insight into any obstacles they are facing and understand how you can support them.

By actively listening during these meetings, you can identify any challenges that may be affecting your team members' productivity or well-being. This could include issues such as workload, communication problems, or personal difficulties. Once you have identified these challenges, you can work together to find solutions and provide the necessary resources or support to help your team members overcome them.

Addressing challenges in one-on-one meetings can also help prevent them from escalating into larger problems. By regularly checking in with your team members, you can catch any issues early on and take proactive measures to resolve them. This not only benefits your team members but also contributes to a more positive and productive work environment overall.

Setting Clear Expectations and Goals

Setting clear expectations and goals is crucial for the success of any team. One-on-one meetings provide the perfect opportunity to discuss and establish these expectations and goals with team members.

During these meetings, you can clearly communicate what is expected of each team member and what goals they should be working towards. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and understands what is required of them.

By setting clear expectations and goals, you provide your team members with a sense of direction and purpose. They know exactly what they need to do and what they are working towards, which can increase their motivation and productivity. These meetings also allow for any questions or concerns to be addressed, ensuring that everyone has a clear understanding of what is expected of them.

Preparing for a Productive One-on-One Meeting

To ensure a productive one-on-one meeting, managers should follow these tips and guidelines. Firstly, it is important to schedule regular one-on-one meetings and determine the appropriate frequency. This allows for consistent communication and ensures that important topics are not overlooked.

Secondly, managers should set an agenda for the one-on-one meeting to ensure a focused discussion. This can include topics such as progress updates, challenges, and goal setting. By setting an agenda in advance, both the manager and the employee can come prepared and make the most out of the meeting.

Lastly, managers should gather feedback and input from team members before the meeting. This can be done through surveys or informal conversations. By seeking input from employees, managers can address their concerns and tailor the meeting to their specific needs.

Scheduling and Frequency

Scheduling and frequency are crucial aspects of productive one-on-one meetings. Regularly scheduling these meetings ensures that both you and your team member have dedicated time to discuss important matters. It also helps in building a strong working relationship and maintaining open lines of communication. Determining the appropriate frequency of these meetings depends on various factors such as the nature of the work, the level of support needed, and the availability of both parties.

Setting a consistent schedule for one-on-one meetings allows you to establish a routine and ensures that they become a priority. By dedicating specific time slots for these meetings, you can avoid last-minute cancellations or rescheduling. This consistency also helps in creating a sense of accountability and commitment to the process.

The frequency of one-on-one meetings should be determined based on the needs of both parties. Some team members may require more frequent check-ins, especially if they are working on complex projects or facing challenges. On the other hand, some team members may only need monthly or quarterly meetings to touch base and discuss long-term goals. It is important to have open and honest conversations with your team members to determine the appropriate frequency that works best for everyone involved.

Setting an Agenda

To ensure a focused discussion during your one-on-one meetings, it is important to set an agenda. Start by identifying the key topics or issues that you want to discuss with your team member. This could include updates on projects, feedback on performance, or any challenges they may be facing.

Once you have identified the topics, prioritize them based on their importance and urgency. This will help you allocate the appropriate amount of time for each discussion point. Share the agenda with your team member ahead of time so they can come prepared with any necessary information or questions.

During the meeting, use the agenda as a guide to keep the conversation on track. Start with the most important topics and work your way down the list. This will ensure that you cover all the necessary points and have a productive discussion. Remember to be flexible and open to any additional topics or concerns that your team member may bring up during the meeting.

Gathering Feedback and Input

To ensure a productive one-on-one meeting, it is crucial to gather feedback and input from your team members beforehand. This allows you to have a better understanding of their concerns, challenges, and ideas, and helps you tailor the meeting agenda accordingly.

By gathering feedback and input, you show your team members that their opinions and ideas are valued, fostering a sense of ownership and engagement. This also allows you to address any pressing issues or concerns that may be affecting their productivity or morale.

Additionally, gathering feedback and input before the meeting gives you the opportunity to prepare and research any specific topics or questions that may arise. This allows you to have a more informed and meaningful discussion during the one-on-one meeting, leading to more effective problem-solving and decision-making.

Conducting a Productive One-on-One Meeting

To conduct a productive one-on-one meeting, follow this foolproof template. Start the meeting on a positive note by acknowledging the employee's achievements or expressing appreciation for their work. This creates a conducive atmosphere and sets the tone for a constructive discussion.

Next, review the progress and performance of the employee. Discuss their accomplishments, challenges faced, and any areas for improvement. This allows for a comprehensive evaluation and helps in identifying areas where support or additional resources may be needed.

Address any challenges or concerns raised by the employee during the meeting. Listen actively, provide guidance, and work together to find solutions. This demonstrates that the manager is invested in the employee's success and is willing to support them.

Collaboratively set goals and action plans with the employee. Discuss their aspirations, career development, and any specific objectives they want to achieve. By involving the employee in the goal-setting process, they feel a sense of ownership and are more likely to be motivated to achieve those goals.

Provide constructive feedback and recognition during the meeting. Offer specific feedback on areas where the employee excels and provide suggestions for improvement. Recognize their hard work and accomplishments to boost morale and motivation.

Start with a Positive Note

To create a productive and positive atmosphere for your one-on-one meeting, it's important to start with a positive note. By beginning the meeting on a positive note, you set the tone for the conversation and create a conducive environment for open and honest communication.

Starting with a positive note helps to build rapport and trust between you and the person you are meeting with. It shows that you value their contributions and are interested in their success. This can help to put them at ease and make them more comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas.

Additionally, beginning the meeting on a positive note can help to boost morale and motivation. By acknowledging and highlighting the person's achievements or positive contributions, you can inspire and motivate them to continue performing at their best. This can also help to foster a sense of appreciation and recognition, which can lead to increased job satisfaction and engagement.

Overall, starting with a positive note sets a positive tone for the meeting, builds rapport and trust, and boosts morale and motivation. By creating a conducive atmosphere, you can ensure that your one-on-one meetings are productive and effective.

Review Progress and Performance

To review progress and performance during the 1-on-1 meeting, start by discussing the goals and objectives that were set in previous meetings. Ask the team member for updates on their progress towards these goals and any challenges they may have encountered. This will help you gauge their performance and identify any areas where they may need additional support or resources.

Next, provide feedback on the team member's performance. Highlight their accomplishments and areas where they have excelled. Be specific and provide examples to make your feedback more meaningful. If there are any areas where improvement is needed, offer constructive criticism and suggestions for how they can enhance their performance.

Finally, discuss any metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) that are relevant to the team member's role. Review the data together and discuss any trends or patterns that you observe. Use this information to identify areas of strength and areas that may require further attention. This will help the team member understand how their performance is being measured and what they can do to meet or exceed expectations.

Address Challenges and Concerns

When addressing challenges and concerns raised by team members in 1-on-1 meetings, it is important for managers to create a safe and supportive environment. Start by actively listening to their concerns and acknowledging their feelings. Encourage open and honest communication by asking open-ended questions and allowing them to fully express their thoughts and emotions.

Once their concerns are voiced, work together to identify the root causes of the challenges and brainstorm potential solutions. Offer guidance and support, but also empower your team member to come up with their own ideas and strategies. Encourage them to think creatively and consider alternative perspectives.

Finally, develop an action plan to address the challenges and concerns. Break down the plan into smaller, manageable steps and set realistic timelines. Assign responsibilities and establish accountability. Regularly check in on progress and provide ongoing support and feedback. By addressing challenges and concerns head-on, you can foster a culture of trust and collaboration within your team.

Set Goals and Action Plans

To set goals and action plans collaboratively with your team members, start by discussing their individual goals and aspirations. Ask them what they hope to achieve in their role and how they see themselves contributing to the team's success. This will help you align their personal goals with the overall objectives of the organization.

Next, work together to break down these goals into actionable steps. Encourage your team member to think about what specific actions they can take to move closer to their goals. Help them identify any resources or support they may need to achieve these actions.

Finally, set clear deadlines and milestones for each action step. This will help your team member stay accountable and track their progress. Regularly check in on their progress during your 1-on-1 meetings and provide any necessary guidance or support to ensure they stay on track towards achieving their goals.

Provide Feedback and Recognition

During the 1-on-1 meeting, it is crucial to provide feedback and recognition to your team member. This helps them understand their strengths and areas for improvement, ultimately leading to their professional growth. By giving constructive feedback, you can address any performance issues or challenges they may be facing and provide guidance on how to overcome them. Additionally, recognizing their achievements and efforts boosts their morale and motivation, making them feel valued and appreciated.

When providing feedback, be specific and provide examples to illustrate your points. This helps the team member understand exactly what they did well or need to improve on. Use a balanced approach by highlighting both their strengths and areas for development. This ensures that the feedback is constructive and encourages growth rather than discouraging them. Remember to focus on behaviors and actions rather than personal traits to keep the feedback objective and fair.

Recognition is equally important as it reinforces positive behavior and motivates your team member to continue performing well. Acknowledge their accomplishments, big or small, and express your appreciation for their hard work. This not only boosts their confidence but also fosters a positive work environment where employees feel valued and supported. Providing feedback and recognition during the 1-on-1 meeting creates a culture of continuous improvement and helps your team member thrive in their role.

Following Up and Documenting the Meeting

Following up and documenting the outcomes of the one-on-one meeting is crucial for accountability and future reference. Managers should follow up on action items discussed during the meeting and hold team members accountable for their commitments. This ensures that progress is made and goals are achieved.

It is also important to effectively document meeting notes for future reference. Managers should summarize the key points discussed, any decisions made, and action items assigned. This serves as a record of the meeting and can be referred back to in the future to track progress and provide context for future discussions.

Action Items and Accountability

To ensure that action items from the 1-on-1 meeting are followed through, it is important for managers to clearly communicate expectations and deadlines to their team members. This can be done by summarizing the action items at the end of the meeting and sending a follow-up email or message to the team member. In this message, managers should reiterate the agreed-upon action items, specify any deadlines or milestones, and provide any necessary resources or support.

To hold team members accountable, managers can schedule regular check-ins or progress updates to review the status of the action items. These check-ins can be done in subsequent 1-on-1 meetings or through other communication channels such as email or project management tools. During these check-ins, managers should ask for updates on the progress of the action items, offer guidance or support if needed, and provide feedback or recognition for completed tasks.

If a team member consistently fails to follow through on action items or meet deadlines, it may be necessary for the manager to address the issue directly. This can be done by having a candid conversation with the team member to understand any challenges or obstacles they may be facing and to provide additional support or resources if needed. It is important for managers to approach these conversations with empathy and a focus on finding solutions rather than placing blame.

Documenting Meeting Notes

To effectively document meeting notes for future reference, start by taking detailed notes during the meeting. Write down key points, action items, decisions made, and any important information discussed. Be sure to capture the main ideas and any supporting details. You can either grab our 1:1 meeting template or use this one from Asana.

After the meeting, review your notes and organize them in a clear and concise manner. Use headings and bullet points to make the information easy to read and navigate. Include any relevant attachments or links that were discussed during the meeting.

Finally, share the meeting notes with the participants and any other relevant stakeholders. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and can refer back to the notes as needed. Encourage feedback and clarification from the participants to ensure accuracy and completeness. By documenting meeting notes effectively, you can create a valuable resource for future reference and accountability.

The Vouris 1-on-1 Meeting Templates For Your Sales Team

We created a template to structure meetings with your SDRs, AEs, and managers. It covers all the bases and it'll help you create a positive, constructive experience every time! You can download it at the end of this article.

Whether you use our template or an alternative, make sure that you keep an eye out for the 9 elements that make up a productive 1:1 meeting:

#1) Shared accountability.

Why this matters: This allows both parties to share what they've accomplished and incentivizes productivity.

#2) Last week's goals.

Why this matters: This starts the discussion on whether the goals were achieved and how well they were executed, creating a feedback loop.

#3) The rep's KPIs.

Why this matters: This allows you to determine how well your marketing campaigns are performing.

#4) Leading indicators of success/trouble.

Why this matters: This helps identify weak areas that need improvement or strong areas that deserve praise.

#5) Specific help.

Why this matters: This allows the manager and rep to solve new problems and tackle specific issues together.

#6) The rep's concerns.

Why this matters: This makes the meeting a 2-way conversation and allows the rep to get any issue off their chest.

#7) Focused coaching.

Why this matters: This is a great chance for the manager to help the rep make a specific improvement to their performance. These add up quickly!

#8) Direct feedback.

Why this matters: This tells them exactly what they need to focus on, what to avoid, and where to double down.

#9) Clear goals for next week.

Why this matters: This ends the meeting on a proactive note and gives the rep a clear short term focus.

This meeting structure works at every stage of an organization’s development and at every level of management.

You’re welcome to swipe this template - it’s got versions for SDRs, AEs, SDR managers, and AE managers.

Conclusion

Productive one-on-one meetings are a crucial part of building a positive team culture and motivating sales team members. By establishing trust and rapport, addressing challenges, and setting clear expectations and goals, these meetings create a space for open communication and collaboration.

With a well-prepared agenda and a focus on gathering feedback and providing recognition, these meetings can drive performance and growth. By following up and documenting the meeting, action items and accountability are established, ensuring progress and success. Grab our meeting template below and get started!

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The Sales Development role is a challenging job, making the first impression. However, the SDR role is typically filled by young, inexperienced workers who, unfortunately, often fail. The SDR is a company's first impression on its prospects; doesn't it make sense to give this responsibility to someone who knows what they are doing?

The grim reality is that many SDRs fail within the first 10 months of their employment. As leaders, we ask, “What happened? Where did we go wrong? It is easy to blame the people; they just weren't cut out for it.” It is also easy to blame the company, “We did not provide enough leads, and we didn't train them.” Of course, there is some reality to both of these hypotheses. That being said, what I have found, is the reason for failing tends to come from 3 key areas - here are those areas and how to prevent them from becoming the point of failure for you or your SDR team.

Lack of Motivation

The first area to look into is your rep's personal level of motivation. Finding out what motivates each individual on your team is very important and should be a part of your onboarding process.

When you have an SDR who lacks motivation it can be a challenge to find out the source. This can be related to their performance, they aren't where they want to be. It can be personal, maybe they are going through a tough time outside of work. Regardless of what it is leadership must take responsibility for their team's level of motivation. People want a leader that they trust and look up to. Someone they respect and feel that they can learn from. It is important to be your team's leader, not just a friend.

Every person has a different set of needs that they require on a subconscious level to feel good about themselves. For example, many people feel good about their own personal growth. If they don’t feel like they are growing in any way they will lose motivation for their current role or project. SDRs should not be looked at as people doing “busy work.” They should be viewed as the future faces of your company and be respected and trained as so. If you aren't promoting the SDRs within your organization then there is a bigger problem.

You can use our 1:1 meeting templates to help consistently look for what your individual reps want and need.

Lack of Organization

It seems simple but another area that can be the cause of struggle is organization. You would think that a recent college graduate would know a thing or two about being organized but that isn't always the case. Regardless if your SDR is a recent college grad or not, it is always surprising to me that organization isn’t as much of a focus as it should be. A lot of it has to do with the tools we have available to us. How can we have a problem with our organization if our CRM automates so much of our work? The reality is salespeople are moving a mile a minute and will spend time on what they value. If they do not value inputting in valuable notes then they will forget this task regularly.

If you have been in a sales position for a long enough time you know the value of keeping good notes, funnel management, and following up. The problem comes when someone doesn't understand the value of these things and they don't develop the habit of keeping them all together. Building these habits comes with structure and actually holding your team accountable. Very few people enjoy writing notes after a call, but the benefits outweigh the time it takes to do it.

Making these tasks mandatory for your sales team is only half of the battle, holding your team accountable is the other half. This is what your one-on-one or group meetings should be helping to enforce. Ask your team what happened on calls, checking in on their funnel, and how many follow-up calls they have. The average sales manager will ask some of these questions so they can fill out a spreadsheet to show their boss. That isn’t your goal here; you should be doing this for THEM, not so you look good with some extra data points.

Lack of Confidence

The most important and the hardest key area to help an SDR with is confidence. If a sales development rep lacks confidence it is virtually impossible for them to succeed. When someone is new to the job it is normal for them to lack confidence on the phone. Oftentimes we are asking someone with little experience to speak with C-Level executives; their nerves are justified. Some new SDRs get over these nerves with practice. For others, it can be a crippling experience that will ultimately lead to their failure. “Sales isn't for me,” is a common phrase to those who can’t gain the confidence they need to make a cold call.

It is quite the challenge to build a rep's confidence because a lot of it is self-inflicted. It is easy to write people off as being “not cut out for sales” and move on but this is taking the easy way out. Confidence comes quickly to some people and slowly to others and as a leader, you must figure out what kind of person your rep is. Are they going to get confidence by making more calls or are they the type of person who needs to be rewarded for even their small successes?

For example, let's say you have a sales development rep who is very hard on themselves. This can work in their favor, pushing them to make more calls and strive to better their performance. However, for some people, this could form as negative reinforcement; they will be overcome with self-doubt and ultimately fail. For those reps, you must reward them for small successes. Teach them how to celebrate the little wins and lighten up on themselves. Anyone can meet with a team once a week and go over metrics and this is a manager's job. A great manager leads with awareness of the needs of the individuals on their team.

Everyone has limiting beliefs, things that they believe that negatively impact their outlook. Some people hold these beliefs in areas that will affect their confidence on the phone. An example would be someone who believes that cold calls are annoying for prospects. If they believe that to the extent that it affects their ability to have quality calls with prospects they won't succeed as a sales development rep. It is a leader's job to identify what is keeping their rep from being successful and work to overcome that. Giving up on someone because they lack confidence is a cop-out, focus on those people and help them overcome their limiting beliefs. You will impact them in a way that not only will help the whole team succeed but will help them succeed throughout their careers.

Having a sales development rep work for months only to fail to meet performance standards is a tough pill to swallow for everyone involved. It is tough for the company because they spent money on-boarding a new employee only to never see a return on that investment. It is hard for the rep because they came into the company excited with the willingness to succeed. It hurts leadership, they hired that person because they felt that they could succeed. A rep's ability to succeed is in the best interest of the entire organization, so what do we do to prevent failure?

We must identify what is causing the failure and work to correct that issue before it spirals out of control. Talking to your reps is the most important piece to this puzzle, as leaders we must keep our hand on the pulse of what is happening within our team. If one of your reps is struggling you must find out why, and this goes beyond just asking them. Diving deep into the core issue: Is it a problem with their belief system? Are they surrounded by negativity? Do they have trouble staying organized? Once you can accurately identify what is causing them to struggle you can then begin to work on solving it.

Grab the tools we use to help develop scalable, healthy sales organizations with high-performing SDRs:

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