Building an Outbound Sales Team

Brendon Cassidy, VP Sales / Talkdesk / EchoSign / LinkedIn

Kyle Porter, CEO SalesLoftJason Lemkin, SaaStr

October 29, 2015

Q. What’s your advice for someone building an SDR team from scratch?

• The sales stack is constantly changing.

• The re-emergence of the cold call as an integral part of the workflow is undeniable.

• You have to pick up the phone, and that has to be at least half of how you're measuring activity for a sales development

• It helps them develop quicker and faster, and I think it has to be part of your core DNA.

“Whatever you thought the sales stack was four years ago, it's probably

completely different today.”

Q. What’s your advice for someone building an SDR team from scratch?

• It really can't be too early. If you have no leads, your first hire should really be an SDR and not an account executive.

• if you don't have any marketing-driven demand early, then you should hire a VP or head of sales development early.

• SDRs play a role in inbound as well, because what you're doing in the sales development function is three parts. You're connecting, you're qualifying, and you're converting.

• Even if you've got inbound leads, they may have downloaded a whitepaper, you've still got to call and email until you get them, and then you've still got to qualify them.

• If you don't have money, then you can't do it, and the founders have to do it.“If you've got money, you hire

people to do it, and that's how you get your business launched.”

• If you have no leads, one to one. it's a 50/50 type scenario. Inbound to outbound, maybe two to one, two AEs for every SDR.

• For AE’s you'd rather that they were great at closing than great at creating their own deal flow.

• When we first got in the business, we saw two AEs to one, then three AEs to two, and now we're seeing a one to one

• Getting out and acquiring customers and getting repeatable customer acquisition strategy's a lot more important than what you're paying for those customers at that point in time.

• You've got to have cash to pay for it, but I think from our perspective, we look at how many new appointments can an AE take on a given day? How many SDR's do we need to produce those? We don't want our AEs booking more than 15 percent of the appointments they take.

"You want your AEs running at full speed all the time.”

Q. What's the learning of the rise of specialization?

Q. How much longer are sale cycles from outbound versus inbound?

• With Outbound, it's going to take longer, and it's going to take some time to get your SDR work, like fully built, baked, flushed out, messaging, nailed, and all that type of stuff. All those things are going to take time

• 10 percent of the cold calls that you connect, you're going to get someone that just happens to say, 'Hey, you know, I've been in this market. I'm interested in this space.

• 40 percent, you'll get will say, 'Absolutely, not.‘ The other 45 percent are convincible to take an appointment.

• You have an ability to pick the right logo, when you go outbound, maybe driving higher ACV's.

"Outbound is a little bit of a larger sale cycle, historically and

traditionally."

• If you have no leads, one to one. it's a 50/50 type scenario. Inbound to outbound, maybe two to one, two AEs for every SDR.

• For AE’s you'd rather that they were great at closing than great at creating their own deal flow.

• When we first got in the business, we saw two AEs to one, then three AEs to two, and now we're seeing a one to one

• Getting out and acquiring customers and getting repeatable customer acquisition strategy's a lot more important than what you're paying for those customers at that point in time.

• You've got to have cash to pay for it, but I think from our perspective, we look at how many new appointments can an AE take on a given day? How many SDR's do we need to produce those? We don't want our AEs booking more than 15 percent of the appointments they take."Outbound, inbound, I'm doing all

the things. I'm all bounding and each one grows each other."

Q. How long does it take to see the first fruits of it from the budget?

• You're hiring talent, not resume. You're looking for personality and raw skills, not 10 years selling for Salesforce, Oracle or whoever else. That's a given. You need to identify what is the culture of your company, what type of skill sets or personalities that have succeed it.

• Hire people that were curious about technology rather than salespeople that were uninterested in technology.

• You're going to lose them in the first 90 days, if you don't get them up and running, understanding, and knowledgeable of the company, product, mission, and the pitch.

• Be diligent about the person you select on the front end in the first place. Do SDR coaching.

• Get them on the phone in the interview process. Do mock calls, really dive in to Are they going to be able to accomplish this?"

• In the interview, we ask our sales team members to give a pitch, and then after the pitch I give them feedback on one or two areas that they could improve on. Then I ask them to do it again, and I see did they take the coaching? Did they implement it? Did they change?

• Get a play book.

It's a routine of things that we've learned and been successful. We

repeat it, and we improve.

Q. How do you ramp new college grads as quickly as possible for an ADR/SDR role?

Q. How should you think about churn in SDRs versus AEs?

• Sales Stack is constantly changing processes and techniques are changing so much faster than they ever did before, and you have to look at the data and decide what's the right way to do it.

• We look at the efficiency score of our sales development reps, how efficient are they with their time, with their resources?

• Connect to conversion ratio.• We still are paying on completed

appointments, but the more sophisticated SDR teams are paying on that contribution to pipeline.

• Most effective scaling sales development organizations aren't going after the people first, they're going after the companies first. They're identifying not just the ideal profile for the person, but the ideal profile for the organization.

“Big trend that we're seeing now, is this account-based strategy for sales

development.”

• It's a phenomenal list building service, and I know not just SDRs but salespeople that use it too. But it's not your best foot forward when you're Talkdesk at 20 employees or HackerRank at 50 employees or SalesLoft at 30. It's not just not marketing.

• Outsourced shops do a really good job of building the lists

• More success with the outsourced SDR as a service with the later stage companies like private equity back companies where they've carved off and they've got a repeatable sales cycle.

• The things you're hearing back from those prospects, that's like product feedback, sentiment, it's all these things that matter to the heart and soul of an organization.

I'm going to outsource it, and then I will take it in-house as soon as I can find some people.

Q. Can you outsource SDRs in the beginning?

• Don't reach for, like try to build a team in a cheaper labor market where you don't have somebody to build that team that you know and trust.

• Good success to go remote when you are between that series A and series B, when you’re past $10m – at escape velocity.

“I pay $22 a square foot for real estate in Atlanta, so I don't have to

worry about the space much.”

Q. Local vs remote SDR teams?

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