SDR Success Techniques

I've interviewed 1000s of candidates over the past 20+ years and have hired nearly 100% of them who took the following approach in the interview: First: take control by proactively offering to walk through your background. It's rare that folks take proactive control as an interviewee - most wait for the interviewer to take control. Think about why this is important if you're in sales... Second, in walking through your background, emphasize the following traits with a short story about each. Don't walk through bullets, TELL A STORY: **Grit. I want to know that you've had to overcome something. Weave (into your story) how you had to work through school, you had an activity or sport that took up a lot of time, you had a personal situation that was challenging. What drove you to push through and get to where you are now. Why and how >>> what. **Curiosity. I want to know that you're a proactive learner. Give me a situation where you had less info than you needed to make a decision but worked to get that information, in whatever way. (Bonus: I am expecting to see your curiosity in action when I give you the chance to ask questions) **Success. Talk about a small win somewhere in your background that you are proud of, and tell me the story behind that. Why was it important to you and how did you secure that win. Could be work, personal, anything. **Share your 'WHY'. What's motivating you to chase this specific opportunity. Why is this one the right fit? Don't be generic. This will show that you've done research and are prepared. To recap: - Take control of the interview (like you'll take control of a sales process) - Tell a story (the why works better than the what) - Grit (you'll get a lot of rejection in sales) - Curiosity (curiosity in general = superb discovery) - Success (Wins will beget wins) - Your WHY is very relevant to understanding mutual fit 950 tech, sales, CS, SDR, and leadership roles you can apply for today; maybe try out a few of these strategies: https://lnkd.in/ew93wnVw ✌️

Being exceptional at interviews has virtually nothing to do with being exceptional at the actual job - but hiring managers keep making this same expensive mistake. You're rejecting talented problem-solvers because they didn't perform well in scripted Q&A sessions, then wondering why polished new hires can't execute under pressure. Still asking "tell me about a time you demonstrated leadership" like it's 1995, then shocked when the STAR method expert can't deliver results. What actually predicts job performance: Give real problems to solve in real-time. Not prepared case studies - actual messy scenarios where you observe genuine thinking process. Offer paid trial projects for 1-2 days. Real work performance tells you more than six interview rounds. Have finalists shadow the team for half a day. Watch how they naturally interact, what questions they ask, how they process information. Ask them to critique something your company does. Reveals how they think, not how well they memorized frameworks. Candidates crushing your interview process might just be great at interviews. The ones who can excel at the job might bomb your outdated assessment. Sign up to my newsletter for more corporate insights: https://vist.ly/4etcm #hiringprocess #interviews #recruitment #hiring #talentacquisition #hiringmanagers #interviewskills #jobinterview #hiringstrategies #recruitmentprocess

I spoke with 25 EMEA SDR leaders last week in Amsterdam. These 3 tactics are the difference between missing quota and hitting it. (Share this in your Slack channel) 1. The 100-to-1000 Rule SDRs need to do 100 of ANYTHING (cold call connections, LinkedIn video DMs, etc) before saying "it doesn't work." If someone tells me: "My rep sent 5 videos and got nothing." My response is: "Cool. Michael Jordan missed 5 shots once too. Then he took 20,000 more. The 5 videos you made are just the warmup. Come back at 100. Here's the math: • 1 SDR = 100 attempts minimum • 10 SDRs x 100 = 1,000 data points • Now you know what actually works The reason for the 1,000 data points is to collect overall data for the team to adopt this across the board. It also builds belief on the team that these tactics that you want your team to do ACTUALLY can work. Stop accepting "it doesn't work" from reps who tried it twice. 2. Test Your Messaging With Actual Buyers Most LinkedIn advice comes from sellers selling to sellers. Again, guilty as charged. So let's get messaging straight from your actual buyers. The play that's booking meetings: • Message your internal champion that is your potential buyer (CTO, CMO, etc.) • Ask: "What's the best outreach you've received?" • Use AI to decode why it worked • Test that approach with similar buyers • Scale what gets responses We did this with our CMO when I worked at Terminus and we booked a ton of meetings from it. 3. Find Your Team's Unique Strength Every SDR has a superpower waiting to be unleashed. Map it out: • Sarah is nailing it on cold calls? Document her opener • Mike gets 30% email reply rates? Emulate his templates • Lisa owns LinkedIn? Make her teach everyone I tried to be the email guy when I realized I am more of a cold call / social guy. Know your lane and maximize it. Then you can build multi-channel plays using each person's strength. I did this with my SDR team and we hit above our quota for 6 straight months. The real talk here is start demanding mastery from your teams instead of going through the motions. This is the way. P.S. Which takeaway are you testing with your team this week?

ACING a job interview does not guarantee high performance on the job ... and poor performance at one does not rule out success ... When asked during a job interview to “tell me about yourself”, some people freeze. Their mind goes blank and palms go all sweaty. They forget half of what they know makes them great at what they do. On the job, the same person is very different. They are unstoppable, solve problems, manage even the trickiest of clients and take on tasks others avoid. Yet none of that shows up when they are sitting in front of an interview panel. Being good at interviews and being good at the job are two very different things. We tend to assume the person who nails the interview will also nail the job. But that logic is flawed. More often than not, interviews reward confidence rather than competence. They favour quick thinkers but not necessarily deep thinkers, leaving quieter candidates or those who struggle under pressure at risk of being overlooked. It is not that these candidates lack skill or motivation. They just do not shine in artificial settings that favour polish over potential. As a result highly capable people miss out even though their resumes stack up and references are glowing. But they stumble through awkward introductions, second-guess their answers and walk away from interviews feeling like they have blown it. The interview system just does not play to their strengths. Interviews are a blunt instrument when it comes to assessing the full scope of someone’s ability. Their focus on questions like “tell me about a time when …” often lead to rehearsed, generic answers rather than useful insight. Even candidates who have the gift of the gab can leave an interview feeling like it was more an interrogation than a conversation. It is easy to dismiss candidates who are challenged by the traditional interview as being not interview-ready. Maybe the better question is whether the interview is job-ready. Most roles do not require someone to sit in a room and answer abstract questions about hypothetical situations. They demand persistence, teamwork, judgment and follow-through. They require people who can get on with the task, not just talk about how they would do it. For employers, there is a growing case for thinking beyond traditional interviews. Adding in work samples, job trials or even a casual chat over coffee can give a more rounded sense of a candidate’s capabilities. The risk is not just passing over a perfectly good candidate – it is missing out on someone who would have made a lasting contribution. Some of the best workers are simply not the best interviewees. And until we stop confusing interview ability with job suitability, we will keep getting it the wrong way around. #work #worplace #humanresources #management #leadership #aimwa #recruitment Cartoon used under licence: CartoonStock

SDRs & AEs - if you do this, I can almost guarantee you that you will land an interview with your dream company. I’ve interviewed HUNDREDS of salespeople over the last 5 years and nobody ever does this: Step 1: Stop Applying through Job Boards Most sales roles get HUNDREDS of applications. It’s very difficult for hiring teams to go through each one. You have to break through the noise and go directly to the hiring managers and show them you can prospect (especially in sales). Step 2: Show Don’t Tell You MUST treat the interview process as if you are an actual rep. Hiring managers are judging all of your communications with them because it’s likely close to how you are going to interact with prospects. Make sure all communication and follow ups are: -Quick (get back to managers within 1 hour if possible) -Short and Concise -Intentional Step 3: Do the Work Ahead of Time Most SDR and AE interviews that I’ve seen recently require a rep to do some kind of prospecting assignment. Get ahead of this and stand out by doing this for your top 3-5 companies proactively build a presentation that shows off your skills and proves you can prospect. You don’t even need to spend hours building decks. Just use Tome which uses AI to build professional decks quickly using a prompt (if you have an outline in mind, use that as the prompt). Best part is that you can share the deck via a link and even include recorded narrations so that you can explain your thoughts as the hiring manager is going through it. Here’s an example one I quickly built out as if I was applying to an SDR role at Deel and wanted to present Clari as a great potential customer: https://tome.pub/3U0CQfy #sales #prospecting #outbound

I hit quota 30 months straight as a SDR. Here’s the blueprint. Most SDRs miss quota at some point. I refused to let that happen. Here are the 7 things that made the difference: 𝟭. 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗱𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘆: Reps who don’t call don’t book meetings. I made calls every day, no excuses. 𝟮. 𝗣𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: The best SDRs don’t wait for the perfect message. More touchpoints = more meetings. Quantity fuels quality. 𝟯. 𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘂𝗽 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘁: 80% of my meetings were booked after the 5th follow-up. If you give up after 1-2 attempts, you're leaving opportunities on the table. 𝟰. 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗵: Nobody cares about your product. They care about their pain. Start with what’s hurting them, then guide them to the solution. 𝟱. 𝗕𝗲 𝘀𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁: Your tone sells as much as your words. Sound like a pro, and they’ll treat you like one. Your voice = your credibility. 𝟲. 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴: I measured calls made, emails sent, meetings booked, and conversion rates. What gets tracked gets improved. 𝟳. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗔𝗘:   This might be the most underrated key to success. Your AE technically OWNS your quota. The better your relationship, the more they’ll have your back. My AEs saw how hard I fought to bring them good opportunities, so when I was falling short, they helped, passing me leads or even crediting me on deals they sourced themselves. It made all the difference. #sdr #coldcalling #sales  

The growth-at-all-costs playbook is dead. The future is 👇 The return of the full-cycle SaaS AE SaaS isn't special. They never needed a role for every different task. They just had more money to invest in SDR teams. SDRs have played a critical role in building the funnel for orgs. Now AEs have to make time for prospecting. Because it's one of many tasks they're being asked to do, AEs need to identify the top skills and tech stack to ensure they can generate best-fit meetings 👉 Our buyers are exhausted. They don't want to sign up for a freemium account to get dumped into a marketing push that includes daily emails while also being contacted by an SDR who has been given such an impossibly high quota they cave to spray and pray. Then FINALLY they get on a call with an AE who starts the conversation with a question like: "So tell me what you know about us?" Budgets & buyers demand that we do better. So how do frazzled AEs get the attention of exhausted buyers? 👇 Signal-based Selling Following the breadcrumbs our prospects are leaving is the future. The only way forward is to use your talents & tech stack to find the right folks at the right time and approach them on the right channel with the right message. Don't panic. It's easier than it seems if you have a buyer-first mindset & tech stack to support you. 👉 Your buyers want to get emails from you. I promise. They simply want (and deserve) those emails to be relevant. Relevance requires you to marry 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party signals to deliver timely insights that make your buyers say, "I'm so glad this salesperson reached out to me." ❌ Single trigger outreach: "I see you closed a Series A last week. Congrats. We sell...." ✅ Layered signal-based outreach: "Your job listing for a new VP of Sales + recent podcast launch tells me you're investing in a fresh go-to-market approach. You may find this checklist of 10 non-obvious ways to capitalize on a rebrand valuable. Usually no. 3 surprises folks the most." Want 100 more signal ideas >> https://bit.ly/3WdaH6i

The CMO of a $40M ARR SaaS company told me her CEO & VP of sales asked her to take over the SDR team. This was odd, given that execs are usually fighting tooth & nail for headcount. After they did this, they saw pipeline increase by 25%+ next quarter. Here’s why 👇 The best GTM organizations right now are thinking way beyond ‘how big can my team be.’ Similar to how the new trendy thing is having the *least* amount of employees, with the highest amount of revenue per person. Instead of 20 SDRs generating pipeline, people are wondering if you can you have 1 GTM engineer do the same. This shift in mindset is now more of a marketing problem, not a sales one. The SDR role has always served 3 purposes: 1️⃣ generate top of funnel activity outbound to supplement inbound from marketing 2️⃣ ensuring a smooth handoff from MQL to SQL so no hot leads slipped through the cracks 3️⃣ a training ground for future AEs If the primary purpose for SDRs in your organization is (3), then fine, maybe they should report into sales. But if it's (1) or (2) - they should report into marketing. Here’s why: With the proliferation of AI, automation & integrations amongst the GTM tech stack - we are automating top of funnel activities for SDRs at a frenetic pace. Automated emails with Outreach, Salesloft or Warmly Automated linkedin DMs with Salesflow, Clay or Warmly Powerdialing with Orum, Nooks. Whereas SDRs came into being to supplement marketing, now they are complimenting marketing in coordinated omni-channel campaigns. As marketing takes more ownership of pipeline goals, and as outbound / inbound merge, the old structure of pipeline creators reporting into different departments no longer makes sense. You want to *unify* pipeline teams, not separate them. Marketing has always been systems oriented, A/B testing driven & focus on linking systems with tools more than humans. This is what makes them the department most poised to use AI to generate revenue. Even larger companies are catching on to this trend - with Interactive rebranding SDR to MDR and moving them under marketing, as well as SAP who has reported an increase in revenue due to their shift. TLDR - The SDR role isn’t going away—it’s evolving. But to unlock its full potential, SDRs need to be owned by the team that owns pipeline, systems, and multi-channel orchestration… and that IS ‘marketing.’ Warmly, Max #sales #marketing #sdr #ceo

I've met very few sales reps who can bounce back like Dillon Reyes In his first 2 months as a first-time SDR at Datto, he booked 0 meetings But 12 months in, he was named SDR of the Year across APAC and the 3rd highest-performing rep globally! Dillon soon landed an AE role... but 7 months in, he was put on a PIP He pushed through and turned his results around, spending close to 2 years with the team, before pivoting into cybersecurity at Huntress Starting as an SMB AE, he hit >200% of his target in his first 12 months He's now a Senior AE on track for >150% of target this year 🤩 So what did he do to overcome the lows? Dillon changed 3 things about his mindset 👇 💥 1. Accept the pressure as a normal part of the job Shit days are going to happen; learn to detach from the outcome A bad conversation or rude prospect is not a reflection of you as a person Lots of things you can't change; focus on what's within your control ❤️🩹 2. Make yourself #1 by prioritising your physical & mental health If you don't respect yourself, how can you expect to perform highly? Find ways to get away from work and truly switch off Your mind is your money maker, look after it with mindfulness and gratitude 🤝 3. Seek help where you can Work with people you can trust and who have got your back Seek mentorship from people who can give you value, be that a sales coach, personal trainer or psychologist Grateful to have Dillon share his vulnerable, raw lessons on 'healthy hustle' with Earlywork Sales Club this month If you're an SDR/BDR keen to get access to future events, shoot me a message :)

I am wrapping up our hiring process for our first two sales roles at Lawfully. We had over 700 applicants apply—standing out isn’t easy. For these roles I was the recruiter, hiring manager, and executive sponsor. Here’s my advice on how to stand out: Getting Through to the First Stage— 1. Reach out directly to the recruiter, hiring manager, or executive sponsor I gave priority to candidates who reached out personally. Some sent LinkedIn DMs, while others crafted thoughtful cold emails. Two memorable examples: one email had the subject line “Matt, I’m skiing my way into your inbox,” and another featured a personalized video introducing herself and addressing common interview questions. Make sure your outreach is thoughtful, creative, and mindful of people’s time. Done right, it sets you apart Done poorly, it can backfire. 2. Make your Linkedin look professional Many applicants had unprofessional profile photos, large employment gaps, or short stints at companies. While you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, with 700 applicants to review, these things can quickly lead to being passed over. You control your LinkedIn narrative and the professional story it tells. Demonstrate to recruiters that you can commit and follow through. 3. Use the right professional jargon. For this SDR role, candidates with SDR experience were fast-tracked to interviews. Ensure your job titles and descriptions align with industry standards to avoid being missed. Make it clear what you do, especially if your role mirrors the position you’re applying for. Getting Through the Interview Stage— 1. Research the company before your interview. Out of 60 people I interviewed, only one could identify our competitors, and few provided detailed responses about our products and services. One candidate couldn’t name a single thing about Lawfully, while another was clearly reading straight off our homepage. Take the time to learn about the company. It shows genuine interest and sets you apart. 2. Answer all the questions. I evaluated candidates on several criteria, including experience, passion, coach-ability, and their ability to learn. To gauge learning, I asked their favorite books—professional or otherwise. If someone admitted they didn’t read, it was a quick signal to move on. 3. Answer positively and tie it back to the role and your strengths. Strike the right balance between positivity and authenticity. Candidates who dwelled on negative experiences sent a clear sign they weren’t the right fit. 4. Align your answers with company & hiring manager goals When candidates nailed this, they were an automatic pass. One standout example was a candidate who asked about our goals right at the start of the interview. Throughout the conversation, he consistently explained how he would help us reach our milestone. I’ve got 20 more tips to share—including what it takes to crush the final round. Drop a comment, and I’ll send them your way!