Salesloft on Salesloft: Building a Winning Pipeline

Can everyone hear me? Just in the chat, if anyone could just say if you can fabulous. Thank you, Mimi. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's session with, with me, James Peacock.

I am the commercial sales director here, for SalesLoft EMEA. I look after our client sales organization, so delighted to, to be speaking with you all today.

We are gonna be running through a little bit more about building a winning pipeline with self lo loft with some of our experts in house for the particularly the newly promoted mid market, a, Charlie Johnson or Charlotte Johnson, should I say, and, one of our, expert in house EDRs, John Older. So just to give you a little bit more context around today, we're gonna be there's a few learning objectives that we have from this session. Ultimately, we're hoping to give you a better understanding of how to identify and engage with some of your ideal prospects more effectively, look at how ultimately you can enhance team collaboration and proxy productivity in working with our platform, and ultimately engaging in more personal and and deeper relationships to build strong connect connections as well as working on how to leverage bottom up and creating groundswell in your messaging strategy to build better pipeline, and ultimately, stronger stronger deals and close more close more revenue.

Just in terms of the q and a as we're going along, I can't see the box, but, currently, but as we go along, I'm sure we will have lots of questions. Please, do submit those as you go along. And Mimi, who is is running this call for us, will ultimately, will push those to us at the end, but we'll, we'll make sure that there is enough time for q and a for all of you for any questions you have. And, ultimately, all also, you can register for our office hours at at sales loft, sales loft events as well for any further questions that you have, as well. And we can, of course, share some of our details as well if you have any follow-up questions.

My bad.

Oh, apologies. There's a bit of a a ring echo in the room.

Okay. So let's kick off then.

So in terms of building pipeline right now, we're what we're seeing right now is, some of organizations we have as as sales professionals, we're being affected by some of the, most interesting or challenging market dynamics that we've seen for some time. And that's a term that we're focusing that we're calling kind of the great, great growth squeeze, which is causing havoc havoc from a predictable revenue perspective for organizations such as ourselves and our customers.

You know? And how is this manifesting itself in in today's market in terms of, people with, number of surveys that have been run by by ourselves and kind of industry analysts?

So right now, Gartner recently ran a study that around eighty nine percent of execs believe that we are in a prolonged period of volatility and an uncertainty.

And, actually, of fifty percent, of companies right now this year have had to adjust their revenue growth expectations downward.

Ultimately, McKinsey as well, are seeing the same type of thing across some of their studies that they're running, and, actually, fifty five percent of overall b to b buyers are saying that their purchasing times and cycle times have ultimately been elongated.

And I think most concerningly as well, from that McKinsey study is that fifty percent of b two b leaders think that their reps, are currently lacking in some of the this or don't have the skills to succeed in this new era.

So we think that there's actually a a an unfortunate truth to this current situation is that, ultimately, companies have continued to operate with, engagement models that weren't designed for this revenue this revenue area, and they're relying on a number of disparate systems, and and, you know, outdated sales practices built for last, you know, previous years' settings that are limiting the our effectiveness of sales organizations when we're in the market and the ways that we're working. And part of this, you know, to exemplify that, that we're now seeing that actually outbound is taking considerably more. In fact, in some cases, up to over a thousand touches per opportunity. That's four or five times harder than it was five, you know, five years ago.

Ultimately, we're seeing shrinking growth and profit ratios to almost a fifth of what they were over the in five years ago and actually seeing around sixty seven percent of time being spent on non customer facing activities.

So I'm gonna take you to a place, hopefully, you're all familiar with, and and it's our diaries. Right?

Looks familiar, hopefully. But, really, the point that I wanted to make with this is that, actually, we're placing so much more, emphasis and focus or or or or requests or demands on the time of our reps and managers, in today's sales organizations. It's do your outbound prospecting, prep for your calls, review your CI, do the demos, prep for one to ones, discovery calls. The list is endless.

But, ultimately, with that, we're placing more and more demands on the rep's time and the manager's time, but we're also doing that across multiple systems, and data silos.

And, actually, what that is starting to cause is or what we're seeing is it's manifesting itself in in paralysis in some cases or almost becoming slow by snow blind of not knowing which datasets and systems they should be working from. Now the way that we go about trying to resolve this at SalesLoft is really actually trying to, I guess, drink our own own champagne in terms of the our our tool sets. Right? Now you have to excuse me. This is a slightly, oh, slightly busy slide, but I hopefully, it underpins the point that I'm trying to make, and we'll go on to be fabulously articulated by Charlotte, and, John as we go on.

I think this is probably missing, something as well, this slide. It's kind of an enterprise grade, data platform that kind of underpins everything that we do here at SalesLoft. Right? So it's about how are we starting to leverage all of those disparate data systems, and first and third party signals that I referenced that are being used across sprawling IT systems currently, and how are we starting to make them digestible and actionable for our reps.

So we ultimately, organizations similar to, I'm sure, many on the call are building their own own sales plays and cadences, which ultimately are going to be reacted to, as well as having third party data signals from the likes of g two, Vidyard, as well as their their own kind of data triggers from their own marketing efforts or, products such as Drift. Right? So what we do ultimately is is we're kind of playing as the layer of execution for your sales organization and for ours. Right?

It's about how we then ingest these signals into our platform, leverage our own proprietary a AI or conductor AI as as we refer to it, And then you begin to leverage rhythm to make the all of these actions all of these, signals actionable for reps and bring them to life within, their their own the the seller's view within the platform to understand how they should be prioritizing tasks and following up in order for them to deliver the outcomes that all we're all trying to drive in this business that you can see on the right, which is ultimately shorter sales cycles, high average deal size, and ultimately driving increased win rates.

So that at a very high level is how we do it from a a technology perspective or how we see our platform should be best leveraged, from a technology perspective. But it's not just about doing that right. It's also about how we set up for success as an organization with our our sales teams. Right?

Now I hasten to add this is all underpinned by kind of best in class or world class recruitment as you will see with Charlie and John as we go on. But we as a sales organization here in EMEA lent into what are the the, really, the the key practices or focuses that we should be looking at as a sales organization? And, ultimately, everything is gonna be defined by, you know, top of funnel through to execution. Right?

So we built out our own success framework, really, which focuses on really the core facets of the job, I would say, for account executives in our business.

And this was a powerful exercise for us because, yes, there are are elements of the wider job role. We wanna make sure that they're focused on the cultural side of things, right, as well as the kind of enablement and professional development. But, really, when we come to the core facets of the the in terms of pipeline or building a winning pipeline and executing against that, there's three facets that we focus on kind of day to day. That's the pipe gen, progression, and execution element. Right? So, really, what we're able to do here is focus with the reps around how are they building their how are they spending their time in their diaries, building out all of the key things that we would deem important. One, to, firstly, go to market, and engage.

What what does that plan look like, and what does those the gaps that they potentially have in that? As well as how do we start to build out an understanding of the customer, and then how do we begin to time box our own time within our diaries day to day so that we can prioritize that time for pipe generation, progression, and ultimately deal execution.

So that is a very whistle stop tour at a high level of how we like to approach it from, from a a technology people and process perspective at at at SalesLoft.

What we're going to do now is just take you through a little bit more of an example of what that would look like from a, an SDR perspective with John. And then, Charlie's gonna take us through a little bit more about some of the tips, trips, tips, tricks, and tactics that she's seeing that are working within the market right now. So, John, I will, I will drive if that's kind of easiest for you. And if you wanna come off mute, and I'll, I'll take us through the slides for your part.

Yeah. Amazing.

Thanks for that, James. So, yeah, James is gonna be controlling these slides. So apologies if there's, some, some winks or some some nods for James to click on.

But as I was kind of a high level, I'm gonna walk you through kind of driving quality pipeline, and I broke that down into into three steps if you, next slide, please, James.

So I wanted to make today kind of as new as possible. I think all of us have been on sessions before. Sorry, James. There we go. We've all been on sessions before where SDRs come on and talk about emails and calls and and kind of things that we already know. So I wanted to break down kinda three key areas that I've sort of used and utilized to drive success in today's market.

And first of all, it's working sort of much more collaboratively with my AE.

Also working with the wider team here at SalesLoft and using some of the people that perhaps SDRs wouldn't necessarily interact with. And then I wanna, leave you with a really quick, easy win that you can kind of build into your prospecting, in respect of one pagers.

So next slide, please, James.

Cool. So the challenge that we have at the moment with kind of SDRs and AEs is that we're really divided in the goals that we have. I think common mistake that a lot of people have is that SDRs are only interested in generating opportunities, while AEs are only interested in closing business, where realistically, we can kind of bring that together. So, again, I've broken this down into kind of a sort of a fundamental lack of understanding about the priorities that we both have, no alignment on the goals that we have, and then, as a result, not working as a team. If you move on again, please, James.

So think back to when I started as an SDR, and I'm holding my hands up. I was definitely guilty of doing this. I was working with sort of two or three AEs at the time, and my target was purely focused on the number of opportunities that I created.

And, selfishly, I I wasn't too fussed about the quality of those opportunities. It was kind of anything will do. And as a result, I it's wrong to say fell out with my AE's, but we just we just had no understanding of of what we we both wanted to get out of that relationship. I was throwing through opportunities that perhaps I shouldn't, and my aide was getting frustrated at the lack of quality in in some of the opportunities that I put through. So I've broken this down into kind of the four elements that I work with Charlie on a on a day to day. I will caveat that saying that I I don't actually partner with Charlie on a day to day.

But since she's here, I thought I'd I'd use her.

That being kind of the identifying of those key accounts, the planning of of how we're moving into that, the prospecting, and then sort of later down the line some of the deal progression that we can we can both influence as well. So if I think into kind of identifying key accounts, this is something that I do equally with AEs. I wanna utilize kinda some of my AEs more experience and and what's likely to close, what has happened before in similar deals, and what we can do in order to sort of best break into them. This, I think, is something that SDRs normally think that they're left to do by themselves, sort of digging into what accounts they wanna work, what they think might be easiest to break into, perhaps not what they should break into if we think about just kind of driving that quality pipeline.

So I've made our pictures kind of the same size there because it is it is equal. The same with planning, moving into kind of that next stage of prospecting.

And the challenge that we see here is that SDRs believe that it's kinda down to them to book those initial meetings, run those initial discoveries, and the AE is not bought in until two or three calls down the line, and that's the first thing know about these accounts. Meaning that the kind of the transition between SDR led calls and, AE led calls tends to be a little bit clunky. But if we're on the same page, then it becomes a lot easier, especially from the prospect's point of view. Also means that I can kinda tap into Charlie's knowledge of of breaking into those accounts.

The prospecting, again, so the first time it's outweighed, I think, kind of as SDRs as a kind of job role entails. We do do a little bit more of the prospecting. But that's not to say that IAEs can't help as well. I think I've moved on to this in a in a few in another slide. But if I think to some of the biggest wins that I've had with my AEs over the last couple of years, most of them came from opportunities that I worked together with account executives rather than ones that I purely self sourced by myself, And I don't think it's a coincidence that that that's happened.

I'm gonna touch on deal progression here, although I wanna kind of brush over it quickly because it's not kind of the focus of what we're talking about here. But later down the the sales cycle, there are things we can do as SDRs in order to help our AEs and kind of align on those sort of common goals that we have of of close one business. We can do things like digging into accounts, asking sort of more qualifying questions from a, a ground level, and then feed in that those kind of pain points and those real on the ground issues back into our AE so that they can bring them up in conversations and sort of further those deals. So if you move on to the next slide, James, I kinda break these down a little bit more.

So I wanted to kind of talk through a sort of a brief, conversation that I have with all my AEs when I start working with them.

Normally, this is done over, like, a half hour coffee, but I wanna understand exactly what Charlie's targeted on. I wanna understand where she wants to be and what she wants to become. And then I wanna know kind of if she needs help, with anything.

I'm not saying that Charlie does need help because she's fantastic. But if there was anything I could do, then then I'd be happy to do it. And that's the same on my side. You know? I want my AEs to know exactly how I'm targeted and what I'm working towards. I want them to know that I aspire to move into a closing role, and I'm gonna need help with perhaps some of the more deeper use cases that we have, and building out some messaging around that.

If you move on, James, I think I yeah. So the outcome of this conversation is I know exactly what's important to Charlie.

I know that we're connected on a common goal, and I know exactly how we're gonna get there.

That really sets us up for success and kinda leads every conversation that we have through sort of planning, identifying those key accounts, and then looking into kind of more of the prospecting as well. Can you move to next one, James?

Cool. So digging into kind of what we do working together to prospect, I think the challenge that a lot of SDRs see in this is is they feel that they're alone with it. And especially if you're not getting a reply from an account or no one's picking up on the phone, LinkedIn's not working, a lot of SDRs will just kind of move on or brush on really quickly. But there's certainly things that AEs can help us do.

I know in Charlie's talk a bit later on, she mentioned some of the other things that we can do as well, which are are really clever. But I just wanna talk about kind of working with our AEs. So first of all, start with kind of what we can do. So as an SDR, I can create groundswell, and this is perhaps one of the biggest tools that we use here at SalesLoft. I can just create noise. If that means connecting with, end users on LinkedIn, getting myself in front of them through kind of digging in and trying to do some more, sort of trying to get a better understanding, sorry, of exactly what problems they face. This just creates noise on the ground, which then pushes up, and, hopefully, then when we do end up on a call with, one of our buyers, they've at least heard of SalesLoft before.

I can also do some really personalized research into this. I've got a bit more time than my AE.

They're probably focusing on closing other deals and and doing other things, but I can really dig in and do some high level research on exactly what we need to do and how we need to do it.

The third point in kind of what I can do if I think towards kind of working collaboratively, I can ask my AE to message people. And this is something that, again, Charlie digs into a little bit more later on. But as simple as kind of asking Charlie to message a VP that perhaps I can't get a reply from, it might be that they've seen some of her content or it's just a different face but a similar company. It might just kinda tip it over the edge.

And that's worked a number of times. I think kind of the biggest deal that I was part of last year, came from exactly that. So definitely worth doing. But I don't think kind of over to Charlie and and what she can do.

I kinda spoke about it already, but using that kind of double pronged approach, two different faces from the same company, Sometimes it's just all it takes in order to to get someone over the line. She can also connect with people that I'm prospecting. Again, Charlie's great on LinkedIn. So any kind of familiarity they have with her, might just be kind of what takes it over the edge for us.

And the last part is kinda calling on behalf of, her SDR. Again, it it kind of all works towards just those two people, same company, means that prospects are a little bit more likely to pick up. If you click again, James, I've got a really interesting stat that I pulled from Italy. This was a couple of quarters ago.

But I found that when working an account with my AE, I was roughly forty percent more likely to book a meeting, which is absolutely huge, especially in a market where sort of we knew we do know that booking meetings is harder.

Yeah. It was it worked really well. So if you move on again, James.

So now kind of bringing it back to kind of driving that quality. And I mentioned it before, but just to to mention it again. I think the biggest mistake that kind of AEs and SDRs have when working together is that they don't have that common goal. You know, I think back to when I started and and throwing through opportunities that I perhaps shouldn't.

It just creates a huge divide. So if I think to kind of more what Charlie's interested in in in building quality in the pipeline, there's things I can do. Right? So after I pass over an opportunity, I don't necessarily have to forget about it and think kind of my job's done. There's things I can do. There's sort of people I can message, and then, again, feed that information up, to Charlie who can bring it up in wider conversations.

I can also I think today's a a great example of this. I can also run best practice sessions with Teams. Sometimes end users feel that they don't wanna talk to an an enablement person. They don't wanna speak to an account executive. SDRs wanna speak to SDRs, and SDRs wanna know how other SDRs have been successful. And even though it makes no influence over my target and what I get paid, running these best sessions, especially throughout a deal cycle, is really gonna help Charlie with a kind of a sticky opportunity.

So moving over to kinda Charlie. Oh, sorry. Go back. There we go.

She can, again, ask me to to find out more. I can help her run sessions.

It also is is kind of a really good enablement exercise for me, knowing that I wanna move into a to a closing role. Being that little bit more involved later down, not only kinda motivates me a little bit more, but also begins to teach me some of the skill set I need in in my next role.

So, yeah, if you click again, James.

So this, again, this was last quarter. We sort of got a run-in this exercise and and both working towards accounts that we'd already broken into, roughly doubled our IOV.

Made it so much more sticky. We found that our win rate went up, as well as kind of that deal size. And I think back to one of the opportunities we had, we we managed to break into quite a small department. I think it was just their SDRs. But then when we actually started speaking with them and I was started speaking with the SDRs, they kinda quickly identified that their account executives had exactly the same issue because they were three sixty reps. And we then brought that up in a conversation, and all of a sudden, all the AEs were interested in jumping on as well.

So, yeah, a really good exercise that that kinda shouldn't be brushed over.

Go on, James.

So I wanna give you some really quick kinda takeaways, from that that you can do kind of within SalesLoft. The first one being creating tasks, for each other. I think in it's it's, I don't think of the word. It's it's wrong to say that, you know, we've all got a lot of time.

And if I message Charlie, she might not see it for a while, and then she might see it and not action it or forget to action it. But you can actually create tasks for other people within, SalesLoft. So if you go into kinda create task, you can change the assignee. So in this one, I've I've asked Charlie, to either sort of do something general, an email, a call.

I can ask her for introductions on LinkedIn, and I can ask her to do some research as well. That's then gonna populate into into rhythm for Charlie so that she doesn't miss anything that I'm asking her to do. And like I said, I don't actually work with Charlie, but my AEs get increasingly frustrated with the amount of tasks I asked them to do. But they do do them, which is the important thing.

If you move on, James.

The second thing that I think a lot of people don't realize you can do with SalesLoft is actually build out kind of those internal dashboards for you and your AE. So this is just an example of one, how I use it. So we use it for territory mapping and account prioritization. So you can see we kind of right in the middle, we've got a prioritization.

I know exactly what accounts we wanna work, what are our high value accounts, and then what kind of what stage we're at. I can see last activity. We use six cents so we can see kind of the six cents intent score, and it allows us to kind of really dig in further with that. So if you click again, James, I think it pulls up some some filters.

So this is something that I do every day when I look for new accounts to work. I can say, hey. In this dashboard of six hundred accounts, you know, show me who hasn't been worked or perhaps show me someone that or or account that's got between two thousand and three thousand employees. Show me all of Charlie's AE prioritization ones, or show me what company stage they're at.

Hey. Have we had a discovery call with them before or if we kind of what's working? It allows me to kinda dig in, and really quickly identify new accounts to work. So if you click again, James.

So I'm gonna talk about this really quickly because I know I'm coming up on time. But I wanna just quickly brush over kind of working with the wider team. We spoke a lot about how we work with AEs and how I do, but there's also other departments that we can, make sure that we're working with as well. So we can talk to customer success.

I think they're one of the hugely underutilized, departments from an SDR point of view. We can dig into, hey. Look. What are the new challenges that our customers are facing?

You know? They bought SalesLoft two years ago because they had perhaps a pipeline issue. But has that shifted? What new challenges do we have?

And then weaving that into messaging with prospects in similar industries, is super key to what we do. Next thing we can do is kind of utilize those executive connections. They're going on LinkedIn, making sure that we, can see, you know, who is connected to perhaps our CEO or sort of our VPs who's connected with James. And can we utilize a kind of draft on behalf?

Gonna brush over that really quick because I know Charlie talks about that quite a lot. But can we get an introduction from from someone higher up?

Next part, we can speak to sales engineers and presales.

And I do this increasingly more often now that I I run a one pager exercise, which I'll talk about in the next slide. But this has been so key to kind of really quickly breaking into those hard to reach accounts and using kind of presales and sales engineers to help build out, hypothesis is super important.

The last part I wanna speak about is prospects. I don't think a lot of SDRs do this.

If I hand over an opportunity to an AE and, you know, it looks like it it perhaps is gonna close after a couple of months or so, I can actually go back to that prospect and say, hey. Look, James. You took the call from me at the start. You know, what what made you take that call?

Can I take ten minutes just on a a quick phone call just to kinda pick your brain and and to better myself? And some of my really quick easy wins have come from doing that. I spoke to one prospect who told me that the only reason that they took the call was because I picked up the phone, so it wasn't great. I had another prospect that told me that they picked up the call because, Charlie was well, not Charlie, but one of my other AEs, connected with them on LinkedIn.

And they thought two people from SalesLoft, I must be an important prospect for them.

So that's worked really well, and kind of shaped how I prospect today.

You move on, James.

So I wanna just quickly give you a a really quick takeaway. This is something that we've been doing for a few months here at SalesLoft now, and has skyrocketed our reply rate. I think in today's market, phone is king still.

You know, back in the day, I think when I started, it was it was video. But the biggest challenge we have at the moment is that emails just don't get the replies they used to, nor do videos. And thinking about how we can make those emails as as relevant and punchy as possible, we came up with this really quick one page template. It shows kinda how we know you, how we can help, and then some social proof at the bottom. It's really quick, easy to digest, and especially with tools like GBT and Claude, you can throw one of these out in five or ten minutes, especially if you've already done your research.

If you click again, James, this is actually what I do when when sending an email. You can kinda put that straight into an email like that so that when prospects open it, they don't feel they have to read two paragraphs worth of text. It's kind of a different piece of media that's right in front of them.

And candidly, we we were doing kind of a dry run through of this yesterday, and Charlie brought up a great point that we can actually put this in through a tool like Seismic or Highspot, and we can see exactly how much of the prospects have read, and get some really relevant feedback from that. So even though I haven't done that yet, that is something that I'm gonna start doing, because I think if we can pull more intent data, that's always gonna be best. And I think that's me. If you click I think we move it to Charlie now. So yeah.

Technical difficulties. Can everyone hear me alright?

Yes. Great.

Hey, everyone. I'm Charlie here, one of the eighties or lots of thumbs up. Great. One of the eighties at SalesLoft.

I'm just gonna cover two points today. But firstly, I just wanna kinda emphasize the area that John's just gone over and how key this is for increasing response rates.

I've never seen a company who works with their SDRs, SDRs and AE relationship like they do at SalesLoft, and especially in such a difficult market where it's, like, four to five times harder for us to be booking meetings.

Working with your SDR and AE, not only on targeting actually working them together and doing that multithreading from your side is just such a key way for us to be getting into accounts with way less effort, and I'm always one for working smarter rather than harder. And I'm gonna share two tactics that have helped me to work a lot smarter than harder, and have probably filled, probably about fifty percent of my pipeline in the past year just from using these two really simple, techniques.

You don't need SalesLoft for this. You can do it if you if you haven't got SalesLoft, if you haven't got a sales engagement tool, and they're two really easy kind of, ways for you to book meetings with your target accounts. So if we can go to the next slide.

We're gonna be talking on DOBs, and we're gonna be talking on, groundswell. And if you go to the next slide, I'll explain what this is. I think DOB is actually a bit of a a sales loft, term.

Essentially, a DOB is a draft on behalf, and all it is is it's getting someone to message a prospect on behalf of you. So as an example, James, who is in the room with me, might message someone on behalf of me. But the beauty with this, approach is that James has an existing relationship with that prospect.

So whether that be that he's met them once at an event or whether that it'd be his sister, which is an actual, situation.

He has some prehistoric, history with that prospect, which is gonna make it way easier for me to get into that account. At the end of the day, his sister's more likely to reply to him than me. Right? She knows him. But how do we find those, people who are connected with leadership within our company?

And, what you can do is in sales navigator, you can create different lead filters. So firstly, you're gonna have your account list into sales navigator. There is a filter in sales navigator that is my CRM accounts. But if you have an overwhelming amount of accounts that maybe aren't as relevant, you can always, just upload your accounts that maybe are your tier ones or your tier twos into sales navigator.

Then we're gonna be selecting those, different fields. I'm not sure if you can see them on on the screen, but it's the seniority level. I don't really wanna see all of my prospects who are SDRs as an example, who are connected with James as an example because they're not my kind of decision makers who I wanna be prospecting into. So I'm gonna have them senior enough so they're actual decision makers and stakeholders that I need to be engaging with. And then finally, we're gonna go to best path in, and we're gonna firstly start with exec team link intro. We're gonna exhaust those options, and then we're just gonna do team link intro because, actually, I found out that a lot of people in our team at SalesLoft know a lot of my prospects already. They don't have to be an exec level, but I usually do start with an exec level because exec to exec is just that easier conversation.

So once we found those list of, prospects who are connected to someone internally at SalesLoft, the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna engage the person on SalesLoft's side to understand that relationship they have with them. Depending on the relationship they have with them, it's gonna depend on the type of message and the type of channel that we're gonna use. So as an example, James and his sister, well, he doesn't really need to send her a formal email. Right?

He's just gonna give Laura a call and be like, hey, Laura. Do you wanna learn about SalesLoft? And she's gonna say, yeah. Cool.

Send me a meeting invite. It's gonna be a lot more of an informal conversation rather than if, let's say, James met someone at an event or worked with someone really briefly for a month. So if you know the person well, I'd firstly always start with phone as a channel to use. So get James as an example to use WhatsApp to message them, then LinkedIn, and then probably email as, the last case scenario for maybe if you don't know that person too well.

And then finally, we're gonna draft up the messaging, and we're gonna send it. We're probably thinking, what does that messaging even look like? So, if we can go to the next slide.

This is an example message for someone who knows them ish. I think it's a lot easier conversation if they've worked with them or their friends or their neighbors. I've had one of my one of my colleagues, one of our VPs, his neighbor was my prospect. So it's a a lot more of a chill conversation, but the most common scenario you're gonna get is that they know them ish. Maybe they've exchanged some messaging on LinkedIn, met them at an event, etcetera.

And you'll notice that this template is very similar to what a normal typical email will look like. We have the context. So, hey. How are you? You can press, yep. We have the context.

Hey. Name. How are things? We. Insert context. We work together briefly at Klaviyo, if you remember.

Great to see. And then we're always gonna add in that extra personalization if you can tap the thing again. Always adding in that extra personalization. It's so difficult to get a reply in today's market.

Even if James knows that person, I'm still gonna add in that extra personalization.

Then we're gonna go through the challenges. We've been speaking with, VPs who are struggling to get insight to help their deals, etcetera, etcetera, and then we're gonna end with that call to action. So it's a really easy kind of context personalization challenge and call to action.

And we're gonna use our initiative on how much of those we're gonna use. We used all of them in this example, but let's say it was, a past colleague at SalesLoft who's moved to a new company. I don't really need to add in much around the challenges that SalesLoft sells because they already know these. So the example there is saying, hey, Billy, Bill, Bob.

How are things? We worked together briefly at Klaviyo. If you remember, great to see the hiring going on in the AE team. We've been speaking with VPs who are struggling to get insights to the health of their team skills, meaning they're unable to spot risk before it's too late.

Something you're thinking about.

Either way, great to see the growth in the team. Sounds like a really exciting time at IBM.

My response rate, I cannot emphasize. My response rate to draft on behalf is probably around ninety two percent.

Do you know what? I don't even know someone who's never replied. So it's probably closer to a hundred percent. I don't wanna say a hundred percent reply rate because that sounds obscene, but it's in the in the nineties. So this is how powerful this technique is.

So massively recommend utilizing your internal relationships in your company, both exec and, rep level to then get a foot in the door at your prospect accounts.

When we say, when we go to the next slide, I'm gonna show you a real live example.

Next slide, please. Oh, yeah. We have a free tool as well, Draft on Behalf. So if you are doing it via email, you can use this, free tool that will be in the resources at the end of the slide that you can use for free.

What it does is it allows it for executives to write emails easily so you're not having to go to your CEO and write and get him to write or her to write the entire email. It's gonna make it really easy and quick for them to send that email with you populating the message. So we go to the next slide. This is a a real life example.

For context, Chris is one of our CSMs at SalesLoft, and he used to work with a customer prospect, who then moved from this company that had SalesLoft and moved to a new company. So Chris knows this person really well. That person knows SalesLoft really well. So in this example, I have the context, why he's reaching out, Charlie, my colleague, asked me to, two, personalization, looks like a pretty large sales team there, and then finally that call to action.

We don't need that challenge, again, using our initiative because Chris was a CSM with this prospect who used SalesLoft, so they know the challenges we solve. I did not book a meeting from this example, but I got a response. I got a response, and I found out that there are about another four or five people from this account that Chris was working on, partnering with, that are moving to this new company. So once these four or five people move to this new company, I can then get an introduction because there's gonna be a way better use case with so many Salesforce champions on it.

So you know what? Timing is everything. We can't always book that meeting, but that's such a great piece of information that I can use. And now I know when to reach out instead of wasting my time reaching out and not getting replies.

Cool.

Next slide, please.

So that was on draft, draft on behalves. I just think it's one of my favorite approaches mainly because it is the least time consuming thing, and it gets the highest returns. So on top of partnering with with my SDR to get into accounts and the messaging we're gonna be using for cold accounts and on top of utilizing signals from SalesLoft to help me prioritize accounts and actions, DOVs is my next go to kind of, technique I use to book meetings.

The next thing, and, John touched on this as well, is that ground swell approach. So what we're doing here is we're utilizing information from lower levels within the team to help make our personalization stand out, but more importantly, make the challenges relative to what their experience. Instead of me guessing challenges, I can then know what their challenges are. And it's so difficult to break into account.

So if I can reference not only personalization but relevance, I'm gonna stand out in that person's inbox. And, again, we can use really simple sales navigator features, to find those lower level employees. I just go into that account level, and I go to entry level employees, sometimes senior as well. And all I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna blank invite these people.

I'm not gonna do all of them, especially if you're working in enterprise account. I'm gonna blank invite a load of them.

And then I'm gonna watch the, connections coming. Usually, the first couple who reply are gonna be the most responsive, and then I'm gonna message a few of them. I'm not gonna message every single one of them because if your, teammate is getting a ton of messages from someone, you're gonna talk and it's gonna sound a bit spammy. So just message a select few. I'm gonna show an example of what this messaging might look like, and always start with the exact same first question.

So my first question is, hey, Andrew. Can I ask a really random question?

We're humans, and we're curious. So we, we're gonna try and find out what that question is. Right? And depending on Andrew's response is gonna depend on my next question as well. So Andrew has said sure.

He's a little bit a little bit uptight. Doesn't really wanna share too much information.

So I'm not gonna ask a crazy demanding question. So sure. And then okay. I'm gonna ask a really easy question around tech stack.

Anyone is gonna answer a question around tech stack. It's really easy to answer. Right? And then I'm gonna go, okay.

Fine. Let's see what Andrew says.

Oh, yes. We are. Because he suddenly changed his tone from being dot dot dot and being a bit moody, and now he's sending emojis and he seems a bit more open to having a conversation, I'm gonna go in for a bigger ask, and I'm gonna ask if you push the next one more around. This was the focus when I previously spoke previously spoke to the to your company.

Is this the same challenge being spoken in your team meetings? And then also adding a little bit of thanks for the insight rep to rep. Again, depending on what Andrew then responds to this one, depends on my next question. If he's really open and really chatty and really, like, expressive around the challenges he has, I'm going to ask him to introduce me to my to his manager.

I'm gonna say, hey. Really cheeky ask, but it's a tough market out there. Can you introduce me to your boss?

I've had so many introductions into companies, from a rep level introducing me.

But let's say Andrew won't introduce me, and I need to then craft a message to his leadership from using this detective information that he shared with me. And there are two kind of common messaging examples that I will use if you click to the next slide.

Number one, speaking with x. I don't always add the person's name. I will ask them for permission before name dropping someone. Instead, I might say speaking with the team. Then I'm gonna insert that detective information.

Then I'm gonna which makes sense because and I'm gonna add in more personalization.

Just finding that detective information isn't enough, in my opinion, needs to add in more personalization.

Then I'm gonna ask a problem question, and then I'm gonna add some third party credibility into and a call to action. So you can read the example on the right hand side. Spoke with Andrew, and he mentioned a big push on AE self sourcing, which makes sense as, the role you're hiring for emphasizes outbound activity.

Many AEs see themselves as deal closers and view prospecting as something meant for SDRs. How are you shifting this mindset?

And then a bit of kind of how they've increased prospecting.

Yeah, open to learning more.

This is quite like the previous one is, like, open to learning more.

This next example follows a very similar structure.

But instead of me saying open to learning more, I am saying if x is a challenge, if x is something you're looking to improve, then here is a webinar that we're hosting or here is a really good, podcast that I listened to recently. Do you want me to share the details with you?

It's an easier response. The the thing is with a lot of people that we're messaging is that they know when they reply they're about to go into a sales cycle, not only do they need to join an initial fifteen minute call, they then need to go through a demo. If they then are not interested, they're gonna get hounded by us as sales reps because we want them to buy our solution. Then if they're interested, they have to introduce more people in from their company into the conversation.

It's a huge resource lift on our prospect side to enter, an evaluation of a tool if they're not a hundred percent sure. So what this does is it reduces that friction, and it allows that response to be easier from them, and it's no commitment from their side. Because by replying, all they're doing is getting a link to a webinar or a piece of deposit from me. But from them replying, I know that they have that challenge because I basically said, is this is a challenge you're looking to solve or you're looking into, then here is something useful.

The next time I call that person, it's not gonna be a cold call. It's gonna be a way warmer call. This is a a common technique that I will use with my tier one really juicy accounts. I just wanna get a foot in the door.

I want them to recognize me and my name before I kind of, ask for that initial call.

The final thing to note is that make sure your message is digestible on different devices. So our prospects will often, digest emails, LinkedIn messages on their phone, or even their Apple Watch. Our CRO said that they die he digests his emails on his Apple Watch. So you have about four, four characters to engage Mark.

But what you need to be doing is making sure that that subject line and that first line is capturing attention. So with that first line is saying, spoke with Andrew from your team, the chances of that person clicking it and opening it is way higher than if I say, hey, first name. I saw on LinkedIn that they're not gonna open it as much. My example is probably a bit too long if I'm being completely honest.

I could have sharpened that up.

And, yeah, if you have SalesLoft as well, you can email that template to yourself, and you can view it on your device to see how digestible it is, for your prospects to, consume as well. I think that's everything from my side. I don't know if we have any q and a's.

Oh, we got some resources as well.

Yep.

Can you hear me? Can everyone hear me?

Yes. Okay. Brilliant. Sorry, Mimi. Thank you. Yeah. I just wanna make everyone aware as well, like, where some of the things that the tweaks that we've discussed today where you can find access to these things.

We've just launched our our new champions hub as well, which is where all of our kind of education materials are. It gives you the opportunity to connect with, connect with other members of the kind of SalesLoft community as well, learn about best practices and all of those things. So, again, thinking of that draft on behalf piece if you're interested in that or talking about the high you know, looking at hyper personalization as both John and Charlie have alluded to today. Right?

There's some really, really good content there, so I'd really encourage everyone to, to go take a look if you wanna learn more about some of these things discussed today.

Now we're gonna open the floor up. I think we've probably got just over twelve minutes just for q and a, and open that up to the floor if anyone would wants to to or maybe if you have any questions to call out specifically or if anyone wants to put them up in the chat.

If anyone's if anyone's in London I don't know if you saw that crazy rainbow earlier.

But if not, you missed out. But if there oh, here we go. How many times are you reaching out to a new connection?

Before moving on.

Before moving on.

Do you know what?

If it's a good fit company, Mimi, yes. We did get people to snap a pic of the rainbow. I made probably the entire floor of sales loft, go over to the window and have a look at this rainbow because the best I've ever seen. Honestly, I don't give up with a prospect if they are a good fit, but I will give them a break. Right? I will reach out to them. And do you know what?

It's rare that I don't find some piece of information about account, especially when I'm doing groundswell, especially whether I'm partnering with SDRs like John to also reach out to them. It's quite rare that we get completely no response from an account. You do get that ones that are just impossible to break into. What I will do is I will exhaust all my options, utilizing SDRs for groundswell, doing executive alignment, normal outreach, utilizing signals and intent, etcetera.

And if I don't get a response, they'll go through my normal cadence. I might give them a break, and then I'm gonna give them another go in a couple of months' time. If someone is a good fan, I know their company is a good fan, I'm not giving up.

To to build on Charlie's point, earlier of timing is everything. Right? We have one of my, team sent me a sent us all a screenshot yesterday of a pro someone he'd been prospecting into two and a half years ago who sent him finally sent him a response and was ready to talk. So it's, timing is everything. Right?

So just looking at a couple more of the messages we've got here as well.

Did, Adam's called out better response rates from Groundswell, email or LinkedIn messages?

It's a tough question, I think. Do all three.

You know, I can't really pin it down to to one of them. I think it it's it's it's all about oh, I'm echoing really bad. It's all about kind of connecting with people on the way they wanna be connected to. I remember speaking to one of our old VPs who said that he can't remember the last email he replied to.

But if someone sends him a message on Slack or LinkedIn, then he'll reply. I think to, not even that Charlie, but super active on LinkedIn. If I can see your prospects active on LinkedIn, I'll probably put a bit more effort into that. But it's hard to kind of pin it down to a response rate from ground smell ground swell, email, or or kinda LinkedIn because I do all three.

Thanks, John. And and Katie is asking what is your average amount of tasks a day, can change depending on, on cadences, or what would you say is the is kind of best practice here?

Again, from from an SDR point of view, tough question to answer. I try and I try and work and this will be different depending on kind of how how you guys work, but I try and work one or two new accounts a day with ten people, ten. But that's because I work in kind of some of our bigger bigger accounts.

However, like, I've seen people do a lot less than that. I would say, like, for me, personally, I probably average about a hundred activities a day.

I have seen SalesLoft users where that's, you know, three hundred and fifty, four hundred. And on the other end, I've seen users where it's fifty. So I think it really depends.

Okay.

Just looking through the chat as well, if there's any more.

What what, was that an image file you're including in your email? I think that was referring to your one pager as well, John. Yeah. That's just a a p d like a document that you both that you then embed as or as an image within the doc. Right?

Yeah. Exactly that. But I think as to kinda Charlie's point yesterday, gonna start using Seismic for that. So that's gonna change. But, yeah, as it stands, just just an image.

Yeah. Katie, I'm not Katie, I'm not sure if this was answered by Charlie as well in in there. And DOBs typically, that's something I I reckon I send probably five to probably five DOBs a day. Right?

And that's drip is drafted by my, by one of the team or is tip typically drafted by one of the reps. I might have a look at it and then just quickly write put it in my own words, or try and make it less wordy. But, yeah, that's typically drafted by them so we have the context. You wanna try and make it as easy for, you know, the execs.

And as you go further and further up the organization, the less and less time execs have to look at at emails. Right? So, you know, we wanna make it super sharp and, to the point. Right?

But just make sure that I often find I quite like, my reps to provide just a a context Slack or whatever that may be when they provide me with a DAB so that we can keep the email short and sharp so they know that I know what it's about and then send it just send it off as quickly as possible.

We've got a few more coming in as well. Will you be sharing the deck? Your last slide had some content and personalization tips to check out. Sure, Adam. We can definitely share out the content of the back of this as well.

The mantas, you're asking, how many cold calls do you do a day, and what's the best strategy for them from your perspective?

I'll take it. An an SDR point of view, I I try and average fifty, but that's just because of the way that our cadences are built.

I know even within SalesLoft, perhaps, in the US, I know they do a few more. It's more sort of like sixty, seventy.

But if yeah. From a personal point of view, it's probably about fifty, but that's because of the way that our cadences are built out. I I rarely do activity outside of my cadence unless there's a really strong signal that comes in, in which case I will pick up the phone.

Best strategy, I think that's that's kind of a whole separate webinar, that one. Be here for hours talking about that.

I think a big takeaway from cold calls and what I've seen, especially in the last couple of years, is to do what you're comfortable with. I think a lot of people fall into the hole of trying to build out a script or jumping on an enablement session. They're like, yeah. This is how we do a a cold call.

I think that even some of the chaps I sit next to in the office, they run their cold calls completely differently to how I do mine. Both work, but I think it's just important to do what you're comfortable with. Do what sounds natural.

I think I think you've signed yourself up for another webinar there, John, other than that.

I think I have. Yeah.

That that would be incredibly valuable. I think, the cold calling one is an interesting one. I think in this business, I've not seen it, like, kind of cross functionally done as well as, you know, we're not scared of the cold call in sales, but by definition of our our tooling. And that goes right up to kind of a management level as well.

Right? Like, I think about we have DemGEN days or pipe gen days in our business. I have a cadence. My kind of it's called exec engagement cadence where I've dropped in from my reps who they want me to connect with.

And, you know, I'm I'm expected to to kinda call out as well a little bit when when when the moment calls for it. And that also makes it fun as well. Right? We wanna make sure that we all feel like we're in this together and in the trenches.

Certainly, I do within in my team.

So, you know, if you if you're using SalesLoft, which I know many of you are, make sure you get your exec engagement cadences and make sure you put your managers to work as an extra SDR.

We've got a few minutes left. Are there any more questions just before we wrap up?

Give it another ten seconds.

Okay.

A sales loft.

Yeah. Right. Hello, Ryan. Nice to see you.

Yeah. And I'm sure I'm sure we can sort that out out for you and, and and the team at some point for sure, particularly with all the work, you know, work we've been doing. So we're you're a SalesLoft expert now, so we should be having you reference in merch. But, listen, I think we are are at time, right about now.

But I think, firstly, you know, thank you to to Charlie, and to John for, like, sharing all of their kind of expertise today. They're, you know, two fantastic talents, and we're really lucky to have them in the business. And, Mimi, thank you so much for facilitating this. And, of course, thank you all so much for joining.

And if there, we will share the collaterals off the back of this. And if you wanna reach out, you have, we'll we'll share our our LinkedIn profiles as well. I'm happy to happy to connect more more closely, follow or any follow-up questions if needed.

Alright. Brilliant. Thank you all. Take care. Have a great rest of your day.