April 17, 2024 • 20 mins
In this episode of Sales Transformation, Collin Mitchell and Ronan Pessar discuss how to build a successful SDR (Sales Development Representative) team. They cover topics such as the financial considerations of building a team, the importance of understanding the value of conversations in sales, and the cost of hiring and managing SDRs. They also provide tips for hiring the right people, including using asynchronous video interviews and structured interviewing techniques. Overall, this episode provides valuable insights for sales leaders looking to optimize their SDR teams.
Follow the Host:
Collin Mitchell (Partner, Leadium)
Our Episode Guest:
Ronen Pessar (Founder, Ronen Pessar Advisory)
Sponsored By:
Leadium | The leader in outbound sales appointment setting
*If you'd like to be a guest on the show or have any questions, email us at guest@salestransformation.co - Just tell us why you're reaching out and we'll contact you as soon as we can!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Announcer (00:01):
Welcome back to another episode of sales
transformation brought to you byLedium. In this episode, Colin
is joined one more time by RonanPeser to discuss how to build
your SDR team. Ronan sharesvaluable insights on the
financial considerations, talentassessment, and hiring
strategies for building asuccessful sales development
team. Colin, back to you.
Collin Mitchell (00:24):
Alright. Welcome back to another episode
of sales transformation broughtto you by Ledium. I'm your host,
Colin Mitchell, and we've gotRonen Pazar back on the show.
Ronen, you wanna give peoplejust a quick introduction and
before we jump into a topic thatI know you love talking about.
Ronen Pessar (00:40):
Thanks, Colin. Great to be back. Ronen Pesar
here. I do fractional salesdevelopment, meaning I build out
your SDR team for you or helpyou optimize it. Cold call
training, but also leadershipdevelopment training.
That's me.
Collin Mitchell (00:56):
Short and sweet. Love it. Love it. We had
run-in on recently, and wetalked about a lot of great
things about, lots of nuggetsfor first time leaders, that or
even leaders that maybe have,you know, been around a while
and are looking to improveculture. Lots of good nuggets in
there of just sort of somethings that you can do to have a
better culture, as a leader,that really do impact results,
(01:19):
especially for sales teams.
And I can tell you a lot of thebad behaviors and, you know, the
things that we talked about arepretty much kind of the norm for
a lot of sales teamenvironments. But today, we're
gonna talk about, you know, howto build your SDR team, which is
something that I know you'repassionate about. Let's just
talk about, you know, maybe fora first time leader or newer
(01:40):
leader, what are some thingsthat they need to be thinking
about when they're maybebuilding a team for the first
time?
Ronen Pessar (01:46):
Yeah. This is something I'm passionate about
because it it has so many movingparts. Get a few of them right,
and you can see, like, wildsuccess. But get a few of them
wrong, and it's like, what did Ido wrong? Why doesn't this work?
I think when it comes to makingthis a little bit more specific,
there there's 2 typical kinds ofclients that I work with. So
(02:06):
that helps paint the backdropfor, like, who this is for. The
first one is the growing VCbacked tech company, like the
start up series a, series b.This is the kind of company that
has already identified productmarket fit, and now they're
looking to add another channelor 2 to increase their pipeline
and then their revenue. Reallytypical strategy, by no means is
(02:31):
it going away anytime soon.
The second use case and kind ofclient that I work with is,
typically a bootstrapped oralready profitable organization
that is now exploring newpipeline channels, and they have
never done traditional salesdevelopment or outbound. So they
already have maybe 15, 20 years,10 years, something, but a a
good chunk of time operating intheir market. And they are
(02:54):
profitable. They have a largeorganization, resources. I have
a client just like that, a valueadded reseller in the hardware
space.
They they've been around for awhile, and now they're just
looking to add another layer ontop of their go to market
strategy. Either way, there'sone thing that's true. Sales
development is newer to them.When you're thinking about it,
(03:14):
you gotta think big picture. Sothere's the finances of it.
Do the numbers make sense? Thenthere's the talent component.
Who are the people that makesense? Ultimately, marrying the
2 is gonna be the job of someonelike myself. I call myself an
integrator because I'm puttingthese two things together.
And when it comes to the actualnumbers, it's pretty
(03:36):
straightforward. What you wannalook for is, do I know already
what my back of napkin funnellooks like? What is the value of
a new conversation? And if youcan have that number figured
out, you can model out a wholelot of things that you can then
go test with a team. I can testif I know that the value of
(03:56):
every new conversation to mycompany's revenue could be 15 or
$20,000.
Then I know if I go find a wayto create another 100 of these I
should be able to project outthat pipeline. On the talent
side, this is usually wherepeople struggle because it's
really hard to assess the righttalent fit. But this comes back
to the heart, the DNA, and theblood of the company. Like, what
(04:20):
makes someone let's takeLeadium. What makes someone at
Leadium a Leadium person?
What is gonna lead to someone'spromotion at Leadium? There's
gonna be something differentthere than what leads to
someone's promotion at a companylike Salesforce. They have
different codes of conduct. Whatis considered good, bad? What's
considered praiseworthy,promotion worthy, and fire
(04:40):
worthy or, you know, disciplineworthy?
So those are the 2 big picture10,000 foot view of, like, how I
think about it before I getinto, like, the details of it
all.
Collin Mitchell (04:49):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the interesting
thing is the first piece there.Right? Like, the the math, even
the back of the napkin math, italways shocks me at how
misinformed people are abouttheir own sales map.
Like, sometimes you talk toleaders, and they literally have
no idea of the value ofconversation or, you know, you
(05:11):
start asking questions aboutcertain sales conversions, and
you get kind of a range or aaround 20% to 30%. It's like
understanding these numbers iskinda table stakes if you're a
sales leader. Like, you have toknow these things. Right? And
and maybe, you know, it's asmaller company, and it's like
(05:33):
you got founder kinda playingthat sales leader role.
Right? So that's understandablemaybe. But even then, like,
these things need to known.Right? So what are some things
let's talk a little bit.
I wanna dig into that a littlebit. Like, what are some things
that they need to look at insideof their organization to
understand that back of thenapkin sales math to be able to
figure out, like, is this aviable option for us to go down
(05:55):
building an SDR team?
Ronen Pessar (05:58):
So, I'm always a little bit surprised like you
when I'm speaking with reallysuccessful business people who
know how important finance is.And finance is the language of
business. Right? So theyunderstand that, yet they don't
have the language of sales down.It's just a sub part of finance,
essentially.
It's just another form ofmetrics to measure. I know all
(06:21):
the people out there who arereally into analytics are gonna
geek out on this, but this isthe kind of stuff that I that
I'll do when I'm trying toassess with a potential client
like, look, does it even makesense for you to invest? This
isn't a cheap thing. This isgoing to be a sizable
investment. You've got salariesand benefits.
That's gonna be your biggestcost. Then you've got
technology. Then you've got thetime investment which is so
(06:43):
underestimated how important thetime part of it is just to see
this thing work out. So you'vegot some numbers. When you think
about it, you could workbackwards.
You could say, I have a revenuegoal. Let's work back from that.
How many deals do I need? Do Ihave ways of segmenting my deal?
So for those of you who aren'tfamiliar with this, most
companies have stages to theirdeals if it's not like a 1 or 2
(07:06):
call close.
If you're selling to a largeanother business, b to b space,
you're selling larger deals,you're likely to break them down
into stages. The most commonsetup that I've seen has
something like first call,qualified opportunity, some sort
of sometimes trial period or,analysis period, some
(07:27):
negotiation periods and legalperiod, and then it's a
customer. That's like the verystandard setup that I've seen.
Collin Mitchell (07:33):
Yeah. Yeah.
Ronen Pessar (07:34):
Right there, you have your first funnel.
Collin Mitchell (07:38):
And then and then I think the other thing
that a lot of times isoverlooked is people not
considering all of the numbers,which is other, you know, basic
finance thing here of what thefully loaded cost of an SDR is.
Right? Like, it's not just thesalary. It's the tech. It's the
anybody managing them.
It's, you know, all of theseother factors of, like, you
know, how do we so maybe it'd behelpful to break down when
(08:00):
you're looking at, like, Hey,how many SDRs can we afford to
start with? And how do weactually have that back of the
napkin math of, like, what isthe fully all in cost of, you
know, hiring these folks?
Ronen Pessar (08:12):
The big costs in the, like, pie the biggest one
is salary for the person. Theyneed benefits and tax. When you
when you're thinking about tech,I think most, tech companies
have a strange belief thateverything has to be software.
Like, so they end up buying waytoo much technology, way too
(08:36):
many tools when especially inthe world of sales development,
you don't need a whole lot toget going. I mean, if you really
wanna scrap it and be super,like, economical about it, you
don't you just need a a phone,an email, and a way to get
information about people you'regonna be, like, calling and
reaching out to.
(08:56):
But, typically, the last thingis location. Like, where are
these people gonna sit? Thatwill matter. There's a whole,
growing space of, like, second II don't know what they're it's
offshore sales development, butit's it's folks in countries
that are English speakers butdon't live in America, so they
(09:18):
require less. That is growingfor a reason.
You know, the cost of it is alot lower than the cost of a a
salaried employee in SanFrancisco. I I think in
California, the minimum salaryrequirement is something like
$64,000. So there's that costadds up pretty fast. In addition
to that, it's also like you justsaid. Who's gonna support this
(09:43):
team?
If this team is making phonecalls, where are they gonna get
that data from? Is there someoneinternally who's gonna help them
set up the process of finding anew contact, getting that number
into their dialer so they canmake the call? Is there someone
who's gonna set up the processfor checking emails so that they
don't bounce, so that SDR can goahead and send the email without
(10:04):
having deliverability issues.That's usually something that
will be, like, chalked up to a arev ops, sales ops person, but
that's a whole another role.That's more cost associated and
opportunity cost.
What else that person could beworking on? Ultimately, when
it's, like, all in, in the US, Iusually am looking at somewhere
between a $100,120,000 per SDRas the all in cost. And that's
(10:31):
that's been from experience,different types of companies,
different industries, but,typically, that's the range that
it ends up hitting.
Collin Mitchell (10:38):
Okay. And let's pivot a little bit here, now
that I think people understand,like, hey. How do we actually
look like from both sides? Doesthe math make sense? But then
how do we pick the right people?
Right? Because there's things Imean, one thing I'll add to that
too is you got to factor in ramptime, like reasonable ramp time.
(11:00):
Right. You can't expectsomebody's gonna get in the seat
in the first 30, 45 days.They're gonna be, you know, 100%
of quota.
You know, that's very unlikely.Right? So even if they're
experienced, I think a lot oftimes people think, think, oh,
they've done this before. Like,they should ramp faster, but new
market, new value prop, probablyeven working on some hypothesis
of, like, who the best targetis, what the best messaging is.
(11:23):
So definitely factor in areasonable ramp time there.
But then how do we get the rightpeople on the team? Are some
things that we need to look for?What are some things that we
need to consider when hiring?
Ronen Pessar (11:34):
So, a few quick tips for anyone doing hiring, to
find good talent. First one is,you wanna play a little bit of a
numbers game, which is you wantthe most amount of qualified
candidates to be able to lookat, But you don't wanna spend a
ton of time with all of thembecause otherwise, you're gonna
be, like, buried. I've I've donethat. Right? Like, where I'm
(11:55):
spending time reading throughevery resume, something like
that.
So here's here's one first quickhack. I'm a huge fan of using
asynchronous communication inthe interview process. Video. As
the first stage of any interviewprocess I'm going to run, I'm
gonna have the candidate answerthe typical first five questions
(12:15):
that I would ask in an interviewover video and then send it into
me. There's, by the way, acompany that's built around this
alone, where they just helporganize all that.
And what I'm asking is the basicquestions of, like, give me your
your highlights reel. Tell mewhat you want me to know about
your your history, yourbackground. I like to know, hey.
(12:36):
Why are you leaving your currentrole? Or if you're not currently
employed, what's going on?
So I asked them to answer thosetwo things. I do like the
question of, like, why this roleat this company? Like, tell me a
little bit more about what itwhat that means to you. And And
that's an opportunity for themto really shine and and tell me,
like, their x factor. And then,of course, I like the future
(12:56):
oriented, like, tell me whereyou're heading.
This is a indicator if anyone'slistening to this and I'm
interviewing you, here's theanswer. It's I'm looking for you
to say something that soundslike it's gonna fit in with
where this role can take you. Soif you say, in 3 to 5 years, I'm
gonna be a top performingaccount executive at this
company. I'm gonna be selling.Great.
(13:17):
Sales development's a greatstart. I'm gonna be, a wildly
beloved and successful salesdevelopment manager. Great. This
is a wonderful role for you.Something that makes sense as a
transition from this role intothe next.
Collin Mitchell (13:31):
Yeah. There's there's a few things I love
about this, because I I've I'veused a similar process in the
past many times. And number 1,you're gonna weed out a lot of
people that never reply. It waslike, hey, they clearly don't
get
Ronen Pessar (13:43):
this job. Yep.
Collin Mitchell (13:44):
The other thing is you now have them on camera.
You can see, you know, how theyconduct themselves, which is
something that's important. AndI I think that, the the thing
that is important there is youcan see the type of answers that
they give you because you cansee, are they just feeding me
answers that they think I wannahear? Or you know? And you can
(14:07):
pick up on cues like, are theyare they looking away when
they're speaking?
Are they making good eyecontact? A little bit hard on
camera, you know, rather than inperson, but you can start to
pick up if you think they'rebeing truthful, for the most
part. Those are things that Ilook for. Of course, I care what
they're answering, but I'm alsoseeing how they're answering and
(14:29):
what those answers are. Do theyseem genuine, or do they seem
like they're just greatinterviews or interviews, and
they're, telling me exactly whatI wanna hear?
Ronen Pessar (14:38):
One fun thing I like to do, and I've any manager
that I've had the fortune of oftraining and and getting into
leadership, I've I've taughtthem this approach. I play a
game where because especially inin tech companies that are
growing, there's a lot ofhiring, so there's even more
interviewing. I play a game of,like, score the candidate. And
then 3 months, 6 months into therole, see if your scoring was in
(15:01):
line with what you thought. SoI'd I'd like to play this game
of, like, try to predict if thisperson is get where they're
gonna be in their performance in3 to 6 months.
What that does is even though ittakes time to develop that, it
allows the manager to see whatthey missed and learn the lesson
that they needed to learn. Sothe next time they're doing
interviewing, which is almostalways happening, you're able to
(15:26):
be more aware of those pitfalls.So one thing that I learned once
was for someone who is a reallygood interviewer. Really good.
She had all the experience, onpaper looked perfect.
Kinda answered all my questionswell, but I always I had this
gut feeling about her thatwasn't great. But for some
reason, everything lined up, soI was like, I'm gonna give her
the shot. Floundered, struggled,didn't show up, had to let her
(15:49):
go like 4 months into the role.What I learned in hindsight when
I reviewed my notes was to trustmy intuition when something
feels off. Yeah.
I was blinded by her previousexperience that looked really
good from a company that was areally good company logo. I was
so blinded by that that I waswilling to ignore my intuition
of, like, she seems kind ofafraid of like a little timid.
(16:11):
And she doesn't seem to be,like, really wanting this role,
but she says she does. Sosomething feels off here, but,
whatever. Like, she's from agreat has a great background.
Like, let's just go for it.
Collin Mitchell (16:20):
Yeah. 2 so 2 things 2 things for that. 1,
trust your intuition. I thinkyou're spot on. Another hack is,
like, don't die don't do deepdive into their experience
before that first call.
Like, a quick scan of theirLinkedIn profile these days is
sufficient. If they reply, youknow, quick scan of their
LinkedIn profile to see if youeven wanna send them those video
(16:41):
questions. And then once theysend those video questions, you
decide if you wanna meet them.
Ronen Pessar (16:47):
Yeah. And at
Collin Mitchell (16:47):
that point, you really haven't done a deep dive
and looked at resume and allthat other stuff because, you
know, I think that can make abig difference.
Ronen Pessar (16:54):
Oh, for sure. I had a a former CRO who said to
me, you need to always have abench. Always have a bench of
people you can hire. And what Ilearned about what he was trying
to tell me, which is veryvaluable, is when you have
people that are ready to go orpeople that you've pre vetted
and you like, you feel a lotless of an attachment to low
performers who have to go.You're ready to move on from
(17:16):
them because you know you canbackfill them.
Or in the case of like, in myprevious job, we were growing so
fast, I actually sometimesneeded to find 3 people
overnight. And if I likedsomeone from previous interview,
and they went through theprocess, I would say this to
every candidate and peoplewho've interviewed with me have
probably heard this. It's like,hey. Sorry. We we can't give you
the offer now.
If it's alright with you, I'dlove to stay in touch. And if we
(17:38):
have an opening again, I willactually reach out to you first
because it'll save me time. Iwon't have to go interview. And
if you're still open to it, we'dlove to give you the offer then.
Is it alright if I stay in touchwith you?
And I've hired at least 5 or 6people that way. Yeah. Save me a
whole a whole cycle not havingto go through it. But, like,
yeah. Also, the interview thevideo is a a great hack.
(18:01):
One thing to just be aware of isis a form of interviewing called
structured interviewing. And theidea is just to have, a very
similar approach to everycandidate in order to have a
fair comparison. There there issome stuff around, like,
implicit bias that goes intothis which is important to be
aware of, but I'm a big fan ofstructured interviewing for a
different reason. You know thescoreboard. It's like a game.
(18:23):
Imagine if you're playing, like,a game of football, but there's
2 different rules for for, like,both teams. The score is gonna
be really weird. So when itcomes to interviewing, make sure
you sit down with, like, 2 or 3other people to think about what
is the structure we want to haveand why. Mhmm. You know, knowing
exactly what you're looking forat which point in the phase.
(18:45):
And the last thing here is userole plays. Stress test the
skills. If you're okay withsomeone without experience, can
you stress test the underlyingcharacter trait that leads to
success in that skill? Classicexample. I'm gonna have my SDR
cold call.
You've never cold call before?No problem. How do you handle
(19:06):
getting objections on a call?Are you gonna just try to push
through it or are you gonnafold? Because I want the people
who naturally wanna keep pushingthrough.
Collin Mitchell (19:14):
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Ronan, it's been
awesome having you back on theshow. Really appreciate it.
Any final thoughts, and where'sthe best place for people to
connect with you?
Ronen Pessar (19:24):
I could get got on this stuff all day. So if you
wanna chat some more about, bestpractices around hiring or even
just managing a team, come findme on LinkedIn, Ronen Pesar. I'd
be more than happy to connect,especially if you're newer to
leadership and and you're reallyhell bent on building a high
performance team.
Collin Mitchell (19:42):
Awesome. Appreciate it. We'll drop it in
the show notes there. We'll alsolink the last episode. Ronan was
on as well because there's tonsof nuggets in there for sales
leaders.
And if you enjoy today'sepisode, please write us a
review, share the show with yourfriends so we can help more
sellers and sales leaderstransform the way that they
sell.
Welcome back to another episode of sales
transformation brought to you byLedium. In this episode, Colin
is joined one more time by RonanPeser to discuss how to build
your SDR team. Ronan sharesvaluable insights on the
financial considerations, talentassessment, and hiring
strategies for building asuccessful sales development
team. Colin, back to you.
Collin Mitchell (00:24):
Alright. Welcome back to another episode
of sales transformation broughtto you by Ledium. I'm your host,
Colin Mitchell, and we've gotRonen Pazar back on the show.
Ronen, you wanna give peoplejust a quick introduction and
before we jump into a topic thatI know you love talking about.
Ronen Pessar (00:40):
Thanks, Colin. Great to be back. Ronen Pesar
here. I do fractional salesdevelopment, meaning I build out
your SDR team for you or helpyou optimize it. Cold call
training, but also leadershipdevelopment training.
That's me.
Collin Mitchell (00:56):
Short and sweet. Love it. Love it. We had
run-in on recently, and wetalked about a lot of great
things about, lots of nuggetsfor first time leaders, that or
even leaders that maybe have,you know, been around a while
and are looking to improveculture. Lots of good nuggets in
there of just sort of somethings that you can do to have a
better culture, as a leader,that really do impact results,
(01:19):
especially for sales teams.
And I can tell you a lot of thebad behaviors and, you know, the
things that we talked about arepretty much kind of the norm for
a lot of sales teamenvironments. But today, we're
gonna talk about, you know, howto build your SDR team, which is
something that I know you'repassionate about. Let's just
talk about, you know, maybe fora first time leader or newer
(01:40):
leader, what are some thingsthat they need to be thinking
about when they're maybebuilding a team for the first
time?
Ronen Pessar (01:46):
Yeah. This is something I'm passionate about
because it it has so many movingparts. Get a few of them right,
and you can see, like, wildsuccess. But get a few of them
wrong, and it's like, what did Ido wrong? Why doesn't this work?
I think when it comes to makingthis a little bit more specific,
there there's 2 typical kinds ofclients that I work with. So
(02:06):
that helps paint the backdropfor, like, who this is for. The
first one is the growing VCbacked tech company, like the
start up series a, series b.This is the kind of company that
has already identified productmarket fit, and now they're
looking to add another channelor 2 to increase their pipeline
and then their revenue. Reallytypical strategy, by no means is
(02:31):
it going away anytime soon.
The second use case and kind ofclient that I work with is,
typically a bootstrapped oralready profitable organization
that is now exploring newpipeline channels, and they have
never done traditional salesdevelopment or outbound. So they
already have maybe 15, 20 years,10 years, something, but a a
good chunk of time operating intheir market. And they are
(02:54):
profitable. They have a largeorganization, resources. I have
a client just like that, a valueadded reseller in the hardware
space.
They they've been around for awhile, and now they're just
looking to add another layer ontop of their go to market
strategy. Either way, there'sone thing that's true. Sales
development is newer to them.When you're thinking about it,
(03:14):
you gotta think big picture. Sothere's the finances of it.
Do the numbers make sense? Thenthere's the talent component.
Who are the people that makesense? Ultimately, marrying the
2 is gonna be the job of someonelike myself. I call myself an
integrator because I'm puttingthese two things together.
And when it comes to the actualnumbers, it's pretty
(03:36):
straightforward. What you wannalook for is, do I know already
what my back of napkin funnellooks like? What is the value of
a new conversation? And if youcan have that number figured
out, you can model out a wholelot of things that you can then
go test with a team. I can testif I know that the value of
(03:56):
every new conversation to mycompany's revenue could be 15 or
$20,000.
Then I know if I go find a wayto create another 100 of these I
should be able to project outthat pipeline. On the talent
side, this is usually wherepeople struggle because it's
really hard to assess the righttalent fit. But this comes back
to the heart, the DNA, and theblood of the company. Like, what
(04:20):
makes someone let's takeLeadium. What makes someone at
Leadium a Leadium person?
What is gonna lead to someone'spromotion at Leadium? There's
gonna be something differentthere than what leads to
someone's promotion at a companylike Salesforce. They have
different codes of conduct. Whatis considered good, bad? What's
considered praiseworthy,promotion worthy, and fire
(04:40):
worthy or, you know, disciplineworthy?
So those are the 2 big picture10,000 foot view of, like, how I
think about it before I getinto, like, the details of it
all.
Collin Mitchell (04:49):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the interesting
thing is the first piece there.Right? Like, the the math, even
the back of the napkin math, italways shocks me at how
misinformed people are abouttheir own sales map.
Like, sometimes you talk toleaders, and they literally have
no idea of the value ofconversation or, you know, you
(05:11):
start asking questions aboutcertain sales conversions, and
you get kind of a range or aaround 20% to 30%. It's like
understanding these numbers iskinda table stakes if you're a
sales leader. Like, you have toknow these things. Right? And
and maybe, you know, it's asmaller company, and it's like
(05:33):
you got founder kinda playingthat sales leader role.
Right? So that's understandablemaybe. But even then, like,
these things need to known.Right? So what are some things
let's talk a little bit.
I wanna dig into that a littlebit. Like, what are some things
that they need to look at insideof their organization to
understand that back of thenapkin sales math to be able to
figure out, like, is this aviable option for us to go down
(05:55):
building an SDR team?
Ronen Pessar (05:58):
So, I'm always a little bit surprised like you
when I'm speaking with reallysuccessful business people who
know how important finance is.And finance is the language of
business. Right? So theyunderstand that, yet they don't
have the language of sales down.It's just a sub part of finance,
essentially.
It's just another form ofmetrics to measure. I know all
(06:21):
the people out there who arereally into analytics are gonna
geek out on this, but this isthe kind of stuff that I that
I'll do when I'm trying toassess with a potential client
like, look, does it even makesense for you to invest? This
isn't a cheap thing. This isgoing to be a sizable
investment. You've got salariesand benefits.
That's gonna be your biggestcost. Then you've got
technology. Then you've got thetime investment which is so
(06:43):
underestimated how important thetime part of it is just to see
this thing work out. So you'vegot some numbers. When you think
about it, you could workbackwards.
You could say, I have a revenuegoal. Let's work back from that.
How many deals do I need? Do Ihave ways of segmenting my deal?
So for those of you who aren'tfamiliar with this, most
companies have stages to theirdeals if it's not like a 1 or 2
(07:06):
call close.
If you're selling to a largeanother business, b to b space,
you're selling larger deals,you're likely to break them down
into stages. The most commonsetup that I've seen has
something like first call,qualified opportunity, some sort
of sometimes trial period or,analysis period, some
(07:27):
negotiation periods and legalperiod, and then it's a
customer. That's like the verystandard setup that I've seen.
Collin Mitchell (07:33):
Yeah. Yeah.
Ronen Pessar (07:34):
Right there, you have your first funnel.
Collin Mitchell (07:38):
And then and then I think the other thing
that a lot of times isoverlooked is people not
considering all of the numbers,which is other, you know, basic
finance thing here of what thefully loaded cost of an SDR is.
Right? Like, it's not just thesalary. It's the tech. It's the
anybody managing them.
It's, you know, all of theseother factors of, like, you
know, how do we so maybe it'd behelpful to break down when
(08:00):
you're looking at, like, Hey,how many SDRs can we afford to
start with? And how do weactually have that back of the
napkin math of, like, what isthe fully all in cost of, you
know, hiring these folks?
Ronen Pessar (08:12):
The big costs in the, like, pie the biggest one
is salary for the person. Theyneed benefits and tax. When you
when you're thinking about tech,I think most, tech companies
have a strange belief thateverything has to be software.
Like, so they end up buying waytoo much technology, way too
(08:36):
many tools when especially inthe world of sales development,
you don't need a whole lot toget going. I mean, if you really
wanna scrap it and be super,like, economical about it, you
don't you just need a a phone,an email, and a way to get
information about people you'regonna be, like, calling and
reaching out to.
(08:56):
But, typically, the last thingis location. Like, where are
these people gonna sit? Thatwill matter. There's a whole,
growing space of, like, second II don't know what they're it's
offshore sales development, butit's it's folks in countries
that are English speakers butdon't live in America, so they
(09:18):
require less. That is growingfor a reason.
You know, the cost of it is alot lower than the cost of a a
salaried employee in SanFrancisco. I I think in
California, the minimum salaryrequirement is something like
$64,000. So there's that costadds up pretty fast. In addition
to that, it's also like you justsaid. Who's gonna support this
(09:43):
team?
If this team is making phonecalls, where are they gonna get
that data from? Is there someoneinternally who's gonna help them
set up the process of finding anew contact, getting that number
into their dialer so they canmake the call? Is there someone
who's gonna set up the processfor checking emails so that they
don't bounce, so that SDR can goahead and send the email without
(10:04):
having deliverability issues.That's usually something that
will be, like, chalked up to a arev ops, sales ops person, but
that's a whole another role.That's more cost associated and
opportunity cost.
What else that person could beworking on? Ultimately, when
it's, like, all in, in the US, Iusually am looking at somewhere
between a $100,120,000 per SDRas the all in cost. And that's
(10:31):
that's been from experience,different types of companies,
different industries, but,typically, that's the range that
it ends up hitting.
Collin Mitchell (10:38):
Okay. And let's pivot a little bit here, now
that I think people understand,like, hey. How do we actually
look like from both sides? Doesthe math make sense? But then
how do we pick the right people?
Right? Because there's things Imean, one thing I'll add to that
too is you got to factor in ramptime, like reasonable ramp time.
(11:00):
Right. You can't expectsomebody's gonna get in the seat
in the first 30, 45 days.They're gonna be, you know, 100%
of quota.
You know, that's very unlikely.Right? So even if they're
experienced, I think a lot oftimes people think, think, oh,
they've done this before. Like,they should ramp faster, but new
market, new value prop, probablyeven working on some hypothesis
of, like, who the best targetis, what the best messaging is.
(11:23):
So definitely factor in areasonable ramp time there.
But then how do we get the rightpeople on the team? Are some
things that we need to look for?What are some things that we
need to consider when hiring?
Ronen Pessar (11:34):
So, a few quick tips for anyone doing hiring, to
find good talent. First one is,you wanna play a little bit of a
numbers game, which is you wantthe most amount of qualified
candidates to be able to lookat, But you don't wanna spend a
ton of time with all of thembecause otherwise, you're gonna
be, like, buried. I've I've donethat. Right? Like, where I'm
(11:55):
spending time reading throughevery resume, something like
that.
So here's here's one first quickhack. I'm a huge fan of using
asynchronous communication inthe interview process. Video. As
the first stage of any interviewprocess I'm going to run, I'm
gonna have the candidate answerthe typical first five questions
(12:15):
that I would ask in an interviewover video and then send it into
me. There's, by the way, acompany that's built around this
alone, where they just helporganize all that.
And what I'm asking is the basicquestions of, like, give me your
your highlights reel. Tell mewhat you want me to know about
your your history, yourbackground. I like to know, hey.
(12:36):
Why are you leaving your currentrole? Or if you're not currently
employed, what's going on?
So I asked them to answer thosetwo things. I do like the
question of, like, why this roleat this company? Like, tell me a
little bit more about what itwhat that means to you. And And
that's an opportunity for themto really shine and and tell me,
like, their x factor. And then,of course, I like the future
(12:56):
oriented, like, tell me whereyou're heading.
This is a indicator if anyone'slistening to this and I'm
interviewing you, here's theanswer. It's I'm looking for you
to say something that soundslike it's gonna fit in with
where this role can take you. Soif you say, in 3 to 5 years, I'm
gonna be a top performingaccount executive at this
company. I'm gonna be selling.Great.
(13:17):
Sales development's a greatstart. I'm gonna be, a wildly
beloved and successful salesdevelopment manager. Great. This
is a wonderful role for you.Something that makes sense as a
transition from this role intothe next.
Collin Mitchell (13:31):
Yeah. There's there's a few things I love
about this, because I I've I'veused a similar process in the
past many times. And number 1,you're gonna weed out a lot of
people that never reply. It waslike, hey, they clearly don't
get
Ronen Pessar (13:43):
this job. Yep.
Collin Mitchell (13:44):
The other thing is you now have them on camera.
You can see, you know, how theyconduct themselves, which is
something that's important. AndI I think that, the the thing
that is important there is youcan see the type of answers that
they give you because you cansee, are they just feeding me
answers that they think I wannahear? Or you know? And you can
(14:07):
pick up on cues like, are theyare they looking away when
they're speaking?
Are they making good eyecontact? A little bit hard on
camera, you know, rather than inperson, but you can start to
pick up if you think they'rebeing truthful, for the most
part. Those are things that Ilook for. Of course, I care what
they're answering, but I'm alsoseeing how they're answering and
(14:29):
what those answers are. Do theyseem genuine, or do they seem
like they're just greatinterviews or interviews, and
they're, telling me exactly whatI wanna hear?
Ronen Pessar (14:38):
One fun thing I like to do, and I've any manager
that I've had the fortune of oftraining and and getting into
leadership, I've I've taughtthem this approach. I play a
game where because especially inin tech companies that are
growing, there's a lot ofhiring, so there's even more
interviewing. I play a game of,like, score the candidate. And
then 3 months, 6 months into therole, see if your scoring was in
(15:01):
line with what you thought. SoI'd I'd like to play this game
of, like, try to predict if thisperson is get where they're
gonna be in their performance in3 to 6 months.
What that does is even though ittakes time to develop that, it
allows the manager to see whatthey missed and learn the lesson
that they needed to learn. Sothe next time they're doing
interviewing, which is almostalways happening, you're able to
(15:26):
be more aware of those pitfalls.So one thing that I learned once
was for someone who is a reallygood interviewer. Really good.
She had all the experience, onpaper looked perfect.
Kinda answered all my questionswell, but I always I had this
gut feeling about her thatwasn't great. But for some
reason, everything lined up, soI was like, I'm gonna give her
the shot. Floundered, struggled,didn't show up, had to let her
(15:49):
go like 4 months into the role.What I learned in hindsight when
I reviewed my notes was to trustmy intuition when something
feels off. Yeah.
I was blinded by her previousexperience that looked really
good from a company that was areally good company logo. I was
so blinded by that that I waswilling to ignore my intuition
of, like, she seems kind ofafraid of like a little timid.
(16:11):
And she doesn't seem to be,like, really wanting this role,
but she says she does. Sosomething feels off here, but,
whatever. Like, she's from agreat has a great background.
Like, let's just go for it.
Collin Mitchell (16:20):
Yeah. 2 so 2 things 2 things for that. 1,
trust your intuition. I thinkyou're spot on. Another hack is,
like, don't die don't do deepdive into their experience
before that first call.
Like, a quick scan of theirLinkedIn profile these days is
sufficient. If they reply, youknow, quick scan of their
LinkedIn profile to see if youeven wanna send them those video
(16:41):
questions. And then once theysend those video questions, you
decide if you wanna meet them.
Ronen Pessar (16:47):
Yeah. And at
Collin Mitchell (16:47):
that point, you really haven't done a deep dive
and looked at resume and allthat other stuff because, you
know, I think that can make abig difference.
Ronen Pessar (16:54):
Oh, for sure. I had a a former CRO who said to
me, you need to always have abench. Always have a bench of
people you can hire. And what Ilearned about what he was trying
to tell me, which is veryvaluable, is when you have
people that are ready to go orpeople that you've pre vetted
and you like, you feel a lotless of an attachment to low
performers who have to go.You're ready to move on from
(17:16):
them because you know you canbackfill them.
Or in the case of like, in myprevious job, we were growing so
fast, I actually sometimesneeded to find 3 people
overnight. And if I likedsomeone from previous interview,
and they went through theprocess, I would say this to
every candidate and peoplewho've interviewed with me have
probably heard this. It's like,hey. Sorry. We we can't give you
the offer now.
If it's alright with you, I'dlove to stay in touch. And if we
(17:38):
have an opening again, I willactually reach out to you first
because it'll save me time. Iwon't have to go interview. And
if you're still open to it, we'dlove to give you the offer then.
Is it alright if I stay in touchwith you?
And I've hired at least 5 or 6people that way. Yeah. Save me a
whole a whole cycle not havingto go through it. But, like,
yeah. Also, the interview thevideo is a a great hack.
(18:01):
One thing to just be aware of isis a form of interviewing called
structured interviewing. And theidea is just to have, a very
similar approach to everycandidate in order to have a
fair comparison. There there issome stuff around, like,
implicit bias that goes intothis which is important to be
aware of, but I'm a big fan ofstructured interviewing for a
different reason. You know thescoreboard. It's like a game.
(18:23):
Imagine if you're playing, like,a game of football, but there's
2 different rules for for, like,both teams. The score is gonna
be really weird. So when itcomes to interviewing, make sure
you sit down with, like, 2 or 3other people to think about what
is the structure we want to haveand why. Mhmm. You know, knowing
exactly what you're looking forat which point in the phase.
(18:45):
And the last thing here is userole plays. Stress test the
skills. If you're okay withsomeone without experience, can
you stress test the underlyingcharacter trait that leads to
success in that skill? Classicexample. I'm gonna have my SDR
cold call.
You've never cold call before?No problem. How do you handle
(19:06):
getting objections on a call?Are you gonna just try to push
through it or are you gonnafold? Because I want the people
who naturally wanna keep pushingthrough.
Collin Mitchell (19:14):
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Ronan, it's been
awesome having you back on theshow. Really appreciate it.
Any final thoughts, and where'sthe best place for people to
connect with you?
Ronen Pessar (19:24):
I could get got on this stuff all day. So if you
wanna chat some more about, bestpractices around hiring or even
just managing a team, come findme on LinkedIn, Ronen Pesar. I'd
be more than happy to connect,especially if you're newer to
leadership and and you're reallyhell bent on building a high
performance team.
Collin Mitchell (19:42):
Awesome. Appreciate it. We'll drop it in
the show notes there. We'll alsolink the last episode. Ronan was
on as well because there's tonsof nuggets in there for sales
leaders.
And if you enjoy today'sepisode, please write us a
review, share the show with yourfriends so we can help more
sellers and sales leaderstransform the way that they
sell.
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