Standing Out: A Podcast About Sales, Marketing and Leadership
Standing Out is a show created to help individuals and companies improve their sales & marketing outcomes, as well as their leadership development. Each episode we have an expert who has a unique perspective on sales, marketing and/or leadership providing insights from his or her experiences. And we throw in a few laughs from time to time. Be sure to hit Subscribe wherever you listen to our podcasts.
Standing Out: A Podcast About Sales, Marketing and Leadership
Supercharging Sales Teams: Strategies and Insights with Andrew Wilkins
If you're looking to scale your sales team without burning them out, this episode is a must-listen.
Tune into our conversation with Founder & CEO of TopSDRs, Andrew Wilkins. Learn more about best practice in reducing risks for both companies and SDRs as we break down the significance of flexible, part-time engagement models. We dive into the pivotal role founders play in the early stages of outbound sales and the key indicators that signal a business is ready to outsource its sales functions. See you there!
Thank you to our sponsor, Salesdash CRM – A CRM for Freight Logistics. Salesdash CRM is built for freight broker & agent sales teams. Manage your shipper prospecting and follow-ups. Organize your carriers and the lanes they run. Learn more at www.betaconsultinggroup.com/standing-out
Standing Out is a sales, marketing & leadership podcast powered by BETA Consulting Group, created to highlight best practices from industry leaders with incredible experience and insights! The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire individuals & companies to improve their sales, marketing & leadership development outcomes.
What's up, everybody? I was trying to be coordinated and it didn't work out. I had three golf balls and one of them had our logo on it and I was going to, like, show the logo off. Look at that, everybody. It's pretty cool, and I dropped it. That's what you get. That's how it works around here. It's the amateur hour. We do our best. Welcome to Standing Out everybody. I'm Trey Griggs, your host.
Speaker 1:This is a podcast about sales marketing and today, as we get started here, we have to give a shout out to ourselves, I guess. Check us out at betaconsultinggroupcom. We love helping companies with their sales and marketing efforts. Sometimes it's just good to have an outside set of eyes on what you're doing, to help you fix those holes, to find the blind spots in what you're doing. So click on that little button on our website that says to schedule a call with yours truly. Tell us what's going on with your company and we'll help you out. In that regard, we would love to work with you. Also want to give a shout out to our sponsor, sales-crm, my good friend Josh Lyles over there. Listen, if you're a freight broker, not all CRMs are created equal, especially when most of them aren't built for freight brokerage in mind. But that's exactly what Sales-CRM is. It's a freight brokerage CRM specific piece of technology built for freight brokers by freight brokers. So be sure to visit them at sales-crmcom or go to betaconsultinggroupcom. Forward slash standing, dash out. That is our podcast page and on there you can fill out a form to request a demo and check out what he's building over at sales-crm. We appreciate the support and Josh just a cool dude, so you're going to love that.
Speaker 1:Okay, a couple of announcements before we get started. We've got to remind you guys, man, we are just weeks away from the next Broker Care Summit. I cannot wait for this. It's going to be down in Fort Worth, texas, october 23 through 25 at the beautiful Worthington Renaissance Hotel. We've got free truck parking for owner operators and small trucking companies that are bringing their truck to the show, so you can go through truckparkingclubcom and get free truck parking. We're so excited about that. We have the best golf tournament in the industry the Post and Pray Classic on Wednesday to kick everything off. So sign up for that and it's a great opportunity for small and medium-sized truckload carriers and freight brokers to find each other in person and potentially do business together. Also, talk about the issues that we're all experiencing as well. It's all about connection. It's all about conversation, less about presentation. So hopefully we'll see you there. Brokercarriersummitcom, go ahead and get registered. Be sure to use the coupon code BETA B-E-T-A to save 10% off, and make sure you come up and introduce yourself at the event when you are there.
Speaker 1:And finally, we want to give a shout out to our partner over at Wreaths Across America Radio. If you're listening to us on Wreaths Across America right now, thank you so much for doing that. We're so excited to be a part of their Trucking Tuesday lineup every Tuesday at 6 pm Eastern time. So thank you so much for that. And if you haven't yet, consider partnering with us, with Wreaths Across America, to sponsor a wreath, because what they do is every December, the second or third weekend of December, they are helping to lay over 4 million wreaths on tombstones of veteran soldiers all across the country, over 4,000 different cemeteries across the country. This is something you can do with your family, something you can do with your company, so definitely get involved. Go to wreathsacrossamericaorg today to either sponsor a wreath or to volunteer to actually go and place those wreaths on the tombstones. It's an incredible experience, just to remember the sacrifice in the past and really teach the future generations about that sacrifice.
Speaker 1:All right, it is time to get our show started today. I'm excited because we're talking about something today that I know very little about, but my guest knows all about it, and so I'm excited to bring him on today. So please, welcome to the show my good friend, andrew wilkins. There we go. We had a little uh production issue there. I don't know this band. Who is this, my friend? What is?
Speaker 2:this, my gosh. This band is fantastic. The song is so good it's uh, you gotta you'll have to give the whole song a listen at some point. The the way it builds is just fantastic, oh nice.
Speaker 1:It's worth checking out. I never know. All of our guests always get to pick their song, and so I was like, well, I don't know what people are going to bring on here, so I'm glad that I get to learn something new. I didn't know about that song. That's cool. Well, give everybody a little bit of introduction to who you are, my friend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Well. Yeah, first off, thanks for having me on, trey. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah, my name is Andrew Wilkins. I am the founder and CEO of two businesses, both kind of in the service space. So one Top SDRs we pair sales reps with early stage startups, seed stage and series A businesses. So while recruiting there, and then fewer taskscom, which is an outsourcing business, so we place qualified virtual assistants who are based in the Philippines with companies here. So yeah, prior to that was working at in finance and a couple other startups and, yeah, found my way here.
Speaker 1:So that's a quick overview. That's great, and I want to talk about SDRs today because, again, it's not something I know a ton about. I've always been an individual contributor myself on the sales side. I haven't been at companies that worked with a lot of SDRs. I haven't really experienced that model of having more of the business development type stuff in regards to that. So I'm excited to talk to you about that today. But before we get to that, I have a fun fact about you that I didn't know, and this one is this one's a core to my heart. You were once stranded in an open uh, in a Jeep with an open top, among a pride of 18 lions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, yeah, that was two years ago, uh, and that was that. Yeah, that was one of the craziest experiences I've had. Yeah, we were out there, we were in South Africa in Kruger National Park, and we were. It was. It was about the sun was starting to set, the lines were starting to get up. We went out there because it was when they were going to start eating, because you know they normally they're lounging around all day. So we went out for kind of a later day cruise and I just remember our guide you know they turn all the vehicles off right when you're out there and I remember our guide he goes, you know he he turns the key and he's like, hey, it's not working.
Speaker 1:And I you know.
Speaker 2:I thought he was joking. You know, you think, right, he's just kind of, he's just yanking your chain, making making a joke. But sure enough, the car was dead and we had to figure out how to get it. I mean, we were out there. There were no other cars in sight, it was just us, thank God. And the radio was dead too, because the radio was tied into the car. So we had no way. We were probably 45 minutes away from the loggerhead thing and these lines start getting up. And you know, I'm sure it felt more dramatic in the moment. But, yeah, luckily another car came and we were able to to uh, jump start it. But even that wasn't easy because, uh, the lines started playing with the cables that they were attaching and you couldn't get out of the car because otherwise they'd come at you, um right. So that was one of the craziest experiences I've of my life yeah, because at nighttime that's when they feast.
Speaker 2:I mean that's when they start video.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of that, exactly, yeah they sit during the day, they kind of hang out, they fight, they play a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't bother.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so how long over was it? Was it overnight? How long?
Speaker 2:no, no, no I mean it all, you know it. It was probably. You know all of that was probably. We were probably stranded there for you know an hour or so and and you know you're just kind of letting them. They're just wandering around, not, you know, they're curious about you, you're curious about them. And and then we had this other car that came around and managed to I mean the guys, honestly, hats off to them. We're able to to maneuver around them and jumpstart it. And I have these crazy videos of the lions, just like a little, you know, a house cat would play with a ball of yarn.
Speaker 1:They these cords that we put on.
Speaker 2:You know that we were using to try to jumpstart playing with them, slapping at them, pawing at them oh my god it. But uh, yeah, it didn't feel like uh, like watching a house cat in the moment.
Speaker 1:I thought that the heart had to probably speed up just oh my god, oh my god were you wearing a whoop at this time?
Speaker 2:that actually I should have been. I should have been. Now I'm in a garment. I wish I had that on me then.
Speaker 1:I know I probably would have thought I was working out or something yeah it probably like hey, are you doing a workout? You are you doing? Uh, no, no not doing that?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:that's awesome, so. So let's talk about top sdr. So you guys specialize in pairing, uh, the best us based ss with growing SaaS startups. Now, this is interesting because a lot of companies are moving towards like offshoring or nearshoring SDRs and you're using US-based SDRs and I'm fascinated by that because I have to share my experience. I used to work for a company that did outsourced labor in Colombia, and we tried really hard to do sales for our customers and we struggled. It was hard. It was a hard thing Maybe it was me, I don't know, but we definitely struggled in that regard, and so I wasn't sure necessarily about the path that you guys were taking on that. But you're all US-based and partnering. Talk a little bit about the model and how that works and why you went that direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I mean it's interesting you bring that up because we definitely tried a lot of different things. You know we did. I have a number of folks I've worked with who were based in Columbia, who are fantastic, honestly, and I've had really good experiences there. So but you know and I can touch on that in a moment but really our model today as it stands is we'll go to businesses that are again seed stage series A companies and you know is we'll go to businesses that are again seed stage series A companies and the position that they're in is, hey, they've started to find product market fit, they've done outbound sales, they've been able to bring in a few customers from it and they have some semblance of a process in place that someone could come in and start to repeat and build reliable quality pipeline.
Speaker 2:So I would say companies that have probably 500K up to $5 million a year in revenue are sort of where we're targeting and we'll go in and we'll pair them. We have a deep network of reps. The reps we work with they're all experienced, so I'm not hiring kids right out of college. We're working with folks who are right on the precipice, honestly, of becoming account executives. So they probably have eight months to a year and a half of experience, and either they aren't getting promoted because of internal things or they're just looking for a new challenge to get more responsibility to a smaller company, and so a startup makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:So the model is we'll pair them with these businesses. Typically we can start them part-time so they'll work two hours a day with the business to make sure it's a good fit, or we'll just say hey, go, go full-time right away and they'll get hired out. So really it's, you know, I think the part-time to full-time we've gotten a lot of. We've had a lot of interest there and done a lot of work there. We'll repair someone two hours a day, you know, and it just helps de-risk it on both sides.
Speaker 2:And then I went to a 16 person company and if you know, a move like that it has, there's a lot of risk associated with it, right and so. And similarly, if you're a startup that just you know has a seed fund, has seed funding or a series A, you know you want to spend that money wisely, and so part-time to full-time helps de-risk the hire a lot. So so that's the model that we use right now. Again, as I said, there's a lot of stuff we've done to to get to that point, but that's that's how it stands at the moment and that's really the one that we're confident in, because, you know, what I've learned, if, if nothing else, is that you know there are a lot of pieces that go into an outbound motion, but the person is the thing that matters the most. You need to have someone who's committed to iterating and learning and, you know, understands what it takes to build out, kind of, you know, just take that motion to the next level, really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your sales reps are the tip of the sphere. When they're the first contact or the first human interaction that they usually have, it matters. It's definitely important, are you? Are they hiring these SDRs directly? You're just kind of the go-between to connect them, or are they?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when we go part-time, I facilitate all of that. So they hire our company and we'll pair them. But when they hire them full-time, we get paid a recruitment fee like you would with any other recruiter. Sure, sure, they're an employee.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's got a little bit of the recruiting model and a little bit of the outsource model built in together. Correct A little flexibility for clients who are just getting into the game. And I know that you traditionally are going with larger companies that have the need and or smaller companies that have some funding and are looking to scale pretty quickly. That's kind of your bread and butter, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly right. We used to work with businesses that were really really early on, meaning had not done any outbound before, and what I learned there is just my experience is the founders, in my opinion, need to do that work. I think they need to be the ones to hire a 24, 25, 26 year old to come in and build out the whole thing.
Speaker 2:just isn't really in my opinion I don't think it's the most effective and best use of time and resources. I think the founder has the product knowledge, they know the market and they should start to figure out that motion and make sure there's success. And, honestly, some of our best customers today are people who I turned away initially and said, hey, I don't think we're there yet. Right, Come in and show us the cold calls that worked, Make sure they're. You know what's the ARR number. You know we want to make sure that stuff's in place before we connect them with somebody, because otherwise that person's just going to spend their time, you know, trying to figure it out for themselves, and it's not the best use of anyone's time or resources.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and a lot of founders aren't salespeople.
Speaker 2:And I think that they want to give it away too quickly.
Speaker 1:But they're the best person to sell it. They need to hold onto that for a long time. What are some things that you might notice on a sales call that would say this founder is ready for this, or this company is ready for this, or this founder is ready for this, or this company is ready for this, or this founder is not. What are some of those marks?
Speaker 2:those indicators that you look for. Yeah, I mean, I think, at the end of the day, if you, you want to be able to say you're booking qualified demos with people, with your ICP, right. So if you're making phone calls to people and you're you're getting real, genuine interest, you're booking high quality, you're booking demos. And when I say high quality demos, I mean you know someone first off. The demo is going to happen, right. So that you know you make a cold call to someone, they answer, they express interest. You know not only that, they show up to the, to the follow-up call, right that you've booked on the calendar. That, to me, is like really, you know that's number one. And then number two is is you know, are those converting, right? Like, are those calls starting to turn into closed one deals? And you know you want to see this happening, you want to see a trend in my opinion of it. So you know that could be 250 calls. But if you do 200 calls and you say, hey, you know we got, we were able to get 20, 20 conversations and you know five of those turned into demos and two of those turned into deals, that's enough. That to me is okay. There's something there.
Speaker 2:I think what you don't want is hey, I made 20 calls, I had one conversation and we booked a follow-up for me to reach out to them and next year Q2 or something like that. It's just not quite enough. Like you want to make sure that there's something that again your rep's going to come in and you want to be able to say hey, here's the example of what worked. They can iterate off of that and build off of that. But I always use the example of you know, if you had, you could have the best athlete in the world. But if you have them show up to the field and you don't tell them the rules of the game they're playing, it doesn't matter how good of an athlete they are, they're not going to be able to go out and win right, because they don't know what the rules are, and so you got to figure those rules out. And then you can put the person in who knows you know, who knows their way around the phone a little bit better, that's that's football guy, so I'm a chiefs guy.
Speaker 1:Most people who watch this show know that I love the Kansas city chiefs, especially now. Especially now, and you know Patrick Mahomes is a very talented quarterback. But I often wonder what would have happened to Patrick Mahomes if the New York Jets had drafted him in 2017, back when they had a no system in place poor coaching, not a very good front office leadership and I don't know where they're at now. I don't really care, I'm not really paying attention to it, but I know in 2017, they were struggling, and there's several organizations like that. You put a talented person into a bad system and you often get bad results. You put a talented person into a great system. You get three Super Bowls in five years. It's incredible the difference. And so I often think about these organizations. If you don't have a good sales system in place or good structure in place for a talented salesperson, they're probably not going to excel and they're probably going to get burnt out after a while.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head at the last point there of burnout. Like you know, these are we're talking about really high performing people who have, you know, whether it's entrepreneurial aspirations or account executive, vp of sales, cro, whatever it is, and you know they don't, they're not going to want to be in an environment like that for too long either, and so I think you know you want to set yourself up so that you're not you're, you're taking advantage and using that and harnessing that talent, not not squandering it.
Speaker 1:And you know it'll be hard to find someone else after that. My opinion so right, that's yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. 100, all right. So let's talk about best practice. Well, you know, before I talk about that, I want to go back to your uh, your experience. You had a very diverse, uh, history of experience. Yeah, I have the same thing, like I've been a lot of places, done a lot of different things. How do you feel like that has helped you? Um, now where you're at in terms of being successful with the companies that you're working at, maybe understanding people, just how do you feel like that that experience has really benefited you now?
Speaker 2:I mean, I look back on, I would not be doing what I'm doing today if I hadn't had the three experiences I had before. So I did. You know, I worked at three different companies. So I'm you know, I graduated college in 2019. So I'm five years out now.
Speaker 1:So young. I spent two and a half years at an investment bank, as I said.
Speaker 2:Then I went and became an SDR at a 16 person startup and then I went and ran sales at a two person startup, and each of those experiences just taught me something different.
Speaker 2:First off, I think the biggest thing is the scariest move out of those three. That I described was the move from the investment bank to the first startup, and because you're in a position where you're making good money, there's a really clear cut path to it within you know what the next stage is and you know what it takes to get there right, and so that was the hardest one, because it was just you know, there are so many reasons not to leave. And then, once I did that, I started to realize, you know, I think it's like anything else, like you have to build the muscle of being comfortable making those sorts of moves, and I really think, early on in a career, making moves like that is it's so important because you know again, I, always say I again, I use the sports analogies a ton, but I think I go back to like I ended up rowing in college.
Speaker 2:I was a division one rower, but I played a bunch of sports before I did that. You know, I tried a bunch of things out. I tried to figure out what I was good at. I learned what I liked, what I didn't like, and I think the same thing applies to a career. So, but like you know, figure out what I want to get out of it. So that's the first thing.
Speaker 2:And then I think you know, the each one again taught me something unique, I think, as I look at the SDR one, that taught me you know sales right. That was just a hard skill. It taught me how do you pick up the phone and call someone, how do you get rejected and knocked down, how do you just, you know, how do you learn, how do you push forward as you fail 95% of the time right? So how do you keep pushing in an environment like that and have the mental fortitude to do that and keep having confidence in yourself? And so I just learned how to sell there. I think that was such a valuable skill.
Speaker 2:And then in the second business, I learned no-transcript, like I would not be able to build a business had I not had those experiences. It just, I think, showed me, you know, it taught me how to sell, how to build top of funnel, how to succeed amongst a ton of failure, and then it taught me how to actually build a company and how to operate and structure an organization. So that's really what I took away from this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, those experiences are huge. Do you ever do door-to-door sales?
Speaker 2:No, no, that's the one thing missing on my sales resume now. I live in a big apartment building in New York now, and sometimes it crosses my mind that maybe I should just go notch that one, because a lot of people I know and respect have started in door to door and I think that's well cold calling.
Speaker 1:You know, as an SDR, doing cold calling it's not that much different, I don't think, but it's definitely. It's definitely kind of a badge of honor. And I know the most successful salespeople. A lot of them did some sort of door-to-door because man like that's, that's like rejection on the phone is hard, no doubt.
Speaker 2:Rejection face-to-face, dude, that's, that's, that's a whole another level that's, that's next level, yeah no I, I know that's how howard schultz got his start just uh, working for xerox on face-to-face here going up. Yeah, I mean just most.
Speaker 1:most these guys did. I remember and I remember I I started, uh, my sales career in Jordador and man, talk about a shock to the system. I came from being a high school teacher. If you're a teacher and you love kids, you're the hero. It's just not like everybody loves you. But if you go from that to sales, where people are like get the hell out of here, that's a big difference from what I was doing before, that's for sure. All right, so let's talk about like SDRs and best practices. When you think about like, if you had a blank slate and you could set up somebody's SDR program, what's?
Speaker 1:like your first three, four or five things that you're focusing on or having somebody do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. So I'd separate that out until, like, you have kind of the profile of the person you're working with and then you actually have the systems that you're putting in place. You know, as far as the best ones that I've seen with you know, when it comes to having a system in place, you know, you want to know, you want to have clearly laid out who's the ICP right, who are you reaching out to? I think that's a pretty straightforward one. You know. Within that, you want to have an understanding. You want to be able to understand what they care about, who they're talking to, who their boss is, why they're going to care about talking to you and all that sort of stuff, what the problems they're trying to solve are all of those sorts of things. I think those are table stakes. The biggest things that I see helping people are they're very consistent about people. Are they're very consistent about, um, you know, feed, giving feedback and listening and giving feedback and iterating and understanding, like okay, like this is what worked on these calls. This is what you know didn't work like a company. We just did a placement for a few a month or two ago. Um, they actually sell software to cattle feed yards and it's a fantastic business. They've been doing a fence, they're really growing it, but the founder has just been so deliberate about bringing.
Speaker 2:When we paired the rep, we paired him with him part-time to begin with. He was hired out. He works there full-time now, but he you know the founder did an incredible job of sitting down with a rep on a weekly, if not daily, basis and talking through it, listening to his calls and reading through the write-ups that the rep was giving every day and just parsing through like, okay, what does this information mean? And I think that's such a good practice internally is, you know, you have this rep who's going out there collecting a lot of information, asking questions, but you know, at the end of the day, like the founder still remains the person who has the most information in their head about the market and the product and all of that stuff. And so I think it's really important to maintain that collaborative environment between the two. Because you're able to give as a founder and you're talking to customers all day or you're talking to your product team all day You're able to get a perspective that is probably a little bit unique to what the reps getting from talking to prospects all day or you're talking to your product team all day, you're able to get a perspective that is probably a little bit unique to what the reps you know getting from talking to prospects all day. So that was the first thing that I've seen. And so that you know, to boil that down, that is just having recurring meetings where the point is to go over, listen to the calls and give feedback on the calls and again, that doesn't just have to be from. Oh, I think you should have used this intro, or I think you should have used this call to action or whatever. Let's talk about how it fits into the product.
Speaker 2:And I think that leads me to the next point, which is product knowledge is super, super important. It's so essential for these reps to understand what the product does, who they're selling. We talked about who they're selling to, but I think again, there's a company we're working with right now. We just paired their second and third rep with them, so they're growing quickly, doing a great job, and the CEO again is so, so good about just taking ownership and initiative of training the reps and the product before anything else. These guys are super fired up about getting on the phone and I think that's awesome, it's what you want, but you have the rest of the year to be on the phone, right?
Speaker 2:And I think you just need to nail that foundation of, hey, you know, here's what the product really does, here's what it solves, and you need the rep bought in on that too, because I mean, we've probably all sold things that maybe we don't believe in necessarily, and you know you can tell right when you're talking about something or you're selling something or whatever it might be right, you know if you're not into it it's going to come out one way or the other and you're just not going to have the passion or the drive to do it. You know consistently. And so I think those are two things. It's just.
Speaker 2:And maybe the last piece that I'd add here in the system is the buy-in from whoever the senior leadership is right, like that sort of underlies, everything I've talked about to this point, which is just having that founder, head of sales, vp of sales, be super dialed in on the outbound process and not like, hey, I'm just dropping this on someone else's plate. You have outbound experience, I'm getting back to the product, but seeing like, hey, this is my business, right? Great, you can go build a product, that's awesome. You can go get money, that's great too, but at the end of the day, if you're not getting customers, then none of that other stuff matters, right, and so that being bought into and having that like. We used to help with a bunch of the onboarding, and recently we've been working with founders and companies where I don't even get on the first onboarding call Cause they're like I got it, let me take it from here.
Speaker 2:And I'm like you know and honestly, when that happens, I'm like I know this is going to be a strong engagement, Like this is going to be really good, because they are just, they have a vision, they're bought in and they know that it takes their involvement too. They're not like, hey, this is a quick solve, right this.
Speaker 1:Hey, this is something I need to invest my time into.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, that's a long answer for you, but I hopefully those are. Those are great answers. I'm going to dig into the phones for a month. Yeah, they trained me on their CRM, their processes, transferring a call, obviously, the sales process, how to talk, how to answer objections, role playing. It was a month before I got to get on the phone, but you know, what was amazing was when I got on the phone, I felt like I knew everything. I felt like I'd been there before, and so I was able to ramp up really fast and so, even though they invested in me for a month with nothing in return, it paid dividends, because the next 11 months I killed it.
Speaker 1:It was, it was great, it was really fun, and so training is really important. I absolutely love that. The other thing I wanted to ask you about is technology. Yeah, you know so, from a sales perspective, I know people will use Gong, for example, and some other tools that are out there. Do you use those tools? Do you recommend those tools? What do you feel like is the best way to really accelerate the training process?
Speaker 2:That's a great. That's a great question. Yeah, I think anything like any call recording tool that you have, like Gong, you know it could just be like Zoom cloud recordings, whatever it is, I think that stuff is is really important to have. You need to be recording that stuff somewhere and, from a tech stack perspective, I think having HubSpot in place is sufficient often. I think most organizations, as they get mature, will probably end up transitioning to Salesforce at some point, but I think HubSpot is very easy to set up. They have a great discount for startups. I have no affiliation there, so, but it's just a.
Speaker 1:I really think when I get paid for this promo?
Speaker 2:Yeah, unfortunately I'm not getting paid for this promo, but they have like 90% off or something the first year for startups and it's just such a great deal and that gives like pretty much all of their packages. So rope them in. I know, yeah, exactly, yeah, it is. You know, apollo, I think, is fine for enrichment and making phone calls. You know, like everyone has kind of their own opinions on those tools, but I have found that Smart Lead is really good for setting up domains and, you know, doing email, warm up and that kind of stuff. So those are the tools, yeah, so those are some of the tools that I've been around and heard, but you know, again, that's not to say like some industries there, there are better enrichment tools, right, but those are the ones that you know. I think you can make calls out of HubSpot, you can get a power dialer.
Speaker 2:if you need like Kixi or Orum or something like that, those are really good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I've never. I've never been an organization that used gong, but I've heard a couple of friends that I trust say that gong has really been a game changer for them in terms of coaching and finding, like trouble spots or, you know, mood tone, all those different variances which are.
Speaker 1:it's pretty impressive that ai can do that kind of stuff. The technology can find that stuff, but having those just simply accelerates. It's a little bit of an investment. But again, I think if you build things right just this is what I learned from my time you build things the right way, you train the right way, it pays off down the road and that's. That's really awesome. All right, we got to have a little bit of fun here. Oh, no wait, one more question, one more question, one more question. That is what is your best advice for a sales rep on how to stand out in a good way, how to stand out as a sales rep? What are some of your best tips and tricks? Anything that has worked for you or that you would recommend?
Speaker 2:That's a very good question. First off, the obvious is make sure you hit your number. Go above and beyond to hit your number. That's number one before anything else, Because if you're not doing that, none of the other stuff matters.
Speaker 1:That's what people will go back to Um how about on a sales call, like when you're talking to a prospect, like how to stand out with that, like how do? You make it memorable in that regard. Yeah, yeah, I mean clearly just be the best performer. That's the way to stand out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say that, I think in an organization. Yeah, um, you know, I thought you meant an organization. Yeah, you know, I think at the end of the day, it's be conversational, right, like, I think that there's this really big disparity between, like, when I started, I listened to some of the calls. I would start, right, and I might do. I might have a call with one of my buddies, right, let's, you know, right before I make a cold call.
Speaker 2:And if you listen to those two or call recordings, you'd be like, who are these two different guys making calls? Right, you'd have me talking to one of my friends, or you know, or even someone in my you know, one of the friends that I work with, and then you'd have me on the phone sounding all robotic and, hey, how are you doing today? You know, do you have a moment to talk? You know people respond to you know you're setting the tone of that call. So if you come into that call and you don't sound organic, you know you're going to turn somebody off pretty quickly from talking to you. And, and again, remember, most of these calls, you know your job is just to get in the door, your job is just to let them give you 30 seconds to talk to them, and so I think the most important thing you can do initially is just sound natural, organic. You know everyone has their own way of doing that, but I think that's super overlooked. Like, if you're like, hey, do you have a moment to speak? It's just going to be, you know, it's going to sound weird, it's going to sound like a telemarketing call and they're going to get off. So I think that's that's the first one.
Speaker 2:And then the second is, you know, lead with curiosity.
Speaker 2:I think this is also a really important thing where, like you know, again, you're going to have a script, you're going to have something that and this is probably something I've gotten better at, as I've actually run my own company where before it was like stick to the script, read the things, understand, and I wasn't making as much of an effort and I was just driving towards the demo.
Speaker 2:The goal was book the demo, follow the steps, and I think what I've gotten a lot better at, and what I would say to reps to stand out, is lead with genuine curiosity. Right, go into the call. Really, you know, from a point of I want to actually figure out what this person does, what they need, what they care about and see if there's a potential fit for us and if you lead with that curiosity again, I think that feeds back into what I was talking about, where I think it comes off more natural and organic and people can sense that, you know it doesn't feel like you're just you're not just waiting for them to finish talking so you can jump in with your next line.
Speaker 2:You're actually like listening, you're not. You're not listening to respond, you're listening to to understand. I think that's like kind of a. It's a Stephen.
Speaker 1:Covey thing. I'm pretty sure one of those, yeah, but successful people is, uh, listen to understand, seek to understand before being understood, kind of thing. But, um, but no, I think I think you're right about that. I mean, the art of asking good questions is one that I think people struggle with for sure, and I like this idea too is be honest about why you're there. You know, some people like is this a sales call? Oh no, this is a sales call. I'm just, yeah, yeah, this is a sales call. I'm here to tell you.
Speaker 1:Something like that actually makes people laugh a little bit, like, oh okay, just being honest and straightforward and I always answer a question with, with, with, uh, with the truth, um, yeah, if you don't know the answer, that kind of stuff. It's weird that those things actually stand out, but it does.
Speaker 2:You know, like it is yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. No, it totally does. And also I think that the other thing is just like there's no magic bullet, like something that works on one one call well, could just totally bomb on another Right, and you could do the same thing on two calls. And one person tells you to F off and the other person you know you book a meeting with and I think that's the key to this thing. It's like, don't try to crack the code, just realize that, like you know, match the person's cadence that you're talking to match their attitude. That's mirroring stuff, you know. I think it's really important, yeah, so anyways.
Speaker 1:I will say this not every customer says yes for the same reason, but many of them will say no for the same reason, that you're doing something wrong, like everybody says the same reason for no, it's like wait a minute, what am I saying that's triggering that response?
Speaker 1:so it is good to learn about that, which is great. All right, let's have a little fun. Andrew, we like to have a random question of the day every day, and this is something our producer puts together. Uh, it could be funny, it could be uh serious, it could be um good, it could be not good, I don't know. It could be a couple things. So let's see what today's random question day is. Here we go. Today's random question today is if you could spend a day talking to an animal, what animal would you choose and what would you want to learn from that? Wow, that is random.
Speaker 2:That's a random. That's a great question, though I got to think about this for a second. Hmm, you know, I'm kind of thinking about what I'm most like. You know, what my mind immediately goes to is I want to either something that flies or something that's in the water, because I want. I don't understand either of those things and I want to know a little bit more about what goes on it. You know like I'm thinking. I think it's got to be like a bird in the rainforest.
Speaker 2:I don't have a specific bird for you, but I was thinking, eagle, my first just a sore, yeah I just think, yeah, you know, yeah, I, I think I think it's got to be some type of a bird in the rainforest. Uh, it just like what is that like it's got to be? So you know that's got to be crazy. Like what can they see? What are they looking out for? You know, like I think they just have to have yeah, so that would be.
Speaker 2:That's a great, that's a really good question you know what, you know what's going to happen is I'm going to get off of this and I'm going to think of something totally different.
Speaker 1:I should have said that I mean, you could go with lion and wonder what it's like to be the king of the jungle, to be kind of like you know, just kind of known for, like the predator of among all predators.
Speaker 2:You know, you know, I feel like I've spent enough time with lions now. That's true.
Speaker 1:You know enough about them. Yeah, I don't know if I need to have a day with lions, All right, Andrew. Before we get off here today, how could people learn more about top SDRs and connect?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm all over LinkedIn. That's definitely where I'm at. So, just Andrew Wilkins on LinkedIn. You can go to our website, topstrscom, and yeah, feel free to reach out anytime.
Speaker 1:Awesome, Andrew. Hey, thanks for being on the show. We got to give you a little bit of walkout music on the way out, but thanks so much for coming by and being a part of Standing Out today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me. This was a ton of fun.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate it All right, everybody makes me come back every Tuesday for an episode of standing out, just like a great guest like Andrew. And remember, uh, take out my friends over at sales dash CRM, especially if you are needing us here in fusion spreadsheets. Listen, first of all, fusion spreadsheet stop. Go to sales dash CRM. Talk to my buddy, josh and get started with that. Also, don't forget to sign up for the Broker Carrier Summit October 23 through 25 down in Fort Worth, texas. Can't wait to see you guys there. And until next time, friends, remember, stop standing. Still, start standing out. We'll see you soon.
