When I started this blog, my focus was to be vulnerable enough to share what is working and how to learn from failures.

I’ve had a tough couple of months as I’ve transitioned into solely new logo space. I’ve worked with greenfield clients before with great success, but I also recognize that was powered by hardcore SDR efforts and extreme hustle.

In my early days of New Logo at my previous company, I started off as an SDR and on average it took 40-50 dials to get to one meeting booked (on a good day). On average we pounded the phones with 130-150 calls a days with 30 second pitches and qualifying questions. I also was on a pilot team for emailing and ended up finding it took 40 emails to get to one meeting (and roughly 8 touches with calls/LinkedIn/email)

It burned you out quickly, but at the end of the day it did yield results – it took that much focus on cold calling to get a viable return on time.

As an SDR you are solely focused on outreach, which when done properly can help drive the fuel for Account Executives to focus solely on deal cycle and partner with SDRs on the deal.

However in most cases we work as individual contributors and are required to dial, book, discover and demo. I have done this as well and with success, but usually I also had a mix of Inbound and Growth accounts to help build my pipeline.

In my current role I am completely focused on being a hunter – going in cold and trying to get the meeting, build value and transition to a sales cycle.

I have always been good at cold calling because I love to connect with people, but I’ve found that post pandemic getting to yes is far more taxing than I ever realized.

Clients are bombarded with time constraints and extra workload that makes them less likely to give you that ‘prime time’ fifteen minutes – even if you offer then a cup of Starbucks (you can get a meeting with me by the way for a pumpkin spice 🙂

Often times many prospects don’t pick up the phone, so we turn to emails and LinkedIn, but even email has become a desert wasteland lately.

I find myself spending four hours crafting personalized and to the point emails with relevant content only to get the following responses:

“Remove”

“Unsubscribe”

“Not interested”

I have thick skin but this has been a form of torture that is excruciating.

I continue to tweak emails and my conversations – from discussions about value and ROI (macro-economic issues and how we can help) to focusing on learning about current processes to webinars and also industry focused resources.

I take time to research and thoughtfully build these cadences because I care about my prospects. I know I can help them save time and in turn money. I know the value I can bring, but getting past ‘remove’ has been tedious.

So I wanted to reach out to the community for your tips…what is working and what challenges are you facing?

Tips I’ve found to be helpful:

• As sales professionals we cannot maintain the status quo…call scripts and emails that worked two weeks ago might not resonant this week…or one cadence might speak to the heart of a pain point with one client but not another – you do need to keep it personalized enough to show that you are invested in their business.
• Invites to webinars can be a helpful open door to conversation, especially if you wait to ask for a meeting until after the webinar…show that you provide value and are not pushy
• Speak to their industry language
• The outreach is NOT about YOU – it is about your CLIENT and helping them to evaluate the best technology/solutions for their business. It is about providing help specific to their unique challenges as an advocate – not as a pushy salesperson. Feature pitching or ‘what we do’ often detracts prospects from booking a meeting. Instead: Why we are reaching out and the value we bring to your unique business. This is a fine line as sometimes we can accidentally move towards feature pitching versus value.
  • How can this help the customer? How much time can this bring back into their day
  • How has utilizing x product led to others in their industry finding success
• It takes 8-16 touches…
  • I call this ‘gracious persistence’ – you have to keep re-mailing and calling until you get a ‘no’ or ‘yes’ – you also need to try multiple contacts at a company
  • When you do this – don’t be forceful…be gracious and with each email or touch make sure to provide some value – be it an article, video, or webinar -don’t simply follow-up to follow up. Be specific on the ‘why’ – why is it worth their time to take this meeting

I’d love to continue this conversation as we move into the fall.

One area we are targeting at my company is in-person drop-offs with swag, asking for a future meeting. It is hit or miss and I’m still in the trenches figuring out if this ‘old-school’ tactic is going to be the best approach for standing out in a sea of cold outreach.

With sales with always have to be creative and focus not on the ‘no’ but ‘remove’ the obstacles that keep us from getting to ‘yes.’