Learnings from an SDR Director: Part 2
The SDR Newsletter recently sat down with Vinh Vong, former Director of Sales Development at Panther, to get his insight on a variety of SDR-related topics. In this article, Vinh provides tactics and knowledge on a few cold calling related topics.
In case you missed, check out part 1 here. Let’s dive right in!
Cold Calling
What are the biggest mistakes people make when cold calling and what can they do to improve?
First and most common mistake is paralysis by analysis. One of the privileges that I’ve had is that I’ve generally been surrounded by A and B level SDRs. The most common trait that I’ve seen from A and B level SDRs is the degree to which they are thoughtful in their workflows. But sometimes this trait can veer itself in a negative direction when left unchecked.
For example, suppose that the amount of research that an SDR is being asked to do should break down to an average of 6-8 mins per prospect prior to outreach in scenario 1. That means you would be looking to spend anywhere from 180-240 minutes if your goal was to reach out to 30 unique prospects. Now imagine that because you wanted to be maniacally careful, you ended up spending an average of 9-11 minutes per prospect instead prior to outreach in scenario 2. Just a difference of a few minutes per prospect. If you think about how this exponentiates, you’re now looking at 270-330 minutes of research for those same 30 prospects. This is a difference of 90 minutes for every 30 unique prospects. Which means that if you’re working an average of 60 unique prospects per week, you could be spending up to an additional 12 hours per month being unnecessarily careful. Imagine how you could’ve been spending those 12 additional hours!
The second most common mistake I see is a lack of awareness around success metrics. As an SDR, you want to be able to answer the following questions:
What has been my average conversion rate from Dials to Opps?
What has been my average connect rate on Dials?
The reason the answers to these 2 questions are important is because it’ll give you the context around how many calls you’ll most likely need to make in order to hit your quota. Let’s do some backwards math:
Let’s assume your average monthly conversion rate for Dials to Meetings is 20%. This means that everytime you connect on the phone with somebody, there is a 20% chance that it results in a meeting. Let’s also assume a monthly average connect rate of 5%. This means that if you were to cold call 100 people, 5 of those would be legitimate pickups. Let’s also assume you have a target of 10 meetings per month.
(X * .05) * .2 = 10
X = Number of Required Unique Prospects
This means that if you wanted to hit your quota of 10 meetings off of purely cold calls, on average per month you would need to call 1000 unique prospects. Obviously you can represent this data with different context because not all of your meetings will come from cold calls (i.e the answer would be 400 unique prospects if you suspect only 40% of your meetings typically come from dials). But understanding this data is important because it gives you insight into what your specific activity standards for success should be within a given month.
What would you tell SDRs that are cold-call resistant?
It’s completely normal to be cold-call resistant! I see a great deal of folks that preach about how selling is one of the most natural things you can do as a human being. This couldn’t be further from the truth. After all, you’re being asked to convince another human being that the way they’ve been thinking about their problems are…wrong? In addition, that person on the other line also knows that you’re comped on whether or not they take that meeting. That’s a tall order.
But in many ways, this is why sales exists as a profession. Because it is so unnatural. Because it is so hard. Rest assured that as long as there is a need to convince others to think about their problems in a different way, you’ll have a profession!
Your choice at this point is to decide whether this is the path you want to take. Remember, sales can be a pathway to generational wealth. The question is, how far are you willing to sprint when the distance is unknown?
In your opinion, what’s the most important part of cold calling?
This is ultra cliche, but I’ll die by this mantra when it comes to cold calls: Attitude is everything.
Think about it. If it’s apparent to your prospect that you yourself aren’t even excited to be speaking with them, why should they be excited to speak with you? I’m not saying that you should pretend that it’s the greatest day of your life each time you speak with a prospect (inauthenticity can be spotted a mile away) but it’s important that you make the prospect feel that the call was intentional.
But the question isn’t necessarily, “How do I get positive before a call?”. Most people have the ability to do that. The question is, “How do I get positive before a call even when I don’t feel like it?” There is a saying in sports that goes like this - “Champions find ways to win even when they’re not at 100%.” Cold calling is no different. You’re not going to feel 100% each time you cold call. And if you did, you should probably go see your doctor about it because cold call fatigue gets the best of everyone.
Here are some practical tips to mitigate cold call fatigue to bring your best version to light:
Use dedicated call blocks during your week so that those tasks are not constantly looming over you throughout the day. When you’re on, you’re on and vice versa.
Laugh it over with another SDR buddy anytime you speak with a disgruntled prospect
Internalize that your value isn’t determined by a handful of bad calls. Having one good call doesn’t make you the best SDR just like how having one bad call doesn’t make you the worst.
It goes without saying, but the best cold callers in the world are oftentimes the ones that simply mitigate discouragement and get back up when they’ve been knocked down.
Where can people find you? LinkedIn?
Linkedin or email (vinhvong@me.com) works just fine! I genuinely enjoy chatting with current and future SDRs as well as other leaders who want to bounce ideas. I’m very grateful for the people in my life that have spent the time to help me, so naturally I want to pay it forward as much as I can.