110: The Changing Role of SDRs in Sales With Amir Reiter

Thank you to our partners, SalesLoft, LeadIQ, and Costello for helping us put this one on. Find all our upcoming events at jbarrows.com slash events. Good afternoon, everybody. It's John Barrows. Make it happen Monday. I am excited today for my new guest because we've been talking about working together for a while now, and I think we're moving in that direction, and we share a lot of the same mentality around SDRs and the role and that type of stuff, but we come at it from two different angles, so I'm super excited to have this conversation with you, Amir. Amir, why don't you introduce everybody yourself over at CloudTask and talk to people what you're doing about these days. Will do, John.

Thank you for having me on. I must say, when I got into the whole podcast thing, I started with your podcast, listened to almost every episode, and then I decided to get every podcast, and that's where I got overwhelmed. I literally stopped listening to the podcast and I went back to yours, so thank you for having me on here. Appreciate it, man. As you mentioned, I'm with CloudTask, and what we're really trying to do is change the face of outsourcing and change that image of outsourcing as being this way to save money, lower quality work, save some money. Let's outsource something, versus times have changed and borders are now down. Let's actually use currency arbitrages to create a situation where companies can get more technology, strategy, smart people, and management included.

And guess what? Our rent's not $4,000 a month for a studio in San Francisco, so we charge less, and you guys save more money and reinvest in your product, because that's kind of what it's all about, making your product and service better. I love it. Yeah, so you actually, it's an interesting story. Talk to me, I'm always interested, and I think our audience is too, to hear why people started what they started. So can you kind of, what drove you to start CloudTask, and then we can kind of get into where we think SDR or something. Interesting story. So I was young and foolish, as I still am, to think that owning a business was the way to make a lot of money right away, right? I ended up opening a water company where we would install water machines and rent them for $40 a month, and we would finance them, right?

In 2008, the financing stopped with the recession. By the side, I said, hey, look, I have all these hotels renting water coolers, but they're buying tons of supplies. Why don't I sell them everything, right? And from that point, I also decided, I said, you know what? It would be great if everybody had a unique price. If I can go to a hotel and say, you know what? Give me your list. I'll consolidate it. I'll give you a unique price. And to get that unique price, without manually updating it all the time, I found a technology called NetSuite, which some of you guys heard, ERP, back in 2010. In hindsight, I probably should have just worked for them and invested in their company. But I decided to pay $20,000, $30,000 a year as a small 25-year-old startup.

And I couldn't really, at that point, afford the $150 to $200 an hour to implement NetSuite, as you can imagine. So I went overseas with my implementation. And being a young entrepreneur, not really coming from that Oracle SAP on-premise world, cloud made sense to me from day one. I was like, really? You would want servers in your place? I was like, why would you ever want that? And I had the vision of working from my boat at 35, running my supply company. And from that point on, seeing the currency arbitrage in different countries, I initially started working with Philippines. I didn't really come up with CloudTask yet, but then just grinding it out, doing about half a million in sales a year.

And I was just seeing myself always pay all my employees on time, believing in them, wanting the best for them, and just never getting across that hump. And I really said to myself, you know what? It should be really a lot easier to scale your company. When we think of a business and idea, we're not like, hey, I want the best sales. I want the best support. I want the best success team. We're like, I want to create virtual reality. And that's cool. So somehow, all these positions became a requirement. I have to be in them. And I kind of wanted to take it back to a service where now you can actually make a service of those positions. And I saw my own pain points where I just struggled with people.

And I knew that other people out there had great ideas, good products, and just were struggling to manage and scale teams. So I created CloudTask with the idea of truly helping leaders focus on their business and product. And that's still my mission today. Love it, man. Yeah, and I think that, you know, it's interesting because you're, like I said in the intro here, like you're coming at the SDR from a different angle than I am. Like I tend to obviously work with SDRs, AEs, everybody. But when it comes to SDRs, you know, I'm trying to give these kids a chance, you know, because, again, they get limited onboarding. They get limited, you know, I always say sales is the default profession, right?

So we go to college for whatever we wanted to get our degree in that we thought we wanted to be when we grew up. We realize that's crap, but we can't make enough money doing it. And so we, because we have somewhat of a personality and we hear that sales is something that, you know, you can make some money in, we kind of get into that. And, you know, if you're lucky, you join a company that invests in you, you know, that gives you some type of foundation. But for the most part, it's, hey, here's your territory. Here's a script. Start making some phone calls and see what happens. And really no guidance, you know, so that's why there's a high failure rate. That's why there's, I think, a high frustration rate of trying to get out of the position as fast as possible.

And people are seeing it as that, you know, I just got to do this for six months and then I get to real selling. That's what I'm seeing. And I'm trying to give those. And I personally think that, and I tell this to, I don't care how old you are in sales or how experienced you are in sales. I think the most important skill set that you need to be successful in sales is how to prospect for yourself, right? So the skills that they develop right out of school will carry them throughout the rest of the year because I don't know one single sales rep out there, just really successful sales rep, that relies on somebody else to hit their number, right? So all those AEs out there who are sitting there being like, where are my leads, where are marketing, where are my SDR stuff coming so I can go close?

You're a dinosaur. I think you should be prospecting yourself and thank the Lord that you have something like an SDR or a marketing team because I didn't have any of that shit, you know, when I was in sales. So with that, how do you – I'm going to talk real first, like what is your perception of the SDR role right now and where does it – and let's talk about where I think – where we think it needs to go. Yeah, so, you know, to rewind, you know, after I had a small exit in my company, I sold part of the supply company, not the Staples, I think you had an exit at the Staples with your IT brand. Yeah, well, I wasn't a majority holder, so I ended up with a down payment on a house, which was fine.

It's not bad. Yeah. It's better than most, but I ended up working for – so I got word of a friend who worked at NetSuite, and I said, you're making what? You know, I was paying NetSuite X amount, and I was like, what do you know about NetSuite? And he didn't even know anything about it. I was like, well, I'm an administrator. So I prospected, I direct messaged people on NetSuite, and they got back to me, and it was interesting because I had a friend, but I didn't want to wait for the friend, right? So I went aggressively, you know, to get the job, and that's kind of where I first heard of SDRs and BDRs. I wasn't really aware of that role. I'd call it inside sales, right, or telemarketers or just a different name.

And, you know, NetSuite had this BDR department, and what I noticed was when I was working there, I know – I am a hunter, right? Like, if I'm not – back in the day, if I was not calling, you know, 100 people, I didn't feel good, right? So I hit this NetSuite job, and, you know, try selling a heart transplant to a CFO, right? I had 120 accounts that I could legally sell to that fell within the corporate 100 to 500 employee range computer software, only 120, right? So at a $1.7 million quota, and what I noticed was as much as I called it, and I emailed, you know, my deals were coming from inbound, right? And when I closed a deal that was, let's say, 300K recurring, I got all these, you know, hurrahs and praises, and I said to myself, I'm really a customer support rep at this point, right?

Like, I'm just politely answering those questions. I'm quarterbacking leaders. I'm getting, you know, can you approve this before this deadline if I give you this? It's like the normal sales talk. And, you know, I didn't get, I didn't have SDRs really working my account successfully, but I heard they were making other people's appointments and doing real well. And I kind of saw to myself, I was like, sales is backwards here at NetSuite. I was like, these guys are getting paid top dollars to be customer support reps, and the SDRs are the ones calling CFOs all day long. So that was kind of my first exposure to SDRs and kind of seeing, you know, initially how things were kind of starting to change.

And I think this was 2014, and, you know, I just learned about HubSpot because I was competing against them. I didn't know, you know, people would go for marketing automation. They choose HubSpot over NetSuite. And I think NetSuite was really, you know, feeding off that inbound engine that they created in that space of ERP. And, you know, really seeing that these SDRs were the ones that were kind of doing the sales work was an eye-opener to me. And I was kind of, you know, fish out of water where, you know, I had high activity levels every week. And my high activity levels actually made me look bad as an account executive, believe it or not, because there was a report once a week, and it would say, Amir, 100 calls, John, 10, Tim, 5, right?

And my manager was like, Amir, what I'm worried about is you have the highest sales activity, but you're not opening up pipeline like everybody else. So I kind of saw, like, wait a second, account executives are not expected to call. They're not expected to email. What are we really expected to do? And it's like, we're expected to stay quiet, play the game, get an inbound lead, close it, and hit our number. And SDRs were the ones, in my opinion, that were getting the training. I think NetSuite had a really good training for them, and they were really learning sales. So I kind of saw, at that point, the funnel being kind of backwards. And I think it's gotten a lot worse since then. I'm going to say worse in the sense that the SDR role being diminished and not given enough or being the hardest.

Let's dig into how it's getting worse. Well, I think what large companies are feeling, so there's this condominality where, like, a big company, you get paid, everyone wants to work for the Salesforce, the companies, the names, the logos. But what they're forgetting to mention is that when you work for those big companies, you have a higher likelihood of getting inbound leads and MQLs on your calendar, right? So I think it's worse for an account executive at, you know, CloudTask, who's not getting inbound leads, right, calling every day, messaging, and an account executive at an Oracle that's making $300K, they're really just closing the deals off the hard work of an SDR. And it's getting worse because SDRs, if they don't get promoted to an account executive, they are perfect for another company.

So all these organizations are investing in their best sales guys and not retaining them, if it makes sense. And then, you know, don't get me wrong, to be an account executive for a big Oracle company, you'd be a very smart, professional guy, but I wasn't seeing that fire, that drive, that picking up their phone and being on social. I wasn't seeing the account executives really promote themselves or put themselves out there. And I still think you don't see it, right? On LinkedIn, you're seeing VPs of sales starting to do it, but not really AEs, right? Do you think that's because the mentality of, I put in my time in that dogfight of making cold calls and sending emails, so now I've elevated to the point where I really should just be focusing on working with customers and closing?

Do you think there's a conditioning factor here that we've created? I think we've created that conditioning factor, but I think the reality is being hidden under revenue, right? Because if you are hitting your number, leaders are not poking into the ground and saying, what are you doing every day, right? They're like, you did 1.5 million in sales, I hit my number. So I think it's a condition, but I think if people really re-examined where that budget's going, they would say, you know what? This account executive is still going to be here for 100 grand because this job's easy, right? That SDR deserves to make more money. And by the way, that digital marketing money that I spent, I mean, I should spend more there.

So I think that once the fountain dries up a little bit, I think people will start restructuring it, but I think people are lost in this bubble, in my opinion. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting because I still think most organizations, I'm seeing a shift. I'm seeing more invest in SDRs, a significant amount more, you know, I'm busier than ever. I'd say 75% of what I do is training outbound stuff, right? It's the other 25% is the closing, which is kind of the AE side of the house. So high demand. I think companies are realizing now if they don't really empower their teams with skills to be effective, that A, they're not, you know, they're obviously not going to hit their number and B, the reps aren't going to stay very long at all.

But I do still believe that a lot of SDRs are getting into this role with this mentality that it's a stepping stone too. Whereas I think, you know, and I go back to the bridge group, you know, Trish Bertuzzi, they had put out some statistics a little while ago that said that the average, if the SDR stays less than six months, right, if they stay in the role for less than six months, I think the failure rate of transitioning to AE is something ridiculous. I think it's something like 78% or 80%, something like that. Whereas if they stay in the position for a year and a half and master that craft, then the success rate is, the failure rate is like 7%. So it's like, you know, if you stay in it for about a year and a half and really master that, you know, that ability to engage with people, to build your own personal brands, to make phone calls, to send emails, when you transition to an AE, you're in a much better position as opposed to those six-month-ers that are just like, look, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.

I'll make my thought, you know, 100 calls a day just so I can hit the numbers and then next. And those are the ones that fail. So, you know, I'm seeing a higher focus. I'm seeing longer tenure. But I'm also seeing a lack of patience, if you will, for a sales rep jumping into a career that is hopefully going to be a 40, 50-year career and looking to skip too many steps too soon. So that's, I think that's probably my fear is that companies look at it as a stepping stone and sales reps look at it as a stepping stone and not an actual profession. Because I personally, and what I'm seeing is, I'm seeing an evolution of SDRs and now SDR leadership and eventually move up to, you know, VP level SDR.

like now the question is, is I personally think it's going to move under marketing and operations more because I think it is becoming more of an ops type role with all the tools and technology that are out there and making sense of it as opposed to a real like hardcore sales role. So I'm kind of wondering where that's going to take us as opposed to being a feeder system for sales because I think that's always been the mentality. It's been a feeder system to build your own sales rep. I think with all the tools and technology out there, it's going to be an operations marketing thing. So I'm kind of curious where the feeder system of sales is going to be and if we're going to go back to inside sales as a rather holistic role that opens and closes their own business with support from marketing and support from, you know, operations and those type of things.

Yeah, you brought up a lot of good points. I think one of the points you brought up, you know, the bridge report has been really useful for us, right? There's a lot of good data and I'm looking forward to their next reports because we use a lot of our messaging off that and use it to educate people on what's really happening. But even, you know, what you mentioned about them staying for six months and then becoming more successful account executives, it got me thinking and what it got me thinking is, you know, what I've seen, we've been fired as SDRs numerous times for making too many appointments that couldn't close, right? And what we did was we would dive into other systems and we would analyze that and be like, well, why didn't these leads close?

And what we found was that some of the organizations we worked for, the account executives, were doing one or two touch and then giving up on a lead. And one or two touch via email, right? Like not even a person, like, so, you know, thinking SDRs, I'm like, you know, these SDRs are probably succeeding because they realize that they succeed in the SDR role with an omni-channel multi-touch process. They're taking that to the 80 role. That's how they need, right? That's like, that's missing. And you probably see that a lot, right? These leads are bad, right? Like I didn't pick up the phone and want to buy it for me day one, right? I mean, so you hit on a sore spot for me because we, so you know Chris, right?

My CRO, like we have that other company Playground Partners and we actually did outsource lead gen using SalesLoft. We did outsource lead gen for under-service markets and it was mostly facilities like lighting and all that other stuff and it was all email. We didn't do any phone. So we would put together persona-driven cadences and we very slimmed down, you know, targeted messaging, not personalized at all and we would set up a cadence to go after with some offers and whatever and we absolutely crushed it. Like we would drive a shitload of leads, like really qualified, like people literally like saying, call me, I want to buy, right? And we would funnel them over to these companies who were distributors, right?

So there were a lot of distributor reps who just went on floors and, you know, they were kind of used to the old school selling and the amount that did not get followed up on was so mind-blowing to me that we got so frustrated because we were being held accountable for that. Like we were a lead gen engine. Our job was to deliver you qualified leads. We were not a closing engine, right? So that was your responsibility. But to your point, these AEs, unless every T was crossed and every I was dotted and the client was ready, like waiting for, with a check to pay, like they would just ignore it because they'd be like, well, basically it takes too much effort for me to follow up on that. I don't know what it is.

Is it comfort? Is it lack of training? Is it, is it, I think it's straight lacing no matter what? I think to a certain, and I'm not blanketing this across all AEs by any stretch of the imagination, but I think there's a, there's a certain laziness to your point. If you're coming close to your numbers anyways, right? You know, whatever. Like, okay, you know, I'll follow up with that one. I might not follow up the, you know, there's also a lack of accountability from a management standpoint in the loop back. But it was inherently frustrating to us because I couldn't imagine not following up with a lead that was qualified and saying, yes, John, I want to talk. You know, I mean, I get in, we get inbound leads a lot and I personally follow up with almost every single one of them.

First of all, A, thanking them for, you know, being even interested in us and making sure that they get at least a meeting set up and somebody talks to them, right? But it was, it was crazy to me. And I think that's, that's where I see a lot of the, the, the friction between SDR orgs and AE orgs is that there isn't a defined process. Like, you tell me, like, why isn't there a standard operating procedure on how leads are qualified and transitioned and tracked from the SDR to the AE? Because it seems to me there should be a pretty basic, okay, it fits this, you know, check whatever qualification criteria you have, okay? Check the boxes of what it needs to have in order to be flipped. And then once it's flipped with those qualification criteria and documented, you know, with a simple email from the SDR saying, hey, I'm looking forward to, you know, thank you so much for your time today.

Here's, I'm seeing my AE so-and-so and here's what we talked about, what your priorities are, what, you know, challenges, this is what they're going to talk with you about, blah. Like, the fact that that's not, and the fact that there's no standard operating procedure for an SDR to have a conversation with an AE, I mean, I, can you imagine, and again, you live it more than I do, being a 22-year-old kid responsible for three, like, working with three AEs, four AEs, five AEs in some cases, all with different personalities, all with different likes and dislikes, and saying, okay, you have to run your weekly meetings with this AE who's probably 20 years in the business, and it's probably going to shit all over you and tell you what to do.

Like, you think a 22, 23, 24-year-old kid out of college is going to be able to manage that with any type of ability to be successful in any way, shape, or form? Yeah. So, so talk to me about how, how do you solve that problem with what you do in your team, right? From a, from what, because you have to be process-oriented based on what you do. So, so what is that look like and where is that gap in, in typical organizations that you see? Yeah, so, so what happens with us is, I think the first thing is that you have a process, right? Like, we use Lucid Charts and we actually document a process. What I notice is that over time the process always becomes too complicated. It's almost like a, a tree that needs to be trimmed all the time.

So I think a lot of companies, because we don't have a, like, we don't have a silver bullet, John, and when I do, I'll share it with you and in the audience, you know, I would start by saying actually document a process. Like, you know, when something is qualified, I'm going to email the account executive these bullet points in this format and then I'm going to be on that meeting for 15 minutes and hang off until a trend, like just any kind of process, right? I think what's happening now is organizations, they don't really know when to hand off that lead or how to, so they're kind of passing the buck down to that, you know, that non-existent VP of SDRs basically, right? And they're like, someone's going to decide this, right?

And VPs of sales are like, I'm still struggling to figure out digital marketing, right? I came from a background of, you know, selling $10 million a year from Oracle. Now I have no Facebook ads and LinkedIn ads. So I think that people aren't paying attention, closer attention to this. And I think, I think we should talk to our friends at the Bridge Group to do a nice little survey to find out, you know, the most common SDR to AE handoff so we can kind of start, I would say, you know, publishing that and getting it out to people so that we can make it a better customer experience. I mean, between you and I, I hate saying this because, you know, we have an army of SDRs and we want to get higher, but, you know, I don't necessarily think every organization should have SDRs, right?

Sometimes it's a better experience to have an AE, right? like have your account executive on Drift. They're not on Drift all day. They have three monitors and a chat comes in and talk to them. How nice would it be to chat with somebody and be like, let's jump on a meeting right now? Well, great experience. I mean, that's, I personally think that the predictable revenue model that kind of created this whole world of specialization, right? Like, well, Salesforce created predictable revenue was a book. So, but that whole, you know, inbound, outbound, you know, then closer, but SMB mid-market enterprise, that is absolutely fantastic for growth of a business in the sense that I even did that back when I was, my first company Thrive before predictable revenue even came out.

It was, you know, I just fundamentally understood as a VP of sales, I was also a player coach, right? So I had my own quota and when I was hiring reps and I didn't have any time or, you know, money or anything like that. So I would hire seasoned sales reps, people with, you know, six to 10 years experience and I would give them a quota and I would say, you have to co-call, meet and close and, you know, your training was follow me and keep up, right? So inherently, I kept getting these, I would hire and fire these kids because they just couldn't do everything successfully. So I took a step back and said, all right, stop the madness here. I can't keep doing this. I had hired and fired six sales reps that just straight up didn't work.

And so I said, let's break down the sales process, opening process and closing. You got to find leads, you got to meet with them, you got to close them, all right? And I looked at myself and I said, what's my favorite part of the sales process? Well, my favorite part is this, like developing rapport, meeting with a client, understanding. I could close, but I'm not a hardcore closer, you know, but we had a CEO that was a like absolute, like ridiculous, hardcore close, like awkward, but he got the shit, he got shit done, right? So we had those two pieces that we didn't have was the opening piece. So instead of hiring another sales rep to do all, I hired a director of business development and we looked at the channels of lead gen, you know, referrals, partnerships, websites, that type, and inside sales.

And that's what created that model because then we turned this engine on to have them get in, cut their teeth on the pitch, then graduate, you know, set up meetings with me. Then as they graduated in, they moved into the meeting role, I moved into the closing role and we had this really cool engine, which is great for businesses to scale. Where I think it falls apart in what you made the comments on was I don't think it's a great customer experience. I just don't. Getting flipped three times before you get to talk to somebody and having no structure throughout that process, one of the more frustrating things I see from a customer standpoint is, you know, having a decent qual call with an SDR and then saying, okay, I got to get you to somebody, you know, an AE.

And then literally the AE asks the same questions on that call. The client's like, I already can, you know, we already have this conversation and then it gets transitioned to a CS, customer success, and there's no intel there on that transition of why the client bought what their priorities were. So the chain is broken. So how do you see it evolving to fix that, to your point, customer experience? Yeah, well, one of the things about predictable revenue in that model and it's, you know, you can't say that model is broken, right? But I think what we can say is that not every company needs to be cash flow positive to make money, right? And we're not looking at the books of these companies. We see, they were, you know, Adobe acquires Marketo for $4 billion, right?

We don't see the fact that it might have been a very cash flow inefficient way to do things, right? But it could have been a blitz scaling efficient way of doing things, right? And I think that's, I think you have to ask yourself, like, are you trying to grab market share as fast as possible because someone else will beat you to it and get you there or do you want to give that customer a better experience? And, you know, I think like everything else is an equilibrium, right? And I think some of the things you mentioned to me, it almost sounds like the same position but just different training based on how long you've been in the company. Like, why can't people be account executives but for your first six months you're doing the top of the funnel and then you move, you know, like, why does an account executive just have to do this and SDR does that?

why not one role and just based on your tenure, right? Because you want that person to lose their experience. So, you know, I don't have the answers for it and it's hard because some companies that might work really well, I think companies that, I think companies that care about the LTV of their client and are not looking to create a bit of skill, I think fewer handoffs is better. I'm like, I personally want to talk to the same person and I've gotten that experience actually from an organization that I think that you're familiar with called Jiminy where I work with them and my rep was Melissa something, I forgot, but she was my rep. She's in my Slack when it comes to problems and she's following up with accounting issues as well.

She's like, hey, Mary, you haven't paid, you pay your bill. I'm like, I like that experience because she understands me and it was probably, that organization probably was the first time that I experienced the same person throughout the whole cycle and it was a good feeling, right? Now, I don't know how efficient it is for them in the back end, but I think right now between you and I, I think that with all this technology and with things like SDRs potentially falling more under ops and marketing, I think we're going to see more of like one single role maybe defined where it's like outbound account executive versus inbound account executive, right? Because those are different. But I truly feel that, you know, companies need to take a look at potentially consolidating and always just testing and measuring, right?

And that's, a lot of companies don't have the bandwidth to actually measure. right? They have the technology to measure, but they don't have the bandwidth to actually report on what that means, right? And back to what I was saying about, you know, account executives potentially being overpaid, well, there's your budget for your business analyst, right? There's your guy and actually going to tell you, hey, we tried this process and it got us better customers but a lower NPS score, right? But this is equally, this is a sweet spot, right? This is, they want to talk to one, two people talks, they want to talk to one person or they want to talk to five, right? It kind of depends. Like if you're buying something like Grammarly, you know, maybe it's a small ticket item, like you might not care if you're, you know, you might not be the same rep, right?

But if I'm investing in training for my team, right? I'm going to want to talk to John every time. I'm going to want to talk to Morgan every time, right? I'm going to call a cell, right? So I think, I think if you look at your LTV, I think higher LTV, less moving parts, in my opinion. Yeah. Just my opinion. Yeah. I think lower LTV, I think maybe you can have some automation, some bots. But I still don't have all the answers, John. I wish I do. I'm looking at you. Yeah. Shit, man. If I did, I'd be making a lot more money. But no, I don't know. My gut tells me that with AVM and the continued evolution of technology and insights on people, I really do think that the inbound SDR role, like the ones who actually take the inbound leads, I think that that's actually should, I actually, well, I don't think it's going to, I hope it's going to, but I think it should turn into an elevated role, more like customer success or account management, you know, AE type of stuff.

Because if you follow, you know, corporate executive board, blah, blah, blah. By the time somebody comes to us, they're 60 to 70% of the way through the sales process. Yada, yada. Like, even if you sniff that, like, even if that's remotely true, right? Everybody argues the number. I don't care. People have done their research by the time they get to us. Okay? So, if that's the case, I don't, like, going back to customer experience, I don't think that the 22-year-old kid fresh out of college is the best answer to that. Right? Because if I've done that, I know me, if I've done my homework and all of a sudden I make a phone call or I send in a lead and I want to talk to somebody and I get some 22-year-old kid that's going to ask me bad questions and push me through this piece of shit demo process or something like that, I'm going to get frustrated and I'm just going to be like, whatever, okay, never mind, next, right?

So I actually think the inbounds role should elevate quite a bit because if you're going to spend that much money from a company to drive super qualified inbound opportunities, you need somebody who knows what the hell they're talking about, right? So I think you can take some of the more senior AEs, for instance, and say, okay, we're not going to give you as much of a commission plan. We're going to give you a higher base salary and you're not going to be out on the road anymore. You're just going to sit here and answer questions, right? And guide people through the process of buying this product. Now, the outbound SDR role, I still think there's room for that as the entry level, right? To just kind of cut their teeth on the pitch, right?

Figure out how to take rejection, right? Understand, you know, how to ask some questions, whatever, and then evolve. But I do believe that there is, we're moving towards almost like a pod structure of sales where there's going to be, you know, account-based marketing and there's going to be one AE that manages that region if you will and gets fed inbound opportunities does have to do some outbound on theirself to fill in the gap but closes most of those things. So I think that the technology and the ABM approach is almost going to force that to happen and which is going to dictate that the outbound SDRs, if and when they evolve, that they won't be SDRs anymore. Again, they're going to go under operations and marketing because now if you think of all the tools that are out there to understand, right?

So now I got like an Owler, I got Crystal Nose, all that stuff, intent data from G2 Crowd, right? Can profile the shit out of clients that are really in our ICP. Then we have tools like Sales Loft and whatever it is to personalize its scale or whatever and really, you know, just make a few tweaks and test and then we hit play and their job is going to be to be able to collect that information, put it into relatively good cadences and then split test the shit out of it to see which ones are working and which ones aren't and so that's why I think that role is going to be more like aligned this way so that's my gut because I just am watching the customer experience B2C versus B2B it's so incredibly different.

Oh yeah, I, you know, we wanted to grow our customer support business because it's easy. I'm honest with you and we were helping B2B companies for customer support hire us and like all of a sudden we woke up we're like wait a second it's the B2C customers that actually care about customer support and our customer profile changed from helping B2B SaaS companies that supports really kind of afterthought to B2C clients. I think a lot of B2B companies can learn a lot from some of the best B2C companies like Amazon and some of the big e-commerce companies because you don't get your stuff next day you know you're pissed and you're getting help and then you're feeling good about it because there's supports right there but you know a lot of this conversation comes to also like where will SDRs fall like back to your thing about whether it's marketing or sales I'm sure you've heard of this before where it's like marketing has the budget sales doesn't right but sales has a budget it's just called human resource budget and for some reason paying $10 million in salary is not the same as paying $10 million to a vendor to me it's the same thing it leaves your account it's money gone but businesses it's a whole different thing right they will look at $5,000 being spent to a vendor with a microscope but they will look at they won't look at $100,000 a month in payroll right so the question is you know will sales leaders you know let's say BDRs relative to marketing will they start getting budget for intent like why would you want to hire three SDRs and you can have one that has intent signals from a G2 crowd or a company like intent data.io I know your friends that had Marsh we've used his data and we've done that we use both G2 crowd and intent data.io now and it's helping us huge but like why when will they get that budget because the budget is controlled by marketing but marketing is not what's marketing going to do with it they're going to send a template out from HubSpot or Infusionsoft right they're not to them everything's the same the answer's always the same send an email template right I think that budget needs to be in the hand of salespeople who are going to be like all right now running up in sales loft where the first day is a personalized message with a connect I can comment their stuff phone call and then people will start converting higher but I think what we're going to unfortunately see is we're probably going to see a lot of people squander a lot of budget in the wrong hands oh well they're already doing it I mean everybody's looking for the perfect you know the silver bullet right it's like and I can't I mean I almost throw I got a business idea by the way out there for anybody listening I'm going to give I'm going to give anybody out there listening a multi-million dollar business idea right here is to be an independent consultant okay go into corporations for free and say you will analyze their sales process and their tech stack and give them recommendations based on the two so for instance because you can easily put together a process that says what type of sale do you have major complex sale you know how many you know how many people are involved that type of stuff super easy transactional whatever what's the ACV that are so based on this and where you are as a stage of your business you should have this structure in place from a sales methodology standpoint or whatever right so you should have Miller Heim and you should have Taz you should have Jay Barrows you should have Sandler whatever that is right because it fits where you are with your business then the tech stack needs to marry up with that okay so now you analyze based on your assessment of their sales process now you layer in okay what should the tech stack look like right and not the overlap how about because almost every tech solution out there you know there's like an 80% overlap on every other one right but it's that one stupid thing that this product does over that product and that's why I got to spend $5,000 a month on that product to get that one stupid thing right so somebody who knew what they were talking about could come in and say okay no no no you don't need any of this shit you need this this and this and this is how they work together so you come in and do that assessment for free and then whatever if they buy into your recommendations you go to all the vendors and you get paid by the vendors recurring fees to set up that methodology bring the trainers in bring the tech in and now you win because the amount of money that's being wasted on people trying to figure out their sales process as they grow and trying to figure out the perfect technical solution for any problem is just mind-numbing right now oh it is mind-numbing so and it literally makes me sick coming from my original background of tech startup with no money I mean we were self-funded we had no cash I had I was our sales marketing and PR engine you know our technology was Microsoft you know Dynamics and that was it like and we had Outlook you know what I mean Dynamics what's that you're lucky to have Dynamics we had we were a Microsoft Gold partner so we got it for free so but my point is like there's a model there to help people make these decisions and make this transition because I think we're in this big transition phase right now where everybody's trying to figure out nobody has well you know if you look at if you look at Gong's data and one one slide that stands out to me that you probably resonated with you was just the VP of sales role going down from 24 months to 18 months right we've all seen that and what you just mentioned plays into that because I think people are looking to hire a VP of sales to fix that problem and they're hiring the VP of sales that still has the president's club 10 times in a row they're not hiring the VP of sales that's on 10 podcasts listening companies partnering no they're not they're hiring in the old school way they're putting people in these roles right in reality they need someone to come in for 90 days put a process together test the process and go you know what hit play over there right and that's what a VP sales needs and that's I think kind of what you mentioned is a great idea and I might take it if one of the listeners doesn't jump on it because it's needed right and you just see it and even an organization and you know I love being straightforward and honest right like we're in the business of technology process enabling and sales it ain't easy it doesn't make it easy right like it's not supposed to be easy but you really have to you have to know what's out there and know the world changed I think the people that like still are living in the fact that like no I'm going to follow up twice I'm not going to use I'm not going to growth hack anything I'm like they're kind of living they're all Facebook I can't get any leads on Facebook I get like four inbound leads on Facebook a week right like a lot of people a lot of companies are either in that comfort zone or they're in that trying everything and they have no cash zone right and there's very few in the middle yep I totally agree people need to help them well and that's where that kind of leads to this to this part which is you know outsourcing right because you said instead of hiring three SDRs why not hire one and provide them the tools or potentially even outsource depending on where you are because you're hearing a lot of like Nova.ai and you know whoever else that are saying you don't have to replace SDRs but if you give them the right tool one SDR can do the work of 10 right or then you have outbound works that is saying no no no actually for your SMB SDRs you actually don't need SMB SDRs because we'll be able to run this engine far better than you would because you know the SMB side it is purely I don't want to say purely about volume but it is a lot about volume right you just got to do it right so they're saying don't bother with SMB SDRs yeah hire some mid-market and enterprise for your ABM stuff but take care of that so how do you help people like when you get involved with somebody who's saying I need some help I need leads you know what I mean I've tried to hire SMB SDRs how should they be looking at the tools to empower one to many the outsource of a certain portion of it to another company that is a lead gen or an outsource to a company like yours that can actually drive revenue for them learn their process pretty quick and flip so how do they know when to look at any of these options well I think if you're looking to grow I think you should look at all options I think you should become aware right there's nothing wrong with being in the awareness of what available options because knowing what an outsource company charges is the same thing as knowing that I hired John but Tim wanted the job and he's still an active candidate right so you hear a lot of especially what I hear a lot is I tried this before and it failed and I'm like of course you did because it was done in India and the Philippines and that's why you know it doesn't work right because once they try something they're done I think people need to be open-minded and know that one thing doesn't replace another and keeping their goals and learning from you know organizations is key and we learned a lot that companies were hiring us to just learn our magic right and that was okay because we were like you know what learn our magic people are still churning at a faster rate than ever you'll come back right but when it comes down to you know talking to organizations like I've worked for a company like we partnered with Outbound Works with great friends of ours Ben Sardella Brendan Shore like I'm just a Michael I'm friends with all those guys and I love what they're doing and you know companies I've worked for companies that have hired Outbound Works and have hired us right and have SDRs right and we all work together in tandem right because we all had our role with our specifications so I think people need to kind of look at something as this is what I'm really good at right this is what I'm going to keep right next to me this is a function where A I can quickly you know find the cost of something I can learn from it and everybody and everybody gets something from the people what people don't realize is that all providers like myself Outbound Works are all working with other big providers that you might have to spend money on right like a discover.org intent data so I think companies need to take a really good opportunity at peeling down the onion of what companies are doing because a lot of companies like ours will tell you what we're doing we'll educate you right like we're all about that like here's what's going on and then kind of almost put it together or let a professional like ourselves or Outbound Works tell you what they've seen in other organizations right because it's like either I have seen this before and I've done it before therefore I need this this and that or show me what you can do and let me use your expertise but organizations and I hope I'm not getting off the question no no hacking it is changed every almost 90 days with a new process right a new growth hacking tool and it's crazy saying this but things are changing so fast that I don't think there's any strategy that's going to last more than eight months nine months right like think about like vidyard videos you guys we're seeing a lot of those before right like do you see them anymore much not really right like it's like things are coming and going but what I think what doesn't go away is the concept that we have to get our message out to our potential buyers and people need to know that we live in a world where you can get that message out with greater frequency without hiring more people and you can hire more people to do things that you can't do with frequency like having high level conversations I can tell you one of our growth hacking techniques if you want to hear so one of our most recent techniques is we partnered with Apollo.io which is very similar to sales law for outreach they work kind of the same one of the things that we liked about it was it had the data in it so it had it's more of a discover.org competitor but what allowed us to do was it allowed us to take one SDR and actually upload 10 different email addresses not from different domains the same domain right so like I would have a writer at cloudtest.com a.writer writer.r 10 different variations and I'd be able to instead of sending just because you can send 400 emails a day doesn't mean you should your sender score will go down you got spam right but with 10 different profiles you could send 80 to 100 which is more like a human and get 800 emails that day so that's a technique that we're using but that doesn't go for every account right because we use outreach all the time we use sales off all the time that's only for instances where people just don't have an outreach for sales law and we're like hey we're bringing this tech stack and that's and another simple growth hacking technique that people don't use is gmass.co I'm not sure if familiar with that app but I use it every day and I probably made some appointments while we're speaking and simple messages right I'm still getting out that quality and velocity of just kind of mail merging and it's still working and I noticed like no organization I have not seen any mail merge training in any SDR and maybe you can maybe you have it I don't know but they're doing you know sequences that kind of training but sometimes if people don't have the technology you have g-suites go ahead and mail merge you know great to have an outreach of sales law from Apollo but if you don't have it don't stop yeah don't stop so let me let's finish on this because I think the outsourcing one's always been interesting to me and I think it leads to my question here of how I want to know how you guys do it but how much does a sales rep need to know before they can be effective with outreach in the sense that you know a lot of companies what they'll do is they'll stuff product knowledge down somebody's throat through their boot camp or whatever it is and then they'll give them limited skills training and the idea is they have to know the product so they can sell it my personal opinion is you just have to know enough about the product you don't need to be the industry expert that's what the sales engineers not knowing not knowing the products the appointments great question let me set up a time for the expert to talk to you you're not supposed to know the product because then you'll just interview yourself so I would say for me it's different for every company right because you're selling a Porsche I have a turbo your target market might be just this kind of person right but I would say that you know three to four buyer personas and three to four value propositions and three to four probing questions and positioning statements is all you need followed up by you know I'd be like John so you've got a great podcast you probably have lots of MQLs you need to follow up with you know how many of those are converting within SDR you'd answer but can I set the time to talk you know it's one thing right and I think I think those three to four probing statements and those value propositions that's what people really care about right yeah I mean I kind of go back to I tell reps all the time I go you know I kind of go a little bit old school with the AIDA philosophy of Glenn Gary Glenn Ross right well they highlighted it which is the fundamental process of sales attention interest desire action and when you're prospecting like you have five to 15 seconds to get someone's attention that's why the subject line matters that's why the first few words out of your mouth make a difference and then you have like a minute or two to get me interested in this shit right and then you need to close me on a meeting so you're not selling when you're prospecting you are not selling your services you are not selling your product you are selling time you are selling the next step you are selling interest that's what you're selling and I think the more you know the less effective you are at that because then you try to sell everything when you're on the phone with somebody so I I agree with you that you need to give them just enough to be dangerous you know and so they can at least talk the talk of what the product does and those type of things and you know a few use cases whatever that's why I think case studies are probably the number one thing that I would tell reps to read like I would my first week of training would be just read every one of these case studies and tell customers and understand so you can have those stories to tell right it never hurts to say you know that's a great question I want to set you up the right I don't want to answer that question the wrong way I'm new here let me set the time with John at this time of day it's hard to come back to that why don't talk to John because he's the expert and he just I wouldn't want to tell you the wrong thing and I'm going to learn and people respect that we listen to call all time we hear we do quality assurance in our calls and yeah reps get in a lot of trouble sometimes to be honest with you a rep that is over 1.35 years they will say too much because they know the product too much there's like a sweet spot right and if you don't have QA or quality assurance process to coach people they will fall into that trap every time including I strongly believe that there's a equilibrium for every product but less is more but people need to be taught how to say there's value in this person who's an expert you know if I was calling for you I'd be like John Popper's you guys trained everybody like just being on his call you're lucky he's not going to charge you you you got to learn some stuff and you can build value profit I'm sure Morgan has done that plenty of times but you should be able to do that for all your executives because they're there for a reason they have expertise I think that's where you end up outselling yourself people do it in person too I'm sure you see it at networking events I tell reps time every interaction you have in a networking event if you meet somebody ask them a couple of quick questions what do you do what do what do you work with for people like you and your industry this is what we do and we're working with a few clients and here's some examples is that something of interest yeah absolutely and as soon as they start to engage you say hey you know what I'm sure you're at this event just to meet as many people as I am sounds like we have a lot to talk about I don't want to disrespect this conversation I want to actually put some meat to this bone so why don't we schedule some time next week where we can sit down and actually have a call here because I want to make sure you get the most out of this done and close so treat almost every interaction in person like as a timed event five minutes right get in and out of those conversations treat it just like a cold call because a lot of times what I see as reps what they'll do is they'll go to events and they'll find somebody who's actually interested in their product and they talk them to death and they leave nothing left to have a follow up conversation yeah there's nothing left there's nothing left and so all of a sudden the person is like yeah sure let's follow up next week and then they ghost the shit out of them so it's like boom like I said AI close on 15 minutes whether it's over the phone or in person so stop trying so hard I think that's a theme here as far as well that's also a problem how we're measuring SDRs with qualified meetings and they don't care about the customer experience right exactly how many times do you have somebody saying your quota is five qualified meetings and ten unqualified ones that we're not taking but I want to see why you unqualified right yeah that's a good point you know what I mean it'd be a lot more a lot more efficiency there yeah how nice it'd be someone calling and be like you know what this might not be that's real sales people right but they're just trying to make the appointment and people know that the appointment is what they're compensated on so they're like they feel like they're just an appointment yep I think I think we should all flip the mindset and try to disqualify more than we try to qualify I do that now actually I put that on our KPIs I tell people that we're going to tell that people are just looking at what are you giving me and then if you make 15 qualified meetings and one turns to custom you're fired right yeah exactly I mean it's happening John it is it's fun I think that's what keeps me jazzed about this space right is that if it was boring I'd be out I'd be doing something else right but staying on top of all this shit I don't get me wrong it's exhausting to stay on top of all this shit and run a company and all that other stuff right but it's why I think it's fun to be in this space and I think if you have that DNA if you will of always trying to get better then this is a great space to be in sales in general but mostly using all the tools that are out there so yeah awesome let's wrap this up just try to keep it under the R mark for everybody out there but Amir tell people how they can find out more about what you're doing where to go how to connect with you that type of stuff yeah so www.cloudtask.com and you can find me on LinkedIn Amir Writer or Facebook I'm big on Facebook I use Messenger like it's any transparency so people can see what we're doing what we're saying but yeah happy to give advice to anybody who wants help with scaling an organization and sales and support and success we do all day long perfect awesome I appreciate I'm looking forward to continuing our relationship here and doing some more fun stuff together and on your travels say hi to everybody because you're pumping into pretty much all the same people I am awesome yeah one of these days it's on the list so let's make that one happen you got it and thanks everybody for listening hope you got some value out of this and like I say all the time you know if nothing else go out there and make somebody happy today because if you make somebody smile you know you had a good day all right have a great week everybody and let's make it happen thanks