Gabe Lullo: Integrating Technology and Personal Touch in the Evolution of SDR Roles

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Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurs, or personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Now, today's conversation is with Gabe Lulo. He's the CEO of Aliu, a sales development agency working with industry giants, such as Zoom Info, Sales Loft, and Adobe. He's trained over 8,000 salespeople across diverse businesses, and during his tenure at Aliu, he's personally hired and managed more than 1,500 SDRs. So this conversation was all about the SDR role and what's wrong with it and what to do about it. We both agree that the SDR function is broken as it stands, but that doesn't mean it needs to go away.

And so he talks about how he's reshaping the SDR role to go to full cycle SDRs with his four pillars of connection, curiosity, creativity, and collaboration. We also talk about how that front end of the sales process needs to be thought about a little bit more like marketing than sales. And he termed it smarketing, which I thought was pretty funny. Then he talked about very specific things like busting and how they target specific personas all at the same time. And so they maximize their exposure. And how we need to get back to basics and stop with all this technology and really start with the fundamentals again and build from there and then add technology to it. We talked about how much the SDR should know as far as product knowledge and how much value they need to bring to the table.

And the relationship with AEs and how that should look. And lastly, how we onboard SDRs and how that needs to change. So this is a super tactical conversation about the SDR role, the future of the SDR role, and its value. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Gabe Lulo, what's going on? Welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing? I'm doing awesome, John. Thanks so much for having me. It's going to be fun. I'm excited to talk to you about this. This is going to be good, but appreciate the time. And I was a big fan. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, this is going to be, I was looking forward to this when I was prepping for this because, you know, I've been talking a lot about a lot of people look to me to say like, hey, what's happening in the industry for SDRs and that type of stuff.

And, you know, I see it from a different perspective, from a trainer's perspective and working with, but I'm not on the inside making those calls or seeing those things anymore. So definitely interested to kind of get your perspective on where things are going right now. But before we do that, as always, let's start with the origin story. So, you know, not just business here, but, you know, as part of this, I always like to know kind of where people came from and kind of where that itch from a business standpoint hit, right? Entrepreneurial. I mean, you're doing some cool stuff these days. So sometimes it's, you know, nature nurture. So it's always, you know, I'm always curious, kind of parents and upbringing and those type of things.

So you want to walk us back through all that stuff and then bring us to today? Yeah, it's interesting. If you looked at where I came from, you probably wouldn't have guessed where I am today. I was raised by educators. My dad died when I was really, really young. And that kind of forced me to grow up very quickly as the first and only son born. My sister and I have a very tough, you know, mom when it comes to being able to wear both hats. But she's an educator and put herself through school. And, you know, I learned grit from her. And I learned, you know, how to study and how to, you know, be really methodical based on her education background. My aunt really helped me as well, uh, get raised and, um, so also an educator.

And so I went to really good schools. I was always doing my homework on time. And so I actually, uh, Oh, you're one of those kids, huh? Yeah, I was one of those guys. Right. But so I was planning on being an engineer because I'm a numbers person and detailed oriented, but I also realized I can talk. So when I was a kid, I was selling t-shirts for a fundraiser and I sold my uncle like 20 of the exact same really bad t-shirts and I said, okay, maybe I can do this sales thing. Right. And so that's kind of how I got into it. And so I was doing door to door sales just to make extra money over the summertime when I was in college and, you know, I went to school for business and came out and then I was doing these internships.

Actually, my first real job as an intern was an SDR, but it was in New York and I was making cold calls kind of like this boiler room style thing. And I, I absolutely couldn't stand it, but it, it really taught me a lot of the, you know, the numbers game being thick skinned and, and, you know, really just law of averages. Um, I was going to supposed to go to law school and, uh, I, I just really didn't, didn't want to go down that path. So I was in law school and I was looking at it and I said, you know what, I'm going to start a business. And I started a, um, you know, home-based business with my buddy's dad and, and really was selling telecom, you know, and, and selling tech, uh, technology and, and, you know, telecom.

And it was really interesting because I really learned a lot. That's when I started picking up a lot of good books, you know, the, how to win friends and influence people, how to, you know, seven habits of highly effective, all, you know, rich dad, poor dad, all the, all the books. And that's when I really started getting into sales. Um, I found myself on the road selling all the time out and about different hotel rooms every single week. And it was great in my twenties, but then I realized I was about to be a dad and I'm like, okay, I need to be home. And I was looking to my hometown for companies that I couldn't, you know, be inside versus outside in sales. And lo and behold, literally the name of the company at the time was inside sales team.

And that literally was the name of our company. So I'm like, this is exactly what I'm looking for. It's in the title. I couldn't believe it. So, uh, left everything that I was building to start here and start again, really from scratch. Um, and came to the table with a lot of recruiting and background as well and building, uh, and sales teams. And I said, you know what, we can really do something great here. And that's when we started building the sales team and then converted to alley-oop when we doubled down and focused on the SDR function, not just full cycle sales as an outsourced firm, but, or the SDR function. And then that started coming out. And then that's where we've been building ever since.

I love it. And I think that, you know, that kind of sets the stage perfect for where I want to go with this because here's, here's my take. Um, and, and I want you to push back or challenge, uh, because I think that, because I hope I'm wrong. Okay. Um, I think the predictable revenue model, when Salesforce came out with it back, however many years ago, right? 15 years ago, whatever it was, I think it was fantastic for us as organizations to scale, right? Cause the theory was you brought in young, cheap talent. You beat the shit out of them. You gave them a section of the sales process so that they didn't have to fail across the board. And, and then they grew into your AE, right? And, and so it was a great transition to basically breed sales professionals for your organization.

Right. And I thought it was great for us, um, as orgs, because it was a great way to scale. I actually did the predictable revenue model back at my first company way before, because it was just out of inherent, like I kept hiring full cycle sales and they kept failing miserably. So I was like, there's gotta be a better way. So I segmented it out and it worked great. Um, and it did work great from 2010 ish, especially I call the golden, golden age of sales, 2010 to 2022, right? When, when money was free, grow at all costs, you know, ROI didn't matter as much, right? The client experience, as much as everybody talked about, it didn't matter as much either because people were buying whatever technologies everybody was, especially in the SaaS space.

But if you really peel it back and you see, you look at it, it's not very customer centric because nobody likes to be handed off three or four times before they actually talk to somebody who knows what they're talking about. Usually you're putting the front, you're putting the most inexperienced rep on the front end. And, and again, I'm not, I'm saying there's certain ways that you do this right and don't do it wrong. But a lot of people like tell these poor reps to call into the executive suite, right? And, and there's no executive that wants to talk to a 22 year old kid who's going to ask them questions and then flip them. Right. And now that the average SDR doesn't stay in their position for very long or stay, forget about their position, their company for very long.

Now the models, the broken in so many ways. And so I'm watching it fall apart in front of our face. Like this year was the year that I've talked to over a hundred CROs. And most of them are like either dumping their SDR org or restructuring it significantly or looking at other options. And so I'm genuinely concerned for this, this, where we are right now, because I feel like we have a whole group of people that we have, we have taught and effectively turned into robots. And now they're genuinely getting replaced by robots. I mean, we hear personalization at scale with, with, with sales loft and outreach, you know, just because you change the name, the title and the industry doesn't make it personalized.

Right. And so, but that's what the reps are doing. And now you got this AI stuff that is doing legitimate personalization at scale. So help me understand the state of SDR world right now and, and how it has to evolve or how, how, how can we salvage what it is and transition into this world of AI? I know that's a heavy, a lot of context. Yeah, it's a big one, but I mean, I agree with almost everything you said, but at the end of the day, I still think that the human interaction in the front end of the sales cycle is super important. Um, you know, AI, I don't have the magic eight ball and, but I do know that we're not there yet, but I'm a huge fan of AI and I love what they're doing. And we use it to help augment as well as, you know, enhance the SDRs abilities for scaling messaging and being better at communicating.

Um, we're able to connect with more people with these different types of dialers that are powered by AI to increase connection rates because they're lower. So it's, it's, it's an amazing tool and it's most definitely evolving and will it replace, you know, what we all do maybe one day soon, maybe, I don't know. But right now, what we're finding is that you're right on many of the points, you know, the SDR function right now is usually a small team. And the problem there is that they turn over, you know, every 12 months, 45% of the SDRs are gone, a big third of the reason why is because they were a bad hire and they were not a good sit and they didn't know that until they started, or they got poached by the competitor across the street for an extra 5k in their base, or they got promoted to AE so they can get, you know, into the next phase in their career.

So what's unique about, you know, companies like ours is that, you know, we have a huge community of hundreds of SDRs that work with us and their tenure is longer. You know, it's a three year, 10 year with us and we are really humanizing the SDR function when it comes to what they're doing every day. They're not just sending out 20 sequences by a push of a button. They're not just, you know, doing robo dials and just saying a script and reading like they are a robot. We're teaching our SDRs and we're teaching them really to be what I call full cycle SDRs. So yes, there is a portion of what they're doing is still the front end of the sales cycle, but they are more flirting with that AE function and asking questions and communicating.

So we broke down the word communicate in four C's. So connection, which is trust and authenticity, which is really important right now for SDRs. And they haven't been doing that over the years and they have to start. And that's what we're focusing on. Curiosity. They got to ask a lot of good questions, not just say a script. So if they can handle and be more, you know, understanding of what it is they're marketing and be towards that AE, but getting the right questions asked to determine that fit, budget is not one of them. It's not banned, right? It's, it's, it's questions about, is there a true need and figuring that out and then being creative with, okay, here's some creativity that we can actually put into here, but I'm not the expert.

I'm going to point you to more of a subject matter expert who can get creative with you. So instead of just selling in 30 minutes, which is always been the case in that 10 year window that you mentioned, it's more of like, okay, let's get on a phone call and figure this out together. And our subject matter expert is going to be the one to do that. So instead of just putting on the clothes or putting on the demo hat for the next call, it's let's get creative here, have a connection. And then we can collaborate, which is the fourth C and say, okay, let's do this together and create more of a partnership. And I think only a human can really do that right now. And I know it's not the typical SDR function like we used to have it, but it's what the market needs right now.

And it's what our clients are telling us is working the most effectively with our successful partnerships. Hey, I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JV sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, filling the funnel and driving to clothes. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific skills and different tech like ChatGPT and how to leverage it in the sales process. And it gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. You get all of this for $420 a year as an individual or $5,000 for teams. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to www.jbarrows.com and click on the individual or team membership and use code podcast, you'll get 20% off.

Let's make this happen together. So cold anything right now is brutal. Like literally cold and cold. And when I say cold, like somebody who's not used to us, right? Not an inbound or any of that stuff. Um, and so the way I'm positioning it right now, and this is where I'm seeing the shift with SDRs and BDRs going under marketing and operations, quite frankly, right? Because I look at a cold, pure cold outbound, almost way more as a marketing function right now than I do a sales function because it's about impression points, right? Yep. So that's why like when I coach reps, it's like, you know, I come into teams with SDRs and they're just like, why make cold calls? Like, oh, you're going to train us on cold.

Like, why make cold calls anymore? Nobody picks up. Nobody's, you know, nobody calls back. And my positioning outside of having a dialer that helps you get better calls and that type of thing is, well, there's a reason that we do it. And it's because I don't expect you to pick up the phone. I don't expect you to call me back, but that voicemail, that call might pique somebody's interest and then go look at the email that can go look at the website and maybe come inbound or whatever. So with that as kind of air cover, what's your mentality on the outbound process? How much of it is education to a target account versus like relevance versus trying to get that meeting to strike up? Because I think the stat I heard recently is like only like three to 5% of our addressable market is ever actually in market for what we have, right?

Whereas the other 95 plus percent are at some stage of zero, like familiarity with us and need to familiarity is no need and so on. So what is the function as it relates to an SDR sales marketing piece here? Yeah. You know, when we started, we started using the word smarketing. I don't know who the one that actually said it, but the SDR really is the guy on the fence and, you know, getting shot by both sides or really the broker between the two departments, right? Sales is throwing over the arrows saying, Hey, you know, our leads suck. And then marketing is throwing over the arrows to sales. And they're saying, you know, you can't close anything, right? So that, that SDR function is right in the middle there.

And that I think is where it needs to live. You know, we have more and more clients right now where our point of contact is the CMO, not the, you know, chief of sales or CRO anymore. So it is most definitely becoming more of a marketing function. I think email is like you said before, is a brand awareness. It's not an ability to get a meeting. And so many companies are just sending email and they're thinking that's where they're going to get the meeting. It's not where it's going to happen. And is the meeting really the most important thing that you want? You know, there's, there's levels of, to your point, there's only 3% that are in the market. Like, it's not just about the meetings about, okay, is this person engaged in this person excited?

Is this person interested in talking six months from now and not just booking a meeting and the timing is wrong, but keeping that information, even sharing that information with the client to make sure that the right people are going after it at the right time. But I think right now it's significantly a marketing function for most of the activities that are happening. But what we're doing right now is we're creating what we call bursting. And I don't know if we came up with that or not, but essentially what we're doing in bursting is instead of just a normal cadence of day one, send email, day two, send like connection, day three, you know, send, send a phone call out. We are trying to target that specific person in various ways, right at the same time.

And our emails, I heard something a long time ago and I love it. Like you should treat your emails like you treat text messaging. That's how you should write emails. You know, when you and I exchange emails, you, you and I are changing our emails to connect you and me personally, but we're talking like we would text. And I think that's how we should actually do it. And that's what we've been doing and it's working, but you're referencing out the phone call. You're referencing out the LinkedIn note. You're, you're being a human and actually using LinkedIn voice notes and standing out from that noise of just, you know, pitch slapping and, and, and sending these emails and sending these automated, uh, LinkedIn's and creating that human connection is going to stand out right now because all the companies are doing all this other stuff.

And I think that's what is going to separate good SDRs versus, versus not. So, so with that, like what's that balance between quality and quantity, right? Cause I agree with you that I, I think, you know, like I said earlier, it's, it's, if it was up to me, we'd all have a half an hour to do research on every single account that we ever went into. So we can be super personalized, connect with them on LinkedIn. And, and I understand on the dialer side, right? So on the dialer side, I think I used to kind of shit on dialers. Cause I'm like, Oh God, it's like a, it's a spam cannon. Right now. I, but even though I, I actually now I like dialers only if it can be segmented down by at least a certain role.

Right. Cause if you're doing a dialer, you can't do research on every account. And I guess you can probably force some things for talking points, whatever. But if I can say, okay, I just want to call every VP of sales in the SAS industry in my book that fits this profile. So I can come with a message that's relevant to them, then unleash that, that dialer. So I can just get those people. Right. So when you pick up your VP of sales, I have something to say. So that's where I like dialers and I can create efficiencies with that. But when it comes to LinkedIn, when it comes to, you know, all these other like email even, right? Like what's the balance of automation or technology, if you will, in the human factor, because one of the things that I, that I really am getting worried about, for instance, is I think in mails, you know, it's, it's kind of gotten trash a little bit because there's been all these autobots that have been basically flooding people's inbox, in mail boxes these days.

Although I do like what you're talking about. I love the voicemail and I love the video thing. But when it comes to like, uh, like I'm seeing now AI start to do automated comments on people's posts. And I threw up a massive red flag on that one. I said, I actually sent it to LinkedIn's executive team and said, guys, like this is going to ruin the fucking platform. And so everybody like in theory, I think you and I are similar in the sense that in theory, the, the approach is, it makes sounds like the way it's supposed to be done is the way it's supposed to be done, but it never gets used that way. All these cadence tools, like when they're used the right way, they're great tools for efficiency, but 90% of them use them as spam cannons and just the easy button.

So I guess where's that balance that you're teaching the reps to make sure the human factor is still there, but the automation puts us in a position where we can do this at scale and we don't have to spend an hour or two doing research on every account. We actually called it about a year and a half ago, back to basics. We started looking at our tech stack and realized our tech stack is like literally a Jenga stack. And it was just about to fall over with the amount of, you know, death by subscription, right? Like we were paying for every tool you can possibly imagine because we thought it was the coolest, next greatest thing and we can test it. And this is awesome. And then we realized like 80% of this is not even being used and probably the rest, 20% sound at being used correctly.

So we like threw it all away and we started from basics and said, Hey, let's get this back to basics. What's working, what, who's picking up and, and how does it work? And it really starts with the list to your point. We actually have researchers who are essentially junior SDRs and their job is to truly scrub that list, find out if they're picking up the phone, truly understanding if this is a person that will communicate, will respond and a reachable person. Cause we all have access to all the right, all the data now, like all the data companies, you know, everyone has the same data. And so we want to see if they're reachable and if they're reachable, then we can put it into a dialer. Then we can put it attached to a high volume SDR because we're throwing activity against something that we know is going to stick.

And I think that's the biggest thing. These spam cannons that are out there, they don't know if it's going to stick or not. And it's ruining everything. Have you gotten this? Have you seen this one? I'd gotten like six of these the last month. I get a one penny PayPal. I paid a penny through PayPal and it says, I'm an AI bot. This is a unique way of contacting you. A penny for your thoughts. And people are sending me pennies right now. And it's just like, I saw some other guys on LinkedIn complaining about it. Like, this is what's ruining, um, you know. Oh God, I hope not. I hope I don't get those. I haven't gotten those. Oh God, I hope to God I don't get those. No, but it's just like. I'll be honest.

I get pissed off when sales reps offer me a, like a $5 Starbucks card. I'm like, do you really like, and I've had to educate a few reps on this. I'm like, so I just want to make sure we're clear what you're telling me here with a $5 gift card for 30 minutes of my time. You're telling me that my hourly rate is $10 an hour by offering me a $5 gift card to sales staples like, or, you know, Starbucks cut the shit a penny for my thoughts. I'd kill somebody if they sent me that. Exactly. Uh, and it's, I mean, I don't want to mention names, but you know, that's one of the tech stacks that we got rid of as well is, you know, too much gifting out there, you know, as bribery for your time. And it's like, Hey, let me send you something for 30 minutes.

It's like, tell me what you do. You know, I just got another one yesterday. I have a template in my notes here. Every time I start getting, you know, spammed, like I get five page, you show a five paragraph message on LinkedIn. As soon as I connect with someone, the next day I get another three, another four, another five. I respond with this. It's literally copied and pasted. And then I said, Hey, listen, please send me a one minute voice note or a one minute loom video on exactly why you can help my company. And I will take your demo. And nine out of 10 times, I never get anything back. And the time 10% of the ones I do, I'll take the meeting. But I think that's what has to happen now. And I think going back to basics, the teams that are doing that, whether it's having the AEs doing the full sales cycle, which I don't think that's the best way to do it if you want to scale.

But also, there has to be the human on the front end. We're cutting too many quarters and it exponentially has gotten to us. And that's, I think, the issue right now. We have to, yeah, it's less volume. But if we contact the right people and we make sure that that is the right contact list, we can add, of course, tools to it to do it at scale. But we have to be authentic and have to create trust. Yeah, that's kind of my, if I were to look at the positives of what happened this year as far as the train wreck that it was, that it was kind of that realization that we need to move back to quality over quantity. We need to get back to some basics here. We got way ahead of ourselves over our skis and now, you know, the correction is the correction.

So, with that, like, how much value should an SDR bring to the conversation? And I say that because, you know, I work with a lot of companies who run the gamut, right? They run the gamut from the SDR literally just getting a pulse and flipping over a meeting without almost anything. And then other SDRs going pretty far down kind of the, I don't want to say ban, but, you know, the qualification stage, if you will. And there's one thing about qualifying, but then there's, like I said, another thing about adding value. And these days, if I'm not going to get value out of a conversation, like, I am inherently frustrated if a 22-year-old kid calls me up, just happens to strike gold with something that they say, right?

And I'm like, holy shit, I didn't, actually, that sounds pretty cool. Let's talk about that. And they're like, well, sorry, I now need to, you know, schedule a meeting with my AE a week out. And why don't we do, you know, and I'm like, well, by then I probably, I'm not going to be interested in this anymore. Right. So, if you don't have this conversation, if you can't add value to my life right now, and don't tell me to go take a look at your website, don't send me a video of your product. Like, I want to talk to you, to your point, the human element here. Yep. So, how much does an SDR, should an SDR know about a solution, and what value do they bring to that conversation? I think they should know just as much as the AE knows.

Now, I'm not saying they should say just as much as the AE knows, but they should know just as much. So, what we do is, like, we have all of our SDR sit with our AEs, client AEs, on those demos, do warm handoffs, throw their video on mute, be a fly on the wall, and know as much as you possibly can. But you have to, again, this is where it comes to, you know, human interaction, and I think AI is an issue right now because they can't do this or it's doing too much, is really the balancing act. And that's what we always tell our reps is, hey, listen, our job is to be the trailer to the movie, right? And the job of the demo is to be the movie. Your job is to be the trailer. So, you can't tell them the ending of the movie, right, in the trailer.

It ruins the movie. But you've got to tell them just enough to get them excited to come to the movie, right? And so, we use that analogy a lot, but it's nuanced. Sometimes, you know, there is a need, and, you know, they are saying, oh, this is perfect timing. This is serendipitous. I can't believe you just called me. We were just talking about this. If that's the case, we can pump them to the expert faster. If it's, you know, what do you have right now? And asking questions about their current solution or program or service. And whatever it is, asking those probing questions, and then to a point, knowing that balancing act, when can you convert it? Because I feel like too many times people are just selling 30 minutes, and that's it.

And I do feel like an SDR's role is to sell that time. But at the end of the day, they have to give enough carrots to get them to saying, okay, now it's time to flip it to an appointment. And I think you should know just as much, not share just as much, but know just as enough. Yeah, and I think that's, to me, it's kind of my philosophy on sales in general. I don't think you need to be the product expert, although I think we're moving into the direction that we probably should know a little bit more than we have in the past, right? Because of product-led growth and all these different things. But you need to know enough to be able to be, and let's go back to your four C's, right? You need to know enough to be curious.

So you can ask those questions and maybe share a little bit of insights and get them thinking a little bit. And you have to be, when I say curiosity, it's like when the type of questions you ask is sometimes the value that you bring, right? I kind of have this whole spiel on challenger sale, like challenging somebody on challenge, like being a challenger, like the whole, hey, you make this decision once a year. I help people make it every day. Let me help, you know, that, I mean, you come across as a jackass, right? So, but the way I challenge people is just by asking them questions that they might not know the answers to, right? And get them to think a little bit, right? Because if I can get you to pause and go, huh, I haven't thought of it that way.

Now you're bringing value to my life because you've got me to kind of rethink my, pick my head up, if you will, right? So I like the value, the question is, is I guess, okay, well now let's keep going on this transition here. So say you got somebody, the SDR has a good conversation, adds enough value to the conversation, right? And I'm going to back into this with training later on, but I want to hit on the transition here because I think this is the ultimate frustration point in the model of the predictable revenue is that transition from SDR to AE. What are some best practices of, that you use to make sure that that transition is smooth and that AE doesn't have to go back in and, and re-qualify the information or, or even knows why we're having this call.

I mean, I've had three calls in the past month, no joke, where the AE showed up and legitimately didn't even know who I was. Not like, and it's like, so how are you doing, right? And I'm going to, and as soon as I hear, Hey John, so, uh, you know, how are you doing? Right. And they don't start with what they already know about me. I know they didn't do any fucking homework and I shred them. I'm like, hold on a second. I was like, do you even know what I do? And they'll be like, uh, or, uh, and you'll see them kind of panic and open up the, you know, there's web. Well, I see you do. And it's like, all right, shut up. This conversation's over and I get off immediately. So what are some best practices on that transition?

So it's smooth and there's continuity. So I'm not like, wait a minute, I just had a good conversation with a kid I'd like talking to. Now I got to talk to some rando over here who's going to piss me off because they're going to ask me some stuff. Yeah. Well, it's funny. I came across the same thing again, not to throw names out, but it's one of the fastest growing data companies. And we were talking to them, asked for a demo and we walked into it and they knew nothing about who we are, what we do. Nothing. And was complaining. They're five minutes late to the meeting and was complaining. They have a hard stop in 25 minutes because he's doing 12 zoom calls today. And that's, that was the AE. And I'm just like, I think that's part of the problem.

Like, I don't think it's just the SDR not preparing. I think it's our AEs are not calendaring out pre-call research before their calls. And we're expecting way too much from these AEs, which I also go off on a tangent. But I think, you know, like you said, from 2010 to 2020, you know, we have all this low hanging fruit. And now we're realizing all these AEs are just not the AEs that were, you know, pre-2010. They, they, they, they, they lack the skills and the training and now that's being exposed. Uh, we can talk about that later, but the reality is, is like what we do and what we feel the SDR needs to do is one, the calls need to be recorded and that needs to be shared. Um, we have to give, we've had fill out a survey before that meeting is booked with detailed notes of how and discovering what we specifically learned.

And we also want to do a, what we call warm connection. So we would say, Hey, you know, John, this is Gabe, Gabe, this is John. Um, you know, John spoke about this, this, and this. We're really excited to have you meet with Gabe today. Gabe, this is John. And then you get out of it and that's the SDR. And then at that point you have the ability to really, like you would add a networking event at a face-to-face event. Hey, this is my, this is John, this is Gabe. And now you guys get to connect. It's true networking. So I think that's part of the SDR's role is to literally be a partner with and pair it up with those AEs to transfer that knowledge at that point, but also have that pre-call research for those AEs.

All right. Taking a quick break here to highlight some of the other incredible podcasts on the HubSpot Podcast Network. You have to check out the Science of Scaling podcast hosted by Mark Roberge. Mark is the founding CRO of HubSpot, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, co-founder of Stage 2 Capital, and actually a good friend. He's even been on the Make It Happen Monday podcast a few times. Each week, Mark sits down with some of the most successful sales leaders in the tech industry to learn the secrets, strategies, and tactics to scale their company's growth. One of my favorite episodes is one of the more recent ones around the diligence of marketing and sales leadership roles with Sidney Sloan and Adam Arons of Drata.

Sidney is actually another good friend of mine and has a ton of insights into the CMO role. This episode is jam-packed with insights on sales and marketing alignment, evaluating potential members of your leadership team, go-to market alignment, and much more. Listen to the Science of Scaling wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not placing blame here on SDRs on this one. AEs are lazy as shit, right? Like, I still have a hard time with AEs just in general who think that, you know, their job isn't to prospect because it's the SDRs. Quite frankly, I don't know why I would ever want to rely on somebody else for my success. Right. I just don't, right? Like, I tell the AEs all the time, I'm like, if I was a VP of sales these days and my AE sat in front of me and told me that the reason that they weren't going to hit their quota was because their SDR didn't give them enough meetings.

Oh, my God. Like, before that sentence got out of their mouth, I think I'd fire them. Right. Well, to your point about marketing, right? Like, if you look at SDR as a marketing function, it's just like saying the same thing about marketing. Well, the reason why I'm not closing business is because marketing is not giving me good leads. But, you know, pointing blame on the SDR to not do that is the same. It's the same topic. So, yeah, AEs need to be self-sourcing and the SDR is adding to that. I always say it's gravy. If you self-source, it's definitely part of that process. But it can't just be SDR or nothing. No. No. So, how do you train these SDRs? Because the other thing I worry about is business acumen, right?

Just straight up business acumen. We teach a lot of, again, no names here, but a lot of companies I work with, they stuff product knowledge down these reps. So, they come on board and then it's product-heavy knowledge as far as their onboarding is concerned. You know, they might give them a couple of, you know, battle cards of competition and maybe a couple of persona cards that Sally, she's a CMO and she cares about, you know, creativity. But then they release them to the world and say, okay, go make some phone calls here. And I tell reps all the time, like, if there's one thing you want to do to improve your results, improve your business acumen. Like, learn the language of business, right?

Forget about your pitch here for a second, any of that shit. Talk to me about how to have a business conversation. Be curious enough to be, you know, to be educated. So, how do you onboard an SDR to put them in a position where they're not just learning techniques that they're trying to apply in a script that they're trying to read? Right. I think a lot of it is just the lingo, like you were talking about. Like, we actually have, we're like, when some, I remember the first time when someone said Q1 to me and I had no idea what they were talking about, right? You're like, what? Q1, what's that mean? Right? So, it's like, we have a specific little glossary of things that make sense and definitions on that glossary to teach them the lingo.

In addition, we talk more about training the objections and anticipate instead of, you know, do improv. So, the objections, we break them down into 10 separate buckets. And so, we teach those, you know, every single week. And we have a literally all hands training every single day with our SDRs for 30 minutes. It's light. It doesn't break up the day too much. And we're teaching objection handling and objection handling. What do you say when someone says this? Because we realize after years of doing this, there's only about 10 things they're ever going to say to us forever. That's it. Yeah. So, you already, if you know every single thing to say to 10 things, you're literally, you know, 10 steps away from making as much money as you want in this position because you know exactly what to say.

So, we teach objection handling. We teach, obviously, the lingo. And to your point, it's not about product knowledge with the SDRs. Now, of course, I'm not trying to be hypocritical. You do want them to eventually know it. And there is a, that's important for that. But at the end of the day, when they're brand new, it's about what do I say when someone says this? And how do I communicate it effectively that's going to work? So, how do you get them to care? So, and I'm going to preface this. When I say care, you know, I call it the give a shit factor, right? And people listen to my podcast, you've heard this plenty of times, the story of Morgan, right? Where he came on board with me and he did really good in his cadences and all that other stuff.

And it leveled off. And he came to me and said, John, you know, I feel like I'm doing all the right things and I'm just not getting the results. And I said, Morgan, he's like, what do I need to do? And I said, Morgan, you're not going to change until one thing does. And that's until you give a shit. Until you start caring, right? And when I say that, I mean about the person, about the, you know, like don't just treat them as a number, right? And I think that's obviously easier as a business, right? You need to care about your solution that you work for. And then once you care about and you have passion for that, then you can kind of be selective with who you go after to introduce that. But you're working in kind of an outsourced model here where, you know, these kids are getting assigned to certain companies of products or services that they might not, may or may not know very well or care about, quite frankly.

So how do you get that care, give a shit factor so that they can have satisfaction outside of the results, but they can actually transfer that enthusiasm over to the client and have some, you know, care about it a little bit more? Absolutely. We've instituted, that's really culture, really. You know, I think SDRs, usually smaller companies that have one or two SDRs. And it's not about the SDR, it's about the support you give the SDR. And it's very hard to support one or two people in anything, right? There's not many, there's not enough of them. So building that culture around one or two people who are going to leave in six months anyway is really challenging to do. So what we do is we build, you know, pods within our SDRs that has a team captain.

And we, you know, our company's called Alley Oop, so we like the basketball theme. So every single, you know, team has a different name, like, you know, the Alley Oop Mavericks, the Alley Oop Bulls, the Alley Oop Lakers. And we have different teams and they're competing against each other internally. And it's not client specific. The client, this doesn't touch the client at all. And so we'll be able to create those camaraderie, that culture, it's team environment, and we're competing in a healthy way. Another thing that's really important, excuse me. Okay. And so another thing that we do is we actually have a survey on how people want to be compensated. Because we just think, oh, money, just throw money against it, just throw commissions against it.

And that's what's going to motivate people. That's what's going to be their why, right? No. We actually say, okay, what are you going to do with the money? We have a survey about what's important to them. And we narrow that down. I know one of my guys wants to buy a ring for his future wife. I know one of my guys wants to buy a house for his kids. I know another one loves cars and he wants to soup up his cool new car that he just got. Or one of them has a sick mom and he's trying to take care of them. And so what we do is we say, okay, what's important to you? And then that gets them to care. And then how do you want to be compensated? Do you want us to buy a gift that's going to help achieve that goal?

Do you want us to give you more PTO and that's what you're going to win? That's what's going to be your prize. Do you want more comp? So we figure that out and we tailor it more custom to what people actually care about. And it does get them to drive. Yeah. And I think, I mean, that's, you know, the internal motivation. And so I think there's the question is, is I guess, how much do they need to care about the solution that they're repping, right? How much? So there's, there's, I think the fun factor, and I think you, you know, you're in a better position than most because those one, two, three poor SDRs sitting on an island, or sitting behind a phone at a, you know, in their studio apartment, like that's just brutal.

So you've got a group that you can work with that you can make fun, right? But that connection to the product service, whatever it is that they're selling, you know, I guess, how much do you, do they need to believe in that solution in order to be effective from your perspective? Yeah. I mean, that's our job as the executive team is we don't let companies come into our environment that we personally don't believe in as, as a company. I think the biggest thing that the company has to sell us on is, is this something that we can bring the market that we can get excited and get people behind? And if that's missing, we just don't want to work with those types of companies. Um, and it's just because of that exact feeling, like I'm not going to feel good as we all hear like, Oh, if you don't believe in it, you can't sell it.

Well, it's true. And, you know, it's, it's really, really important. So we try to filter that out before it hits their desk. And I think as a company, that's super important to figure that out first. But if, if, you know, you're hiring your own SDRs and you need to get them to believe in it, I think customer testimonials, you know, showcasing and just sell to your employees, what this is truly doing and really understanding that will be helping them believe in what they're doing. Cool. Yeah. I think that's, I tell that all the time. Like I wish that onboarding was, you know, when I used to have a decent amount of reps, the first thing that I would do is, uh, I'd give them a blank org chart and I would give them our customer list and the blank org chart, they would have to go in internal systems and meet with all the people to fill out our internal, uh, org chart so that they understand they had, they had to treat it just like a meeting.

So they'd have to prospect to the CFO and get meeting with the CFO of my company and then interview the CFO as if they were, you know, curious and then come back with a book report and that thing all filled out. So they understood why people loved working at the company, but then it was, Hey, I want you to go meet with the top 10 clients that we have and ask them what value they get out of us and that type of stuff. Cause that really instills that belief in like, Holy shit. Like, you know, we might not be the right fit for everybody, but we're a, for the right client, like we are, we are absolutely fantastic. And that belief comes through. So. Yeah. I mean, have them pair up with the C, you know, the, the CSM team, right?

So get on a client call and have them be a fly on the wall, do a ride along as an SDR, uh, or even the new AE and have them sit with the CSM team and see what it is that this product service offering is actually doing for the clients in real time. It's truly worth it. Let's kind of finish on, on the AI note here, right? Um, because it's coming fast for all of us, quite frankly. Um, but I think fastest for the SDR, I mean, almost every application I see for AI right now is front end of the funnel stuff, right? It's automating this, it's, it's creating emails, it's messaging, it's even shit. There's even air.ai that's making cold calls for people these days. Right. So I guess where, where, where's the line?

Same thing. Where, where's the good line of leveraging AI? And again, I think it's good to service contact information, those types of things, but what my vision of the future is Ironman, right? Is it, is the rep that uses the tech, the AI and the rep. So what is that? What is your vision for like where you're seeing the SDR role go with AI? Yeah, I agree. I mean, I don't think it's going to replace the SDR function, um, for many companies. Uh, it again, depends on the vertical, depends on what you're marketing. But at the end of the day, like that human element, if that is important to the buying cycle, it's not going to replace it, but it will help it. You know, right now we're using AI for messaging and helping our SDRs really write good messages as well as personalization, even though we feel relevance is more important than personalization, but it's using it that way.

It's making sure that our lists are accurate and making sure that our tools are accurate, um, when it comes to making those calls. But I don't think it's, it's, I don't know, it's too early to tell. I think right now when it comes to fully replacing it. And I think every AI caller or every AI, you know, conversation that is a true cold call through AI. It's saying, Hey, this is an AI person. And as soon as I, they say it and actually, you know, proclaim it, my trust goes down right away. I don't know about yours, but as soon as I hear that, I'm like, Oh, I don't trust this. I'll listen. It's cool. It's intuitive. It definitely gives me responses, but it automatically feel like a distrust there.

And I think that's, what's going to prevent, you know, people to, you know, move into action as much as if you had a human connecting with you and knowing that it is one, but using AI to, again, help that, that conversation happen. Yeah. I think that it's interesting because I think there's, there's a fine line, right? It was almost like when drift first started coming out with the chat bot stuff, like even before AI and that when the chat bots really hit, right? I remember a lot of people, um, or a lot of the chat bots like literally pretended to be human. Right. So it was like, Hey, I was, and you're like, Holy shit, like this thing, this person is super responsive. Right. But then after like the third or fourth, you know, chat, you're like, wait a minute.

And that's where I lose all trust. Like if I thought you were a human and then I found out your AI done, I don't give a shit how valuable you are. But if you, but what drift did was drift kind of raised its hand and said, Hey, I'm not human. I'm not, I just want to let you know that, but I can get you pretty close. And I think that's where the trust kind of where I'd say, okay, as long as I know I'm talking to a robot, then I might not fully trust it to get everything, but I'll sit, I'll, I'll, I'll play along. You know what I mean? And then I ultimately want to talk to somebody who knows what they're talking about. Um, but the, the, I think that's the, the, the fake is the fake part of it is where it gets scary because now, you know, the, you, you see these, these videos now of avatars with, if you're using, you know, video prospecting, it's like, these things look pretty damn accurate.

Like they look like humans. Right. So I, you know, I'm just, I think, I think there's almost like, you know, those guys up there pretending to be like Tom Cruise and all this deep, deep fake stuff is out there and it's, and it's really cool, but it's not real. Yeah. And so to your point, like the trust goes out the window once, you know, the smoke and mirrors, right. And you never want to smoke anything in sales, but I think that was starting to happen. And now they're like realizing, oh, if we say that we're an AI companion or an AI bot or, you know, not human, then maybe you'll trust me more. And I think you're right. But I also think it's more of like an email. I also think more of, it's like, you know, you know, a voicemail, it's a touch point.

And I think there's room for AI to be a touch point when it comes to getting the conversation started. But I think the SDR role still needs to be, okay, the conversation has started. We used AI to do it. Now what? Curiosity, you know what I mean? Connection, creativity, collaboration. And I think there's room for that in the sales cycle and it doesn't have to live with the AE entirely. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, I think email is the part where I see, I almost believe that, you know, the analogy I always use is why do I like Instagram, right? Well, the reason we don't like spam for instance, right, is because it's irrelevant, right? It's a bunch of shit and it's going to go on my, whatever. But the reason I like Instagram is because I've trained that algorithm.

Well, that algorithm has trained me, right? So I've liked things and I've stayed. So now almost every ad that I get is like, well, shit, I kind of want that, right? So I fast forward a little bit and I think there's enough information about all of us out there that AI is going to be smart enough where almost every email in my inbox is going to be a super hyper personalized relevant email. And quite frankly, do I care that that's coming from a human? No, I don't. Now, do I care that I talk to a human? Absolutely. So I think there's going to be this shift of, I don't necessarily know if AI, maybe using intent data and all that other stuff and pointing it in the right direction is what AIs, SCRs are going to do, but not necessarily writing every single email that comes out of an inbox, you know, probably in the next two to five years.

Sure. Absolutely. And I think to the point of connecting on email with those short, you know, text messaging, like communication to tee up the phone call or to just, you know, ping you to let you know, I just sent you something on LinkedIn is, is the way that it's going to go. And I think you're right. Cool. Awesome. Well, any, any last parting thoughts before we wrap things up? Um, no, I mean, I think, I think there's a great conversation, by the way. I think that, you know, there's a lot to see. And I think that there is definitely going to, you know, have an evolution in our space, but I think going back to what we said about leveling up, you know, I think we just, as the SDR and the AEs, like, you know, the, the gold rush is over and now we have to actually go ahead and, and, and get better at our craft and be, um, you know, that's why, you know, what you're doing is so amazing because, you know, we need to all level up right now in this, in this time.

Yeah. I mean, including us, right? Like, I mean, I may have cop on my part, right? I, I, I got lazy, right? I was like, oh, this is, look at this shit. Everything's going good. And I, and I, you know, and not that I didn't work and didn't put, you know, go put in the effort is, is I didn't pay attention to the details. I, I kind of assumed certain things and it was, it was easy. Right. So, so getting back to those basics and, and really getting back to fundamentals, I think is, you know, just like anything, right. It's like the, the people who succeed are the ones who do the fundamentals well, and they do them consistently. Yeah, absolutely. The long, like you said, the low hanging fruit is, is not where it used to be.

And we have to go out and look for the fish elsewhere and be better and more strategic about it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a brave new world, my friend. I think this year, this is, this, this year is, I hope people are paying attention. Actually, I tell a lot of people they should, they should journal these days, because I think if you journaled this year specifically, and you look back at this in 10 years, you'll realize that we are in literally the transition year, I think of, of, of everything, not just sales. Right. Because the way I look at it is, you know, chat GPT, it's almost, it's almost like Skynet, right. It's like, we woke it up and, uh, that shit ain't going back in the box. And so we got to figure out how to evolve with it or else we're going to get replaced by it though.

Yeah. You gotta, you gotta move forward with this. You gotta move forward with it. You can't pretend it's not there and you can't ignore it at all. Cause it'll, it'll take your market share for sure. Yeah. All right, Gabe, tell, uh, tell everybody, uh, giving people a little bit of sense of like, who's the, for you, who's the target audience, right? Who are you looking for? And then how, how can people, whether it's reps who want to, you know, look for a job or whatever it is, or, or companies who are looking to do some outsourcing here, where can they find out more information? Well, we really have two audiences, of course, the SDR, you know, if you've done it before and you found yourself maybe, you know, displaced because of, you know, decisions that happened over the last few years and you're looking for an SDR role, you know, you don't have to be young.

We have senior, uh, you know, it's not seniors, but more in their, you know, later part of their life that are looking to, you know, you can say it. I'm a senior. I'm 47. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not just designed for the 20 year olds anymore. It's, it's really, you know, a role that has evolved dramatically and it's an opportunity where, you know, you can really plant your flag and, and, and, and do really, really well as an SDR. Uh, and we are definitely looking for people like that. Sorry, I'm coming over a cold. That's all right. Yeah. That's why we have the editor. Right. But, um, yeah. And then the other, you know, obviously audience is, you know, the CMOs, CROs, CEOs that are looking to scale, looking to push through this and, uh, do it in a way in which, uh, they don't have to build it from scratch or, you know, build it on their own or, or spend a ton of capital just to test it out.

You know, we can help build a white labeled program for you, completely tailored to your offering and, and deliver results that you're looking for. Love it. Awesome. And if they want to find out more information about you, what LinkedIn best place or? Yeah. LinkedIn by, by far, you know, just go to my LinkedIn, uh, Gabriel Lulo and, uh, or if you want to learn more about the company, alu.io. Perfect. Awesome. Good. Well, thanks for coming on, man. I appreciate it. I enjoyed the conversation. It's always easy. It's always good when there's somebody who kind of knows the language, if you will, and, and, and is in the shit, just like I am right now to talk through what's going on. So I appreciate you coming on.

Thanks so much, John. I appreciate it. Absolutely. And everybody else, hopefully you enjoy the conversation as much as I did and got to think a little bit about your own role, your own company or anything like that. And just, again, just let's level up together here. And like I always say at the end of my podcast, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day went or you think it's going, make somebody smile and you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I'll see you on the other side. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now.

And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going. It would mean the world to me. If you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also check out my new website, jbarrows.com. Well, you'll find even more ways to engage. There's a ton of free content and you can also get trained from me directly as an individual or for your team. Look, I'm out there selling every day, just like you are. And I'm doing my best to stay on top of all the latest trends in sales and technology. So if you're looking to level up and you give a shit about this profession of sales, let's connect and make it happen together.

And I'll see you next time.