🎙️Transcript: Sales Development During COVID
Folloze
"Sales Development in the New Reality"
Eric Bauer, Adi Aloni, Brian Remington, Ralph Barsi
November 2020
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Summary
This collaborative workshop, the eighth in Folloze's Reroute Your Marketing series, brings together sales development leaders Ralph Barsi (VP Global Inside Sales at Tray.io) and Brian Remington (Head of Global Inside Sales at Skedulo) to discuss how SDRs and sales development teams can succeed in the challenging COVID-19 environment.
Moderated by Eric Bauer and Adi Aloni from Folloze, the session emphasizes that this is not a one-way webinar but an open discussion where participants are encouraged to share their experiences and best practices.
The conversation addresses both pandemic-specific challenges and timeless issues in sales development, particularly the critical relationship between marketing and sales development teams.
The discussion covers practical adjustments for remote work (from webcam positioning to calendar invite simplification), the proper application of empathy in business outreach, and the fundamental disconnect that often exists between marketing and sales development teams who don't understand each other's roles and KPIs.
Through audience participation and real-world examples, the panelists explore service level agreements, account-based approaches, and whether XDRs should report to marketing or sales.
The session concludes with actionable takeaways including Ralph's powerful opening line that's working during COVID ("Hey Brian, I know it's a weird time for a biz dev call, but do you have a minute?") and Brian's framework for listening to XDRs, sharing customer use cases, and informing talk tracks with relevant data.
BIG Takeaways
• Empathy Belongs on the Business, Not the Personal – Ralph Barsi reframes the overused concept of empathy by redirecting it from awkward personal inquiries ("How's your family?") to business-focused understanding.
Instead of tone-deaf personal questions to strangers, lead with empathy towards their company, the prospects their company serves, the customers they're trying to help, and the problems their business is solving.
This approach maintains authenticity while respecting professional boundaries. The key is understanding that decision makers are revisiting and reprioritizing initiatives - whether monthly, quarterly, or annual - and the more sensitive you are to those business challenges, the more meaningful your empathy becomes.
This business-focused empathy creates genuine connection without the awkwardness of forced personal concern from a stranger.
• "I Know It's a Weird Time for a Biz Dev Call" Is Pure Gold – Ralph shares a specific opening line that's generating exceptional response rates: "Hey Brian, I know it's a weird time for a biz dev call, but do you have a minute?"
This simple acknowledgment of the current reality disarms prospects and creates immediate authenticity. Brian Remington adds that teams need more prescription during uncertain times, not autonomy - including softening CTAs, reducing 17-touch sequences to more palatable lengths, and being more directive with teams.
The combination of acknowledging reality while maintaining business focus has proven remarkably effective.
Companies should also bucket their prospects into red, yellow, and green categories based on their current situation, adjusting approach accordingly.
• Marketing and Sales Development Speak Different Languages by Default – A fundamental challenge unrelated to COVID: marketers typically don't come from selling backgrounds, and SDRs don't come from marketing backgrounds.
This creates two entities that don't fully comprehend each other's activities, purposes, or KPIs. The solution involves regular cross-functional education like Tray's "Team Tuesdays" where every Tuesday from 12-1 PM, a representative from a business unit presents to SDRs through various formats (fireside chats, Q&As, round tables).
SDRs on the front line making first impressions need to understand not just marketing but all business units, enabling them to connect dots for prospects and begin the diagnosis process that account executives will build upon.
• SLAs Must Exist at Three Levels: Marketing-SDR, SDR-Sales, and by Lead Source – Service level agreements are rare but critical. Example SLA: SDR follows up on leads within 20 business days with 8-10 touches.
But it goes deeper - companies must establish SLAs by lead source (A1 leads vs C3 leads, "contact us" forms vs content syndication). There must also be an SLA between SDRs and sales - if an SDR tees up a high-caliber meeting but the AE "lets the weeds grow around it," value depreciates daily.
For account-based approaches, Ralph suggests managing it like a project using tools like Asana or Microsoft Teams, with regular syncs between tiger teams.
Brian emphasizes that accountability and visibility are huge - weekly meetings reviewing top 10 accounts, understanding conversion rates, and ensuring everyone knows when their step triggers the next step.
• The XDR Reporting Structure Depends on Multiple Variables – Whether XDRs report to marketing or sales isn't a fixed answer - it depends on: Are you hybrid or specialized? What percentage of pipeline comes from inbound vs outbound? What's your sales team structure (SMB, commercial, enterprise)? What career paths do XDRs want (marketing/product vs sales)? Where is your business in its evolution?
Brian notes it's okay to change as you evolve. Ralph confirms he's led teams under both structures successfully. The key insight: there's no right answer, but leadership must ensure the entire organization works in harmony regardless of reporting structure.
One participant notes SDRs are "in the middle of everything," making either structure viable.
• Stop Talking About Your Company, Start Developing Gratitude – Ralph's three immediate action items are powerful:
First, collectively decide to be successful with a mission that sees only goals, not obstacles.
Second, stop leaving 90-second voicemails about your company's history, latest blog post, or new features - "please stop" and focus on them instead.
Third, develop an attitude of gratitude - every SDR should have thank you cards on their desk. Send them to gatekeepers who helped you reach executives, include $5 for coffee, or thank long-term mentors. "It's that little stuff that really, really counts that you could do today."
This shift from ego-driven monologue to other-focused dialogue transforms both results and relationships.
• Marketing's COVID Opportunity: Get in the Trenches and Iterate Daily – The pandemic presents marketing's chance to shine by abandoning traditional campaign thinking (months) for daily/hourly iteration.
As one participant notes, this is a stress test requiring agility - marketing must leave their "castle" of high-level messaging to be in the trenches listening to calls.
The methodology involves weekly learning cycles: what worked (three successful calls), what failed (two disasters), what was medium? Synthesize and distribute insights company-wide.
Brian's action framework: Listen to XDRs (they're on the front line), Share customer use cases (where you fit in their COVID recovery plan), and Inform talk tracks with current data (not 2018 templates).
Crisis flattens organizations, making everyone a leader - marketing must seize this moment to prove strategic value through tactical execution.
Transcript
Eric Bauer (00:00):
Out with the first, the brave souls that go out, see what happens, and then we'll make...
Brian Remington (00:04):
The decision. Don't test it early. Adopter is not the way to do it in this world.
Eric Bauer (00:07):
That's right. I do not want to be on the bleeding edge of this one by any means.
Adi Aloni (00:12):
All right. I started the recording.
Eric Bauer (00:15):
Outstanding.
Adi Aloni (00:16):
Yep. So let's get started here.
Eric Bauer (00:18):
All right.
Adi Aloni (00:19):
I'm expecting a few more people, but we can get started.
Eric Bauer (00:21):
Yeah, no worries. Well, Adi, thank you very much. And so we have a new co-host today. So my name's Eric Bauer. For those of you I don't know, I run alliances and business development here at Folloze.
I was a customer for about almost three and a half years, working I think biweekly with Adi on our CSU as my customer success manager for almost four years before I decided to join the company last July. And so this is number eight in our Reroute Your Marketing Workshop.
And I think a lot of those familiar faces kind of know really what the format is and the fact that we're really trying to drive some collaboration. Today we're going to be talking about sales development in the new reality. So some really, really great insights as far as how SDRs and sales development can really succeed within the challenges that we have today.
Eric Bauer (01:33):
And this kind of builds on - as we talked about, this is number eight in the series. All of it, all the content's available, which is great, up on folloze.com/reroute. So if you want to... Yeah, exactly. So want to encourage the fact that this is open discussion, one of my skills. It's great. Exactly. That's right. That's right. You're wonderful with that.
And so this is an open discussion. We really want to drive that home. It's not where we sit here and pontificate and just preach to you guys. This is really meant for two-way communication. So it's great those of you are able to join on video to see the smiling faces. It's not a webinar. You are not only welcome but encouraged to participate, whether that's through the chat window and having questions or whether that's by raising your hand and just jumping in on the conversations.
Please share your stories, your best practices, your experiences. We're all here as a community. And of course, as I mentioned, all the resources are available on folloze.com/reroute.
Eric Bauer (02:35):
So we're talking about sales development in the new reality and we thought that no better people than Ralph and Brian to kind of have this discussion. So what I'd love to do is take a minute and Ralph and Brian, if you guys would kind of introduce yourself, give a little bit about your background before we kind of start diving into some of this discussion.
Ralph Barsi (02:35):
Thanks, Eric. Good morning everybody. I'm Ralph Barsi. I oversee the global inside sales team at Tray.io in San Francisco and have been there for the last eight months.
Prior to that, I ran the global sales development organization at ServiceNow based in Santa Clara and have spent the first half of my career as an individual carrying a bag and carrying a quota. In the latter half, I've really centered my attention and focus on building and leading sales and sales development organizations. So I'm thrilled to be here and happy to talk with everybody.
Eric Bauer (03:14):
Awesome, thanks Ralph. Brian?
Brian Remington (03:16):
Yeah, good morning everybody. Or afternoon if there's a few of you in the mid to east region. Yeah, so similar to Ralph, been in sales for a long, long time. I'm currently heading the global inside sales team at Skedulo, which is a mobile workforce management solution.
I've been very lucky in my career to be parts of companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn - started off as an individual contributor and doing the work and then very lucky to get into leadership and really found a place that I was able to give back to and replicate sort of why I had success in my career. And that's standing on the shoulders of a lot of other people. So really, really excited to be in front of people like this and not just one-way talking, but love that it's collaborative and we get to hear from the audience as well. Same here.
Eric Bauer (04:07):
Alright. Alright, that's great. And for those of you who don't know Adi yet, do you want to kind of remind everybody as co-host of this initiative?
Adi Aloni (04:17):
So I think most of the people here know me. I'm VP of Customer Success at Folloze, and me and David and Carl Lane established this workshop eight sessions ago and love to see it as an ongoing community.
Eric Bauer (04:34):
Cool. Alright. Shall we get started?
Adi Aloni (04:37):
Yes, do it.
Eric Bauer (04:37):
Wonderful. Alright, so over to you guys, Ralph and Brian.
Ralph Barsi (04:41):
Yeah, happy to take over. Thanks for having us everyone. So I think my hat's off to you also because here we are on a Friday and you're investing time to sharpen your skills and your competencies, get better at your craft and ultimately make a stronger impact on our entire profession and ecosystem. So hat's off to you.
So great question here. What's changed for sales development professionals? Yeah, number one, we're all working from home. I'll start with that one because we're all logged in from home as well.
Ralph Barsi (05:11):
And one thing that means for sales development reps is they've really got to get crisp on their messaging. Number one, because a lot of work now is done via email and via video chat like this versus the traditional phone. I mean, that being said, people are still picking up the phone and business is still being done without question, but we do have to make some adjustments and we do have to adapt to this new remote environment.
So sometimes that means paying attention to a couple details. When you forward a calendar invite to a prospect, let's just say you're using Zoom like we are here, Zoom will often default to populate that calendar invite with probably eight to 10 phone numbers, a couple links, the meeting ID, and what we want to pay attention to is making things very simple for our prospects.
Ralph Barsi (06:10):
We want it to be very easy to meet with us, very easy to talk with us. So you might want to consider scraping out all the meat from the calendar invite body and just include the link to the Zoom meeting as well as maybe a dial-in to call.
Another thing to consider is when we're online, like we are now on webcams, you've got to make sure that you've got your camera at eye level and if you want to go ahead and make a hundred to $150 investment in a high-def webcam, that's not going to hurt. You don't have to go so far as getting a podcast mic like this, but you do have to be mindful of how you're coming across from an audio perspective and from a video perspective so that you're looking people in the eyes when you're talking to them.
So there's little nuances like that that you have to keep in mind when you're working from home. So I'll start there and then Brian, I'll let you take the next one if you want to, unless you want me to just keep rolling.
Brian Remington (07:09):
You can, yeah, go ahead and keep rolling and then I can jump in or where I see fit.
Ralph Barsi (07:15):
Cool. Okay. So key industries and companies as we know are seeing massive layoffs. It breaks my heart to see it. It's in the news almost daily at this point. Depending on the industry, depending on the company size, depending on where that company is in the maturity cycle of growth, a lot of people are losing their jobs.
And so for those of us who do have a job, it should drive an attitude of gratitude. We have to pay attention to the details when we wake up in the morning that we're breathing, we're not in any pain, we get to sit on a nice webinar and have a good chat today and we get to do work. And so hopefully each minute counts and we're making the best of it.
Secondly, those that have been laid off, how can we help them? Perhaps it's a forum like this that's going to inspire or motivate people to think differently about how they're approaching their profession, how they're approaching their craft, and hopefully they can better brand themselves in the marketplace, add some value into the lives of other professionals and become that attractive eligible candidate for that next venture in their career.
Ralph Barsi (08:26):
Another thing I think about is number three, the decision makers have to revisit and reprioritize their initiatives. So we've been hearing for the last 60-plus days since we've been sheltering in place that we need to lead with empathy. We have to be sensitive, we have to be mindful in our conversations. I can't emphasize that enough. I'm getting tired of hearing the empathy word.
However, here's how I've spun it and here's how my team has taken the empathetic approach. It's not so much that I want to call Brian, say he's my prospect and say, "Hey Brian, it's Ralph with Tray.io. Hey man, how are you doing? How's your family doing? Are you okay? What's going on?" I just think that's a bit tone deaf, especially if I don't know Brian when I'm calling him.
So I want to have a heart and I want to make sure that he's doing well, but instead my empathy is going to be driven towards his company, towards the prospects that his company is trying to do business with, the customers that his company is trying to serve, the problems his business is trying to solve. That's where I'm going to lead with empathy.
Ralph Barsi (10:01):
And so having that understanding before you pick up the phone, before you send off that email, that hey, if you're reaching out to a decision maker, they're in the midst of revisiting and reprioritizing their corporate initiatives. And it could even be their monthly initiatives or their quarterly initiatives. And the more sensitive and aware you are of those, the better you can lead with authenticity and then the empathy is really meaningful.
Brian Remington (10:01):
Yeah, that's massive, Ralph. I think that's a huge thing right now, and if you don't mind, I'll jump in and grab, kind of put four and five together a little bit.
Ralph Barsi (10:09):
Excellent.
Brian Remington (10:09):
In that young professionals, as much as verbally they will tell you they want autonomy and creativity - they want the ability to go out there and do stuff and utilize their experience - the reality is they don't have a lot of experience and what they're looking for in times like this is prescription.
And the unfortunate reality is yesterday's playbook is less relevant because of the things that Ralph is talking about, but also that we do need to tweak not just the actual messaging piece of it, but softening our CTAs a bit. Taking that 17-touch sequence and probably bringing it down to a much more appetizing, if that's a word... Palatable. I love it. Palatable. Thank you. There it is.
Eric Bauer (10:54):
Appetizing is a lot more fun though.
Brian Remington (10:56):
Appetizing, come on, marketing. They want to find things to help me with afterwards. Please reach out to me after to help.
Carlyn Manly (11:03):
Brian, we're already using it on our material.
Brian Remington (11:06):
I love it. I love it. But yeah, it's just changing the way we're doing things and while we are, to Ralph's point, leading with empathy - not just empathy but compassion as well - showing people that, yeah, we completely understand the situation that they're in, but hey, we're here because we know we can help you because we have examples of how we're helping companies thrive during this moment.
But as a marketing organization, as a product marketing organization, being able to help those ADRs as they're making those changes because there is a hesitancy to fail, especially right now. You do have a number of companies and we're kind of bucketing them into red, yellow, and green. There are some companies that are very lucky and are in the green, like the Zooms and those type of organizations.
Brian Remington (12:27):
And then there are companies at Skedulo - our number one focus in 2020 is the healthcare industry, specifically acute healthcare. That was red for a long, long, long time. So instead of just saying, "Hey, don't touch," we really, really had to triage and sit down with people and start over-communicating what the right thing to do, when the right thing to do it is, and what that actually looks like. So being a little bit more directive with the team is incredibly important right now.
Eric Bauer (12:27):
And I think one of the things that I kind of took out of that is the empathy side, right? It's not calling and saying, "Hey Brian, how are you?" Right? Because you're right, Ralph, you don't have that personal connection and it is a little bit awkward or tone deaf as you said.
But I think it's really empathy towards what their companies are facing and feeling. "Hey, you still need to succeed in this time. You still need to do business. How can we work together to do that?" Of course, we want to make sure you're well, but make it more, have that business spin to it rather than just the personal, so you don't come off as inauthentic and just trying to play up the situation. So I think that was some really great insight.
Ralph Barsi (12:57):
Absolutely. Let's see. Okay, what are some challenges unrelated to COVID-19 between marketers and - we're saying XDR because Brian's organization calls them ADRs, mine calls them SDRs. We have BDRs, LDRs, I've heard it all. Just so we all understand that that's the same role and we're talking about the same thing.
So some challenges that I've seen not only today at Tray, but really throughout my 25-plus year career - I don't know why, but it doesn't seem to change. What's that?
Eric Bauer (13:36):
It was just a little bit of feedback.
Ralph Barsi (13:37):
Oh, sorry about that. So oftentimes marketers don't come from selling backgrounds, and at the same time, SDRs aren't coming from marketing backgrounds. So right out of the gate, you have two entities that don't fully comprehend what the other one's doing or the purpose behind a lot of their activity and charter. And so it's critical to communicate that to one another.
The best I've seen this done is some companies have held lunch and learn meetings. For example, at Tray we have what's called Team Tuesdays, specifically for the sales development team. And on Team Tuesday, every single Tuesday from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM we have a representative from a business unit somewhere within the company present to the SDRs, and there's a number of formats we can consider.
Ralph Barsi (14:37):
We could do a fireside chat, we could do a Q&A session, we could do just a 40-minute deck with Q&A at the end. We could sit around a round table and just have an open discussion about the charter, the objectives, the KPIs, et cetera.
But the point is that the sales development reps who are on the front line for the most part, making the first impression of that company's brand, having those initial conversations with the prospective marketplace - the better they understand not only what marketing does, but all the business units in the company. What they can do now is connect the dots for their prospect and they can immediately acquaint themselves with where the prospect is in their business and they have a very clear understanding of the mechanics of how their prospect's business is run.
Therefore, they're going to be able to surface problems that are going to be happening with personas that they're talking to, and they can begin that diagnosis process that Brian was alluding to earlier so that an account executive and other stakeholders can begin the prescription process. So it's really important to have those communication lines super open and super transparent about what each team is doing. I blame, for lack of a better word, the leaders of either organization if there's a disconnect. It comes down to leadership. So that's something to keep in mind for any of the leaders that are with us today.
Eric Bauer (15:56):
So Ralph, do you see a situation where the SDR scripts are kind of co-written with marketing? Because you're right, a salesperson is going to write something in a certain way, a marketing person's going to write something in a certain way. Do you ever see or would you recommend coming together to co-create those messages or is that something that isn't super common?
Ralph Barsi (16:20):
No, it's the former, Eric. I would absolutely encourage the coming together of those teams, but I would include sales and marketing in those discussions. I've been in many situations, as have most of you on this call, where sales can't write well, marketing can write really well, and vice versa.
Sometimes marketing, for example, might be a little too pitchy, can't wait to talk about our company, our offering, our history, the new iteration and version of our offering, whereas sales is a little more mindful of the problems that these prospects are solving, the industry trends, the biggest issues that the key personas are encountering on a daily basis. But unless that collaboration's happening, it's an uphill climb for everybody and there's a ton of finger pointing and it's super uncomfortable.
Brian Remington (17:12):
Awesome. Yeah, I think something that we're doing that we've always did in some way, shape or form, but right now what you're hearing is it's about personalization and relevance. And I think that's a perfect opportunity for sales and marketing to come together and sort of bifurcate that approach and say, "Hey, we'll do all the daily, the personalization. We'll use amazing tools like yours, but we need that context. We need the data, we need some KPIs, we need some bullet points that marketing can help provide, and we need it written in a way that's a little bit more professional than what maybe they're used to writing on a daily basis." Yep.
Ralph Barsi (17:52):
Number three is really important. There is rarely a service level agreement between the two teams, and when there is, you seem to be working in harmony. And a great example of an SLA is that an SDR is going to follow up on a lead within 20 business days, eight to 10 times - they're going to apply eight to 10 touches against that lead.
And it depends now - does your company score the leads? Is it an A1 lead versus a C3 lead or is it not scored at all? And we're simply sorting by conversion rate based on lead source where "contact us" is going to convert much higher than maybe a third-party content syndication lead. You have to have those types of discussions with both parties as well.
Ralph Barsi (19:10):
So for us, what we've done with the sales development reps is we do our very best along with marketing to educate them on the investment alone that goes into the cost per lead and the understanding that, look, marketing's doing a lot of heavy lifting and making big investments towards these leads so that they can yield the MQLs that are going to serve up high quality meetings and pipeline opportunities for our team.
And until they understand that, it's very difficult for them to understand, "Oh, I understand now that there is a handoff between marketing and between sales development and we have to do our due diligence and be held accountable for our side of the coin, our SLA," and then take it a step further.
There's also got to be an SLA in place between sales development and sales. I may tee up a killer high-caliber meeting for Brian to grab the baton from me and run with and create a great pipeline opportunity, but Brian lets the weeds grow around that meeting and it depreciates by the day. And so Brian and the sales team, they're accountable to me in sales development to grab those leads or grab those meetings rather and run those pipeline opportunities through to closure and provide that closed-loop feedback.
Adi Aloni (20:01):
Ralph, I'm interested to hear how does this SLA look like? I think it's very clear when you're talking about the MQL-SQL world. How does this look like in an account-based world?
Ralph Barsi (20:15):
Oh, great. In an account-based world? So it depends. It depends on what the balance of inbound and outbound is. In an account-based world, so let's say it's mostly outbound - right now I'm a top account executive at my company and I've got 25 tier-one accounts that the company is working on from an account-based standpoint.
We have to make sure that I'm going to execute, let's say 25 touches over the course of a quarter, and I'm going to execute those touches with a unique narrative for the five different key contacts that I'm reaching out to. They might be in different business units throughout this enterprise organization and we have to work in concert on that SLA. We have to make sure that one-on-ones or team meetings and sync-ups are happening on a regular basis between the tiger teams that we've created in our company to represent that account-based effort. Otherwise, it's really just sales-led and that's not a true account-based effort, right?
Brian Remington (21:15):
Yeah. I would love to jump in too because I've seen it happen many different ways, but accountability and visibility are a huge part of the SLA when you have account-based. Because depending on how you have it set up, the one I'm speaking of specifically is around ADR does step one, AE does step two, marketing does step three, SDR does step four.
If you're not meeting regularly and understanding where either things are slowing down or people don't know for sure that when they do their step, the next step is coming so they don't know when their next step is - that is huge. So that SLA is built really more around accountability. Maybe it's in your system, maybe it's every Friday, people coming together with a list of the 10 top accounts you're doing and understanding where they are, what sort of conversion rate you're having, open rates, those types of things.
Ralph Barsi (22:04):
In addition to a QBR forum, for example, if you're not managing that account-based process in let's say Salesforce or whatever CRM you use, you're going to have to manage it like a project. So maybe Asana comes in or Microsoft Teams or something to keep that collaboration going and keep everybody in check.
Because you can't be relying on the salespeople to be logging detailed notes as to why there's only X touches versus Y touches, and then everyone's like, "Hey, wait a minute, we thought that you'd be reaching out much more often." It's just not going to fly that way. So I would suggest, and what I've seen work well is when you manage it like it's a project.
Ralph Barsi (22:48):
And then that informs number four. Sometimes both teams are managing and measuring different KPIs. Sales development reps for the most part are measured and compensated on the quality meetings that they book or the demos that they conduct or the opportunities that they create for their account executives.
Whereas on the marketing side, we're interested in inquiries, we're interested in leads, we're interested in MQLs, and then as you break out the marketing organization, we have product marketing KPIs and event marketing KPIs. We've got SEO KPIs, so on and so forth. So we have to make sure that at least there's an understanding from both parties as to what KPIs are being measured and what matters most to that audience.
Brian Remington (23:33):
Yeah, ADRs can be very single-threaded if all they're compensated on is meetings. Great example - why it's important for marketing to sit down and have this bi-directional conversation is sometimes sales has been known to say, "Oh, these leads suck," or "I'm not touching them."
Well, the reality is they're content syndication leads, but they're used to getting hand-raisers and demo requests, but no one sat down with them and said, "Hey, there's a different approach. We don't expect you to get a perfect meeting with the CEO because a TechTarget lead came in. We're expecting you to start educating this lead a little bit more."
So sitting down with them, walking through each lead source and explaining what the proposed conversion rate and outcome is then helps the ADR. And again, that's on leadership to build a process and a follow-up motion as well, but helping them understand, "Okay, my job is not to get a meeting today on my first touch with this person. My job is to nurture that account because something's going on in there that eventually should put us in the driver's seat to have a conversation."
Eric Bauer (24:42):
It's really good points. And one thing I want to bring up, so Chris, if you had some great questions in the chat, if you want to kind of ask Ralph and Brian, we would love to hear those questions.
Chris Ortolano (24:51):
Thank you so much, Eric. I appreciate the shout out. Ralph and Brian, I'm working with a client right now and they really have to re-adapt their go-to-market message. Obviously it's a bit dated and it's an opportunity for marketing, sales and product to actually come together, but this is going to be a bit time-consuming.
So we're taking an agile approach rather than change everything at once. We're looking at small shifts and we're getting customer development feedback while we go through. Do you think that's a time to also sort of level up these ADRs, XDRs to teach them about building these business relationships to use this new go-to-market message so that it's less product-focused and maybe more problem-focused?
Ralph Barsi (25:35):
I'm a big fan of that, Chris, and I think the SDRs, ADRs - that team will be able to execute on some A/B testing as well while you're trying to fine-tune that messaging so you see what's really resonating, what's not, and where lift is being shown - i.e., meetings are being created and opportunities are being created as a result of this new messaging.
And again, I couldn't emphasize enough the importance of focus on problems and the problems that are solved versus our product, our company, our history, et cetera.
Brian Remington (26:12):
And I think take advantage of any opportunity where change is the number one priority. So if you're going from a single standalone product to a platform product or you're going from an SMB company to an enterprise company, there's some sort of latency and there's a gap there and there's change that needs to happen.
While you don't want to overwhelm your ADR team, take any opportunity where change is happening and decide what else can we teach them. Because once their brain is in that "give me more" mode, it's a perfect time to position. And then it's that - what does our business need? Those reps are talking to the prospects, so what data are those prospects sharing that should be advising our objection handling or the product team or those types of things that we may have missed?
Chris Ortolano (27:01):
Absolutely. Brian, it speaks to my second question, which is how to develop a framework for a positive feedback loop. Because if one or two ADRs start to understand messaging that's opening up new doors, increasing engagement with additional stakeholders, how do we distribute that across the ADR organization?
Brian Remington (27:18):
Wow, that's a really great question. I think it depends on the structure. It depends on do you have a product team? For instance, our product team's in Vietnam, our sales team is global. It's a hard thing to do, but what I would say is it's harder to have all of the people in a room and everybody communicating.
I think you need to have a single source of data from the ADR team that then has a point person who's now responsible for disseminating that in meetings, having the tiger team of people that represent their organizations that can make decisions quickly and decide how to triage the information that's coming through. But then giving those ADRs and other people in the business the opportunity to show up to those meetings and say, "Hey, Chris had five amazing conversations this week, so I asked him to join so you can hear it directly from him." Versus again, seven people in a room all trying to not speak over one another but all with amazing information and then less gets done.
Chris Ortolano (28:21):
I love that approach. Thanks Brian.
Ralph Barsi (28:22):
Yeah, of course. And if you leverage tools where you can actually record and save your calls, that's super powerful as well where you can be listening to what great calls sound like and what really crummy calls sound like at the same time. And you can iterate in real time. It's super effective.
Chris Ortolano (28:39):
Through a call library.
Ralph Barsi (28:41):
Yes, exactly. It's like a knowledge repository. That's exactly right.
Chris Ortolano (28:46):
Love it. Thanks Ralph.
Ralph Barsi (28:48):
Great question, Chris. Thanks.
Carlyn Manly (28:49):
I want to mention one more thing about educated learning. I come from the product methodology and product-market fit is what we're concerned about, and there's something to be said about how you learn and iterate that could be applied also to sales development and marketing messages and all of that, which is truly doing quick iterations.
But as an org, essentially very analytically try and say, "Well, those are the things that worked. We had three calls that worked with that messaging. Those two calls were disastrous, and those were kind of medium," and try and every week decide what have we learned both on the negative and on the positive as a group and then push the envelope next week, which is what have we learned this week?
Carlyn Manly (29:51):
And I think that's something really tricky to do, especially in larger groups, but establishing not just "this was a great call," but what have we learned? And so every week you make progress.
Now in this environment it's pretty tricky because things change so quickly. The sentiment of customers four weeks ago is very different than today. It's actually four weeks ago - "Don't talk to me about buying new things." Now it's like, "I need to run my business. How am I going to do this?"
So I think it's worthwhile to - I think that collective learning really is a leadership and process exercise in my mind, and since it has to happen in kind of a matter of days, it has to be very methodological but also not very complex. Just simple things like what worked, what didn't work, and just make sure that everybody - you synthesize the information and you distribute that back to the company. I've seen it work again in other areas, but I think it's a methodology of how do we learn as a company in general that applies to anything.
Ralph Barsi (30:50):
Reminds me of two quotes, David. The first is "manage what you measure" or "you manage what you measure." And the second is "you can't win if you don't keep score."
Carlyn Manly (31:03):
Exactly. Love it. Keep score.
Ralph Barsi (31:06):
Excellent. Okay, so why don't we go to the next slide?
Brian Remington (31:09):
Yeah, I'll jump in here. So great question. Who should XDRs report to - marketing or sales? I think if you talk to 50 companies, you'd probably get a split, but I think the answer is it depends. It depends on what you truly need from your XDR team at the moment, and it's why it changes quite often as companies evolve.
But some of the bullet points here around are you a hybrid ADR team or a specialized ADR team? I have seen specialized teams where the outbound team is much more KPI'd around the sales organization and the inbound team or MDR team, some people would call it, is much more specialized around the marketing KPIs.
If you have a hybrid team, it depends on if 70% of your pipeline's coming from inbound and 90% of their activity is coming from inbound versus you are really leaning on going bigger and taking that challenger approach and starting a vertical - you probably need a little bit more of a blend of those two.
Brian Remington (32:11):
Similar to inbound or outbound heavy - there's a difference between how much of your pipeline is being driven by inbound or outbound and how much time your XDR team is spending on inbound or outbound, and you have to be very conscious of that.
Whereas before you start specializing, which most companies that are smaller, under $50 million, are probably going to do everything they can to have as small a team as possible and try to do as much as you can with the team you have by staying hybrid.
The structure of your sales team is important too. So if you're lucky enough to have a large sales organization - you have SMB, you have commercial, you have enterprise - that's not a one-size-fits-all type of approach for an SDR team.
So sometimes when it's transactional and you are doing a lot more business from air cover and events and those types of things versus you are doing a lot more introduction and you're doing a lot more ABM higher up in the business.
Brian Remington (33:18):
The career path for the XDR is a huge part. Ralph brought this up yesterday - if you're hiring amazingly smart people that want to be in marketing and product and engineers and these types of things, you want them surrounded by and led by people that can help nurture that. If you're simply hiring your next closing account executive, very important. Again, same answer - to surround them with the people that can nurture their careers. That's what today keeps people in their seats.
And then where are you as a business? Are you going to change every six months? Are you going to change every year? Are you pretty locked into your process? It's okay to change. That's the other piece too. As you evolve and as change happens, like we talked about on the last slide, when change is happening within your organization, take a step back and say, "Huh, what else maybe should we change right now because we're going through this motion that could help us come out and thrive and be stronger a couple months from now or a quarter from now?" What do you think, Ralph?
Ralph Barsi (34:17):
Yeah, I don't have too much to add. I mean, Brian hit on all the key points from experience. I've led teams that have rolled into marketing as well as teams that have rolled into sales. I think there are pros and cons to both, but this hits on all the major stuff. It really depends on all these factors. And so I would weigh into all of them before deciding as a company, if that's where you're at, where you want this team to roll into.
Eric Bauer (34:47):
Do you see them switching? I think you mentioned that during the maturity, right? And so just because you make a decision today doesn't mean that's a decision you're stuck with and kind of reevaluating. That seems to make a lot of sense.
Ralph Barsi (34:57):
That's right. And there's no right or wrong answer to that, Eric. So I have seen it switch. I don't see it often, but I have seen it switch and I've seen it switch and do really, really well. I haven't seen it switch and not do well. It's just a matter - again, it comes down to leadership who's leading from the front and making sure that the entire organization is working in harmony. And I mean, I know it sounds a little fluffy, but it's important. It's really, really critical.
Ryan Lennox (35:29):
And I think it's an interesting concept because it's streamlined, right? It's marketing leads going, business development, sales development is in the middle. So I've been under the marketing funnel, I've been under the sales funnel and we're in the middle of everything. So just my two cents there as leads go through.
Eric Bauer (35:54):
Through, keeps everything together.
Ryan Lennox (35:55):
Valuable two cents. It is. We're in the middle of things and it does matter what funnel we're under, but it's interesting to hear people's perception of sales development and what funnel they should be under. But anyway...
Brian Remington (36:14):
Yeah, ironically it's a big reason why we changed it to Account Development Rep because we wanted to take sales out of the name.
Eric Bauer (36:20):
Yep, there you go. That's right. You're developing accounts. That's right. That's a good point.
Carlyn Manly (36:25):
That's right. I want to ask a question related to the COVID state in that regard.
Ralph Barsi (36:32):
Yeah.
Carlyn Manly (36:33):
Again, in the early days, people were a little bit in shock and they were saying, "Don't sell to new accounts, forget about net new in the next few weeks." So there was a school of thought - focus on your customers, make them successful, potentially identify upsells and then focus on people in the pipe or people that have been in the pipe and try to work with them. Don't try to create net new.
And I know that things have changed. How do you perceive that strategy and/or priorities? Have you shifted those priorities? I even heard about a company that transitioned their entire SDR org to be customer success, meaning working with existing customers. So wanted to hear your thoughts on this prioritization these times.
Ralph Barsi (37:18):
That's a good question, David. For us at Tray, we are fully focused on net new. We have not, however, taken our eye off the customers by any means. We have a pretty robust customer success organization that's fully focused, of course, on making sure that the customers are getting the very best of the offering.
But at the top of the funnel where the SDRs sit, we're in full net new acquisition mode. And when we approach the marketplace, we don't really focus on pursuing all these hot logos that we want to do business with. We instead focus on attracting the logos to us.
And we do that by way of making sure that our colleagues in customer success are getting customers to talk more and more about us in the marketplace, and that then attracts opportunities for us. Also, it comes down to the email copy we've been talking about on this call and how we are approaching and using empathy in the right ways in our conversations. That's kept our focus really heavy on net new acquisition. How about you, Brian?
Brian Remington (38:30):
Yeah, I would say not a lot to add to that, very similar here. What we did - and we were lucky in January, we implemented 6sense, and we've always been using tools like Engagio and those things. So what we did is we took proactive outbounding and turned it into reactive outbounding because we still have a net new "go get logos" charter as an ADR business at Skedulo.
But we did a lot more reacting to where there was some sort of warmth as well as going back to whether it was hand-raisers, whether it was an event, people that have showed interest in the past, but we also still had to open some new doors and were doing it from more of a reactive, so behavioral and intent-driven approach.
Ralph Barsi (39:15):
One line that's really working out for our SDRs right now in the outbound prospecting approach is, "Hey Brian, I know it's a weird time for a biz dev call, but do you have a minute?" And that for some wacky reason seems to be resonating big time. We're getting a lot of conversations out of that opening line in particular, and it's something that you might want to try out on your teams.
Eric Bauer (39:39):
That's great. That's great feedback. Very specific. Yep.
Ralph Barsi (39:45):
Okay. Let's see here. How can marketers best support sales development reps or account development reps in the current environment? Yeah, this is a lot of reinforcement and reiteration of some points that Brian and I have already made on this call. But just being transparent and sharing where North is for you I think is really, really important.
So how that could be applied is, for example, the leader of the sales or sales development organization should be putting out at least a weekly update for the team. It's something I have done. It's a habit I've adopted years ago where every Sunday morning - it's what works for me - every Sunday morning I tee up a weekly update for the team just so that they're aware of what's on the radar, what's coming down the pike in the week ahead.
It keeps them really, really focused. While however most sales development reps are playing the long game and they're really aspiring to become account executives or move up in their careers, but we keep their world small through these weekly updates just focused on the present and focused on the next couple days and making sure that they have productive weeks, that they're owning their calendar versus the other way around. A lot of that stuff can really be emphasized and encouraged in something as simple as a weekly email that goes out to them.
Ralph Barsi (41:13):
And if it comes from marketing, even better - just to let them know what campaigns are coming down the pike, what tweaks have been made in a new nurture track and what that looks like so that they're aware if they're going to disposition a lead into a nurture track, they know what they're about to put that person through.
We talked about SLAs earlier. I highly recommend implementing an SLA by lead source. So if it's open versus contact versus engaged or otherwise, you actually have an SLA for each lead disposition. I'll pause there for a minute, just that's just a lot I just spewed out. So Brian, do you have anything you want to add to that?
Brian Remington (41:53):
I mean, I would jump to the last one to four here just with regards to don't assume that SDR team knows what you do and what's important. It's incredibly important just from the definitional standpoint. To Ralph's point, having specificity wins - anything you can do to make everything that the ADR sees actionable is going to create just a better relationship between the two organizations, but also produce much better outcomes.
Eric Bauer (42:28):
It sounds like it's really kind of coming down to some of the fundamentals because you make these assumptions that, "Oh, if marketing's doing what they're doing and SDRs are doing what they're doing, well, they have to know what each other's doing." And it's that failure of assumption there.
And it's just going back to the fundamentals. I love the idea of marketing saying, "Hey, here are the tweaks we're making to the nurture tracks," or "Here are the tweaks we're making to our messaging" because then the SDRs can consume that and whether it's consciously or subconsciously understand those changes. And so it's not these big massive changes you have to make in the organization. It's a weekly update email, but it's the fundamental things that could have such a big impact.
Ralph Barsi (43:00):
Yeah, Eric, I love that. So an example in today's world, because it's virtual, all the events now are virtual including this one. And so if there's an assignment for the SDRs to follow up on all the leads from a virtual event, help them out with the talk track.
So they didn't necessarily attend that virtual event, so give them what the top three takeaways were from the keynote presentation or share one or two screenshots from a slide that was shown. That way when they're initiating conversations with prospects: "Hey, thank you so much for registering. We understand you didn't have an opportunity to attend. Let us know if the recording doesn't get to you. Hey, here are a couple key takeaways that I think might resonate with your business right now that were talked about on the recording. So why don't we talk next Tuesday at either 10 or 11, and I want to hear your thoughts on these."
And when you just approach it that way, then you can get them into more of a sales-type conversation once you've had those initial pieces discussed.
Brian Remington (44:03):
And just to say this half-jokingly, but sending a Slack to me to say, "Hey, we spent a lot of money on this. Can you please make sure your team gives it the attention it needs?" doesn't change really well what we do.
Ralph Barsi (44:18):
That doesn't go real well. Yeah, again, that goes back to the KPIs. I don't care, frankly. I mean, I'm worried about the high quality meetings and the opportunities for this. And then if you even take it a step further, my CRO doesn't care about that. My CRO wants net new revenue coming across the line. So we all have to make sure we're aware and acknowledging what one another's KPIs are.
Adi Aloni (44:47):
Chris, one great idea that I heard on another webinar that actually Chris Church showed, so thank you. That was for SDRs, but I guess it's true in general - to shadow your prospect for a day. Having not having the logistical opportunity to do that, to actually shadow your prospect or customer, marketing is probably the next best department or team to do that in your organization. If the more marketing can tell and share and make the prospect or the customer tangible for SDRs, for salespeople, for everyone in the organization, the better.
Ralph Barsi (45:40):
Love it. You know what came to mind that's not on this slide is the branding part of marketing. So some of the best marketers I've worked with have focused on what does everybody in our company's LinkedIn profile look like today? Does everybody have a professional headshot? Is everybody illustrating our brand and our image to the best of their ability? Are they true representatives of our brand in the marketplace? Let's take a look at everybody's email signature. Let's take a look at all the nuances of how we're branding ourselves as a company and as a team.
When you let a bunch of SDRs off loose into the wild, making their phone calls and sending their emails and there's no auditing of it or governance of it or oversight of it, it could get really, really messy and tarnish the brand for the entire company.
Ralph Barsi (47:04):
And those on the line here who are familiar with calling into the enterprise and the very large enterprise world - when an SDR does a bunch of research and finally breaks into an enterprise logo and gets someone from the C-suite on the line and just blows it on that first call, or just has emails laced with typos, doesn't have the right brand in check, it makes it worse for everybody.
And you risk a good one to two years passing by before your company gets another opportunity to have a conversation with that logo. So pay attention to those types of details when it comes to brand. Let's see.
Adi Aloni (47:21):
Alright, my favorite part of the session. What can I do tomorrow, next week?
Ralph Barsi (47:28):
Yeah, here's the good news. I mean, in Pacific Standard Time, it's only 10:51, so you could do this 15 minutes from now. So number one is you have to decide here, not just individually, but collectively to be really, really successful and you have to have a team mission that, "You know what? We don't see any obstacles. We only see our goals. We're going to make them, yes, we'll adapt on the fly because we're A-players and that's how we roll."
So until decisions are made like that and talk like that starts happening within the team, it's just going to be a disaster. People are going to be flying in all different directions and they're going to get frustrated really fast and they're going to be coming to you leaders on the call going, "Hey, could you motivate me and inspire me? I'm just not feeling it."
Ralph Barsi (48:15):
Well, it's simply because you never made the decision to begin with to be successful. So self-imposed.
Second is please stop talking about your company. Stop getting on voicemails and leaving a minute to a minute and a half long voicemail saying, "This is who we are. We started in 2012, we just rolled this out. There's a new article on our blog. You might want to take a look at this video. We just..." Like, please stop. Start talking about them. Start focusing on them. That's what happens when you're into your ego and you've got a lot of inner monologue or inner dialogue going. You must only face outward. You must only serve others and serve our marketplace.
And then lastly, develop your attitude of gratitude. Every SDR should have thank you cards on their desk. If they get a killer meeting with a logo that could influence the trajectory of your company in a positive way, and they get through to that C-suite executive because of the gatekeeper, they should be sending a thank you note.
Ralph Barsi (49:24):
"Thanks for investing the time with me on the phone. I know my call came out of nowhere. Here's five bucks to go get a cup of coffee or order something on Amazon, but I'm very, very grateful."
Or, "Hey, thank you so much. Whether you know it or not, you've been a mentor to me for the last 10 years and I can't thank you enough for the pearls of wisdom you've left with me through the course of our conversations. This is just a thank you to let you know that I'm thinking about you and I really appreciate all you've done for me."
It's that little stuff that really, really counts that you could do today.
Brian Remington (49:57):
Love that. Love that. That's great. To stay within the power of threes, I'm a big fan. My recommendations are listen, listen, share and inform.
So first off, listen to your XDR. So they're the ones talking to and getting responses from and connecting on LinkedIn with your prospects. What are the prospects saying? Is it related to what you've been telling them the reaction would be, or is it totally different? So schedule time to actually listen to what's going on or use a tool like Gong or Chorus or review emails, however you want to do that.
Secondly is share the voice of the customer use cases. So whether this is more the CS side of the business or product, but one thing we've had success with is our customers are telling us where we fit in their plan to come out of COVID successful and thriving. And some of our customers have said, "Nah, we kind of stopped using you," but we're leveraging that voice of customer use case to go after them.
Brian Remington (51:01):
And now back to the outbounding question - start to drive some of where we're doing our outbounding because we actually have value to bring and deliberate value to bring to some of our other prospects.
And lastly, work to inform their talk track - personalization plus relevance. I like to think of it as sales is a science delivered artfully, and that takes multiple people to come to the table and bring their expertise. So help with the belly of the message, help with the pivots.
Especially - we've all worked in organizations where templates are going out from Outreach that have data from 2018 because we just haven't taken the time to get in there and share the right information and make sure we're updating and sharpening and smoothing our messaging.
Eric Bauer (51:51):
I think that's great - that listen part, that number one really struck home, right? I mean, from a marketer's perspective, there's gold in the fact that the XDR or the SDRs, ADRs are out there having those conversations. I know there's a lot of situations where marketing thinks, "Hey, this is what's going to resonate," but you know what? These SDRs are on the front line. Have a thesis, but go back and double check it. I think it's a gold mine of information that's not always tapped.
Ralph Barsi (52:19):
Cool. I hope this was useful to everybody.
Adi Aloni (52:22):
Yeah. Oh, really useful. Thank you.
David Brutman (52:24):
Good. Can I make one last comment on marketing and what marketing can do? Of course you can.
Brian Remington (52:31):
Absolutely.
Ralph Barsi (52:32):
David.
David Brutman (52:34):
I go back to - I always think about this time, the Corona time as a stress test. Stress test on our lives, stress test on our company, stress test on our KPIs. Everything needs to be more focused, more efficient than ever, and agility is going to be really, really important.
And one of the things as marketing people - we always, and I'll say that out there, we are fighting for to be important, to be significant, to be revenue drivers in our respective companies and has been so, and it has improved. And ABM I think was a great step forward to be much closer to the accounts, much closer to the revenue. And I think that's a really important and very positive change.
But the reality still - I mean marketing is perceived not necessarily as the most strategic part of the company necessarily. And that could be a problem.
(53:36):
I think COVID is an opportunity for marketing to shine and be very, very impactful in driving those changes on sales development and on sales and revenue. And that requires a little bit of the ABM hat. You need to be able to pivot very quickly. You need to be very responsive. You can't stay in your castle and talk about high-level messages. You got to be in the trenches with the people listening to calls and helping them on the ground, which I think is anyhow a good marketer. These are the people that are out in the field. They know what's going on and this is what inspires them.
So in my mind, this is a huge opportunity how crisis is sometimes new leaders come up and definitely this crisis is going to inspire a lot of us to think differently about many things. I think this is an opportunity for marketing to really, really shine.
(54:33):
And we've seen examples in the previous workshops of exactly, Ralph, the things you've said - leadership that says we're going to win. This is a winning opportunity for us, nothing else. But also enabling teams.
And since this is a workshop focused mainly on how marketing can function in this time, really be able to address it and be agile. Marketing typically thinks in campaigns and months, and this is no months, this is days, this is hours. This is listening, making hunch calls on what the messaging should be, trying out and all of that.
So I see this as a huge opportunity for marketing to shine and be significant for the companies that work well. But it does require that roll your sleeves, forget about the messaging house from Marketing 101 in college, and just get out there and do the work.
Brian Remington (55:27):
Yes. I think crisis flattens an organization, right? Everyone all hands in.
Ralph Barsi (55:32):
Yep. Everybody becomes a leader like that. Excellent. Well, you've all been super generous with your time today. Thank you so much for your great questions and dialogue and discussion. It's been a real honor and pleasure to be part of this.
Eric Bauer (55:47):
Thank you Ralph and Brian. Really, really appreciate you guys contributing to this. I think the insights were terrific and I think we've all learned a lot and definitely look forward to holding the next episode of Folloze Reroute Your Marketing Workshop.
Brian Remington (56:02):
Have a great weekend.
Eric Bauer (56:03):
Thank you.