🎙️Transcript: MSP SDR Surge

Modern Sales Pros - SDR Surge
"The Playbook for Scaling Your Sales Development Team"
Anna Fisher (CMO, Spiff), Rashmi Viswanath (Director of Growth, Apollo.io), Kent Venook (SDR Leader, Dialpad), Ralph Barsi (Global Inside Sales Leader, Tray.io)
Moderator: Nipul Chokshi (Head of Marketing, Atrium)
April 14, 2021

Summary

This panel discussion brings together four seasoned sales development leaders to share their frameworks and philosophies for building, scaling, and managing high-performing SDR teams.

The conversation explores the full lifecycle of SDR team development, from hiring strategies that prioritize attitude and grit over experience, to comprehensive onboarding programs that focus on customer problems rather than product features.

The panelists emphasize the critical importance of treating SDRs as humans first, recognizing that these individuals are temporarily on their teams and deserve intentional career development and clear growth pathways.

Throughout the discussion, the leaders address the challenges of maintaining quality buyer experiences while scaling SDR operations, particularly in distributed work environments.

They share practical frameworks like Ralph Barsi's "Four P's" assessment model (Performance, Proficiency, Process, and Professionalism) and discuss the delicate balance between leveraging automation technology and maintaining the human touch that creates delightful prospect interactions.

The conversation highlights how modern SDR leaders must do "the work that doesn't scale"—personally coaching team members, reviewing call recordings, and continuously refining messaging—to ensure their teams represent their brands with excellence.

The panel concludes by tackling the perennial debate of whether SDRs should report to marketing or sales, with unanimous agreement that the answer is less about org chart placement and more about establishing strong partnerships across functions, maintaining clear SLAs, and ensuring SDRs have defined career paths.

The overarching theme is that successful SDR scaling requires leaders who see themselves as servant leaders, committed to removing obstacles from their teams' paths and leading with empathy, clarity, and love.

BIG Takeaways

• Hire for Attitude, Effort, and Grit Over Experience – Kent Venook advocates for preferring "a fresh ball of clay" when hiring SDRs, arguing that while experience is valuable, it often comes with bad habits and unrealistic expectations about promotion timelines.

By hiring for intrinsic qualities like attitude, effort, and grit, leaders can quickly scale teams with people fresh out of school or those making career changes. Rashmi Viswanath adds that the key is identifying candidates who are 90% likely to perform at the top 10% level and who will raise the bar for the entire team.

This approach allows companies to build strong cultures and develop talent in their own image, rather than inheriting another company's training or bad practices.

• Focus Onboarding on Customer Problems, Not Company History – Ralph Barsi emphasizes that effective onboarding should center on customers, prospects, and the marketplace rather than on company history, product iterations, or internal processes. SDRs need to speak to the marketplace about prospect problems and critical business issues, not just pitch product features.

This outside-in perspective is reinforced through what Tray calls "standards of excellence"—quarterly assessments based on four pillars: Performance, Proficiency, Process, and Professionalism.

By orienting new hires toward solving customer problems from day one, companies ensure their SDRs become consultative resources rather than robotic pitch machines, setting the foundation for delightful buyer experiences.

• On-the-Job Coaching Is More Important Than Bootcamp Training – Kent Venook warns against "death by PowerPoint" and emphasizes that the real learning happens on the job, not in initial bootcamp sessions.

The key is ensuring enablement doesn't "drop off a cliff" after formal training ends. Using the Salesforce example, he notes that showing someone how to build reports isn't enough—they only truly learn when they actually have to do it themselves with coaching support.

Anna Fisher extends this by advocating for call review sessions where SDRs identify their own areas for opportunity and the team collectively learns from real conversations.

This continuous, practical coaching approach shortens ramp time and ensures SDRs develop the real-world skills needed to navigate complex buyer conversations.

• Practice Talk Tracks Like You're Dating – Anna Fisher introduces a powerful metaphor for SDR training: conversations should feel like dating, where you're trying to understand if someone is the right fit rather than forcing a match.

SDRs need extensive practice with talk tracks before making real calls, learning how to uncover a prospect's actual challenges rather than just following a script.

This requires role-playing sessions that help SDRs develop fluidity in conversations and the ability to recognize when a prospect is genuinely a good fit versus when they should move on.

The goal is to prevent wasting everyone's time—the prospect's, the SDR's, and the sales rep's—by quickly identifying whether there's real potential for a buying relationship.

• Do the Work That Doesn't Scale – Ralph Barsi's most powerful principle is that SDR leaders must consistently "do the work that doesn't scale."

While automation and email sequences can be effective, they require constant refinement and monitoring. Leaders must regularly review call recordings, refine messaging, and ensure their SDRs have deep knowledge of prospect problems.

This hands-on approach prevents teams from becoming robotic and helps avoid the negative perception that "prospects dislike SDRs because they break the flow."

By investing in personal coaching, getting to know team members' individual motivations, and maintaining high standards for buyer interactions, leaders ensure their teams represent their brands with excellence and create delightful experiences rather than annoying interruptions.

• Distributed Teams Require Intentional Rhythms and Human Connection – Managing SDR teams remotely demands deliberate systems for maintaining human connection and accountability.

Rashmi Viswanath describes Apollo's approach of establishing clear rhythms at individual, team, and company levels, coupled with end-of-week accountability sessions where teams discuss what went well, what didn't, and plans for the following week including backup plans.

Anna Fisher emphasizes that technology is both a blessing and curse—while tools like Zoom enable remote work, leaders must be intentional about creating opportunities for connection that used to happen naturally in offices. Daily standups should have substance beyond attendance checks, focusing on celebrating wins and identifying learning opportunities.

The key is building trust so team members know they can support each other even when not physically together.

• Lead from the Bottom of the Org Chart with Love – Ralph Barsi presents a transformative leadership philosophy: seeing himself at the bottom of the org chart rather than the top, serving his team by removing obstacles from their paths.

Effective SDR leadership means getting to know team members deeply enough to understand their "why"—what drives them, why they want to succeed, what they plan to do with their earnings.

This knowledge becomes critical during inevitable rough patches when leaders need to inspire and motivate struggling team members. Barsi openly states "I lead with love" and recognizes that SDRs are temporarily on his team, so his job is to ensure they leave with positive experiences and skills that serve them throughout their careers.

This servant leadership approach, combined with clear communication cascading through weekly updates, creates organizations where everyone knows the direction, buys into the mission, and can execute with confidence.

Transcript

Gina Holly (00:00):
This week's summit will be full of ways to get your teams supercharged, whether you're in sales, marketing, customer success, or product. There's an awesome event for you. If you want to see what we have going on for the rest of the day, click the agenda tab at the top of this page and you can see everything else that we have.

The event that you're about to watch is SDR Surge, the Playbook for Scaling Your Sales Development Team. In the afternoon, we have Building the Future: Modern Sales, Tech Design and Go-to-Market. To close this out, we have not one, not three, but five CROs to speak on From 10 Million to a Hundred Million: The CRO's Game Plan to Long-Term Growth.

Now here's the agenda for this session. I'm going to go over some quick housekeeping notes. Our fantastic speakers will do an introduction of themselves and then they'll dive straight into the content.

Gina Holly (00:54):
We'll have some time for Q&A right after, and then we'll wrap up with some key takeaways. But before we get into it, which I know you're all super excited about, some quick housekeeping notes.

First off, this event is being recorded just like all of our MSP events. You'll be able to access this recording and the key takeaways on our summit page of the MSP website following the event. I'll drop the link in the chat so you can watch our events from the past two days.

If you missed any event, don't worry. You can always go back there, check out the key takeaways, and watch the events from now until forever, until YouTube ceases to exist.

Secondly, if you have a question for our speakers, please use the Q&A function at the top of the chat bar so that we can get them answered live and so they don't get muddled within the chat. Also, this chat is wide open, so please do chat in there. Where are you calling in from? What did you think about what a speaker just said? What do you want to double-click into? Yeah, go all out.

So let's get started. I'm going to introduce the one and only Nipul Chokshi, who is the head of marketing at Atrium. Nipul is going to be the moderator of today's fantastic panel. So Nipul, I'm going to hand it off to you.

Nipul Chokshi (02:19):
Awesome. Hey everyone, super excited to be here. Thanks, Gina, for kicking this off.

I've got the awesome privilege of being kind of your tour guide or MC, if you will, working with the great folks here. Just a little bit of my background as context: I run our marketing efforts here at Atrium. I've been in B2B sales and marketing for over 10 years at this point, working with high-growth marketing and sales teams at companies like Marketo, Yammer, Lattice Engines, as well as bigger companies like Dun and Bradstreet, and now back to the high-growth side here at Atrium.

While I certainly do have points of view and experiences around setting up and scaling sales development teams, my experience actually pales in comparison to the folks that you see on the panel here. So why don't we have the panelists introduce themselves. Anna, do you want to kick it off?

Anna Fisher (03:31):
Sure, I'd love to. My name's Anna Fisher. I'm currently the CMO at Spiff, and my responsibilities are—I guess my team is responsible for all the pipeline in the org, which of course means that includes the SDR org.

I have built SDR teams in the past as well and hopefully can offer some repeatable processes for everyone here today. For those of you who don't know what Spiff does, just a really quick overview.

We're essentially a new class of software putting trust back into the commission process. We're really doing that by offering and delivering real-time automation of commission calculations. This enables the finance or sales ops team—whoever might manage those commission plans—to self-manage what is a really complex process of incentive compensation plans.

On the other end, we're really providing that transparency for any commissionable employee, whether that's sales teams, CSMs, or SDRs. So that's what Spiff does in a nutshell.

Nipul Chokshi (04:42):
Awesome, awesome. Excited to hear about some of your experiences there. Rashmi, why don't you take it away next?

Rashmi Viswanath (04:50):
Yeah. Hi everyone. I'm Rashmi. I'm currently the director of growth at Apollo.io.

I kind of entered into the sales world with a wild segue, starting first off as a corporate lawyer and then—but I love my career since I shifted. I've worked in the data space for most of the time that I've done sales. Previously at LeadGenius for about five years before I joined Apollo, where I currently lead the team for SDR and also our initiatives on basically product-led growth and product-led opportunities through product-led growth.

Super excited to be here. For those who don't know what Apollo is, we're basically a sales intelligence and engagement platform with the contact data, account data, and basically an all-in-one place for salespeople to get their work done.

Nipul Chokshi (05:50):
Awesome. Very interesting mix and background there. A mixture of law as well as data. Super excited to hear how you approach the topic that we're going to be talking about today. Kent, do you want to take it away next?

Kent Venook (06:08):
Yeah, sure. My name's Kent Venook. I am currently running the SDR org at a company called Dialpad.

I've got about 20-plus years in sales experience. I did a 10-year stint in commercial real estate before joining the tech world in 2010. I spent a few years as an SDR and AE and then found my way to SDR leadership and realized my passion for developing people over closing deals. I've focused on building some big teams with that foundation in mind.

I'm now on my fourth build here at Dialpad. I was at a company called Apttus, which is now Conga. Built a big team there. Then I moved to Talkdesk and I was there for a handful of years. Before Dialpad, I was at RingCentral and now I'm at Dialpad. Excited to get this conversation going.

Nipul Chokshi (07:07):
Awesome, awesome. Some amazing logos there that you've built out teams for. And so Ralph, why don't you bring it home on the intros?

Ralph Barsi (07:16):
Hello everybody. Thank you. Really excited to be here with the Modern Sales Pros. What an incredible community it is. Hopefully we can add some value today in the discussion.

I'm Ralph Barsi. I currently lead the Global Inside Sales organization at Tray.io in San Francisco. We're a dynamic automation platform that connects all the dots for companies with respect to sewing together all the components of their tech stack and driving automated workflows from those integrations.

Sales development is near and dear to my heart. I have built and run teams in companies of all shapes and sizes and different phases of the maturity cycle. Prior to Tray, I ran the global sales development organization at ServiceNow. We had 230 SDRs at the time.

By the time I left after four years in 2019, the team was producing over $700 million of revenue pipeline each year. I think I've been around the block. I've seen quite a bit, and hopefully I can shed some light and share some insights for everyone.

Nipul Chokshi (08:31):
Awesome, awesome. Just the breadth and depth of experience promises to make this a really exciting talk indeed here.

Why don't we kick it off already? I'm seeing a bunch of questions come in. The first one really hits on a topic that I think is a good way to kick it off here.

We're all in various modes of growth and we've all had experience when it comes to building up an SDR team. What I think would be really interesting for the audience is to really get everyone's perspective on what do you look for when it comes to actually hiring and building an SDR team, especially as you're going through a really rapid growth phase. Kent, why don't you kick us off there?

Kent Venook (09:27):
Sure. Can you hear me okay? Having some—I was skipping around a little bit. Okay, great.

I always hire for attitude, effort, and grit over anything else. I usually prefer a fresh ball of clay. Of course, experience is great, but if you can develop a program where you can hire to those things and get people up to speed in the role, you can really scale teams quickly.

You can take people fresh out of school, people wanting to change their career path—something I did halfway through. That's usually what I focus on.

Nipul Chokshi (10:10):
Awesome, awesome. Yeah, always interesting and always an interesting trade-off between do you hire experienced folks versus new folks right out of school, right? Rashmi, how do you tend to think about this?

Rashmi Viswanath (10:27):
It's basically a mix of new folks and experienced. But at the end of the day, when you're digging back into their approach, my personal approach is to see whether they're likely to be an A player. Are they 90% or more likely to hit? Basically, are they 90% or more likely to be able to perform at the top 10% level?

If the answers are satisfying, that's really great. The other aspect is, is this person likely to be the person who can raise the bar within the team? If they're joining, will it make the others also feel like, oh, the bar was raised?

It's really hard to say unless you dig in with some questions. But drive, curiosity, and growth mindset—I guess those are the other aspects that I want to see, especially with the new ones.

Nipul Chokshi (11:21):
Interesting. I love the 90% chance of achieving the 10% of outcomes. I like that framework, and I think we all ultimately try to look for that.

Ralph, when you and I talked earlier, you had some good kind of framework that you tend to look for when it comes to high-potential SDRs for the team. Can you share a little bit about that?

Ralph Barsi (11:48):
Sure. What's really important to me and to our team is that we're delighting the marketplace. We want to make sure that when we engage with prospects and customers and partners and even candidates who are interested in joining our team, that it's a delightful experience.

We want to set a really great world-class impression from the outset so that the person we're talking to and engaging has an idea of what it's going to be like to work with us or work for us. With that comes a lot of the attributes that we've just heard about. You've got to have a great attitude. You've got to have an energy level that sheds light, that is positive, that's empathetic.

I'm a big fan of people who enter a situation and they shed warm sunlight instead of suck the life out of the room. Those are the types of people I like to hang out with, and those are the types of people I like to work with.

Ralph Barsi (12:41):
Those are definitely the types of people that I want representing our brand and our organization. Along with that comes just a sense of curiosity. I'm very interested to hear the types of questions that sales development reps ask both of the organization as well as of the marketplace.

They've got to be great conversationalists, having an idea and a mental map, if you will, of the beginning, the middle, and the end of the conversation and where they are in the discussion so they're not fumbling over words, et cetera. Lastly, SDRs have to wear a lot of different hats and spin a lot of different plates. So being able to stay organized in the midst of the swirl is imperative.

Those are just some key traits that we look for when we're hiring A players.

Nipul Chokshi (13:29):
Well, those are certainly setting a high bar, which is great. I think as folks building high-growth, high-performing teams should.

This is actually a question from Nirvana in the audience. What does that mean for lesser-known startups? I think you all have worked at companies at earlier stages as well as later stages—earlier stages where your brand is lesser known and you're competing against the Asanas of the world, the Salesforces of the world for that same talent.

How do you tend to think about maintaining that high bar while at the same time competing for the talent against the heavily armed competitors in the employment market? Anna, do you have a perspective there?

Anna Fisher (14:22):
I do. We're going through that now, so it feels very relevant. I think there are a few benefits right now. We are hiring a fully—pretty much a remote team—which makes it a little bit easier for us to have just a greater pool of talent.

But the last time I was hiring an SDR team was for ZoomInfo. ZoomInfo was much better known, especially in the Boston area, which is where I was located. We definitely had that brand recognition much better than we do now at Spiff, although it's getting better and better as the company grows.

One of the challenges is really—or one of the areas of opportunity is really educating them. I feel like in the past with SDRs, you're kind of like, "Oh, I'm going to pick and I'm the employer, and so you're just going to do what I say. You have no choices."

Anna Fisher (15:12):
I think what happens now is that they do have choices, just like other roles that we might've hired in our careers. It's actually changed the way that I asked the team to interview. I want this to be a good fit for them and for us.

Although they might be our favorite candidate, if we're not their favorite company—because what we're asking them to do is really hard work—we have lots of different buyers, lots of personas. We're talking to a very sophisticated, intelligent buyer. Our SDRs really have to rise to the challenge, especially if they have no SDR experience.

Now, not only do they have to learn how to talk to our buyers and understand the challenges that they face to have an intelligent conversation, they have to learn all the skills, especially if they're from college or have never done the role before. I shouldn't generalize there about college graduates, but they then have to learn all the tools and organizational skills potentially.

It's a really hard job. I actually think this market has forced us as employers, especially for those of us who have a little less well-known brands, to approach hiring SDRs as we would approach any other role within the org. I think it creates a better structure where hopefully the SDR has selected us and therefore they're more likely to stay and hopefully more excited about what we're building.

Nipul Chokshi (16:30):
Okay. Well, Rashmi, I see you vigorously nodding there as Anna was talking. Can you talk a little bit about what that means for your pitch for potential SDR recruits?

Rashmi Viswanath (16:43):
Yeah, it's interesting because at Apollo, the first round that I did the SDR hiring, I wouldn't say we were as well known in our brand and marketing as we are now. One of the unique pitch angles that worked was: it's a small company and you can rise fast if you're ambitious.

That is the very unique thing about being a small company. When you portray that trajectory that you want your company to be on, that vision is attractive and you find the right candidate that's really hungry. That positioning is so attractive.

Especially in our case, we had situations where our previous SDRs had risen really far in a very short period of time and were doing world-class work. That kind of scenario is extremely attractive to great talent at a small company.

Nipul Chokshi (17:38):
I love it. I love it. Showing them that roadmap, if you will, especially for folks who are new to the tech industry or who are new to the professional world.

Showing them that, "Hey, this is just the beginning and it can yield a lot of benefits for us." Like the SDR team and the operations team here at Atrium—it serves very much as a feeder, if you will, into growth for other parts of the company, whether it's digital marketing, customer success, field sales, and so on and so forth. I love that idea of showing the roadmap.

Now going back to a little bit of what you said, Kent, earlier: you talk about "fresh ball of clay" over experience. How does your answer change if you're recruiting for an inbound SDR versus an outbound enterprise-oriented SDR?

Kent Venook (18:41):
It still doesn't change. I think you certainly need resources. You either need to be able to bootstrap your own enablement and onboarding, or you need to have a team that can set it up and you need to plan for it.

But I think as sales development leaders, we need to be prepared to consistently train new superstars. Oftentimes with experience comes bad habits or unrealistic expectations of timing to be an AE and what that looks like.

It doesn't mean that experience is horrible, but I want those three things over experience. If someone has those, then we can show them how to be a good SDR. Then it's just about planning and budgeting to make sure that you have enough lead time to develop the pipeline that you need for the ever-growing numbers that are in front of you.

Nipul Chokshi (19:43):
Well, it's interesting. Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting you talk about just enablement, right? That's a good segue into once you've actually brought someone into the organization, how do you make sure that you're as effective as possible in terms of getting the most out of that person?

Human beings are the most expensive line item for any company, and so you want to make sure that you're getting them onboarded and ramped as quickly as possible. I'd love to shift the conversation a little bit to that and how everyone thinks about onboarding and ramping SDRs and BDRs most effectively.

I'll turn it over to you, Ralph. Can you talk a little bit about the framework that you've used at Tray and other companies to make sure that you're getting the most out of SDRs who are new to the company and getting the most out of them as quickly as possible?

Ralph Barsi (20:45):
Sure. That's a great question and that's a big challenge for all sales development leaders. What's critical at Tray and in general is you've got to show the sales development team where North is.

If you are confused or muddy or unclear about what direction we're all heading, we cannot fly in formation. It's important that everybody knows what the mission is and what it is we're trying to accomplish, and that everybody buys into that mission because everyone needs to be a contributor to it in order to move the needle for all of us.

With that in mind, some of the things that we include in our framework include what we call "standards of excellence." Every quarter at Tray, we assess our SDRs on four key pillars. They all start with the letter P. We quantify and qualify each of our SDRs on performance, on proficiency, on process, and on professionalism.

Ralph Barsi (21:49):
Beneath each of those headings, we have three subheadings that we ask the SDRs to rank themselves in from one to five. One being, "Hey, I've got a lot of work to do," to five being "I'm an expert on the team being sought out by my peers for my expertise," et cetera.

We then as leaders do the assessment with them each quarter and end up doing kind of a private stack ranking, which then informs calibrations for future promotions, eligibility, et cetera. We do that coupled with a pretty rigorous onboarding program, which centers on the customers and the prospects and the marketplace versus our company, our history, the iterations of our product.

We want our SDRs speaking to the marketplace about them and not about us per se. We focus a lot of our efforts on critical business issues and problems that we're solving for people and how we've brought people from X to Y in a given timeframe.

Those are just a couple of key areas that we focus on. It goes much deeper than that, but I want to offer other people an opportunity to share how they're doing it.

Nipul Chokshi (23:09):
Yeah, absolutely. I love the outside-in perspective there. Kent, what are your thoughts here?

Kent Venook (23:20):
Yeah, so I think—of course, I second what Ralph mentioned—setting up the foundation for product knowledge and process during onboarding. Of course.

I think one of the things I focus on is making sure that it doesn't drop off a cliff after the bootcamps are over and so on. The on-the-job, in-the-seat, on-the-phone training is, I think, what is key for shortening the ramp time and making sure that you can scale quickly.

Making sure that you're not just putting people through death by PowerPoint or recorded sessions like we do these days, but also shadow time and listening on calls and making sure that you are really reinforcing what the person just learned. I always use the Salesforce example: you show them how to use Salesforce, how to build reports, how to create an opportunity if that's a function that the SDRs do.

It's not until they actually have to do those things that they learn how to do it. If you're not there to support them during those efforts, then the onboarding was a waste.

Nipul Chokshi (24:36):
And the "death by PowerPoint"—as with any sort of onboarding class, there's always this trade-off of how much information and knowledge do you impart on them and what are the mechanisms by which you actually do that.

I think that's a good way to talk a little bit about specific tactics and processes. Anna, do you have any thoughts on specific tactics and processes you've used on a day-to-day basis to make sure that the SDRs get the knowledge they need so that they can be effective quickly?

Anna Fisher (25:18):
We have a few of the tactics that both have talked about. But one of the things that we haven't really talked about is creating some talk tracks and practicing.

I think we can tell them all about our solution and here's what the buyers care about. But at the end of the day, they're talking to real humans and how do they uncover that person's actual challenges? They might know high level those are some of the things that might be top of mind. But again, they need to be able to speak to the person on the other end.

How do we practice those conversations so that they feel more fluid, so that they feel more like—I don't know how to put this—but almost like you're dating someone, right? How do you understand who they are, what they are, and maybe they're the perfect fit and maybe they're not. Let's not force it if they're not, because you're not just wasting their time, you're wasting your own time, you're wasting the sales rep's time.

Anna Fisher (26:13):
We need to identify quickly. We might think we know the right accounts or the right challenges, but we really should talk to people within the org and understand that. That's hard to train because, again, everyone has different ways to learn.

How do we have them practice before they're officially on the phone? Then once they're officially on the phone or sending emails, how do we have call reviews? We have the SDR identify potential areas of opportunity, and we have other SDRs present. We show this with the rest of the team, and then the rest of the team can hear directly.

We're not shaming anybody. It's more of a learning opportunity to figure out, "Do you guys hear—sometimes it's hard to hear your mistakes—do you guys hear what this person could maybe have done better?"

Anna Fisher (26:57):
Again, the purpose of this is just learning. The purpose is not to look at people's mistakes because it might be a call where we booked the meeting, we did it, mission accomplished. But that doesn't mean it was the perfect call, or there might always be areas of learning.

That's a tactical thing that I've seen work, especially if you're going after a more complex buyer that might have different areas or speaks maybe even a different language than SDRs. You have to learn that, right? You might not know the language of accounting or finance or whatever that is unless you've done it before.

There's just a lot of rigorous training and making sure that people are excited to continue to learn and that they're not bored. I think it's been said—although we do have the PowerPoints and the Workramp courses and the "watch this and then respond"—it has to be coupled with the fact that people all learn differently.

Nipul Chokshi (27:54):
Right. Yeah, there's definitely different mechanisms that you can use. Again, to your point, the content matters. Again, it ties back to what Ralph brought up earlier, which is you want to take that prospect-first perspective.

Cliff actually asked an interesting question from the audience that I'll just paraphrase here. Look, I mean, ultimately we want SDRs to be as efficient as possible. But at the same time, we need to be stewards of the buyer journey just as brands and make sure brands are actually served by the SDR function in such a way that benefits the customer rather than us.

When you think about the content in terms of onboarding and ramping SDRs, how do you think about the trade-off between training the SDRs to be customer-centric versus efficient in their jobs? Rashmi, I'll have you give your thoughts and then we can ask the others.

Rashmi Viswanath (29:01):
Yeah, I mean, this is the central balance that is the SDR's job. I think Ralph really captured it very beautifully when he said the delightful experience is very important.

The SDR basically serves a function to see whether there's a readiness to engage in a buying cycle. If you're putting your SDRs in front of those types of accounts where development is actually required, then you're doing a good job in positioning to your buyer and also positioning your SDRs to understand where their job adds the most value and what outputs they can accomplish.

I mean, cost efficiency against SDRs—this is where I think SDR talent and your recruiting efforts being really strong is going to be helpful to you. Because it's a matter of—there is a human element to this aspect, to be able to recognize when there's interest, when there's a buying opportunity, when there's hesitancy, when there's just mere curiosity.

SDRs who have that instinct and who are set up to take ownership of their process and then bring out the most from it are basically where it's most valuable. Otherwise, we have so much automation in the industry and we could all just go in that direction. But again, the prospect experience there would be terrible. So yeah, I think SDR talent is key.

Nipul Chokshi (30:38):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Kent, how do you think about that balance between making sure that the SDRs are efficient in their jobs while at the same time making sure that they're actually driving that superior experience that Ralph had called it?

Kent Venook (30:55):
Yeah. Well, I mean, selling contact center as a service at the last three companies in the last seven years—customer first, everything. You need to take that customer journey into consideration.

I think that there are certainly buyers, usually on the smaller end of the spectrum, that should be passed directly through and it doesn't make sense to have repeated conversations with SDRs. As you move up, I think it's actually very useful to have an SDR. But it's up to us to make sure that the SDR is useful and not just going through what we want to know as a company, but actually being that consultative resource for someone that's very early in their stage of information gathering.

That way we can direct them to the right place. Then it's up to us to make sure that we pass along notes so that there's no repeat conversations. We get in front of the account executive and make sure that the person knows what has happened before introducing them to the conversation, to eliminate some of that frustration or annoyance that can happen if you're not set up appropriately.

Nipul Chokshi (32:13):
Yeah, absolutely. That's actually a good segue into the next topic that I wanted to bring up, which is really all about your ongoing process and the technology that you focus on and leverage in order to drive scaling. Ralph, you had a pretty unique point of view here, so why don't you kick us off on this one?

Ralph Barsi (32:42):
Yeah, it's interesting, this topic. I'll address it at a pretty high level, but I'm super intrigued by the question that Cliff posed in the Q&A about from a prospect perspective—prospects dislike SDRs because it breaks the flow. That breaks my heart to read, and I want to go back to that question if we can.

But with respect to technology and scaling, what is super important to keep in mind with SDR work is that you have to do the stuff that doesn't scale. We leverage automated sequences, for example, with emails, and it can be super effective if done properly. It requires a regular looking under the hood and wrenching on the engine of your email copy, how your messages are crafted.

It requires listening to game tape of the calls that your SDRs are doing to see if they're establishing conversation flow, to see if they are delighting prospects and customers. Which, by the way, comes from intense knowledge of that prospect and customer's problems and critical business issues.

Ralph Barsi (34:00):
That goes back to the proficiency piece I was talking about. If you as a leader on this call are not focused on ensuring that those areas are covered with your SDRs and continuously trained, you're up a pretty steep hill and you're going to start getting questions like the one Cliff posed in this chat.

You're going to make all of us look bad. That's why I said it breaks my heart to read, because we work really hard to make sure that we're setting outstanding first impressions. But there's a lot of bad apples in our profession as well, which makes us all look bad.

I just think the onus is on all these leaders to ensure that people don't slip through the cracks and fall off the cliff and put a bad taste in everybody's mouth about sales development.

Nipul Chokshi (34:53):
Yeah, no, hear, hear on that one for sure, Ralph. I actually also think that the problem is exacerbated because we're all dealing with more of a distributed workforce. We're all in situations where you can't just have everybody on the same sales floor anymore.

It's important to be able to manage in a distributed environment. Can you talk a little bit about how you're thinking about your processes when it comes to scaling the team, Rashmi, especially in a distributed environment that we find ourselves in now?

Rashmi Viswanath (35:36):
Yeah. Apollo is a very distributed company, and especially during the past couple of years, our hiring has definitely just remained that way. A lot of our processes are built around the distributed workforce.

I think a big component of that is ensuring that rhythms that are necessary—at an individual level, at a team level, at a company level—are understood. There's enough preparation and an understanding of what each of those interactions are about. That's pretty important for us.

We also have a culture of end-of-week accountability to just look back and analyze what went good, what didn't go great, and share that openly in a discussion before we close out the week. I think the most valuable thing also from that is to talk about what's going to happen next week and what's a backup plan if it doesn't go exactly as you hope.

This kind of just sets the stage for a lot of people to talk to each other through the week, through their various rhythms that they connect with each other, and kind of support each other even if they're not in the same office workspace. There's a lot of trust that there's going to be interaction with your teammates where they know what you're doing and they know how to catch you if you're struggling with something you're planning. That's helped us a lot.

Nipul Chokshi (37:11):
Yeah. Anna, what are your thoughts there?

Anna Fisher (37:15):
Yeah, so I agree with everything that's been said. When Rashmi's speaking, I feel heard. I'm like, "Yes, yes, amen."

I think the fact that we have a distributed workforce—we've really leveraged and we rely on technology a lot more, like Zoom, for example, to build those relationships and to really train the team. It's done one of two things. One, it's obviously harder—you can't hear your colleagues on the phone.

But what it has forced us to do, and this is not something I used to do in the past, is have a team meeting, a daily standup. The purpose is not just to say that someone's awake. There's nothing worse than if someone's checking in to make sure you're up and you're ready to go. No. If there's not any relevant content to share, cancel the meeting.

But what it does do—and again, in an SDR org, at least I haven't had these daily standups when everyone's in the office, you sort of walk by each other, you hear each other—but this has created an opportunity to have these scheduled trainings, and they're more—there's just more consistency.

Anna Fisher (38:23):
We have an opportunity to say, "Hey, let's either celebrate someone that's done a really tremendous job that day or have an area of opportunity to continue to learn." I think technology has been a blessing and a curse in this environment.

When I think back to Cliff's question around experiences where it's really fallen through on the prospect side or on the customer side, I think some of that is because of our reliance on technology and automating processes instead of getting to know our buyers. But it's also helped improve, move things through the funnel a little faster.

Once we do get to know our buyer, giving them the opportunity to book a meeting when it's available for them without the back and forth is an example where it definitely accelerates the buying process if we've already had an opportunity to talk to them.

Anna Fisher (39:12):
Again, in my opinion, it's a blessing and curse. There's incredible technology out there that didn't exist even a few years ago that's really helping our SDRs be more productive. But I still think at the end of the day, what really motivates people and our SDRs is the human interactions and knowing that they're going to be successful and transparency.

I don't want to stream this plug here, but to know what they're going to get paid—technology to actually know that if I do this, I will get paid that—trusting their leaders, trusting their companies so that they can put their best foot forward and do the really hard job that we're asking them to do.

Nipul Chokshi (39:55):
Yeah, and I think what I really liked about your answer, Anna, is intentionality matters, right? You have to be intentional about driving those human interactions in order to make sure that you're not losing what you had in the office, if you will.

Now, that obviously has implications in terms of how you train your managers and educate managers on how they can be coaching the SDRs. Kent, do you have any perspective on how that changes how you train your managers to be more effective?

Kent Venook (40:35):
Just as we have an SDR playbook, there should be an SDR management playbook, of course, which usually plays second fiddle. I'd argue that it should probably play first when you're setting up your process because it'll create that foundation for the rest of the team.

Absolutely need to make sure that our managers are able to understand the difference between a one-on-one and coaching and making sure that those things are happening in different sessions. It's hard to have a one-on-one and then go into trying to coach and correct some of the things that you discover on said one-on-one.

Also making sure that the managers are going out and getting all the cool things that our SDRs are doing. I run a very lean tech stack, and that's because I don't want robots. To Ralph's point, we need to do the things that don't necessarily scale and the boots on the ground in the trenches.

SDRs have the best ideas that I've used and spread across my teams. But also we need to be constantly reiterating and reviewing our process and strategy. What's working today is probably going to be half as effective tomorrow. Our leaders need to be constantly having that pulse on the market and the situation so that we can continue to be effective in the role.

Nipul Chokshi (42:08):
Yeah. Ralph, in your intro, you said you built some pretty big SDR teams, so surely you've got some thoughts as to how you can make your SDR managers more effective. How do you think about that from a process tooling standpoint?

Ralph Barsi (42:26):
Well, first of all, it starts with me seeing myself at the bottom of the org chart versus the top. I'm here to serve my leaders and the individual contributors on my team. My primary responsibility is to really remove obstacles from their paths so they can get where they're trying to go personally and professionally.

Going back to the things that don't scale, it's important that I get to know my leaders and individual contributors as best as I can. That way I can understand the "why" that's really driving them, so I know why they're showing up every day, what it is they're trying to accomplish in their life.

To Anna's point, they want to get paid for their hard work. Find out the reason why they want to get paid, what they plan to do with all this money that they're about to make, because they're going to hit rough patches and they're going to have some tough times.

Ralph Barsi (43:21):
If you as a leader are not in touch with what their purpose is, it's going to be a really hard time for you to try to inspire them and motivate them to get back on the rails. With respect to tooling, it's just a matter of leading by example.

I send a weekly update every Sunday morning to my team that my directs are copied on and extended directs are copied on. In kind, my leaders send weekly updates as well to their directs, et cetera. That's how you ultimately scale a large organization. It's through clear, consistent, and concise communication.

That way the message can be cascaded across the organization and everybody's on point and everybody's on message, and everybody can sleep at night because we know that we're all heading in the right direction. Those are just some examples. I don't lean too much on technology with all due respect to technology.

Lastly, I think I have a unique approach in that I lead with love. I love my people, and I want them to do really, really well in their career. I recognize that they're going to be temporarily on my team and in my organization, and I want them to go off and do great things in their career.

I want them to remember what they learned when they were under my oversight and under my leadership. Hopefully they have a real positive experience from it.

Nipul Chokshi (44:48):
I love it. I love it. And I love the fact that we've all kind of said, "Okay, technology is a great enabler, but that's not the only thing here." What really matters is just leading your team.

What else, just in terms of processes or technology, do you think can actually help take it to an 11, if you will? Rashmi, you were nodding pretty vigorously to Ralph's comments there. Did you have anything else to add there?

Rashmi Viswanath (45:29):
Yeah, it was very interesting to hear Ralph talk about his weekly report to his directs, and same thing directs down to their directs because we have a very similar rhythm that's very helpful to us. But it's the other way around.

We basically set our weeks up so that we have a written review from the managers—the frontline managers—of how the week went, what's expected next, and then that report goes up versus goes down. Typically we lean more towards all the red items, towards what's not on track, so that we can have those discussions during our business reviews, during our department reviews.

That's about process. But I think that's also just a framework by which you're having these more interpersonal conversations that don't fit into a paper that you can't really document and write down. But that come out when you have an honest discussion and the rapport is open and there's a lot of trust. That takes some time.

But definitely setting up good processes and setting up a good culture where you feel open to share the tough things—that really matters.

Nipul Chokshi (46:54):
Awesome. I know we're coming to the bottom of the hour here. Before we talk about key takeaways, I feel like this question has to get asked in any session where we have a whole bunch of SDR leaders, SDR team leaders here.

Doug Landis asked, "Should the SDR function belong in marketing or sales?" There are debates on this in online forums as well as other webinars. You can do a whole two-day session summit, if you will, just around this particular topic and the sub-components.

I'd just love to get you guys' thoughts there. I think everyone here is reporting into the marketing function ultimately. Maybe we all have predisposed notions on this, but I'd love to get your thoughts on this. Kent, do you want to kick it off? What's your thoughts on where does the SDR function belong?

Kent Venook (47:56):
Sure. Starting off, I've probably reported into everywhere. I've reported directly to the CEO at Talkdesk. I've reported to the chief customer officer at Apttus who was also a co-founder, which was unique. COO. Now I'm under the CMO. I've also reported into sales a lot.

I've actually noticed a shift into marketing. It seems like more marketing organizations are starting to own it. But I think where it lives and if you have really strong opinions is probably driven a little bit by ego.

I think what we need to be is a partnership with sales, marketing, and operations. I did a session a couple of years ago on this. We need to hold ourselves accountable for metrics and how we deliver to each organization.

Kent Venook (49:08):
Oftentimes, wherever you're reporting, there are things that can be stressed or ways that you manage the team to make sure that you don't step on lead flow or you make sure that there's enough pipeline depending on where you report into.

I think it's important to just take away some of those things and make sure that you establish SLAs. You're holding yourself to them to be responsive and to give leads the attention they deserve, but also giving feedback of things that aren't ready for us to be following up with yet.

On the sales side, make sure that there's a definition of what is qualified and make sure that when it is qualified, that it's being accepted. It's not "Let's see how this goes the next couple of weeks" or "Wait till after the demo call" and calling out sales on those things.

From an operational standpoint, of course, partnering and making sure that the right leads are being delivered into the team, and you're not acting as a routing system for the org. I think it's the partnership that's more important than where we sit. I'll sit in the basement with my stapler and run it from there as long as the partnership's there.

Nipul Chokshi (50:09):
Fill out those TPS reports.

Kent Venook (50:11):
Exactly.

Nipul Chokshi (50:13):
Anna, you were vociferous.

Anna Fisher (50:15):
I feel that. I feel that. No, so I'll speak for myself. Right now, our SDR org is in the marketing part of the org. I have a dedicated focus with the demand gen team supporting the SDRs.

It was in our sales org. They just needed a little bit more love, and I have built out SDR teams, so it just made sense for our business. Again, similar to what Kent said, I think oftentimes it is about ego. For me, again, it's not about that at all. It's like, how do we just make these people successful?

For me, it's really essential that I have a good partnership with the CRO so that these SDRs have a career path that we've identified for them. If at any point—and this has happened to me where I didn't have that clear alignment with the CRO for the SDR career path—I've said, "You know what? You should own it."

Anna Fisher (51:11):
I need this team to feel motivated enough to understand that we are here for them. They're not just here for us. We have a path for them. But in areas or times where I've had that really clear alignment, the marketing org and being able to support them with campaigns and initiatives and focused budget has been really essential and something that I've seen work really well.

But then also that alignment with the sales org and the enablement part of the company to make sure that they are getting the training that they need. That when and if they get promoted, that they are by far, hopefully, the best AEs that the company has.

To me, that's what I am proud of—not where they sit—is that these people, we are nurturing them and giving them a career path that we've sort of promised or the one that they have proved themselves to deserve.

Nipul Chokshi (52:08):
Awesome. I love that you've split it out into there's the need for alignment on objectives and then just making sure that you're really being explicit about the development side of things. Ralph, what's your take?

Ralph Barsi (52:25):
First, a big shout-out to Doug Landis. Such a valuable asset in our community. Follow him through Emergence Capital. He is a great thought leader, great practitioner. Big fan of Doug's.

My answer to his question is yes and yes. I mean, it really comes down to a lot of the things we heard from Anna and what we heard from Kent. It depends on the mission. It depends on who really believes in the sales development organization and its contribution to the organization's pipeline.

I've rolled into both marketing and sales. For the record, at Tray, we roll into sales. At ServiceNow, we rolled into marketing, but they now roll into sales since I've left. You have to think about a couple things.

If it's a heavy inbound organization, that function might want to roll into marketing. Marketing invests a ton of money to produce one single lead. Those leads, as we all know, depreciate by the minute. It's critical that the sales development team is on top of that and operating with urgency.

Ralph Barsi (53:59):
On the outbound side, when we're calling into target accounts, it's more consultative, a little longer tail than we would find when we're following up on leads. Leaders of the business need to be mindful of all the nuances of sales development work and the mechanics behind their day-to-day and make sound decisions when discerning who is this team going to roll into.

But the net-net here is that I've seen it work effectively rolling into both functions.

Nipul Chokshi (54:03):
Awesome. And then Rashmi, what's your point of view here?

Rashmi Viswanath (54:03):
Yeah, kind of unique because as a PLG company—like a product-led company—we sit really in between sales and marketing. A lot of our lead flow comes from product-led metrics. SDRs really need to understand and generate good ops from there.

We actually have—it's a separate org rolling up into one revenue team that has sales, there's marketing, and then there's SDR. We have sales to contribute and expect things from both sales and marketing.

Nipul Chokshi (54:38):
Awesome. Awesome. This is great. Angelica is trying to give me the hook here because I know we're reaching the bottom of the hour here.

Before we finish though, I was wondering if there was some tweet-length type wisdom that you guys would be willing to share here for the audience on just in general scaling and growing your SDR teams. We'll kick it off with you, Anna.

Anna Fisher (55:09):
Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway for me is really treating the SDRs as humans. They're humans. They all learn differently. They all want to be successful, want to provide value, want to grow.

It's our jobs as leaders, especially as hiring managers and managers of hiring managers, to make sure that that doesn't fall through. We are obviously numbers-driven and numbers really matter, but the human who's delivering that value really matters as well.

Nipul Chokshi (55:45):
Awesome. Rashmi?

Rashmi Viswanath (55:47):
Yeah. Yeah. I think we should basically set your SDRs up for ownership and then give them good guiding principles so that they can own their process.

Nipul Chokshi (56:02):
Awesome. And then Kent, how would you wrap up?

Kent Venook (56:06):
Yeah, I said it earlier, but what's working today is probably half as effective as it is tomorrow. It's important to continue to evolve your process and strategy. I think that tailors to the human aspect as well—as people change, as the new generation is coming up, we need to take that into consideration as leaders.

Nipul Chokshi (56:30):
Cool. And Ralph, bring it home.

Ralph Barsi (56:33):
Sure. Mine's just a quote from the late great Jim Rohn. "Success is something you attract by becoming an attractive person. Success is not something you pursue." So work on yourself harder than you work on your job and everything's going to work out just fine.

Nipul Chokshi (56:50):
That's a great, great quote. On that, I want to thank the panelists here. I've definitely learned a lot. Thank you for engaging and providing your points of view here. Thank you to the audience for being here. Angelica, you want to take it away?

Angelica (57:10):
Yeah, absolutely. Again, thank you so much everyone and the panelists—thank you Nipul, Kent, Anna, Rashmi, and Ralph—for an amazing informative session to kick our final summit day off.

Thank you everyone again for attending and asking some really great questions. Before you leave, we have amazing content. After this, next up on the agenda, we have Building the Future of Modern Sales: Tech Design and Go-to-Market. Be sure to register. We'll drop the link in the chat box there and we'll see you there.

Thank you everyone, and have a great day.