The Mindset Behind Elite SDR Performance

0:00Anyone who could go out and hire someone out of school or hire someone like myself that was a bartender in college and wanted to get into tech sales or wanted to get into financial sales. You can hire SDRs, but supporting them, enabling them, giving them the right data, giving the right tools, giving the right training, giving the right management, giving the right KPIs and dashboards and analytics and a track to run on, that's where it gets expensive. Right. And that's where, you know, you look at almost twice, if not more, the cost of paying a rep just to support the rep. And companies who try to build out an SDR function don't know that or don't realize it.

0:41And so they're down that road and then they say, OK, well, one, this is not working and much more expensive than I thought it was going to be. So I need help. And that's usually what they're asking about.

0:51Gabe Lullo:So we know that a good SDR doesn't necessarily make a good leader and often over promoting an SDR, you end up with a bad leader, but clearly something's gone different in your journey. You're someone who's been an SDR and now a leader. What advice would you give to those people who are SDR level now, but have leadership aspirations? Yeah, it's a great question. Seven years ago, I fired our top producer on our sales floor. We had 80 STRs in our office on our sales floor, and he was number one about six months in a row. I think that was six months too long. The problem was he showed up when he wanted to show up.

1:33He took a two-hour lunch. He was a jerk. People asked him for help and support, and what were you doing? He just didn't help them. To your point, just because you're a great producer doesn't mean you're a great leader. right and so but i do believe great producers should be great leaders or at least great leaders should come from top producers right so it's a matter of which are you are you a great producer and can you support and turn around and say okay i'm at the top of the mountain well here's how you do it here's how you get there here's how you get there faster watch out for that rock on the way up like are you training people to come up to the top of the mountain with you or are you just someone who's at the top and you know uh you know flexing their arms and is just a jerk about it so So I think it's important that, you know, it's not about, you know, yourself.

2:20It's about serving others. You know, I was always taught when I was younger, like service to many leads to greatness. So if you can turn around and teach, you know, my mom is a school teacher. And so I learned, you know, the act of teaching. So if you could go out and teach people how to do it, and then if you can teach teachers how to do it, that's epic, right? So I've been able to find some amazing leaders that I can teach them how to teach. And that's how we've been able to scale the business.

2:47Gabe Lullo:So salespeople and SDRs, like any job, come with emotional baggage, but probably more so in this game, you're facing rejection and validation every day. So you've got to face that relationship. And often what people are seeing in their own sales teams is these big peaks in performance, then troughs because suddenly I'm taking the rejection really hard. What have you found works to create consistent, predictable SDRs that don't have that massive up and down in trajectory? Yeah, I think the two hardest things is exactly what you just said. And, you know, looking for grit, right, is the number one thing we look for.

3:26But it is the hardest thing to find on a resume. Do you really have to get into face-to-face connection in the interview process and understand if they have the grit? And then secondly, to your point, do they have the ability to stay consistent and even keel? And it's a lot to do with training and mindset, right? Attitude is everything, but we do probably 60%, 70 % mindset and attitude training within our company and 30 % to 40 % tactical training. because you just have to understand that it is a roller coaster, but the best way to have fun on a roller coaster is to keep the bar down. But some people don't realize you're even on a roller coaster.

4:07I remember years ago, I hired someone on a Monday. They didn't show up after lunch. They left to lunch, and they didn't come back. So I still don't know where that person is. But we've been able to create a really, I would say, multi-tiered interview process. We're pretty rigorous about it, not going to lie. but we don't regret it or shy away from it because we want people to come in and feel like okay i'm in a cockpit of a f1 car and i know that what i have my hands on is pretty powerful and they they know that it's going to be a great ride and it's very very dangerous and thrilling to your point and the emotional roller coaster but you're also in an f1 car how cool is that so we have to get them expected to doubt those results.