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Today’s show featured an interview with Greg Lullo, CEO of Alleyoop, and his customer, Terry Husayn, VP of Engagement at live conversation company Orum.
Find Gabe on LinkedIn. Find Terry on LinkedIn.
GABE’S ADVICE: “You have to be practicing and you have to be consistently, consistently, consistently rehearsing that. I remember driving to work every single day when I was an SDR. My steering wheel was my best prospect. I was the guy like, “Who is that crazy person talking to himself on the way to work?” That was me because I was practice, drill, rehearse, practice, drill, rehearse. It’s second nature. Again, preparing what to say and don’t be lazy in language is super important.”
TERRY’S ADVICE: “Business process map the processes the SDRs are taking a day, whether it’s prospecting, demos, follow ups, or proposals for AEs. You have no idea how much time is wasted not selling. You also have all the tools. You likely have the Salesforce, ZoomInfos and Gongs and everything. You have the exact same tech stack that your competitors do, but your competitor probably is automated twice as much as you have. Take a look at your rev ops stack, look at what your team is doing. I guarantee you there’s 50% plus more efficiency there that you just haven’t even deployed.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: Today, we’re talking with Gabe Lullo. He’s the CEO of Alleyoop. We have one of his customers, the founding team member and VP of technical sales from Orum, Terry Husayn. We’re going to be talking about some of the nuances and some of the ways you can build an effective SDR team. Gabe, that’s a topic that comes up not infrequently. Again, a lot of the companies that are part of the Institute for Excellence in Sales are hiring young professionals to come on board to play the SDR, or some people call it the BDR role, whatever it might be. Why don’t you give a little bit of insight into some of the things that you do to help companies in those particular positions? Then we’ll get started with the podcast.
Gabe Lullo: Thank you so much, I appreciate it. Huge fan, by the way, of what you guys have been doing. 700 shows is quite a feat and it’s amazing what you’re doing for the community of sales. Terry and I have been friends for many years and super excited to work with him and use his technology each and every day. It’s amazing stuff that we are able to get from him and his company. But what we do here at Alleyoop is really simple. The word in alley-oop, if you’re a basketball fan, is the ultimate assist. It’s not our job to be the deal, or get all the praise, or get the recognition and to get the points. That’s for our clients. Our job is to set up the right opportunities with the right people at the right time perfectly so they could come in and slam dunk and get all the credit. Alleyoop’s analogy is just that.
Case in point, 15 years in business, one of the leaders in the market. We build the teams themselves, find and vet and train and manage the best SDRs from a people perspective. Then we put processes in place behind that from management, to data, to technology. Then we work with amazing vendors, such as Terry, to really stack them and enable them with the best tools so they can get the most effective work done. Then provide warm and hot qualified leads to our clients so they can scale their businesses.
Fred Diamond: Terry, you’re one of the founding team members of Orum. Give us a little bit of an insight into Orum and what Orum does.
Terry Husayn: Thanks for having me. What Orum is, is we’re a live conversation platform. We really built this company from the ground up because we wanted to democratize access to getting in more live conversations with their direct prospects in your market fast. The traditional legacy models of using people to do that, or large call centers, was just prohibitively expensive. We found that the only people who could do this were the big boys, big enterprises, they had the money, but if you were a five-person team, or even a hundred-person team, you didn’t have thousands of dollars per rep to shell out. We said, “Can we use AI to democratize access to this?” Because we fundamentally believe that live conversations are the best way, not only to sell, but also to get the message across to pierce through the fog of war. It’s not just in sales. It could be CS, it could be full up with support tickets. At the end of the day, some people just want to talk. They just want to get them on the phone, handle that problem and move forward.
We’ve built a suite of technology around that as well. It’s not just about making dials, it’s also about calling together and being as efficient as you can so you can do more with less. I’ll spare the vendor pitch, but that’s been our mission and we continue to really innovate around those core areas.
Fred Diamond: Before we get deep into today’s call, I was checking out your LinkedIn yesterday, Terry, and you did a very well engaged post on empathy. As a lot of the Sales Game Changers Podcast listeners know, we’ve talked about empathy tons of times on the show. As a matter of fact, we did an analysis of the most commonly uttered words on the Sales Game Changers Podcast, with the exception of the thes and is and ands and all those things. Empathy was the number one most uttered word on the Sales Game Changers Podcast from 2000 through 2002. Then of course, I published my book Insights for Sales Game Changers. Let’s unpack that for a second.
Why did you write that post? Then, Gabe, I’m interested in your thoughts on empathy and how critical it is. A lot of times when people think about SDRs, they think about just kind of pounding on the phones, speaking real fast to get the appointment, if you will. But as we all know, sales at its core, it’s about successful empathy, understanding what the customer’s going through. Terry, why’d you write the post and did you expect the response that you got?
Terry Husayn: The reason why I wrote that post actually is I had a manager, and I used to work at this company called CalFinder, we used to sell to contractors. I actually failed at that sales position. I only lasted four months in that role. I remember Mike Bohnett, who was the VP at the time, he kept telling me that, “Terry, you don’t have empathy. You have sympathy. You have too much sympathy, but you don’t have empathy.” I was young at the time, and I was much more hardheaded. It wasn’t sinking in and I didn’t really get it. Really, I didn’t get it until I started selling more of a SaaS solution and having to be more prescriptive and realizing that I need to put myself in their shoes and that this product also might not be the best fit for our company, and I should say no.
He took an image of a beaver that was on a phone, and he kept calling me, I was an eager beaver. I wasn’t super interested in understanding and solving the problem. I just wanted to sell the deal and move on. It took me a while to understand that there’s a fundamental difference between sympathy and empathy. That’s why I wrote that post, because I was reflecting on a failure that I had and someone trying to help me and literally tell me what I needed to do and change, but I didn’t.
Fred Diamond: As a matter of fact, about four months into the pandemic, we did a show with a couple of sales leaders. We were doing live shows at the time. Someone chimed in with a question at the time and said, “Do I have to still be empathetic? When can I stop being empathetic?” The guest, a guy named Dan Cole, who’s been around the block a bunch of times, he said, “If that’s a question that you’re asking, go to the beach for the weekend and come back Monday strong, because sales is all about empathy.” Gabe, what are your thoughts on the topic?
Gabe Lullo: I couldn’t agree more with both of you. I think that’s why it’s so successful for carrying our businesses because there’s this black hole of the AI coming for all of our jobs. What’s interesting is that I think that is the biggest word that is going to really put a stop to that entire movement, in my opinion. Now, Terry’s program uses AI, but it’s to support the conversation of human-to-human interaction. There’s a lot of tools that AI can do, and we’re huge fans of, and that we are using in-house, but a lot of people are saying it’s just going to replace all sales. We’re just avatars ourselves on the beach somewhere, and our avatars are talking to each other on this podcast.
I think we’re going too far down the road right now and putting it ahead of our skis a little bit, but it’s because of the empathy that the human communication, that’s where that lives. I think that’s the biggest point that needs to be communicated and reminded of companies who are trying to do that. But human-to-human interaction, empathy is all that we preach here. In our role with SDR, the SDR movement started 12, 13 years ago. It was invented by SaaS and tech companies. It was never there. Now there’s a million SDRs on LinkedIn, literally, 840,000 who have that title on their profile. My point is that most of them are not doing human-to-human interaction. They’re just sending outreach emails and they’re not doing that. I think it’s really important.
Fred Diamond: One of the SDRs at one of the companies that’s a member of the Institute for Excellence Sales reached out to me. We’re doing today’s interview in March of 2024, if you’re listening in the future. This was probably about a month ago, and said he’s looking to leave his company. I said, “Why?” He goes, “I’m tired of making 150 phone calls a day.” Gabe, I’m interested in your thoughts.
I hear that all the time. A lot of managers will say, “Your job is to just pound the phone. Your job is to just make as many phone calls as you want.” Sometimes not 150, sometimes it’s 200, 250 is the metric. Give us your insights on what is the ideal role of the SDR today. If you’re going to say to an organization, “This is exactly what the SDR should be doing right now in March of 2024,” give us your insights into what the perfect use of SDRs are.
Gabe Lullo: Our team had always lived around the phone, and still today. We work with some of the biggest companies out there, the ZoomInfo teams, the Salesforce teams, the Oracle teams of SDRs, and a majority of the meetings that are getting booked are still done over the phone. Now, to your point, when you say calling 150, 200 dials a day, it’s usually because they’re using like a HubSpot click to call, and they’re listening to voicemail all day long. Making a lot of calls is not the problem, but having quality conversations is what SDRs need to be doing all day long.
If they can have that happen, that’s I think the role of the SDR, is to have quality conversations at scale. But I don’t look at how many calls you make. I look at how many conversations you had all day. If you’re talking to prospects, literally talking to prospects all day, then you’re doing the right things in the role of the SDR. Now, all the other messaging and all the other channels is there to support it. I’m not saying not be on LinkedIn, not create content, not do voice notes, not do email. That’s all important, but it’s to really dovetail into that one-on-one conversation like we’re having right now.
Fred Diamond: Terry, what do you think?
Terry Husayn: I think that when we think about the SDR role, too many people put it in the box of meetings, meetings, meetings. While that’s absolutely a core metric, the SDR is also there as the front face of your company. They’re often interacting in the first touch point that your company is going to have with a salesperson at your org. When you think about that, and you look at how the way certain SDR teams are run and how little enablement and training is given, or the quality of the candidates that they’re churning and burning through, you realize that they’re doing actual harm to their business when it should be the other way around.
During the recent change in interest rates, you saw a lot of CFOs look at their balance sheet and say, “Look at this SDR team. Wow, that’s a very high customer acquisition cost. They’re adding way too much to CAC. We’re just going to knock them all out.” Entire SDR teams either get laid off entirely or severely reduced. When we actually have engaged with these customers to help them rebuild their pipeline, I’m sure Gabe’s seen this as well, it’s a lot of broken processes as well as how they understood the SDR role, which is frankly, to generate interest when there wasn’t interest there before, and to be essentially your brand ambassador. The meeting may not come on the first connect. It may come from a series of emails and connects over the course of an entire year before they’re ready to meet. The SDR has to not only generate and get those skills, but they’re the bench for the rest of the revenue organization.
Fred Diamond: Gabe, I’m kind of curious of something Terry just said. I’m interested in your thoughts. Let’s say a client of yours came to you and said, “Our CFO said we got to cut cost, we’re going to cut out the SDR organization,” or we’re going to cut it maybe realistically by 50%, or something like that. What would be the steps that you would take to ensure that it stays or what would be your advice to a customer at that point?
Gabe Lullo: Well, I wear two hats here. What would be the advice if they kept it in-house or if they came to me? I’m a little self-serving, but here’s to Terry’s point. We’re growing like a weed right now, and it’s because of what he just said. There’s a huge push to outsourcing this function because they just can’t keep it on their balance sheet. It is too expensive. It’s not being effective. To our other point where just because they’re literally hitting buttons on email sequences and that’s all the SDR team is doing, and it is, I wouldn’t spend money on an SDR to do that. You have to look at other options, and if you can outsource it, where again, these teams like ourselves are doing it more effectively at a better price point, that’s my first approach. Not because it’s self-serving, because you get more bang for your buck and they know what the heck they’re doing.
Fred Diamond: We talked briefly about AI before. Let’s get right to it. Terry, will AI replace the majority of the SDR’s role?
Terry Husayn: I think it will, but I don’t think it will replace the SDR. I wrote about this in a blog post. It was on LinkedIn. It was called Automate All the Things. I do believe that the ability for a rep to fully understand their tech stack and deploy the AI as well as automation within their tech stack, knowing how to do that is actually going to be a greater predictor of the outcome than their skillset. That means that a C player leveraging AI and these tools can generate more quality activity and outcomes and pipelines than that of a really great sales rep who’s great on the phone, et cetera, but this other person has essentially automated away all the ancillary work. Then what you’re really scaling is just your humanity. You’re scaling who you are as a person, and you’re leveraging AI to do that.
I think it will take over a significant amount of roles, and the bigger question that is there is what are SDRs doing. If it’s the case, I do believe it’s allowing them to just be human. They should be focusing on that and the channels in which they need to be human in and let AI just handle the rest. I can see a world where there’s 5x, 10x, 20x SDRs, and they might be a rev ops professional on top of a sales development professional.
Fred Diamond: Gabe, how about you? Where’s AI going to come in on this?
Gabe Lullo: The SDR role is to handle the prospecting function for a team. Let’s just put it in a sentence. Do we still want account executives spending their time prospecting? My answer would be no. Can the SDR be better at prospecting with AI as a companion to their day? A hundred percent. Yes, there are going to be opportunities to scale back an SDR headcount. There is going to be opportunities to remove SDRs currently who are just doing one automation email. But again, those live conversations that we think so valuable, it’s very challenging to have AI replace that at this exact moment in time. I’m dating this 2024. I don’t have the crystal ball, but I do know that AI is significantly here to stay. It’s just going to keep getting bigger. But I do think it’s not going to replace, but it’s just going to add and help enable.
Fred Diamond: We have a lot of SDRs who listen to the Sales Game Changers Podcast. I want to get your insights on the career path of the SDR. I was of the belief that SDR, you’re going to move to AE, you’re going to move up to VP of sales, but I’ve met a lot of people who enjoy being SDR. You guys have met tons more than I have. I know, Gabe, you’ve managed and hired close to 2,000 by this point. I’m sure, Terry, you’ve mentioned a ton as well. Terry, why don’t you go first, and then Gabe, what do you see for these SDRs who are listening to today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast? A career path, what does it commonly look like, and what might it look like?
Terry Husayn: What I’ve seen on our end and internally is the role for the SDR is not just linearly to AE anymore. The revenue organization is getting more complex. Account managers are kind of CSMs now. You have SDRs that can become CSMs. Actually, we had an SDR that was one of our first SDRs from Alleyoop, Thomas Lopez, who’s now an amazing rev ops professional. We’ve seen them go into marketing. The rest of the revenue organization, again, they’re a bench for that. When you box them into just AE, then you also take away that greater capability they may have. You may have an SDR who’s great on the phones and crush it and can generate pipeline, but they are really smart when it comes to systems, or they’re really thoughtful when it comes to handling customer requests. They know your product often better than sometimes a lot of people in the organization because they’re the ones pitching it and having to deal with the initial conversation. They’re definitely a fit for other areas.
Fred Diamond: Gabe, how about you? What do you see as the career path for the SDR?
Gabe Lullo: It’s funny, speaking of Thomas, who left us and went over with Terry. We call those individuals Alleyoop alumni. We celebrate it. We know that many SDRs who come into our ecosystem will not be here in two, three years. Now, we have a phenomenal retention rate. It’s actually over three and a half years. That’s for a lot of reasons we can get into later. But it’s really a lily pad for sure to many people in getting them into the business-to-business industry, I would say. But we have seen it too. Our sales enablement, our engineering, our IT and data teams in-house, most of them are SDRs before they’re into those departments. We have SDRs almost in every single division that isn’t sales development because they have been able to lily-pad into other roles. I was an SDR when I first started my career 20 plus years ago. There’s a great opportunity for people to move into their career path and be the next Terrys of the world, VPs of huge organizations, but started off in that SDR. It’s such a great learning opportunity.
Fred Diamond: What would be your advice to the sales managers who are leading SDRs to help them become more effective? Give us a little bit into what they should be thinking about to get the most out of these people who are frontline, in a lot of cases, with prospects and in some cases with other people at the customer site.
Gabe Lullo: We’re pretty fanatical about not promoting sales development managers that weren’t on the floor at one point. We also recommend them to always be in the front of the lines throughout their day. If you’re locking arms and say, “Let’s go do this,” as opposed to, “You go do this,” that’s the mentality we want on our sales floor. If you’re managing SDRs, you got to get in the trenches. It’s always like, “Hey, let me show you how to do it. Then you go do and I’ll monitor,” and then go from there. Then you inspect what you expect. Leading from the front is the best way to manage a sales development team, because you get their respect, and that mentor/mentee versus manager/employee relationship starts to come about. I think that’s the best way to do it.
Fred Diamond: Terry, how about you? What would be your advice?
Terry Husayn: I would say that the first and foremost advice is learn how to interview and hire great people. That is by far the biggest issue that I see with SDR teams today. I think what managers make the mistake of, and they continue to make the mistake of, until if you get into a director and VP position, then you start realizing, wow. You hire the wrong people, nothing is going to save you. I wish there was a playbook, a tool, AI, something that could bail you out of the pain and suffering that comes from making a bad hire. Unfortunately, if you get this part of the process wrong, you’re going to fail both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Your team is most certainly going to underperform and you’re going to miss your number. You’re going to spend more time with HR than you are going to spend time with your team. Your top performers will likely leave. You’ll probably get fired. Everyone, including the people you hired, won’t even like you.
What I see is that when teams get desperate or they need to put butts in seats and they’re getting pressure, they make the decision to hire the wrong people. I’ve done this. There was a lot of pressure back in 2022 from all the investors and all the money, and I had to get butts in seats. I unfortunately made a couple of bets that were the wrong bets to make. It was a significant cost to the org, but also to the morale and everything like that. It took time to rebuild. That would be my number one advice.
Fred Diamond: I also want to ask a similar question. What would be your advice to any SDRs who are listening to today’s show? We talked about career path, but what would be your advice if someone’s kind of struggling right now? Or if someone comes to you and says, “Hey, what’s your advice for me on how I can become more effective in my career moving forward, as an SDR right now, or as I continue to progress?” What would you say to them? What would be one of the first things you would say on how they could become a better SDR?
Terry Husayn: I would say, try to become a marine. In the United States military, they live by codes, and they have things written in black and white so it’s very clear to all the boots on the ground. There’s this incredibly valuable assessment that informs them and defines what the United States Marines call the Eminently Qualified Marine. Marines go through rigorous evaluation programs. They’re ranked one through five, one being really poor, five being outstanding and exceptional, and they’re graded on by leadership. They’re graded on an individual contributor basis, and they’re graded on how well they accomplished the mission and how they sought evaluation performances from others.
Much more of this evaluation translates to being an effective SDR. I think one of the things that I did as an SDR is you need to also proactively look at all the areas that an SDR does, prospecting, cold calling, your data entry, hygiene, and be more proactive at it with your manager. Most SDRs are very reactive. They’re just trying to get the meeting and move on. But if you’re trying to grow yourself professionally, you should understand where you’re struggling and bringing that up proactively. Don’t do a performance evaluation every quarter, seek a performance evaluation every month. I did that when I was an SDR and as I was continuing my sales journey. If you have a really good manager, that can change your life. Be proactive there.
Fred Diamond: Actually, I’m older than most you guys, but once a year you’ll get your reviews. I have a friend who manages sales with a well-known company, and we were talking and he said one of the guys on his team wants a performance review every day. He wants to know, “Hey, boss, how did I do today?” He eventually had to tell the young man, “Look, you’re doing great. Keep up the great work. We’ll officially do one every single month.” Gabe, how about you? What would be your advice to a SDR who wants to know how to improve their career right now, or their performance?
Gabe Lullo: Terry nailed it, but to add to it, actually, I wrote a post last week about this, and it’s to find an accountability partner. He was talking about a manager, but I have someone, and I’ll remain nameless on this one, but she started with us with very little experience working as an SDR, mostly emailing, not on the phone. The phone was very new to her, but she had all the other things in spades when it came to being an SDR. As a CEO, you would feel like, “I’m not going to reach out.” We’re all on a Slack. We have Zoom chat. We have internal communication. We have Teams. She messaged me and said, “Hey, do you mind listening to this call for me and giving your feedback?” To me directly, she has three layers of managers between us. I said, “Sure.”
You can’t even realize how many people are willing to help if you just ask them. That’s what I mean about being coachable and finding a mentor as an SDR. Now we literally have a weekly sync, and she’s an SDR on her team. She just got promoted, and we talk literally about her calls, very tactical every single time we talk. The metamorphosis that I’ve seen over the last six months, from where she was now to where she is today, is night and day. It’s pretty awesome to see. Find a mentor and be willing to be coached is the biggest thing I would say when you’re looking to be a better SDR.
Fred Diamond: I applaud her for having the courage to come to you, and I’m sure she did it the right way. You probably clued in her leadership.
Gabe Lullo: A hundred percent. We got a group chat.
Fred Diamond: Good for them too. We talk a lot about mentoring and the one advice that we like to give is leaders like you, Gabe, and you Terry, I’m sure would mentor people all the time. We tell them, come with a specific ask. Not just what would you do, but how do I get better on the phone? Or how do I get the customer more engaged? Or how do I bring the company better customers? I applaud her and I applaud you for taking her on and for your commitment to her success.
I want to thank you both for the great insights. We hadn’t really done a show in a while on the role of the SDR, so this was perfect timing. I appreciate it. As we like to do at the end of every show, want to ask for one final action step. We covered a lot. We covered sales leadership. We also covered the actual rank-and-file SDR as well. We usually ask for a final action step that you recommend to our listeners who are either listening today or reading the transcript. Terry, what would be your advice for our listeners today? You’ve given us so many great ideas, but something they should do right now after listening to the show or reading the transcript.
Terry Husayn: I’ll give you a rev ops task, and it’s not a small ask to those that are listening, and I guarantee, 99% of you have never done this. BPM map, business process map the processes the SDRs are taking a day, whether it’s prospecting, demos, follow ups, proposals for AEs, whatever it may be. You have no idea how much time is wasted not selling. You also have all the tools. You likely have the Salesforce, ZoomInfos and Gongs and everything. You have the exact same tech stack that your competitors do, but your competitor probably is automated twice as much as you have. Take a look at your rev ops stack, look at what your team is doing. I guarantee you there’s 50% plus more efficiency there that you just haven’t even deployed, although you have the keys to the engine.
Fred Diamond: Actually, as Gabe mentioned before, and I agree with you a million percent, whenever people ask me, “How do I get better at sales?” I say, “Pick up the phone.” I like what you said in the very beginning, that if you’re not on the phone as much as you could be, then you’re definitely wasting time. Gabe, bring us home.
Gabe Lullo: I’m so happy. You set up the analogy for me perfectly, because pick up the phone is step one, but knowing what to say is step two. That’s what I want to talk about. My analogy’s very quick, 10% of the people are going to say yes just because, 10% are going to say no just because, and 80% are going to be in the middle. Those are your green apples. They have to ripen up to red. Well, you are the one that’s supposed to be the sunlight and ripen them up. What do I mean?
There’s only 10 objections you’ll ever hear in sales, and the SDR role. Now, you hear a million, but you can file them across about 10 specific categories, and you need to know exactly what to say when that comes up. Then you can write your own check, and it increases the confidence level through the roof, which is what is super important in the SDR role, is to have that confidence when you’re talking to executives. But if you know how to respond to every single objection and have a rebuttal for that on anything that throws to you, you’re lethal. Get really fanatical about knowing how to respond to anything that is said your way, and there’s only 10. That’s the good news.
Fred Diamond: Even though I usually end the show right now, I just want to follow up with that. One of the other most important words that we talk a lot about is preparation. A lot of times we have these young SDRs, typically their first or second job out of school, or maybe at some point they made a shift. They want to get into sales, if you will. One of the fears is, “Okay, I’m talking to a director of IT,” or, “I’m talking to someone my dad’s age,” or, “I’m talking to someone C-level,” and you hear them time and time again, just scripted. Or they’ll say something fake. I get a lot of calls from SDRs because of the Institute for Excellence in Sales. They’ll say, “Gee, I know you’re looking to be more productive.” Everybody’s looking to be more productive. Terry hit on that a second or two ago. What are your thoughts on preparation and how prepared the SDR should be with what the customer really needs, the specific customer, before the engagement happens?
Terry Husayn: I talk about the reasons why reps fail on dialing automation like Orum, because a lot of people think they’re too “strategic” to leverage automation. Because they’re like, “We won’t be prepared. We won’t have our notes.” Then I do a live demo and I talk exactly about the public reports they had, where I found the information, their job posts, how I know their tech stack and LinkedIn information that I gathered. All the information you need to be prepared is there. We almost call that our hinge. When you enter the conversation, it might sound like, “Hey, this is Terry Husayn calling from Orum. I saw you were hiring SDRs. In the job post it mentions that your reps are making 80 to 100 dials a day and logging it into Salesforce. We integrate with that. I think we might be able to help. Can I tell you a little bit more and can you let me know if it makes sense to continue the conversation?”
It is important to just not come in with anything. If you share just a tiny bit of information and research, our data shows your conversion into conversation is going to be very, very high. You are going to have a little bit of back and forth. You’re going to have a chance, as Gabe put it, to ripen the apple. You might get that 80%, you’re going to see a much higher level.
Fred Diamond: Everything’s out there. All the information. You could just go into ChatGPT and just type a question today. It’s just unbelievable how far that’s come. Gabe, why don’t you wrap it up here for us?
Gabe Lullo: It’s more of what I was mentioning, but the preparation is essentially you’re in the batter’s box, and they’re throwing the ball at you. You just need to know, okay, that was a fastball, or that was a changeup, that was a curve. If you know what those pitches are going to be, then you’re going to be better at knocking it out of the park. But you got to be swinging the bat. You got to be practicing and you got to be consistently, consistently, consistently rehearsing that. I remember driving, we all work from home now, but driving to work every single day when I was an SDR. My steering wheel was my best prospect. I was the guy like, “Who is that crazy person talking to himself on the way to work?” That was me because I was practice, drill, rehearse, practice, drill, rehearse. It’s second nature. Again, preparing what to say and don’t be lazy in language is super important.
Fred Diamond: We like to say on the Sales Game Changers Podcast, if you’re a sales professional, be a professional. I want to thank Gabe Lullo, Terry Husayn. My name is Fred Diamond. This is the Sales Game Changers Podcast.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo