We have all had days where we have forgotten to pause notifications on Slack. Well, this was one of those days.
Slightly annoyed with myself, I decided to check and see why my Slack was blowing up.
My annoyance did not last all that long when I saw that our SDR team was celebrating their recent win! 😁
Here’s the snapshot of what our SDR team accomplished late that night –
After sending out a few messages congratulating the SDR team, it was our turn (the Content Marketing team) to continue this party train.
We wanted to let the world know and celebrate our SDR team. To find out more I sat down with Rishav Ram and Avirup Banerjee from our SDR team, and here’s my takeaway from the conversation.
The Story
‘Twas around the middle of the last month of the first quarter with unfulfilled quotas hanging over the heads of our Inbound SDR team.
The inbound SDR team decided it was time to re-strategize. Gathering their strengths for one last time before the quarter ends, the team met up to discuss how we can leverage our product and their skills.
After an intense meeting, a multi-channel approach to hit the quarterly targets was established. They tweaked their existing cadences to incorporate other touchpoints (social proof) to begin with.
The team went back and looked at the MQLs they encountered during the quarter. They focused their efforts on MQLs that showed interest but did not book a meeting, they realized that MQLs that never responded to our outreach efforts were the start.
After shortlisting the MQLs that they wanted to chase after, the team then launched a coordinated effort to ensure that they g0t these MQLs to book meetings with us.
To ensure they had a better edge, they chose to leverage our Chrome Extension to the maximum—and bippity-boppity-boo—we booked 42 meetings that day!
Well, if only life was so simple every single day! For those of you who didn’t get the memo—it’s not.
Tips From the Horse’s Mouth
#1 Identify the Right Prospects
In every possible scenario in sales, identifying the right prospects is important. But when it’s the end of the quarter and a few days left to hit your quota, identifying the right prospects to reach out to is a big deal.
Rishav and Avirup both had the same opinion. In this time crunch, we picked prospects that we had previously reached out to. These prospects had the following characteristics:
- They had responded to us to find out more information before they went cold.
- They had either opened our emails or clicked on the links in the email.
When asked if they only reached out to old prospects, Rishav and Avirup mentioned that a handful of fresh new prospects thrown into the mix.
#2 Personalized Outreach
We have all heard this one before—no matter how things change in sales, personalized outreach is here to stay. While the advice is sound, we have to remember that most SDRs are making 70 cold calls, adding 45 new prospects on email cadences, and continuing to prospect as if their life depends on it.
At Slintel, our SDR reps firmly believe in quality over quantity. While it is great to book meetings, what matters the most is to convert these meetings into opportunities.
While speaking with Rishav, I had the opportunity to ask him how he and his team worked on creating personalized outreach. He mentioned that –
“With Slintel’s Technographic and Psychographic data insights, personalization becomes that much easier.”
A quick installation of our Chrome Extension will not only allow you to find the contact information of the prospect but also give you access to crucial information such as buying intent scores, psychographic intent, key data points regarding the prospect’s company, and more.
It can also help with identifying possible pain points a prospect may have and how you can help address them.
Incorporating this information into your email sequences will help you and your team develop uniquely personalized emails.
We’ve got something to help you write cold prospecting emails. And while you’re at it, make sure you know what are the dos and don’ts of cold emailing.
#3 Social Selling
This is another effective way SDRs can leverage to book meetings. With social media, SDRs can understand their prospects in a personal way and find out what kind of content they are consuming.
Look around to see what influencers your prospects follow, and what posts they like or comment on. Implement cadences in your sales sequence specifically for these prospects by referencing their actions.
Your major goal is to get your prospects to respond to you so that you can loop it back to your value proposition.
#4 Video Prospecting
While it is great to use time-tested methods like sending emails or cold calling, another promising medium to leverage is video prospecting.
With video prospecting, your SDRs can use creative methods to reach out and engage with prospects.
It can either be a video of your SDR just saying hi or in the later stages of prospecting it can be a video that explains succinctly who you are and what your product can do for your prospect.
More often than not, prospects prefer getting a feel of a product or service via videos as opposed to a Zoom call.
Pro Tip from Rishav: It is not necessary that our SDRs should be video editing experts. There are a lot of free tools available with which they can make sure that the video is customized for each prospect. With tools like Vidyard and Loom Chrome extensions, your SDRs can be their very own movie directors.
To further drive Rishav’s point, check out a fun parody of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” by our very own SDR Ryan Aneja.
#5 Teamwork
At Slintel, we pride ourselves on our teamwork. We believe that this is one of the biggest factors that sets us apart and helps us achieve our quotas and often exceed them.
Our SDR team is no stranger when it comes to teamwork. To make sure that the team’s quarterly quotas were met, our SDR team of 6 rallied together to achieve this by booking 42 meetings in a day.
On the call with Rishav and Avirup, fondly recalled how there was a sense of friendly competition within the team to see who books more meetings. As an observer on this call, it was delightful to see the camaraderie, embodiment of Slintel’s culture, and a sense of accomplishment that exists within our SDR team.
Right Place, Right Time
Like everything in life, sales prospecting also depends on being in the right place at the right time. When asked if what our SDR team did can be replicated, both Rishav and Avirup exclaimed with a unanimous “Yes”.
TL;DR: Key takeaways from this blog —
- Identify the right prospects for this exercise.
- Pick the right time for performing this exercise. Our team recommends the end of a quarter or a month.
- Devise personalized cadences for prospects.
- Establish a minimum of a 10-day cadence sequence to capitalize as much as possible.
- Deploy creative methods when reaching out to prospects. Incorporate memes, fun videos, engaging on LinkedIn when they haven’t responded to your emails work great.
Good luck prospecting, folks!
