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You might not go to spin class, but should you still be a full cycle AE? Will innovations in proposal technology help you get more customers to say "I do"? And should more sellers be doing the side hustle? All this and our first ever report from the field on today's episode of Full Funnel Hey everyone, I'm RajNATION, he's Tyler Lessard and this is Full Funnel. The every so often show where we cover three hot topics happening in the world of sales, all to help you go out, show out, and fill up your funnel. Let's dive in today with our top funnel topic. With the rise of the sales development function in many modern sales teams, the question needs to be asked, do AEs need to be full cycle or not? Raj, what's your hot take on this? So I actually come from a world where when I, my first sales job, the SDR BDR function didn't even exist yet or it wasn't popularized. So if you were selling, you were doing all of it. And I'll tell you what I found, and I know what a lot of full cycle sales people find, is that yes, you can do your prospecting, but the second your pipeline actually starts to develop, what's the first thing that gets dropped off of your weekly schedule? More prospecting. It's just really hard to keep up with all of it. So what I believe should most organizations should do at this point is, yes, definitely have a SDR/BDR discipline, but that doesn't mean the AE should do zero prospecting. Instead I think what's the best use of the AE's time and the best way they can build a solid relationship with the SDR and then help the company grow is if you just give the AE a short list of strategic accounts, I don't know 5 or 10 strategic accounts where you say, hey, part of your job is cracking into these accounts throughout the year. So there's no longer a volume game and now they get to use the functions that they would be using once someone gets into their funnel anyways but they're just doing it a little bit earlier. And I think that's how you get more and more deals in your pipeline. You get to execute personalization techniques, which we all know is what most people receiving messages want to receive anyways. And then on top of that you're able to make it part of your natural workflow as an account executive. Tyler, are you on that same tandem bicycle with me or are you thinking something else? No, I'm with you. I agree that the SDR BDR function is a really important part of today's sales process, but if your AEs can't prospect, they're going to have a hard time when things don't go right. And it's not only prospecting into new accounts but to your point, prospecting into existing accounts, finding new relationships and opening up expansion opportunities. It's not just about closing out deals. But on that topic of closing out deals we are going to move into our middle of final topic for today. Proposal technology has gone through some interesting innovations in recent years and some big funding, which means there's a lot more goodness to come, To learn more about this area, we are going to pass it over to Sales Feed's own, Will Aitken for a report from the field. Thank you so much Tyler. In the news this month. PandaDoc and Proposify both raised an undisclosed series C and a $5 million venture funding round respectively. With Panda Doc now entering unicorn status. "Unicorn Status" This proposal category is an interesting one. Solutions promised to give sales teams more control over what their reps are sending, save their reps time, improve presentation with things like embedded video and give insights with document tracking. Beyond that it really is a combination of other categories merged into one. For example, if I went on to PandaDoc's website, they list themselves as a proposal software but also list use cases like eSign, content management, contract management quoting, RFPs, invoicing and payments. There's really a lot there. Now are any of those use cases going to be as effective as a solution that dedicates itself to just one of those functionalities? Probably not. But for the majority of companies, especially small, medium sized ones that light functionality in each of these areas is likely all that they'll need. For the future of this space, I foresee a heavier focus on the analytics as those closing stages in a sale cycle are lacking data when you compare them to the top of funnel and middle of funnel. On that note back to you gents. Being a salesperson is a full time job, but should it be your only job? Well, I'll tell you as a lifelong side hustler, my first sales job out of college, within a year, I was building up a side hustle and that was all around creating networking events for people in marketing and sales and the world of business and I found so much fulfillment in doing that, that it kind of made me feel more motivated at my main job. Now here's the tricky part of it though, it's really easy for a side hustle to become a main hustle and in that case that's actually what happened because I started to fall out of love with the main work that I was doing. However, I don't think I would have even been motivated to keep coming to work if I didn't have something else I was doing on the side to round out my overall personality. And so depending on the type of personality you are, you may be like me where you don't feel fulfilled internally unless you're able to explore your passions in a way that works for you. So my advice if you are starting a side hustle or if you already have one going is just make sure you can figure out a way to let it work within your schedule without disrespecting your employer. One example I can point to is one of my side hustles, outside of Startup Hypeman is teaching yoga. And at first I thought you know what, I can dip out for an hour during lunch a couple times a week and teach a lunchtime yoga class. And I quickly saw that to teach at noon, I've got to start thinking about the class at 11 and then afterwards I'm tired and it takes me until 2:30 to even like get back into work mode again, It's kind of like a four hour swing overall. So I made a decision, I'm only gonna teach yoga in the evenings once I'm done with my main responsibility, Tyler from a leadership perspective, how would you view an employee like me? Well, I think it's important for all of us as leaders to be supportive of those who work for us. If they do have a side hustle or a gig, call it what you will. But for many of the points that you raise here, it can make them a more well rounded, more excited, more passionate individual and that will carry over into their day to day job as a sales rep. The other thing to be mindful of is many of the things they'll be doing will actually contribute back to their own personal sales skills and their own personal development, business management, customer management and so on. All of these other things can actually make them a better salesperson. The last tip I have for you, is the worst thing for a sales leader is to find out accidentally or on the side that you've got a side hustle. So be open with your boss about it, let them know that you've got this thing going on because you don't want them to find out accidentally and then think you were holding something back. That does it for today's episode of Full Funnel. We have run out of time. Let's do a quick recap of our show. In our top funnel, we talked about the merits of being a full cycle account executive. For more great information on that, check out the episode of the Live Better Sell Better podcast linked in the comments. And in the middle of the funnel we talked about the proposal tech space and what's booming over there. For more details check out the TechCrunch article on PandaDoc's recent funding. And in our bottom funnel we talked about how to execute a side hustle as a sales person. If you've got more questions on that, please reach out to me, I'm a lifelong side hustler, I'm happy to share with you my tips, advice, and thoughts on your own journey or reach out to someone you know and trust who has a side hustle and is doing something that you want to get involved in and ask them if they can share their journey with you. That's all we've got for you today on Full Funnel, brought to you by Sales Feed. He is Tyler Lessard, I am RajNATION. We hope you can get out there now and fill up your funnel and remember, please play close attention to your microwave, as oven wattages may vary.