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when you first move into the especially in companies where there's not much process really with their sales development team i'm interested to to hear what you think is the most important things to be addressing in terms of that building up those processes out um from a salesman standpoint like you know if you were to move and um no um like god forbid but if you were to move again um and like right now fresh company or if there's like a you know ceo founder who's looking to build their cell phone development yeah now our brand new str manager what would be for you the stuff that you would advise them really focusing on at the start in terms of building processes sure i think i mean process is so important that's the first thing i looked at i went to my cro at the time and i said look this is what's happening at the moment these are the problems these are the solutions um i would urge anyone uh in life if you've got any problems that you know and you're trying to go to somebody with those problems that you need to at least have a proposed solution for them um for me the foundations are so so important you know i love my analogies but if you imagine kind of building a house and uh the first layer is pretty shoddy it's not gonna it's not gonna stay up for too long so those foundations are so important there is so much information out there on linkedin or you know blog post you know what have you i would say to my team um there's so much advice to go and seek but please whatever you do take everything with a pinch of salt because uh people have got a lot to say and you know what might work for me in my company is not necessarily going to work for you and yours um so trying not to run before you can walk i think is so so important and built and really focusing on getting those foundations right you know is it a case of i spoke to somebody the other day that was having uh who was a founder and he was having issues um with his sdr team uh and it was all down to data i actually pointed them in your direction so you can thank me later there we go it was down it was down to data you know not having data and obviously you know calling is our number one channel that's where we we book the most meetings um but that's not to say that we then can't work on any of the other channels but if i was if i was starting out i would focus on getting myself to the point where i've got the good data so that i can call because you know i remember spending we would spend hours um my team at forecast and when we were just trialling different um you know data data tools and you just would be dialing somebody over and over and over again and we just feel like we're hitting a you know hitting our heads against a brick wall it's so frustrating um and then i think i suppose the second thing is to try and try and try and try again until something works you know whether that's with your messaging you know you need to be really looking at your cadences at least once a quarter and bringing in new messaging um you know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result if you're not getting meetings if you're not booking meetings you need to look at what you can change and what your process is and that all comes down to being proactive at the end of the day but i think if i was starting from completely fresh it would simply be focus on one thing get it right move on to the next i love that really love that advice and are you um i'm going to be a bit cheeky here but you mentioned that you kind of had a team lead that's recently moved up and she's now managing peers and i think you went through that same process um maybe there's other people that are kind of in exactly that that um mode right now or experiencing that right now um what was do you mind me asking what was your advice um on on that point to um to your team lead and yeah any advice for anybody out there i think a lot a lot of it comes down to the kind of you know a slight sense of imposter syndrome potentially you know you've been on a loving play a level playing field with these people you might have been a particularly good um or exceptional contributor in my instance um she was i don't want to say her name so i don't know anyone to pinch her from me but um she was she was absolutely incredible and um and that's why she was promoted um i think for her it was a a challenge of you know being a similar age range to her peers and kind of how do i maintain that really good positive relationship um but also make sure that i get the most out of people i think a lot of a lot of there's a huge stigma around people think that you can't be you can't have a good uh friendship with your managers as well as a good working relationship now for me i've always kept that line very very clear um but it doesn't mean that you can't have one without the other you know you can have ultimate respect for somebody but also you need to learn when the time is right to turn around and say actually you're not putting a weight here but rather than it be a case of this isn't working and kind of more of like a telling off session um i think there's just a way of you know reframing that it's not a case of right you've not hit your number this month why has that not happened it's let's look at ways that we can set you up to succeed because ultimately that's not happening at the moment and as a manager you have to ask yourself it does that come down to this person cannot do this role or does it come down to the fact that this person has not got what they need to do their role and those are two very different things attitude cannot be taught everything else can so that's something that i absolutely stand by and advised her very much on is a case of you know don't let that impostor syndrome kind of get to you you are where you are for a reason and self-belief is going to take you further than most other things will that's great that's awesome um i think um so you've obviously got and obviously we won't talk about names because i also don't want her getting poached but you've got two female um leaders in your sdr team and i always say that me doing this is totally selfish because um i you know since the day i started um being um kind of in the in this world i've been always other people asking people questions um just so i can learn myself um and so i always whenever i do this i'm always um i always ask the team whether there's one question that they would you know that they would ask and i think this time round because we've obviously met your team we've been super lucky to have your team in in our offices um and met the met the team one of the things that was super clear was actually like you your team bucks the trend in terms of the female to male ratios that you ordinarily see within tech tech scr world certainly um and so i think one question that we had was like we would love to hear from from you like what what do you think um you know we're always trying to attract more female candidates and if there's anybody watching that is a uh wants to be a um an sdl for cognizant and there's a female we'd love to hear from you um but um yeah we're always looking to attract more female candidates i'd love to hear from you how you're doing it so well but like if you have any advice for us and and other companies out there that you know that you think would help attract candidates sure sure um to be honest with you it's not i promise you it's not it's not something that we've done intentionally we are now down to one one man on our team and the rest are our female um not not intentional i know people always say you know you hire in your own image um my uh predecessor was was male and so was my team leads so we've gone from two to men running the team to two to two females wasn't intentional just the way it's happened uh we work very very well together which i absolutely love um in terms of the rest of the team to be honest i think with us it's a case of we are a martech so you know as a very sort of hoping this is not a sweeping statement but as a general kind of gist of things you know girls tend to to lean towards marketing positions more so than perhaps men it's much more female dominated um and i think it's just a case of the girls really get it and understand it and understand the solution the tech like what we're trying to achieve how we actually help brands you know everyone does i do a lot of online shopping so i know all the tips and tricks of kind of when someone's trying to um uh you know what what looks good in terms of like a personalized experience versus what doesn't um so i think we've just leaned perhaps slightly we've leaned slightly more into into women but then you know we look at i look at my bdm team um sorry not not mine that they're not under me but our bdm team um and you know our head of sales is male uh we have uh two other male bdms and two females so that's a bit more balanced um to be honest with you i mean i don't know if you're aware of um kind of wiser and there um i think it's making moves they call it there's a couple of the girls there lauren um is one of them that run a a kind of women in tech um forum so anyone looking at sdr's looking then i definitely would head towards their direction they actually recently have published i'm going to get this wrong so sorry lauren if you're watching um a kind of i suppose a little bit of data that they kind of went out to a lot of women that work in tech and ask them what it is exactly that you know what do you want from your working environment um so it's interesting to read that report and see what has come out of it um you know one of the top things was commission structure um being a huge kind of um incentive you know and also women in leadership positions you know i want to work for somebody where i can see somebody like me you know it's the age old classic of you wanna you want somebody to kind of look up to an aspire to be in their role um so that's that was really interesting would recommend having a flick through that um and then interestingly you know as much as me and all my friends go to the gym gym membership was was leased on on the list of priorities um so you know ask your team ask ask your sdrs what is it that they like uh working you know about working with cognizant um and and yeah but for us to be honest with you i think it's just a case of it's just the way it is not intentional i promise it's great it's and it's really great advice i really like you know the idea of going to the team and kind of asking them i think is is obviously a complete no-brainer um and yeah i'd love you know we're super super keen to have more people in so if there is anybody watching please please um please apply on our website um ellie we um when we like the other thing that um when you came into the office we spoke about was kind of like i think you're really um it feels like you've really like you're building that fresh relevance team out leveling them up and or constantly leveling them up um i'm interested to hear like what you're um as a leader what you've done or what you feel has been like a really like the best things you've done to move the needle and kind of like push the team to the next level um you know i think it's really easy to kind of get in you know have a and this is a true management general get in have a quite successful team um but kind of stagnate um so yeah you know pretty broad broad question here but like is there anything in particular you think's done that like made a big impact and kind of yeah helped continue to level level the team up sure um for me i think probably the biggest thing that that i suppose i've implemented would be um the uh awareness i suppose of the email channel i think a lot of the sdrs when i first joined hated the email channel thought it was completely pants and wasn't going to get them anywhere um i think i read something the other day that said that the number of emails being sent has gone up um twofold since since 2020 and the level of replies has gone gone uh has dropped by a half um so obviously you know that's you can understand why perhaps people don't want to email um but you know doing a lot of enablement sessions around email around follow-ups um implementing best practices which is you know 25 to 50 words keep it short and sweet straight to the point um following a structure of you know clear compelling event an assumption um a question based around that assumption uh you know value and a call to action um you know the list goes on i've really really spent an awful lot of time looking at our messaging um i think a lot of time cadences are built around you know for us it would be crm e-commerce which you know people don't like being in cadences um your prospect does not want to be in a cadence uh you know people view their emails as a to-do list and if your email is not relevant it doesn't matter how personalized it is but relevancy is so so important and personalization without relevancy is going to do a hell of a lot of damage to your reply rates um so i think for me you know just bearing in mind that you know i think it's people are eight times more likely to open an email on their phone and three times more likely to send it via a computer um so being aware of that mobile optimization you know is it short and sweet is it snappy is it in layman's terms and straight to the point rather than you know obviously i'm sure you do as well they've received so many emails um and not only are they not personalized but they're just not relevant i mean i wouldn't mind them not being personalized if at least they were relevant but they have no relevancy to me whatsoever which is why they just get deleted um so yeah i would say probably the email channel has been my biggest focus and i'm very glad that it's it's going well so far no that's great and honestly i think it bucks the trend i think you hear so much about the email channel dying [Music]