Streamline sales pipeline development for enterprises

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all right great thank you the guy at the back can hear me so that's good you know so hi everyone my name is May I'm co-founder and CEO of Li like you and today I will be sharing a little bit of our journey growing and building a sales pipeline so a little bit about myself prior to lead IQ I used to be a product manager at Oracle I was there for 10 years a little bit too long before I finally decided that it's time to oh I suspect some time in the business you know me when I was at Oracle so and and then I decided to try to work in a start-up so four years ago I left Oracle to join my co-founder working on a startup that eventually became Li like you Li like you was not the first thing that we work on we prefer that to get to what Li like you is I am NOT a sales person I do not have sales background so we did a lot of trial and error to learn what we learned today to get to where we are today so as the founder I was the first salesperson of the company and throughout the past four years we grew the sales team and today we have seven salespeople working for our company so what I would like to share is that outbound sales is very important especially for early startup because if you are working for an enterprise or a larger startup you typically have a better a brand that at least some people recognize you have credibility you have repetition when you are in early startup you have none of that no brand no credibility no one have heard who you are it's much harder and why outbound sales is even more important so most of you would probably have heard of benefits they will at their glory days was one of the most hyped company in Silicon Valley MOOC day and Salesforce took about for years to get to from 0 to 20 million ARR zenefits took half of that so just about 2 years it was really good they did something good and of course now slack is the golden child I think slack did it even short in a shorter time then what's the end of it did but let's listen a little bit to what did then if it's do how did they do it from 0 to 20 millionaire in two years there's no audio can we get the audio up sorry bear with us for a few seconds yeah right well so in any case zenefits started as a Y Combinator company the first three months they hired Matt Epstein who you will be hearing him talking soon to just do a lot of prospecting Cory mailing and happy testing who's the right audience who's the right person they thought it's simple because they are selling an HR software they should be talking to the HR people but in the end what they realize is that when they are emailing the HR people they don't respond to them so even though the HR software which the most obvious people that would be using them as the HR people no one responds back to them as only after AP testing sending the different people they realized that when they send it to the CEO or the CFO the company then they get more response then it will eventually forward to the HR people so that's one of their learning it looks like the audio doesn't work so we'll skip it I'll move on but that's they took almost three months they'd be testing this you would have it would be more exciting to hear it from Matt rather than me but that's a summary if the audio works we may try to play this again right so given that we decided as a company that we wanted to invest in outbound sales - we tried to hire of first SDR and I'm going to share our journey on how we did that and what happened was the learning what's the apps and what sit down so the first thing we did we launched in lead IQ in April 2015 about six months later we hired our very first marketing which luckily is a good person who's very experienced in Co emailing he was a nasty or another company called Dyne before so one thing that most people do not most companies do not pay a lot of attention is that as an early company the first impression matters as we mentioned right no one have heard of you you have no reputation so the first thing they will try to gather about you is that from your website or your blog's or your emails when you are sending an email about who are you what kind of company are you do I even want to talk to you now most people spend a ton of time in building the website designing it so it looks nice what do you want to talk about it may be 10 to 100 hours you spend a bit of time maybe hire a Content person to work on your blog's making sure that you are giving good content but when you are sending call email most people don't even think about it you just type it up and sending it and as we saw today most of you probably know it too you have received tons of call emails that the content is just junk right and most people are now thinking that call emails is equal to spam and you will be deleting most of them right we are we believe in this and we spend a ton of time rethinking our core email how can we make sure that our core email is received by the recipient and how would they thing about it when they first see this email here is some example of our Corey Mills Ryan the first marketing person that we have who's a prospector wrote this to a sales leader in a company because we want to talk to them about I brought up we wanted to get their feedback so we didn't sell even about up what up he's just like say hey gr I'm not a gifted musician but I made this for you Linux are in the description any chance we could snack time to talk next week you just say that this is Co prospecting tool you're building and we can help you guys what are your thoughts and there is in the link there's a mr. audio still not working but there is a video let's the men in the video and the link there is a video to do this [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you get the idea right the key here is that all we're trying to do is get your attention and let's meet and then we talk about the rest during the meeting right so by making this video we catch the guys expect attention this is the response we're not seeing it here so we got response right away Ryan I'm in for call next week and so it's my boss and see seeing the whole sales team they just was so impressed by the amount of effort put into this email that they were like yeah I'm down to talk we didn't cause this me but we got a good meeting out of it if they're not like we were too small a product was too little this what with what we are looking for but we get a good first meeting and in the early days we did a ton of this just trying to get meetings with people this is another song for another company that was also personalize it doesn't scale but we did maybe 10 to 15 of these kind of Corey males with videos right that's the early days how we first get real company to start like talking to us so once we did that for a couple of months we see that it's working we can get people to talk to us we in May 2016 we hired our very first SDR to try to replicate what Ryan did so Ryan and Ryan is quite a personality he's comfortable singing in a video office SDR is not like that doesn't matter the goal was just that we want to personalize so he does different things he's sweet just Lincoln he makes sure what are they interested in and he still make it personalized it's not video anymore but it still works so since we'd hire office SDR we implement that Salesforce and we started tracking and we you can see the number of new opportunities created was going on we thought this is working this is great but what happened was that ops are growing the revenue is flat we were not posting those ups so outbound ops are actually kind of hard they tend to be longer cycle you want to close them that doesn't mean that you can always close them yet in the beginning but you start dancing with them you're not chewing them so there are a couple of things that were happening for us at that point of time actually so first is that I'm the I was still the very first and the only sales person of the company then and up until this point this is when we hired our very first AE so I think because we started getting more and more customers we did not actually have enough people to handhold them we are still early many people is still needs to be taught on how to use it so when we hire our very first AE it free me a little bit to work with each customer when they were not happy about something we can actually build it quickly for them and then our revenue starts going up again so now I mentioned to you that we hired our first SDR and office AE opportunity starts going up in November 2016 we decided to scale it let's build three more STRs right so we hired a second ae and more's but the next six months opportunity stay flat so when we hired one SDR we were making in making about maybe 30k in opportunities every quarter as we hire morris the earth somehow it's just spread between the three of them so something is wrong so we was we started like learning like what happened the opportunities are just not coming and we learn about that having the SQL helped us to learn at that point of time lead IQ we are a software that helps sales team get more prospects and contact information at that point of time we only have emails we don't have phone numbers and we started reaching out more companies but most of the companies do not want to pursue further when they learn that we are email only providers we were lacking for numbers so this period of time we realize that it's hard for us to continue growing if we don't have phone numbers the SQL help us to learn that so we started like we need to grow this we need to fix the phone numbers and make that available to you so in August 2017 we kill the SDR team realizing it doesn't work we just move 1% do customers obsess move another person do applause enroll and and we actually did not have any SDR team at all for a couple of months then in November 2017 we the phone numbers is available we started to take another step at this let's do this again and this time she realized that to office experience that as the ORS are a pretty hard role that it would rise a certain personality you need someone who is not that's not give up easily who's resilient and typically people hire out of that college graduates and it's very hard to train them and they need a lot of training we don't have the skills and we don't have to bear with and the capacities to actually train that's part of the failure with our first batch of the SEO theorem so this time round we decided to hire experience as the our were dispatch of people they have been an SDF before in another company for at least three years or four years and then we hire them with real IQ you have done this before you know what's coming you know what you need to do you just need to do it again but this time it's easier because you are selling to folks like yourself it product it what products also SDRs right so they got it oh yeah I would use SMS T or I would use this product and it's easier for me to sell that so we try that and it actually works really well sorry I'm clearly not knowing how to navigate this it actually work really well as you can see starting then like opportunity starts going up again so what I wanted to share more to here is that more we have had a lot of questions because we work with many companies who hire sqr when should we hire in-house SDR and when which should we outsource it in our experience right when you don't have the time to invest in it or you do not have the bandwidth outsourcing may make sense typically it's cheaper to get started it's easier it's about 6,000 per month for an agency to start testing out for you they will work on finding ideal customer profiles finding some contacts working on some email templates but you still have to work with them closely as if they are your in-house team because in the early days there's still a lot of AP testing on messaging and value proposition if you just fully outsource it like for us for example we may never have learned that the problem we were not closing the ops or we were not getting the ops was for numbers because we have that in-house the people were just like I can't sell this because you could we don't have phone numbers the agency may just not care to dig deeper or why this or if you don't have a good communication you may not understanding it and you maybe you just may feel like the agency doesn't work out and you find another agency there's a you need to communicate and really feel to meet them like an in-house SDR but in a long run an in-house SEO is really needed because it's hard to scale with agency with once you get an in-house SEO running if you have processes that you can train new people on how to hire how to train and how to scale them then once you're ready to scale it's very easy to just add another body and you know how many ups you will be generating next so in our experience building a nest your team takes about at least three months from time we only get about 50% success rate this is us as in only one out of two SDOs we hire and up being successful and staying with us after three months so it's something that we're trying to improve it could be our fault in training right we don't know it could be but right now we're just okay we need three as yours we know so far we only have fifty percent success rate we need to hire six that's the way we go about it and what we have realized - on average we are asking our ask us to send less emails most people in the industry we know they are targeting between 50 to 100 activities either email social or calling a day whereas the earth and in our opinion that's way too many if you are sending that many you don't have the time to personalize it and if you don't personalize it more of those emails are ending up in junk mail or people just sending it market a spam when that happens in the long run more and more of your emails are going to be ending up in the spam folder right and then if it efficacy of your school email is going down - so it's very important actually to send last email that most people are appreciating and the percentage of emails being Marcus Pam by your recipient and the percentage of emails that are getting response back needs to be pretty balanced in order for you to continue being able to do this outbound in the long run otherwise within a few months it will you just like no one is responding to our outbound out of each so we see more success if you use multiple channels email phone and linked in it's the way you once you email someone try to engage them within LinkedIn we internally use LinkedIn a pan where if you know these people are mentioning something on their LinkedIn posts we will then try to engage with them or our marketing team actually spends a lot of time building on contents that we are posting in LinkedIn and then we will be prospecting people who like to posts so our marketing and STRs actually work hand-in-hand we try to give our SEO us warmly it's rather than cult leads that these people are already liking content for marketing from social media so lastly is that we realized that as us who are successful have really liked competitive and aggressive nature that they just don't take no for an answer when they try to do call email it's easy for someone to say I don't have time right now the better one somehow is able to turn that no into a ten minutes conversation like someone say oh I I don't have time right now but he asked oh but how are you you know are you meeting your quota this man or are you meeting do you have how you're currently doing delete and somehow that turns into a conversation that ten minutes later okay I'll take the meeting with you so it takes skills and it takes practice but after seeing that's why training is very important the newer guys the younger guys typically give up really easily they just think this is impossible who is going to take my calls but after seeing the the more experienced as the or did it they finally like they realized okay this is some of the tips the tip and tricks that they can do one last thing that is actually the biggest idea from what we have discovered today is that we realize that STR team are often being seen as the most junior of people in the company they are the most kind of like usually the least paid because usually they are the most junior who are out of college and athlete that the worst sort of like you know they're just the assistant of the AES whose job is just like making appointments for the salespeople we are trying to do it another way where as the ORS are the most important people in our company because they're our brand advocates they're at the face of the company who is there for us if you remember my slide from the beginning most impression matters your website your blog your call email and your SEO is one of those they're the people who are out there representing you your company and your brand who are these people we we are now no longer hiring out of grad we hire people with experience who we think and represent our brand and can speak to what we are about we spend marketing dollars to promote our as yours as industry experts we ask them to make video content we put a lot of like actually social social advertising to promote some of this content but how they are doing their poor emailing what some of their tips some of their tactics and we promote this content so we put more down STR and we nominate them to be checking SEM STRs think it's okay to show your prospects know love and respect or that it's okay to give more than take when they prospect if you want a demo just let me know I'll get more booked some STR is leave the ball in their prospects court and don't have a clear call or think sending a template an email is fine but one STR that doesn't do this is Jeremy levy a from weed IQ Jeremy levy a spent the past few years helping STRs everywhere improve their prospecting and is constantly innovating is outreach Jeremy how many options you got so far this month it's it's the last day of April 69 just a couple of months ago he had the greatest month we've ever seen sixty-nine opportunities in one month whether he is singing songs to prospects lip-syncing raps about their bill up cities and even leaving voicemails warning prospects he'll be sending them a prospect in video with the dancing banana jeremy is what you call a game-day player 1 prospect Jeremy reached a - he found out that the business development manager was having a kid so what he did was Jerry arts and his girlfriend they made a little baby onesie with the logo of his company on it that's what we got the meeting if Annie didn't convince you just look at his responses from his prospects fantastic outreach above all the most impressive details was the throwback jersey great touch hey dude so I had lunch with any today and gave you huge kudos for the way you kicked off the conversation you did a great job of using something personal without being creepy a fine line to walk for sure well done kudos to Jeremy at lean IQ humor is really tough to get right and cold outreach but he nailed it here I really appreciate those that take the time to put thought into their approach obviously he's seen my tweets hey Jeremy your video is 10 out of 10 I'm free around 9 a.m. Pacific time killer outreach I'm open anytime after 12:00 Central next Wednesday if he bleep prospecting should be personalized fun and somehow disruptive yet polite nominate Jeremy levy a is sales development rep of the year this prestigious award will be presented by ten bound at the sales development conference on August 30th 2018 I hope to have your vote for best SDR at the sales development conference by 10:00 bound I'm Jerry levy and I approve this message paid for by STRs for Jeremy okay so basically we and Jeremy won the SDM award obviously we we promoted that video everywhere we try to get a lot of our customers to to to agree with it that this is how as you are should be prospecting this is how the you know imagine if all of your cool emails is done in a thoughtful way right people would be there will be less cold emails around it would be better for the recipients and we want ask you ask to be like better SEO is like basically elevate their position this is not an easy position pay them or find the right people to do that and make su s PR like a position that's similar to a is not like to more junior than a so we put a lot of marketing into this trying to actually put our SEO as a plan advocates the people who are reaching out to be like you and how they should be doing things and it's been working out well for us right as I mentioned right we are still in the beginning of scaling this but we see a couple of examples that work well from what we have done in the past and now we are having more and more people to grow this theme continuing this idea that out which an outbound needs to be personalized in is to be put with thoughts and the people doing it needs to be people who really cares for the company for the job and their different brand advocates you're not just people who felt this is an entry level and all they want to do is becoming the next AE and I'm just doing this for a while while trying to wait for that position to come so to wrap up the takeaways outbound sales is really critical for most people and most companies in the early days feel that it's very hard we work with many companies that just felt that it's not working out for us we will just put money in inbound it is hard it takes time it takes investment but if you put in a lot of effort in there it can be for us almost two years before we finally get it going it will be very rewarding and it's the first step for you - it's killing your company and lastly again ask yours are your brand advocates treat them like they are pay them like they are and it will really pay well for your company thank you can you help yeah good right do do we have time for questions oh no are we done okay all right oh we have two minutes I didn't get it okay we have two minutes does anyone have any questions yeah we have a surface for sales development of apps actually we help them with like finding leads finding contact info and then engage with emails or like a calling to different platform and then we sync it the dev CRM no no so you have to have your own STRs and we are just the service that the platform for the SDR series yeah I really liked what you said about SDR is its own discipline how do you convince people that to do that when it's generally seen as just a stepping stone sure that's a very good question so we we have been it's not easy but we are very transparent in our hiring most-asked yours after doing STRs for a couple of years one to become an AE but not everyone is good at closing it's actually different skill sets like Jeremy is very good at getting the first appointment he is not as suited to closing and he enjoys what he's doing just opening the door right there are many people who all like that and they felt like they are stuck in other companies where they can't move up any longer because the expectation is becoming an AE that's the next career course so we try to find people like that and convince them that come join us we pay you can earn the same or even more than AE if you're doing this well because your job is just different than me you are advocating on brand and so one thing that we do is we found the SDM compensation typically a ce o--'s are paid like 48 50 right now with active base salary with the number of appointments and the quality of bringing in we also give them a closing Commission when when the opportunity schools typically ask us do not get closing Commission so in our company we give them closing Commission so they are aligned with the AES we are still testing it out but right now we do a lot of like the main thing is recognition and compensation the actives love it when they are being recognized like being put as been advocate then they don't feel like this dear student the most junior level in a company yeah great question thank you you did yeah all right any last question right thanks so much you