Climbing the ladder to success in sales - SDR Lead of Chargebee, Mohamed Ismail tells you how it’s done

Written by Sheena Ambarin, content creator at MidGear

Meet Mohamed Ismail, an SDR Lead at the SaaS company, Chargebee. As smart working as he is, he has got some valuable insight for you that will leave you with only an opportunity to learn and grow. MidGear’s conversation with Ismail tells you the secret to his success and lots more. From a BDA at Byju’s to an SDR Lead at Chargebee, he has had a hell of a ride on his sales express. Let’s give you a glance of what this know – it – all has to say about his story.?

Was sales a profession of choice or a profession by accident?

It was an accident. After college, we had a campus placement and I got through Byju’s as a Business Development Associate. I sat through a lot of interviews back then but, I was never selected for any technical roles for my core job but, interestingly, I got through every sales interview. And then I told myself - let me give it a shot. Let me try out and see if this is actually a field that I can take up. So, I chose Byju’s and I worked there for six months.

But, I wanted something more and not just B2C. I wanted to handle B2B clients, you know. And I got to know about SaaS sales from different people. Getting into Chargebee as a Lead Development Representative was how my actual sales job started.

What's the biggest challenge you had to face when you started off as a salesperson and how did you prepare yourself to face this challenge?

It was rejections. I couldn't take it back then but, then I realized that rejection is a part and parcel of a salesperson’s life. I have been through a lot of different areas that can actually work well, watched some YouTube videos and understood how exactly objections from leads are handled.

I finally got my own strategy and my own style. Everyone has a different style. That was my biggest challenge and that’s how I’ve overcome it.

How should young graduates prepare themselves to get into sales?

They would have to take ownership of the cultural events at their college and try to get sponsors. Where ever you go, sales is involved, be it to get sponsors or investors to sell your product. These events are more than enough for any person to prepare for selling. You would also find out whether you have the natural skills needed for sales. If there’s a liking towards sales, one can be coached by different sales leaders. When you check out LinkedIn or YouTube, you’ll find a lot of content. I would say, the person who really inspired me was Becc Holland. His course named ‘Flip The Script’ is more of an unconventional sales tactic. I would definitely suggest one to go through that course of videos. It’s really good for cold calling and personalizing your emails.

One needs to be born with natural sales skills to become a salesperson. Is that true?

Not really, it’s not like one ‘should’ be born with sales skills to become a salesperson. Anyone can be a salesperson. It’s just that one should have the willpower to learn. No one is born with sales skills.

Most of the organisations believe that sales training is just a waste of money. What do you feel about a sales training?

I always feel that sales training is very important for a team of salespeople. There are a lot of different techniques like MEDDIC, metric technique, persuasive selling, etc. which are really important for a salesperson. At Chargebee, we mainly focus on the sales training part. Every week we have some content which is shared with the entire team to make sure they’re equipped enough and enough fuel is given from our end to perform better. These trainings are more like tuning the performance and not changing your entire strategy. So, I believe that sales training in an organisation is very important.

Could you imagine starting off as a salesperson without any guidance, training or mentor?

I would say no because you need guidance, you need that mentor, you need a person to whom you look up. Starting as a fresher without this, by the trial and error method, is impossible for him/her to survive in a sales job for even six months. What has to be done, what not to be done, try this out because it worked for me, is all taught by mentors. We at Chargebee have a couple of mentors training and guiding salespeople. That is really important.

You are now an SDR Lead at a prestigious SaaS company like Chargebee, what do you think kept you going overcoming every obstacle in your way and what do you think is the key to success in sales?

You have to set your goals right. ‘I want to talk to professional clients from different countries’, that was my ideal goal when I joined Chargebee. I found out what exactly an SDR, an LDR, an AE does. In a period of ten days, I did set my goals right. I joined in the month of December. One day, I spoke to an enabler at Chargebee, who is now my pillar of support. After ten days, I told him that I want to jump to the next role, in a year’s time. He told me to perform for four to five months straight and after that, they could have a discussion about it. He was my trainer initially.

All the LDRs would ideally take charts and for seven straight months, I topped the chart and got that year’s award as well. Then I went and spoke to him and he said – okay, let’s go on a two month training plan for the SDR role. I failed in the first four mock calls. After another month, I went on another mock call with them. Cleared a few mock calls and failed in another two. Since I cleared some mock calls, I was given old leads to work on and then based on my performance, they could give me the role of an SDR. I was asked to make a call on the first day and that really scared me and my first dial led to the booking of the meeting. That was a great moment for me and I did pretty well in the first month and moved into the inbound queue. For the next one year I focused on becoming an expert in my current role.

“It’s all about the flow. It’s never about the script” says Ismail. Remember this, the next time you cold call. Ismail, just like any other human, did get nervous at the beginning of a few calls. He is now enabling the team at Chargebee and cold calls have stopped chasing him (phew). A hustler, also a believer in luck, Ismail, says that it is upon us to get our path in line with the path of our luck and only hard work and determination can make that happen.