Get Pitched! Ep. 4

Welcome to Episode 4 of Get Pitched! The show where SDRs cold call mystery prospects and try to book a meeting in 60 seconds flat!

Get Pitched! Ep.4 ??

Congrats to our three killer SDRs! Make sure to connect with them here ??

Olivia Reger

Claire Crane

Samuel Boodram

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?? Pitched Debrief - Interview with Lydia Hutchison

Who is Lydia Hutchison?

Lydia is a powerhouse of SDR knowledge. She's coached, mentored, and enabled SDR teams from early-stage start-ups all the way to enterprise giants.

She is passionate about being data-informed and leading with experimentation wherever she goes.

If you were able to go back in time and give one piece of advice to your younger self during the transition from IC to Management, what would it be??

"It would be to try new things. Don't be afraid to follow your gut. Back when I first started in sales we had handwritten scripts and it was always so hard for me because I wanted to deviate and have better conversations."

"My advice is don't just take something that marketing gave you - experiment, iterate, analyze, and just always absorb as much as you can from people around you."

What strategies went into building the outbound messaging and cold-calling operations at SoundCommerce?

"It was more of building from scratch. I think the only two people who were there at the time were just calling to recruit for events, so there was no real sales development function. The first thing I do when I start a new outbound role, whether it's leadership or not, is I'm going to try and get a handle on personas we're selling into with a persona pain chart. And that really outline who we are reaching out to, what do they care about, how is success measured for them, what are their roadblocks, who do they work most closely with, and from that you can build your messaging. Most outbound messaging is very product and feature-focused and it's not enough about the cost of doing nothing to the problem they have. And if you don’t have that no one is going to care.

That enablement piece is huge because that's why a lot of reps struggle. So for me, building out that playbook with messaging and resources - that was the critical tool we needed to successfully start doing outbound at SoundCommerce."

What is The Ruevy Project ?

"I'm a firm believer that staying in the trenches and having a full time go-to-market job helps me stay sharp, helps my brain stay engaged, gets me excited to get up and go to work every day, but I still have that passion for coaching and enabling people so my thought with The Ruevy Project was to close this gap for sales development teams who just don't get what they need from their companies and aren't crushing their numbers and wondering why they are failing.

We started by building an email course and that took off. Then I decided to teach my cold call framework - and that also took off. And now we've launched a newsletter for weekly tips and tactics for better prospecting. So now it's slowly snowballing. We're on Linkedin, we have a newsletter, a bunch of free resources for SDRs, and some affordable courses as well. I really wanted to help because it took me so many years to figure out what works and to get frameworks to repeat and meld along the way and now that I have them I want to share them."

What are the most important steps to prioritize when creating an outbound motion for a start-up company that hasn’t explored or seen success with sales development??

"You have to nail it before you scale it is my motto. Many founders have this assumption that building a team and hiring reps will build more pipeline. But until you've really figured out what works, what resonates, who are your buying personas, what messaging are they going to respond to, what offers will be appealing to them in that messaging - you don't want to replicate stuff that you're not sure about.

Hire an SDR leader who has done it before but has also built from scratch that can test and measure to build a playbook and then go scale. If you're that one person to start that out - what I have done is always tier my leads. I have people I know who are super high intent and I do that all manual and personalized. My mid-tier are people that have some signal and I'll do a first manual email and then some nurturing things. And then you've got everyone else where literally it is spray and pray. If you're not sure what's working you need to A/B test at mass to figure that out. But you're not doing that with everyone - it's only for those tier 3s. Prioritize your leads until you figure out what works."

How do you think SDRs from early-stage start-ups can gain a competitive advantage without having a household name like the larger companies have?

"You can only control what you can control. The last start-up I was at, I was the 5th or 6th hire, and we didn't have any use cases or anything. Remember everyone is getting the job done whether it's using a competitor, or doing it themselves, whatever the case may be, they are already getting by without you. So the important thing to embed in your messaging is why doing nothing is a horrible idea and what gaps can you address that your competitors may have.

If you're selling against a giant you may want to go to G2 and find out what others are saying and don't like about those things and get in front of it when you call. You need to use that stuff to your advantage. So do your research, find an enemy - not the product, but the problem - and talk about that."

What does it mean to be data-driven in the context of running an SDR team and what are some ways other SDR leaders can embrace data and use it effectively for their orgs??

"I think data-informed is a better way to put it. There is a difference if you're looking at a dashboard and saying that someone isn't making enough dials or someone is missing their quota and assume they just aren't doing their job. You need to use the data to point you in the direction of where you need to do your coaching and development. If someone's call-to-meeting conversion is lower than everyone else, you need to go in there and listen to their calls. If someone's connect rate is higher than the rest of the team you need to dig into if it's a geographical thing, if it's an area code they are using, or maybe because of their vertical. Using the data to point you in the direction to figure out where the discrepancies are happening is supercritical. If you want to keep morale high on the team and work together don't ever use it as singling out."

Pure joy having Lydia join us this week on the show. Thank you again for sharing your SDR wisdom with us and putting our callers to the test! Make sure to connect and follow Lydia Hutchison ! ??

If you want to guest star on our next episode of Get Pitched! send me a DM!

- Dom Odoguardi

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