FREEDOM
First Things First…

This isn't going to be a ‘4531 lessons I learned from the Olympics and how it translates to B2B SaaS’, but…..

Something that is becoming a lot more apparent is the way athletes are dealing with loss. 10+ years ago, athletes were incredibly hard on themselves, blaming themselves for everything that went wrong. What we see during post-event interviews now are athletes who separate themselves from what happened during play. There is a sense of freedom and confidence that they prepared as best they could; it just wasn’t their time. This is evident by the age of the athletes; you are seeing so many in their 4th or 5th Olympics. That's only possible if they do not mentally burn themselves out.

Why am I mentioning this? We need to realise that sometimes we are just not in control of the outcome. A quota is incredibly arbitrary. Yes, I know many of us are responsible for planning! But as long as we have prepared the best we can and do everything we are in control of, that should be what gives us joy.

Something to think about, I believe.

FATHOM
Elevate your sales conversations

What if all your team’s customer calls are recorded and transcribed in a single, searchable location?

What if you Show, not tell, with playlists of what “good” sounds like? What if metrics help identify who needs help and who is outperforming?

What if you'd be alerted to important moments weekly, daily or in real-time?

What if we Align team members by organizing and sharing key moments from customer calls?

What if you could have a unified view of all conversations with a customer or prospect?

What if you simplify the handoff from sales to success and never lose any context if a team member departs?

Most critically, what if you could Reduce the time your team spends on data entry with automated post-call data syncs? These include BANT, SPICED, and MEDDPICC, which automatically generate post-meeting data and sync it to the CRM.

Fathom can do this and more!

Click this link to try it out and get three months FREE of Fathom Premium

STUFF ONLINE
Content of the week

• How to hire your founding BDR

• Selling is changing, but its not too late to adapt

• You and your reps should try this Linkedin play

THOUGHTS
What am I seeing this Week: Have you heard of inbound led Outbound?

The fact is, Inbound led outbound It has been around for years.

Its called Go-to-Market, right?

Recently, a big topic taking up the airwaves on LinkedIn is inbound-led outbound, where your aligned GTM function drives marketing campaigns to create leads for your teams to convert.

Sounds great!

But this has been happening at the top organisations for 10+ years, right?

You see this as fact, by work that Lars Nilsson, Travis Henry and Remmington Rawlings have been evangelising around Account Sales Development for many years and have had success in building and scaling at multiple companies. It comes down to executive alignment.

The C-level and C minus-1 level need to agree that your go-to-market strategy is to have a set number of accounts, where marketing dollars drive account-based marketing motions.

Then, you need to have your Marketing/SDR/Sales alignment super tight; otherwise, it won't work.

I'm happy to stand corrected; let me know!

For those new to the newsletter and like what you are seeing, please click on the subscribe button, and you’ll receive this top-quality newsletter in your inbox every Friday morning!

STAKKI
Questions about sales tools in 2024?

Tired and confused by all the noise on other platforms?

Get in touch with the community's Revenue and Sales Tech Consultant James @ Stakki.

Free advice and guidance on the right solutions to make a positive impact on your team and pipeline.

INTERVIEW
Five Questions of the Week: Dariia Gerasymova

Our next guest is our first returning guest of the newsletter, Dariia Gerasymova! Dariia has been making waves online with her very strong meme work and is just ensuring that sales don’t have to be serious all the time! Dariia has also moved to Influ2, a sponsor of SDR Leaders of EMEA and she will be delivering another Masterclass soon!

Firstly, tell me a little bit about your journey? How did you end up at this point?

9 years ago, I started my career as a junior marketer. In 2021, I had a personal crisis and switched to B2B sales with no background. I joined WeLoveNoCode as a BDR (one of the fast-growing no-code startups that TopTal acquired), where I gained a "sales rock star" title, turning a humble $3K MRR into a head-turning $50K MRR in just 8 months. In 2022, I decided to try being the solo sales maestro for a pre-seed startup, building processes from scratch. I did it repeatedly with 2 other startups, but the PMF was never proven, so... here I am! I'm helping Supercadence (a second Influ2 product) become one of the most innovative startups in the outbound sales arena!

What is it about your role that you love?

I love to show my creative side, as I always wanted to be a journalist (haha). Now I am prospecting with humor and a personal attitude to cut through the noise. So when prospects open my emails or messages, they are like, "Wow, this girl made me smile for 3 seconds - she deserves a reply.". Such creativity helped me become one of the outbound sales experts on LinkedIn, with more than 10K followers. And this is only the beginning!

When did you realise that leadership was the career path you wanted to follow, and how did you make it happen?

I'm not the leader at the top level, I had experience managing a team of 7 BDRs, but I failed. (with a lack of management skills). Now I'm learning a lot about how to be a successful leader in managing SDRs. First of all, I always wanted to be an example of a hard-working and passionate sales representative so when the time comes, I will show how it could be :)

Drawing on all your experiences so far, what advice would you give your younger self on their first day as a manager?

Honestly, it will be: listen to your inner sense, not the mass

With AI looking to disrupt the SDR space, what do you see the role of the SDR evoloving in the next 36 months?

I feel like it will be super helpful for research purposes, but not for prospecting. AI will never replace smart and innovative SDRs with unique approaches. So my suggestion for all SDRs is to follow their strengths when prospecting and use AI for their weaknesses. :)

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LASTLY
Whenever you’re ready, here are two ways I could help you

The new Community for European-based SDR leaders: SDR leaders of Europe

An ebook about SDR<> AE Alignment: Closing the Gap