ANNOUNCEMENT
First Things First…

So happy to announce our new sponsor, Orum! Ive known Jason and the team at Orum for over eight years now, they were ahead of the game regarding AI parallel diallers, and they have some fascinating announcements of their own coming up in 2024.

You can support the newsletter by checking them out! Let them know that Dave sent you!

USERGEMS
Outbound in 2024 is hard…

Outbound in 2024 is hard. The best reps use signals to identify which companies and buyers to go after, when, and have a compelling reason to personalize their outreach.

UserGems captures job-change signals of your most valuable customers and new buyers. It also automates the next steps, enrolling leads into cadences and notifying your team.

With UserGems, your SDRs don't need to sift through lists of leads, enrich, or create their own cadences. It's an always-on playbook that consistently produces a 15%-25% response rate and 3X more meetings booked.

SDR teams from Mimecast, UserTesting, and Lattice see more than 15X ROI in closed-won revenue from UserGems. 

They're offering a FREE pipeline assessment to see if this play makes sense for you (e.g. how many of your customers are at new companies, how many new buyers recently joined your accounts, etc.)

Check them out here

STUFF ONLINE
Content of the week

• Do you think your company is a PLG company?

• Book your meetings 1-2 days out max: Your prospects owe you nothing.

• How to adapt to cold calling

THOUGHTS
What am I seeing this Week: Green shoots of recovery in the SDR market?

Leading such a vibrant community with SDR Leaders of EMEA gives me access to the pulse of leaders in and around senior leadership roles. So, it's been great to see that over the last few weeks, there has been an ever-increasing volume of leaders looking for new SDRs and new SDR managers to scale their teams.

The last 18 months have been rough for many SDRs and leaders. Businesses have made economic decisions to cut SDR organisations as they consider them non-quota-carrying. However, we have seen that the ‘belief’ that other functions will pick up the slack regarding pipeline build is just that—a fantasy.

SDRs are critical in converting the demand built by our marketing organisations and filling the calendars of sellers who need to focus on closing business. This isn’t a Turkey calling to cancel the Christmas situation; these are the facts.

So, let's celebrate this leading indicator of economic improvement with these roles being reinstated. It’s now the role of SDR leaders to verbalise, present and deliver the value that we all know the role brings.

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INTERVIEW
Five Questions of the Week: Magnus Barber

Magnus Barber, Head of Sales Development at Volt.io , joined us this week! Magnus will share his story of how he found the SDR role, why leadership is for him, and how he sees the SDR role evolving over the coming years!

Thanks for joining us today, Magnus! Firstly, tell me a little bit about your journey. How did you end up at this point?

I started in "telesales", the original SDR for a Consultancy advising on R&D Tax Credits. After a promotion, the companies wanted to add a new employment law product to their portfolio, and I was then chosen to head up that product. I spent the next few years growing that team and putting in place team leads and seniors below me effectively as an SDR manager. Left that role to go into a closing role for a medical journal, after a year of being there where there wasn't an SDR function, realised we were wasting a lot of time with senior sales people doing a lot of calling that we could make more efficient. Set up the SDR team there before making the move into tech. Then, I took a step back and became an SDR in payments, where I was promoted after five months to run the EMEA team, briefly covering the global team. It taught me all the skills I needed to know about tech for a few years before moving to Head of SDR for another payments company. I built that team up and then moved again within payments to open banking to take over the head of SDR there.

What is it about your role that you love?

I love hiring new talent, using data to see trends within sales and seeing SDRs become experts and get promoted into senior roles

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

I was fortunate to take a leadership role after my first year of work, and I loved being able to help others and implement my strategy. Although I have moved into an individual contributor role several times, I've always been drawn back to managing people.

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

Hire slowly and fire quickly. The way to make being a manager the best vs the worst job is by the people you hire, and when you hire the right team, you will love working each day.

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

I see the role of the SDR shifting further up the sales cycle. Buyers are becoming more self-autonomous and want to make their own decisions, so having a solid demand generation strategy (pre-SDR is critical) is essential. However, the intricacies of moving a prospect through a sales cycle need a human touch, so a focus more on understanding the qualification and taking over the next steps in the process will be how the SDR role evolves (I think)

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GOOD READS
Book of the week

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