BIRTHDAY
First Things First…

So today is my birthday, and it’s the perfect excuse for me to share another picture of Choccy.

Enjoy today’s edition!

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

• The SDR landscape is changing

• 90% of GTM teams don’t know why their customer bought their solution

• Celebrate Marina, a good friend of the community, has a new group; GirlsWhoClay

THOUGHTS
What am I seeing this Week: Gold Standard Hiring Strategy for EMEA SDRs

Imagine the scene: You are building out your EMEA SDR function, expanding on the successful team you built in North America.

But where do you start?

Each territory has different cultures, behaviours, and nuances that only native speakers of those countries can understand. Most critically, you also need to consider revenue contribution for the countries you are going to hire in, so that means there's some talent you can't bring in immediately!

When I speak with leaders, this is the order I recommend hiring:

Phase 1: English speaker for Inbound in the whole of EMEA (your website and collateral will mostly be in English; you can get away with an English speaker here for the time being)

Phase 1a: English speaker for UK/Ireland/ Nordics and Netherlands, Middle East (Business is normally carried out in English)

Phase 2: French speaker, German speaker (These will be your hardest hires but some of your most productive)

Phase 3: Italian/Spanish speaker, Swedish/Danish/Finish, Arabic

Phase 4: Dutch/Polish

So when building out your languages for your SDR team, first consider where will bring the most revenue; if it's in some of the countries I mentioned above, then stick to that phased approach.

There will be edge cases, of course, where more revenue will come from Phase 4 countries, but don't make the mistake of hitting someone too early, or your CAC will be way too high, and the SDR you've hired will be metaphorically redundant.

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
Overwhelmed by Sales Tools Options?

Sales tools often boast an alphabet soup of features.

Deciphering complicated technical jargon can be time-consuming and frustrating, leaving you confused and unsure if it will help with connection or conversion rates.

Meanwhile, researching, comparing, and evaluating sales tools can be highly time-consuming.

Diverting your focus from core business activities like closing deals and managing your team.

This is where we’ve built Stakki, your free sales tool calculator.

We mapped 176 tools and their integrations, minimum costs, feature overlaps and freemium options. 

Visit stakki.io to make the selection of sales tools easy for you. 

Or book your free consultation call and we’ll recommend the best three tools for whatever you are trying to achieve.

INTERVIEW
Five Questions of the Week: Ashleigh Early

We have the incredibly talented Ashleigh Early today in the newsletter! Ashleigh is someone ive wanted to speak with for quite some time; her CV is REALLY impressive and has bought some fantastic insights into our conversation today. Enjoy!

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

Daughter of a salesman - swore I'd never do it - was broke after college - caved and worked my way from SDR to Sales leader by specializing in building data-driven systems backed by empathy, and in the process moved from the US to Europe!

What is it about your role that you love?

Human connection. There's nothing better than knowing you made someone's day a little better—whether it results in the next steps immediately or not.

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

I've always been more excited about people around me succeeding than my own success (my therapist has a LOT to say about that). But that's really it - my success isn't defined by my personal details, it's defined by how far the people around me go!

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

Two things - sorry, I can't pick - first, get used to 1:1 docs and focus on your 1:1 skills. If those aren't dialled, you'll always be putting out fires and struggling for data. Two - get mentors and start building your management skills. There's a ton you can read, but learning happens in the trenches, and you need a bunch of people you can reach out to and ask, "Wait, what should I do here/Where did I go wrong?"

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

AI is simply taking the grunt work out of the role, allowing all of us to up our game. SDRs need to up their writing and critical thinking skills to learn to use AI properly and when NOT to use it. But the best prospectors won't be impacted by AI.

Earn free merch 🎁

You can get free stuff for referring friends and colleagues to our newsletter 👇️

1 referral - Linkedin Shout out 🔊
5 referrals - Mastering Sales Development Stickers 🎉
10 referrals - Free Copy of Closing the Gap 📖
15 referrals - Limited Edition Mastering Sales Development mug 🍵

You currently have 0 referrals, only 1 away from receiving a Linkedin Shout out!.

Copy & Paste this link: https://saleswise.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER

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