EVENTS
First Things First…

We are ramping up our virtual events post the summer. One of the big sessions we have is USA Cold Email Adaptation to Europe. We will be joined by Yurii Veremchuck who is a wizard of cold emails and will share his tricks and tip to make European cold emails RED HOT.

Sign up here

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

• Find your competitors at scale

• Community led growth is here to stay

• Send this to your new SDRs

THOUGHTS
What am I seeing this Week: SDRs should only do Revenue Generating Activities

Revenue generating activities, with SDR’s this is the only thing that matters.

And this structure will help!

As an SDR, you have so much being thrown at you:
📲 Calling
📥 Emailing
🧮 Prospecting
📝 List building
🗣️ Internal meetings
📚 Enablement
👥 1:1s

The list goes on and on!

How can you prioritise your day to focus on the most important thing: making money

A simple but effective tool is add time blocks to your calendar

What are they?

It's pretty simple: when is the best time to call? Block that time off as a recurring time in your diary to call, no exceptions/excuses. You must call at a set time at the start and end of each day to prepare your leads for the call.

Make sure your 1:1s are added at times that are not within those key calling hours. Try it out for a few weeks. People respect you if you have time blocked out; they understand that your role is about getting on the phone and making dials.

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: Sara Storm

Today we have SDR Leader of EMEA community member and founder of Break the Box, Sara Storm. Sara is SUPER PASSIONATE about sales and developing talent. You are going to see that coming through so clearly in our conversation!

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

Why I have read hundreds of books on this topic and it’s honestly sad to me how alike they are. 

Following me on Linkedin you will get to know my political views, my views on late-stage capitalism, and personal notes that speak to my person. 

The point is to get to know me, as we journey together into the revenue world. 

So first, I'd like to introduce myself. 

I know, I am starting our relationship by talking about myself, in an interview that will recommend that you don’t do that with customers.

 The irony, right? 

But the thing is - I feel that it’s important that you get where I am coming from. 

Authenticity is important to me, as you will see.

 So read my intro - if at the end of it, you don’t feel like continuing the conversation with me, then we at least don’t waste your time. 

And if that’s how you feel, do me a favor. Send my Linkedin profile to someone who you feel might relate to my person instead. 

Trust me, they will thank you. 

So, let’s do it.

This world is not for me

I have never felt like I fit into the world. 

I have always felt out of step with my surroundings. 

The process of understanding where to use the way I am as a benefit for me and others took time. Accepting who I am took even longer. 

As a kid, I struggled with an undiagnosed bipolar mom, an absent dad, and a very unstable and changing environment. 

Food was not always a given. We moved around a lot and I soon understood that I would spend a lot of time alone. I remember being 12, lying hungry in bed, staring up at the ceiling, and suddenly realizing my mother was sick. 

I had also started to notice in school that kids didn’t behave the way I did. And their parents definitely didn’t behave like my mother. 

This realization made me obsessed with human psychology, and since I already was a huge reader(when you move schools a lot and have no friends, you gotta kill time AND escape somehow) - I started consuming books on the topic. 

Probably the first hyperfocus that I can remember. I just wanted to understand how people worked. “So I got to work - in all the sense of that word. 

Of course, I realized later that I was in full-blown “protect myself”-mode. I never knew who my mother would be when I came home. In a home like that, you become hyper-vigilant to the smallest changes in people’s moods and behaviors. 

This way of consuming knowledge has followed me since then. Spending 22+ years in the revenue game has brought me so much knowledge - and still, I learn every day. 

This is a way of being that I am trying to help you achieve. 

During these years I have had the opportunity to consult with big brands, sell lots of different products and software, and educate and train people both in workplaces and schools. Many insights have been acquired - some of them have basically hit me in the face. 

It’s interesting how you remember key moments where your path took turns. 

Instead of going through my freaking CV, I will tell you about some of them. 

My first gig - I got a sales gig at a fitness chain. 

Day 2 we were going to a university to sell memberships to students on campus. It sounds pretty simple, right? You just need to stop a random person and get them to buy a thing… I was a very very introverted person at this point. 

I was scared out of my mind. We set up the stand and then I felt like I was gonna hurl my breakfast. I stepped away, called my older sister, and hyperventilated. She was the one that told me to get a sales job, she was herself a sales manager at the time. 

I told her I was gonna die and I will never forget what she said: 

“Sara, listen to me. You need to put your suit on. Your suit will talk to people today, will get judged by people today, will get rejected by people today. Your suit. Not you. So put your fucking suit on and start talking to people.”

This was my first experience of how to create and control my own psychological armor. 

We all have them, the barriers that protect us. 

Often they are put in place by our subconscious to protect us. 

The fact that I could build my own armor at will was a completely new thought to me. But I did. And I went back out. 

We broke a record that day, and sold over 50 memberships in 6 hours.” And now my love for this profession was born. 

 When I realized what my dream for my career was 

I walked off the stage in intermission at a company event after moderating a panel. After sitting down in the audience next to my coworker I saw the intermission message on the screen - an exercise for the audience to do during the break. 

What will be your legacy? 

The words sunk into my mind. 

My coworker turned to me and said: “Hum, I don’t know. Legacy. That’s hard.”

Without looking at her I said out loud, more to myself than to her: 

“I wanna impact as many people as possible to make conscious changes to their lives. “

To this day, this is what I am working on doing. 

So many people go through life without questioning basically anything. 

Unconscious decisions are being made daily. Staying in a bad relationship. Staying at a job you hate. Staying in your friend circle. Staying in your comfort zone. 

All of these choices and decisions are something we need to strive to move up to the conscious mind, so we can actually work on driving our life to be the life we want to lead, not just what society and people around us think it should be. 

When I landed in myself 

So, during my life, considering the trauma and triggers I have as a gift from my parents, you might guess that I have struggled a lot. 

I got diagnosed with Bipolar II very late, in 2019, and when I finally got my diagnosis a lot of things fell into place. 

When I met my husband and soulmate(and also co-founder of Break the Box - George Storm - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgestormbtb/)  a few years back, I had a past filled with toxic relationships, problematic behaviors, and a lot of soul-searching that didn’t lead me to the right conclusions. 

I had a great successful career though… I have also gone to A LOT of therapy to deal with the events in my life. 

I will never stop doing that, it’s a very amazing way to keep yourself accountable. 

I see therapy as preventative work on your soul and mind, not as a way to save a situation. Most people don’t go to therapy until things are completely broken. 

I see that as a mistake. I do believe a lot of work can be done on yourself by yourself, but when it comes to relationship dynamics you do need a safe haven in the form of a romantic partner or very close friendship to sort of wash out your own trigger behaviors and trauma. 

So, to move to when I found the space to be creative again, writing and painting, is when I found that safe haven in the form of my husband and our home. 

Together we dwelled deeper into who we are at our core and my core is not the business persona I have crafted so carefully over the years. This character has very much flourished because of my core being but also because of the extensive skill set in reading people I have acquired because of trauma… I am - at my core - a curious child. I paint, read, write, and sing. I never would have imagined having the career I have had, doing all revenue roles to CRO and launching 2 businesses. But here I am.

What is it about your role that you love?

Everything. Spending 22+ years in revenue, nothing is more satisfying than sales.

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

Oh, I worked my ass off. I also followed my passion all the way. I never really had a career path in mind, I just went to the jobs that called to me. :D

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

Don't care so much about what people think about you. Own your own style. No one remembers a coward.

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

I am seeing SDR/BDR roles targeting SMB completely shut down. We will do all buying online for SMB deals. It's not worth the money to actively "sell" on an SMB ACV. AI BDRs are already on the market. They will take over. The only BDR/SDR roles I see staying in 5 years are related to opening up Enterprise Deals!

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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