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It started with a simple question
One of our SDR Leaders in Ireland dropped a question into the SDR Leaders of EMEA Slack last week. He wanted to know whether teams had cracked the connect rate problem with a parallel dialer, or with phone intent data that scores who's most likely to pick up.
What followed was the most engaged thread in the community over the past fortnight. 21 replies, three EMEA leaders piling in with the same underlying problem, and one framework that reframed the entire question.
The regional split nobody talks about
One of our Global leaders in the UK kicked things off with a clean data point: her team saw connect rates improve materially after switching parallel dialers. A global SDR leader in Spain confirmed the same lift, but only in North America. Their EMEA gains came from rebuilding the data layer instead.
That split alone is worth pausing on. If you're sitting in an EMEA seat being pitched on a US case study, ask for the EMEA proof point before you sign.
The framework that changed the conversation
James Donaldson, founder of Stakki, and SDR Leaders of EMEA Revenue and Tech Stack Consultant then dropped the post that pulled the whole thread together:
Connect rates come back to three things. Data, dialer, and behavior. The dialer is the last piece. Parallel dialing is NOT the answer until the other two are correct. Otherwise you compound the issue.
His healthy benchmark for dial-to-connect sits in the 8 to 12 per cent range. Our SDR Leader in Ireland admitted his team was at 3.5 per cent calling CISO and IT Director personas, and assumed the benchmark wasn't achievable for that segment. James pushed back with a case study from a peer in the security space prospecting the same persona, who 6x'd their connect rate after rebuilding the data layer.
The strategic shift he advocated for: stop stacking premium data licences for every rep, layer in waterfall enrichment to fill regional gaps, and revisit the dialer only once the data and behaviours are dialled in. Behaviours include call length, varied numbers, local presence, switchboard dials, and multi-line attempts. Things that no tool fixes for you.
The pattern is bigger than one thread
Two days after SDR Leader in Irelands question, another one of our senior EMEA SDR Leaders posted essentially the same story unprompted. Eighteen months on a parallel dialer. Connect rates are diving. A recent CRM routing change may have broken enrichment downstream. By the end of the week, he was booking time with James to walk through the same diagnostic.
When three EMEA leaders surface the same problem in the same fortnight, the connect rate question isn't a one-team issue. It's a market signal.
The takeaway for the rest of us is uncomfortable but useful. The instinct when connect rates drop is to look at the dialer because it is the most visible tool in the stack. But the data layer is doing the heavier lifting, and the behaviours are doing the rest. If you haven't audited those two first, switching dialers is just rearranging the deckchairs.
One question for you
When did you last audit your data layer and your team's calling behaviours before reaching for a new dialer?
Dave
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