Guest post written by Tito Bohrt, VP of Sales Development as a Service at AltiSales
"Without execution, vision is just another word for hallucination."
Over the past few months AltiSales has drawn some attention due to our success putting together SDR strategies for B2B companies and executing those effectively. It might not be surprising for most of you to hear that the average SDR team only has 60% of the reps hitting quota.
At AltiSales, we've had 100% of our SDRs hit quota over the past 6 months. Moreover our quota attainment average is 174%. No, this is not a manipulated statistic, and no, we do not have low quotas. Many times, we are comparing ourselves to internal SDR teams. That's why in this blog I want to share with you more details about how we set up our program for success.
Strong Incentives for SDRs Beyond Quota and Maximizing ROTI
We have a great program for SDRs, but how do we attract, hire and retain great talent?
It’s all about ROTI maximization. What is ROTI? It stands for Return On Time Invested. What I try to make clear to any SDR applying for a job at AltiSales, is that joining us and working hard together is the best way to spend their next 2-5+ years. I can very certainly guarantee them that they'll learn more from an entrepreneurial company that is well structured and fast growing than by joining either a huge company like Salesforce, that has a lot of structure but not a lot of opportunity for growth, or a small startup, that has a lot of growth, but no training or structure.
Employees who understand that we are maximizing their ROTI, are on board immediately. It also doesn't hurt that we have a super fun company and that we understand the Rockstar vs. Superstar mentality (read Radical Candor by Kim Scott to learn more). When someone books a demo, firework emojis are sent to the team. If a rep exceeds their quota 3 months in a row, they qualify for our Quarterly SDR Presidents club (a more adventurous version of the regular Sales Presidents club). Our performance incentives are also quite strong. Once an SDR hits 120% of quota, their commissions tend to be 2.5-4x the amount they were making before.
A lot of our great work emerges due to our mindset of constantly testing and improving every part of the business. My background in Behavioral Economics and Decision Science, and some Engineering and Research Methods courses in the mix while being at Duke have provided me the foundations. However, even if we had the right concepts, the right processes, and the right training, without the right system in place, we wouldn't be where we are today, and for that, we have to thank Outreach.io
Organized KPIs and Call Recordings
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”—Leonardo Da Vinci
A lot of our program is based on two principles:
Controlling the work that the SDRs execute
Measuring, A/B testing and improving constantly
Before AltiSales used Outreach we had tested various systems. Back in the day, while working with ShareFile, we had to use "Coffee", their in-house built CRM. Later on we used Salesforce, with a Vonage dialer integrated. In early 2015, we tested ToutApp. We quickly left ToutApp for SalesLoft in late 2015 in search for a better UX, but the metrics were lacking. Finally in 2016 we started using Outreach, it was life changing, and that's why I am such a big fan of it and why I'm writing this guest post.
Outreach.io doesn't have a competitor when it comes to performance. It's like comparing a Ferrari to a Nissan. Sure, you can be very proud of your Nissan (SalesLoft, ToutApp, Yesware, etc.), but if you hop in the Ferrari, you'll understand the difference quickly.
Outreach allows us to easily and quickly set up custom dispositions for calls. This allows us to control much better the flow of calls and train the SDRs exactly where they need the most help on their pitch:
After understanding where the SDRs are having the most trouble, we can dive deeper and investigate each type of call and try to figure out how and why they are not able to book as many demos. SDR Managers just click on the disposition and get all their recordings:
On a weekly basis, the SDR manager reviews the calls and during 1:1's with reps we talk about the 1-3 things they need to focus on that week. That way the reps have radically candid feedback on what they need to work on, yet enough focus to actually be able to improve. We also host specific trainings and practice mock calls constantly to make sure the training sticks.
You can’t manage an early stage SDR program using dashboard only, you need an expert coaching your team and you need to see the big picture but dive deep into the data to fix problem and coach your team (this aligns nicely with career progression! Yay!).
This ability to quickly find the recordings we need and to have both, a big picture view of the rep performance, as well as a granular view of their execution is a key asset to my team. There are many other ways in which Outreach excels, but those go beyond this blog post, so just reach out to me if you'd like me to show you why we love Outreach so much.
Tito Bohrt is the Founder and CEO of AltiSales, a company dedicated to Design, Improve and Scale SDR teams for Modern companies. For more information about Tito or the company, or if you're interested in consulting services, visit www.AltiSales.com.
