Podcast episode
Selling pizzas and tearing down sequences with the blue-haired legend (Sam Nelson, SDR Leader at Outreach.io)
30 Minutes to President's Club16 Sept 202029 min
Description
Join the most tactical sales newsletter in the world: https://hubs.ly/Q01-R33G0 Four Actionable Takeaways: Don’t have 3000 sequences. Have 3 for your main personas and 1 low priority one. In the Agoge sequence - your first email is super tailored, followed by two bubble ups After that, tailoring didn’t work. Hit prospects with your best cold email. If they’ve accepted the invite, don’t sell more. No need to send the confirmation. Sam Nelson’s Path to President’s Club: SDR Leader at Outreach.io A huge LinkedIn brand and Host of Sam Nelson Live RESOURCES DISCUSSED Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal
Show moreShow less
Listen
Loading the recording
0:000:00
This recording could not be loaded.Open the audio file
Quoted on this wiki
Every place a page here uses this source, in the order the words come in it.
Nick, why should people listen? Today's a deep dive into Outreach's best-performing sequences, so if you want to get better at making sequences, stick around. A three, a two, a one, a pepperoni! Sam, welcome to the show. You know we start every single episode with your top three actionable takeaways. Let's get your three. “Okay, number one, on your objection handling sheet, you should have your top five objections” and how you respond to those effectively. You should also have your go-to fallback for whenever you feel stuck. Whenever you're stuck, you go to this, and what I use for that is my own personal story of using the product. If that's possible for you, fall back on a 30-second personal story of how it works for you, okay?
making sequences, stick around. A three, a two, a one, a pepperoni! Sam, welcome to the show. You know we start every single episode with your top three actionable takeaways. Let's get your three. Okay, number one, on your objection handling sheet, you should have your top five objections “and how you respond to those effectively.” You should also have your go-to fallback for whenever you feel stuck. Whenever you're stuck, you go to this, and what I use for that is my own personal story of using the product. If that's possible for you, fall back on a 30-second personal story of how it works for you, okay?
your initial meeting three minutes before the meeting starts. So you schedule a new meeting, right, with a prospect. You will schedule an email to show up in their inbox three minutes before the meeting starts, and the subjects can just be bridge, and it can be one sentence saying, hey, just wanted “to put this at your fingertip so it's easy to jump on, and it increases the hold rate,” okay? Just a few things. It increases the hold rate. It shows them that you're there and that you're serious about it, and also, if you have outreach, you can see how they're reacting a few minutes before the meeting to see if they're engaged, and if they're not, you can do some backup plans to make sure that you get them on the fly. Very cool. What's the last one? Round us out.
You will schedule an email to show up in their inbox three minutes before the meeting starts, and the subjects can just be bridge, and it can be one sentence saying, hey, just wanted to put this at your fingertip so it's easy to jump on, and it increases the hold rate, okay? Just a few things. It increases the hold rate. “It shows them that you're there and that you're serious about it, and also, if you have outreach,” you can see how they're reacting a few minutes before the meeting to see if they're engaged, and if they're not, you can do some backup plans to make sure that you get them on the fly. Very cool. What's the last one? Round us out. The last one is know the day and time that you'll be setting the meeting for before the
and the subjects can just be bridge, and it can be one sentence saying, hey, just wanted to put this at your fingertip so it's easy to jump on, and it increases the hold rate, okay? Just a few things. It increases the hold rate. It shows them that you're there and that you're serious about it, and also, if you have outreach, “you can see how they're reacting a few minutes before the meeting to see if they're engaged,” and if they're not, you can do some backup plans to make sure that you get them on the fly. Very cool. What's the last one? Round us out. The last one is know the day and time that you'll be setting the meeting for before the prospect picks up on the other line.
and if they're not, you can do some backup plans to make sure that you get them on the fly. Very cool. What's the last one? Round us out. The last one is know the day and time that you'll be setting the meeting for before the prospect picks up on the other line. “Before they say hello, you should know, okay, I'm going to be asking for a meeting on Tuesday” at 1. You need to reserve all possible headspace when you are cold calling someone for listening to them and interpreting what they really mean. Often it's not literally the truth. It takes a lot of headspace to interpret, and you can decide that ahead of time, so make sure you're always doing that, and also just straight up suggest a time.
But there's like a million other things he could be learning from product knowledge to negotiation skills to cold calling skills. And so I'm wondering, how do you stack rank the skills that a new sales rep needs to know when they're first starting? And then how do you actually do that? So the number one thing I would recommend that you focus on “is figuring out which personas or which titles get as granular as titles,” which titles deserve the lion's share of your time. You want to spend most of your time on the most important prospects, and then relatively little time on the ones that are less important. So what I do is I figure out the functions where we sell into. For us, it's the sales department and marketing.
So the first email you're going to do research and then you're going to reference that throughout the rest of the sequence Okay, there are going to be Two follow-up emails that use that exact same personalization and then every time you make a call It's very easy to click emails and outreach and then see what that research is “Now for the first email when people are first starting out I highly recommend that you just personalize the first couple of lines” Okay, first line should be something that a robot couldn't do Tie it into your value prop and then keep the value prop Generic you don't need to have SDRs constantly reinventing the wheel on the value prop We haven't seen a significant difference between SDRs spending significant amounts of time
So the first email you're going to do research and then you're going to reference that throughout the rest of the sequence Okay, there are going to be Two follow-up emails that use that exact same personalization and then every time you make a call It's very easy to click emails and outreach and then see what that research is “Now for the first email when people are first starting out I highly recommend that you just personalize the first couple of lines” Okay, first line should be something that a robot couldn't do Tie it into your value prop and then keep the value prop Generic you don't need to have SDRs constantly reinventing the wheel on the value prop We haven't seen a significant difference between SDRs spending significant amounts of time
Generic you don't need to have SDRs constantly reinventing the wheel on the value prop We haven't seen a significant difference between SDRs spending significant amounts of time Customizing the value prop and that mattering at all the generic works just fine So spend your personalization time in the part that matters, which is the first couple of lines, right? “That's what the prospect sees when they're looking at their inbox deciding if they're gonna open it” That's where you need to invest your energy Okay, so we've got that first email then the next two emails all they do is they resurface that first email a public enemy number one to your first email is really them just like Not clicking on it or not seeing it in their inbox
a public enemy number one to your first email is really them just like Not clicking on it or not seeing it in their inbox and so giving that email two more chances to be seen is actually extremely valuable and Some people will say okay like the follow-up emails will be short “One line and the whole point of that email is to draw attention to the first one that you invested all the time” You don't need to overcomplicate it Don't add other things to distract from that that follow-up email is to draw attention to that first one Where you have put all your eggs, okay, so we got that first series of three emails Then we will do a social touch in between. We'll take a little break from emails. We'll do a LinkedIn message
You don't need to overcomplicate it Don't add other things to distract from that that follow-up email is to draw attention to that first one Where you have put all your eggs, okay, so we got that first series of three emails Then we will do a social touch in between. We'll take a little break from emails. We'll do a LinkedIn message “We don't get tons of responses from those but we know that people will see our face and see our message” So it is what it is. That's what we do. People don't always respond in social unless they live on it then the next series of emails will do our very best templated email and then Important part of not personalizing it there is one you've already tried that strategy and if they've gotten to this point in the sequence
You're even calling the office, and you're saying, hey, we've got a couple people on the line. Could you go get Jeff? You're not saying, oh, well, it would be really great if Jeff could let us know if, well, if the meeting time still might even work for him. And I think especially a lot of new sellers, they look at their role from a perspective as they're less than the person that they're working with. “And, look, if somebody agrees to a meeting with you, they've made a commitment to you.” And you can be respectful and professional, and you can also expect them to treat you that way. Sam, one of the things that I'm curious about is in terms of timing for when you're scheduling these meetings, are you seeing that affect show rates for outbound prospecting?
You're even calling the office, and you're saying, hey, we've got a couple people on the line. Could you go get Jeff? You're not saying, oh, well, it would be really great if Jeff could let us know if, well, if the meeting time still might even work for him. And I think especially a lot of new sellers, they look at their role from a perspective as they're less than the person that they're working with. “And, look, if somebody agrees to a meeting with you, they've made a commitment to you.” And you can be respectful and professional, and you can also expect them to treat you that way. Sam, one of the things that I'm curious about is in terms of timing for when you're scheduling these meetings, are you seeing that affect show rates for outbound prospecting?