Podcast episode
How to Navigate Firing, Hiring, and PIPs as a Leader (Ken Amar, Agoge Prospecting School)
30 Minutes to President's Club29 Aug 202434 min
Description
FOUR ACTIONABLE LEADERSHIP TAKEAWAYS Clearly communicate metrics, quotas, and potential performance improvement plans (PIP) during onboarding Design compensation plans that allow top performers to earn substantial rewards. To gain approval from finance, include decelerators where reps who don't reach 70% of quota earn no commission. When turning around an SDR team,iIntroduce new talent by hiring fresh SDRs and replacing underperformers to inject new energy into the team. Use a pod system (e.g., 4 AEs to 2 SDRs). This allows AEs to focus on key accounts while SDRs work on B and C tier accounts, generating additional meetings. PATH TO PRESIDENT’S CLUB Consultant @ Agoge Prospecting School Director of Sales Development @ Vercel Senior Manager of Sales Development @ Outreach SDR Team Lead @ Outreach RESOURCES DISCUSSED Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal Agoge Sequence 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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you couldn't pay rent, or you were filthy rich. How would you respond to someone like that? I think that's true. Sales is hard. The hardest part of the sales funnel prospecting, we're getting to the youngest, typically the people with the least amount of experience. “if you want your SDRs to make amazing AEs, they've got to master the” hardest part of the sales funnel. I don't think everyone's cut out for sales. I think anyone can do it, but not everyone is meant to do so. Folks, if you're listening to this as a rep, this might sound really intense and intimidating. I want to give you two examples. Number one, when I was selling insurance, and also I have a lot of friends who've worked
So they're given a 60-day plan to hit 100% plus up target. When do you introduce that concept? Yes, that's a great question. In the interview process, but we really harp on it during onboarding. The first week of onboarding, we have a whole day dedicated specifically to “expectation setting, goal setting, ramp, quota, metrics, PIPs.” It's a very black and white structure. It should never come as a surprise to a rep when they go in. You're setting expectations very early in terms of quota, activity level, etc. Someone now qualifies for PIP. You need to have that conversation with them. Are you doing it in their one-on-one?
As an account executive, full book of business, you're an SDR. You're not taking customer calls. How can you not make time to call for two hours per day? That's one morning block and one afternoon block. You do your morning dials, 1 p.m. dials, or call in the morning, and you've got six other hours. What else are you doing? “You're researching the accounts, pulling the accounts, finding the prospects.” There are tools that make that much faster today. It's not like you're tailoring every single email. People don't do that. They usually tailor the first email. And so where's the time going? I've seen AEs dial 200 times per week. Why can't an SDR do 400 a week? It's not unreasonable.
You can pre-pick conversation. But on the flip side, occasionally you run into SDRs who are putting in the bare minimum, but somehow converting into opportunities and meetings. Those are great conversations. We have that comp plane built ahead of time and we can literally walk through how much “of an impact based on the math, how much more thousands of dollars in commission they can” make for just a tiny bit more effort. And it's a very clear cut, hey, if you want to make an extra 5k per month, put in an extra hour per day of cold call. I think any FCR would take that up. So talk to me about, I want to make this real, there's a team that I'm working with, I do
Yes. So it's really interesting. Clay and AI, the way we see it, it's dividing the market of outbound SDRs into haves and have nots. And what I mean by that specifically is back in 2018 when I was slinging outreach and SEP was new, even if you did poorly with it, you'd still yield some results. “Outreach or other SEPs would amplify what you put in.” We're noticing more with clients that are using Clay or other AI tools out there that they're getting more garbage out or they're doing even better, right? It really does depend on if they have a fully baked out outbound strategy.
I think one of the biggest lies AI tools out there say is that, oh, you'll have more time savings, but in practice, most SDR teams or sales teams don't actually make use of that extra time. They just be very rigorous when it comes to things like that. “If you look at it since the emergence of sales engagement platforms, email volume has gone” up. But if you look at the number of calls that are made, it's actually gone down substantially. And if you look at the average SDR quotas, they're usually around 12 to 16 meetings. They've pretty much stayed the same for the last 10 years. The outputs have actually gone. So Ken, if I were going to start to do this the right way, and if I were like, okay, I'm
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