#50: Listen as Chet Lovegren, SDR leader & Host of the Sales RX podcast, discusses sales development and building an outbound muscle into your sales organization. Chet gives sales reps insight into how to effectively time-block, where they should focus energy, and tips for opening that conversation with prospective clients.
Listen to the episode by clicking play below OR search “the sales lift” wherever you get podcasts.
Important Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chetlovegren/
Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:
Focusing Your Energy (0:23)
It’s important to understand specialization.
You also don’t want to take away all the power from your inbound SDRs. Chet recommends structuring half of your inbound as outbound but poses the question of what that means.
Whether they’re building lists from ZoomInfo or Seamless, or utilizing current customers to target new prospects, set some rules and guidelines in place for how that works.
The biggest source of leads a company has is their CRM, and it’s important to retarget or re-sequence it. Chet is also a big fan of specialization.
Directing Your Outbound Reps (4:22)
Chet is a proponent of sales teams never touching lost opportunities, which should stay with the AEs. AEs should also never have to do any prospecting because they’ve been hired to close deals.
Whether you’re doing things from an account or a lead level, build list view, sort by last activity, make a date greater than the six months prior. Then go through as many as you can.
The sad reality is that probably one in 10 AEs can block a schedule, stick to a block schedule mentality, and follow a plan.
Time-Blocking (8:46)
Chet believes multitasking to be a myth when it comes to two activities that require attention.
When you’re not tracking your activities, it’s easy to think you’ve done way more than you’ve actually done. That’s why it’s important to log your calls and block your time.
Set your first 10 to 20 calls up first thing in the morning that you want to do before you even respond to email.
Now vs. Later (12:53)
Reps often think they need to send that email or post that article immediately, or people will forget about them. The reality is, most of that stuff is a push-off and not a priority for a client.
Calls should take precedence. Even if someone says they’re not interested over email, call them immediately and see if it’s true.
No one randomly responds to emails they’re not instantly sold on. Seeing if they’re truly uninterested requires a bit more active digging.
Opening the Discussion (15:43)
Probing questions are key to opening a discussion. You’re not interested- why is that? Do you truly not want the product, or do you not know enough about it to be interested in it?
The point is to find out if it’s a brush-off or a true objection. the fact that the prospect is busy at that moment doesn’t mean you both shouldn’t talk in general.
Outbound focusing on smaller businesses still in the building phase won’t have as many people calling them. They’re the ones looking for it.
On the outbound side, prospects might know where they want to go, but you also know where they might want to go additionally. You can get to the root of how to get them there.
Outbound does close at a lower rate typically but also takes longer to close.
Chet’s Bio:
Chet is the Host of the Sales RX Podcast, Founder, and Head Sales RX’er of The Sales RX Community. With over a decade in sales, Chet puts an emphasis on sharing valuable insights with revenue leaders on all things sales development, prospect engagement, and professional development.