#52: Listen as Jamison Pence, Senior Manager of Sales Development and Operations at LeadIQ, discusses growing sales teams and how to balance creativity in the sales process. He gives tips on better organizing sales processes, specifically around sales development, and how scripts can launch SDRs to success in their roles.
Listen to the episode by clicking play below OR search “the sales lift” wherever you get podcasts.
Important Links:
Jamison Pence’s LinkedIn Profile
Don’t feel like listening? Read the Episode Cliff Notes instead below:
When to Personalize (0:23)
Both email personalization and videos are LinkedIn social touches. Everything must come from a one-to-one fashion.
Jamison often has team sessions where they go over LinkedIn profiles of who they want to reach. Everyone will write a personalized email and look at them as a team. It’s incredible to see ten people personalize in different ways to the same person.
Then you have that transition to the value prop. You want to try to make that a seamless and smooth transition as possible.
Training Your SDRs (4:29)
Starting out with a couple of starter transitions for SDRs to play is great for the education process.
Daily team huddles allow you to set aside time for knowledge-blocking.
Regarding giving CTS directions, there are two competing schools of thought: asking if an employee is open to learning a little bit more or setting aside specific amounts of time, like five minutes, to jump on a call.
The first week of training is very structured. Jamison has a sales enablement person who’s phenomenal at structuring it. For the most part, the first part of training is really understanding the tools.
Working remotely, having an employee share their screen to show you their process is much more effective than sharing yours to show them how to do it.
Once they understand the basics, you can start focusing on quota.
Importance of Scripts (9:49)
Jamison is a big fan of scripts and believes they should be a big part of the initial onboarding process.
Many new hires are coming right out of college and will speak the way they’re accustomed to speaking.
Giving them established scripts ensures they’re speaking the way you want them to speak, developing those habits from the beginning, and speeding up the whole process.
Be sure that you’re constantly iterating on the script, so it’s not a static thing that you’ve built. You want to constantly add and adjust to align with new ideas.
In the beginning, they should be sticking to the script virtually word-for-word because a really good script should be dynamic to still acknowledge what the prospect’s saying and give it right back on track.
Coaching helps to take the script piece by piece with the reps, lay out the scenario, and help them understand why it’s structured the way it is.
Coaching Through The Process (14:11)
Started off by covering the objections that you’re going to naturally get. When you introduce a script, let them know it’s not going to sound like you and it’s not going to be dynamic.
You’ll get the most pushback from hires with sales experience because they think they’ve already figured it out.
It’s helpful to be open and talk through potential adjustments to the scripts in coaching sessions. Then, in the next huddle, they’ll talk about the adjustment as a group and feedback on how it works.
Monitoring and coaching sales calls is another great avenue to talk through the script on what’s working, what’s not, and what the SDR can do differently going forward.
When pulling a call, there are several aspects to listen for. How do you sound? Are you, are you fun to speak? Like, how’s your demeanor? What’s your tone? What’s your pace? Are you going too fast, too slow? Are you mixing it up? Are you clear over the phone? Do you have a personality? Are you building a rapport with the prospect and active listening?
Handling Group Dynamics and Culture (20:28)
Jamison has a culture of feedback and is very open to looking at scripts as a tool for everyone. So if something isn’t working as well as it could, it’s important to make appropriate adjustments.
Look at calls ahead of time to get a few notes of things to look for over the next week.
Role-playing with parts of the scripts is also super beneficial to encouraging a culture of improvement.