Episode 9: Lauren Wadsworth, VP, Global Sales Development at Segment

(Transcription Automated)

Jan 00:02

I will I will start recording now it’s super nice to to have another woman like I speak to a lot of guys. And you know, but But to be honest, like the other female leaders are the most innovative and like the best one, but don’t tell the rest about it. Okay, cool. So first question was just, you know, coming from the SDRs? What what are you passionate about, in sales, right

Lauren 00:32

In my job or just in life in general, I’m passionate about empowering people, and giving them opportunities that they might not otherwise know about or have. So we did this exercise a while ago, and we talked about what are our values, what’s our purpose, and one of my values is advocating for people, and, you know, giving them access to opportunities that they don’t have. So, I mean, just an example of that is like, I’ve gotten the chance to hire people who have been my servers at restaurants or shoe salesmen, and nordstroms. And something that I think is really incredible about sales development, and about the tech space in general, is that you get this opportunity to gain financial freedom that you might not have even known existed, and do a job that really builds up a lot of skills for so many different jobs and avenues that you want to go down. And so when I see SDRs come in, whether they’re industry changers, whether their parents returning to the workforce, or people straight out of college, who want to break into tech and don’t really know what sales development is, it’s an incredible opportunity to be a part of their journey and help shape their careers, and empower them and challenge them to do the best work of their lives. And work that’s really fulfilling for them. I think you see SDRs, when they come into the job, and they they take it, they go after it with a force, and they get so excited about what they’re doing. And they start learning the product, and meeting other people within the company and booking meetings, you watch them build this competence up that they never even knew existed, and become the most competent version of themselves. And it’s through all that rejection and failure and falling flat on your face. And then after you know, after you’ve been an SDR for even just a year, you’re a different person you feel if you ever need to get another job, you’re not going to apply. I mean, you might apply. But you can just reach out directly to somebody on LinkedIn with a personalized message and get an interview. You know, I’ve helped my mom do that. And she was like, Are you sure? Can we really reach out to a recruiter, and I said, trust me, you totally can. And that’s how you actually get an interview. And so there’s so many other examples. But there’s so many things that it helps you, skills that it builds, not just for sales, but for life, and for other future jobs. And so I’m really passionate about bringing people in, giving them a really strong foundation, not throwing them to the wolves, you know, making it a challenging experience. It’s not, you know, easy to hit quota, you still have to work 100% and put in 100% to get to 100%. But giving them a path to get there and investing in them and just pouring in to them when it comes to enablement and resources and career development so that they can grow, you know, grow as a professional and personally and get to the next level. So that was a long winded answer to your question. Oh, I am very passionate about and that’s why I’m in sales development.

Jan 03:40

Yeah, I can’t give you that. It’s great. Because, I mean, at some point, you were an individual contributor, right? I’m just curious to understand like, when when did you sort of learn that this is like, this is my passion. I want to actually enable other people I find satisfaction in not only booking meeting for myself, but actually leveling Peter, Paul and Mary in my team to crush their quotas.

Lauren 04:03

Yeah, so I think I became a manager before I loved managing and I picked by the leader that I was going to work for I had an opportunity to do two different types of sales jobs at my company and then be a full time manager as a team lead at the time, only managing three SDRs I don’t even think I had one on ones with them. I I had no idea what I was doing. And when I I picked based on the boss for who I wanted to be like and who I thought would really pour into me and invest into me. And so I picked up SDR management. And then I got a full team. And I had nine people on my team and I felt like I was nagging all the time. I felt like why don’t why do I have to tell you to make your cold calls? Come on.

Jan 04:48

Yeah, I can relate.

Lauren 04:51

Yeah. And so you know, there was a big turning point and I won’t, it’s a longer story. So I won’t go into the whole that background of it. But this big turning point was when I realized it had this epiphany that I can’t actually make a difference on people’s performance. Because I just thought, I just have to tell them what to do. And that doesn’t really work, you really need people to buy in and get excited and feel like they’re a part of this team. And not only a team, but the best team. And they’re surrounded, and we are going to be the best no matter what it takes. And when we got that team mentality, you know, that I won’t go into the whole details of the story, but basically, had an SDR who was on a plan, he had to hit quota this month, it was we had a total breakthrough experience about why he wasn’t going all out all the time with his work to hit quota. And, you know, it was it was the last week of the month, he wasn’t there, you know, he went out onto the floor, and the other SDRs could tell you had been emotional. And you know, everyone’s just we had these roll up standup desks. And everyone just started rolling up their desks and they said, Hey, throw me a few accounts, I’ll start dialing with you. And everybody on the team, we started all calling it his accounts with him. And his first two connects, he books to meetings, and he runs around, and we’re all giving him high fives. Anyway, he ends up hitting quota and then hitting an exceeding it every single month for the next eight months before he gets promoted. It was somebody who had never hit quota, if ever in their entirety as an SDR for many, many months. And so just realizing Oh, you actually can motivate people and you actually can make a difference in the way that they perceive themselves. and empower them and make them feel more competent to be able to feel confident that they can book a meeting and they can do this. It makes a difference. So that’s when I really started to love management. But yeah, it’s a big, it took me a while, maybe six months to really love it.

Jan 06:53

Yeah, this is this is an amazing, amazing story. I think a lot of people can relate when you’re like, finally, when it clicks, you know, things are falling into place. What do you think happened in that moment, you know, to speak a lot of you know, empowering people actually realizing, like realizing their full potential I feel you’re speaking about you help them, you know, realize, okay, I can do this as well. Right? And yeah, I don’t know, maybe you can, you can? I don’t know, maybe you have time to reflect upon it like this. And I think this is what happened. And if not, we move on.

Lauren 07:28

no, no, I’m happy to answer it. I’ve actually asked him before, because I’ve shared this story before if I could share it, and he’s given me permission, I won’t say his name. But the big breakthrough was me, you know, we’d had this conversation multiple times, not you know, what’s going on, what’s happening. And really what happened were on this wall case, and what is stopping you from going all out? Why I know what you can do, because he was talented. He was great on the phone, great writing emails, but there was something holding him back. And so I just am like, what is stopping you from going all out. And he just told me and open up and it was a really emotional conversation that his dad, his whole life has told him, you’re always going to be a B player, you’re never going to be an A player, because you don’t try. And and he had just grown up with that and live with that. And when someone’s constantly telling you that someone you look up to. That’s I mean, that’s, that’s really detrimental. I don’t think parents realize that I’m sure his dad never meant to have that much of an impact. But he broke down and said, I’m a B player. And that’s what he thought of himself. And so you know, I can’t just say you’re an A player, you can do this, it takes more than that, you actually have to do it. And I said, This month, let’s just go all out, the worst that can happen is you don’t hit your quota. And guess what that’s been happening for the last six months. So just go all out and see what you can do and prove it to yourself. And he really did, he went all out and just coming in early, staying late, meeting with everybody getting advice from all the people around him. And you could see a material difference. And what’s what was the really tough part, it ended up being a great ending. But the really tough part is you really need to be doing that there’s a 30 day lag with meetings and the activity that you do. And so when you start the beginning of the month, you couldn’t you can’t really expect results until the month afterward. And so it was really cutting it right down to the wire if he was going to be able to hit his number and not that month and stay at the business. And luckily he did right in the nick of time. And because of all that momentum he had built up and realizing, okay, I know what this is going to take. He just kept that same energy level up. It gave him this confidence. He he was a different person afterwards. And so that’s what I see with people. It’s not necessarily something clicks where you say, Oh, I I now understand what the prospect really wants me to say or how to handle an objection. You know, all of that stuff is is learned and it’s it becomes instinctive and more and more that you do it, I think the real thing that holds people back sometimes and it’s different for everybody. But is that mental wall that you put up in your mind? That, I don’t know if I can do this, or this is I, you know, it’s it’s like the SDRs who hit if their quotas 10. They’re hitting eight or nine every single month. And it’s like, okay, clearly, if you’re able to get to that number, you can definitely get to 10. But it’s this mental barrier that people put up that you have to help them break down.

Jan 10:29

Yeah. Yeah, great story. I can totally relate, like you were literally speaking about my one on ones last week this week. And so yeah, great story. mentals play play all the role lights, like they they play. So an important like such an important role in in BDR life and SDR life in whatever role you take. But I think BDR profession really flashes this up to life or highlights this a lot. And just to maybe continue on that, because one big question was, you know, what do you realize? What do you see with SDR that sort of say, make it right, that break this mental barrier that hit quote, a month over around? What are the things that you see in this people versus those that are not making it? Or you know, maybe pursuing another other profession?

Lauren 11:27

Good question. I think most SDR leaders would probably say a combination of the same three or four things. And but I have one extra that I think makes a really big difference. The basics in what we hire for is grid/drive, being driven and motivated. coachability, you need to be able to take the back and we want you to have that growth mindset where you actually crave feedback, and you’re asking for it and proactively. Communication skills are obviously really important. So coachability communication skills drive. There’s another one that I Oh, curiosity, being really curious about what you’re selling. Curious about. Excited to be the best at whatever you’re doing. You know, you can you can see SDRs who are really curious to learn outside of their role from their AEs, from CSM, from marketing, they excel past their peers, time and time again. The other big component that I look for and that I see in really successful SDR is is optimism. There are as

Jan 12:35

I heard this before, so good. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, that’s Matt told me about it to work with chili Piper, he brought out team. Oh, yeah, I know, maybe you know, him, Matt Roberts. So he actually pointed it out in the last conversation, but continued, it’s so important. Like, yeah, tell me what you understand on optimism.

Lauren 12:53

Right. So so you know, just having a positive mindset and seeing, you know, it sounds so cliche, but seeing the glass is half full, there are SDRs, who are great at all of those other characteristics that I described, and they spike in those areas. But when it comes to actually having a positive mindset, you know, they have the opposite mindset where, oh, this isn’t coming in, or I’m complaining about my ease, or this is why this isn’t working. And it’s fine. And they can usually grind, if they’re really good, they can grind through and they can still get to their numbers. Um, but the people who everybody wants to see promoted, or everybody wants on their team from the SDR, or the people that are excited that add great energy, and those those are the teams that the RDs on the AE team, they’re coming to me and saying, I want this person on my team, because they’re going to add so much, you know, it’s important to have that addition to your team culture. And just being optimistic, you have to be, you have to think every no gets you this much. You know, 10% closer to a yes, no, every reaction means that the next thing it’s going to be positive, it doesn’t mean that today’s a day full of rejections. So you can look at it that way. You’ll you’ll go so much further and have so much more success and be happier.

Jan 14:09

I love it. I love that you highlight this because it’s an overlooked theory to all the blocks, you know, you have like, great curiosity, blah, blah, blah. But very few people are speaking about that. Be optimistic, right? Especially in the startup, things are changing all the time.

Lauren 14:26

You have to be adaptable to things. I mean, I think most SDRs are really adaptable because things change a lot, but that’s a big one too. And you need people that look at change as a positive thing. And not something that’s frustrating or maybe have to be as a leader. It’s important to be good at change management. But I do think being adaptable is another great, great characteristic.

Jan 14:50

That’s fantastic. Thanks for sharing it I know like you, you are you said like processes are so important to you. You really want to like set up people for success. And you have this, I think, I don’t remember the specific name, but you have a specific program to help you SDR getting ready for an AE role. I think I read this on your LinkedIn.

Lauren 15:11

Yes, it’s called the AE Interview Readiness Program. And it prepares SDRs to interview for the AE job. We have a program after that to prepare them even more for the AE job that involves territory planning, forecasting, negotiation skills, and mentorship from a top AE. But this interview readiness training, it’s part self serve. And then there’s where there’s recorded trainings that we have for them to go through. And then there’s exercises and certifications to go through to get ready for the interview. Because we want, if they don’t pass the interview, they have to redo it the next quarter. And that’s three more months on our team, which we love to have. But we want you off, we want you to get promoted and move. And and we also have so many AEs that we’re hiring for yars performed two times better than external hires that we make on our growth AE team. And it makes sense, right? They know product. They they know how to do their own outbound with segment. And so we want them moving in being that talent pipeline for the org. So that’s it’s really to help ensure that the as many that they can pass do pass and and can move up.

Jan 16:25

They’ve been through that Lauren school before so they know exactly how to get to the next step.

Lauren 16:31

No, it’s actually interesting. So are two of my managers actually, almost all my managers have sales closing experience, but two of them have their their previous roles before they became SDR managers here, were closing roles being AEs at other companies zoom and intercom. And when they came in, they were really passionate about putting together the interview readiness program, and then the bridge program to build SDR skills before they help them ramp faster. And so they put all of this together. Jessica Smith and Kate O’Hanlon and those programs are fantastic, because it’s all the things that they wish they had had when they moved from SDR to AE. And so that’s what we’re trying to recreate.

Jan 17:13

love it. Thanks for it’s such a difficult step. Like every str says, I want like most of them say I want to be an AE I want to start closing. But a lot of the times you realize that the AE role isn’t the role, you you thought it would be as from an SDR perspective. So what like to just put it in simple terms, when do you think an SDR is ready to become an AE?

Lauren 17:39

Ah, if they’re so, I mean, for us, if they’re able to hit 100% of quota for six months, usually, at that point, by the time they’re able to do that they’re probably minimum 10 months into the role, maybe 12. And the deal sensors are pretty big for our growth AE team. They’re definitely a lot larger than I think you’d expect. And, and so it is still it is still a jump. But the fact that they do, you know, they get inbound, they do qualification calls, they’re talking to the buyers on a regular basis. So I think, you know, I think the sweet spot is probably 15 months on for most people on average. Because you need you really do need a minimum of six months of doing the same thing over and over, it’s not enough to hit quota once or twice and say great, I know how to do it, I can move on. When I was an SDR, I was in the role for four months. And I went to the VP of our corporate sales team. And I said, Okay, I’m ready to coordinate an AE job and he just laughed at me, like, okay, you need many more months of doing the same thing. And, and that’s what, you know, you want them to have that consistency and that repetition. Because not that it’s luck at all, when you hit quota the first or second time – it’s not, but you there’s this grind that comes in to do it consistently over and over and develop them in motion so that it’s your constant, you constantly have your own SDR pipeline, and you’re constantly you know, closing out, moving it forward every single month. So once they can get in that rhythm, I do think six months is a, you know, good test of time to be able to do that. They for our team, they can’t move before 12 months enroll, but we you know, once they hit 12 months, they’re able to do it, they’re eligible to interview or move into the next role. Does that answer your question?

Jan 19:34

Definitely. Definitely. Also also on the point, you know, what you said like maturity wise to have done some qualification before they have done some disqualification before. They’ve like handled different objections and so forth. Yeah. You know, and I think it’s great to also have this this time horizon like a lot of the times you are like you said by yourself, right four months, I mean, I can do that. Move on. Right. But there’s actually so much more to explore in this role. And yeah, that was that was great. And we are running short on time. I know you’re super busy. And so maybe last question you have sharp Yeah,

Lauren 20:15

I do. By the way, I do have 10 more minutes, or I have my next meeting at the 15. So I have like, 10 or 12 minutes if you if you do, I’m happy to answer.

Jan 20:24

Yeah, it’s the end of my dams thing is saying long and the office. So So no, because I would love to continue speaking to you, of course, um, it’s a really interesting one. I mean, we all read your case study. I think I’ve shared it with everyone. It’s great. Honestly, because it’s super actionable. Right? And what happened there? From 12 qualified ops to 25 qualified ops. What happened? Like, how do you get your team from 12 to 25, qualified ops.

Lauren 21:03

I mean, probably only 10% of the changes that we made are outlined in that article, maybe maybe more, because changing the workflow in this structure was huge. But I walked into a goldmine, I don’t want to, I don’t want to say that every team can double production, because sometimes you already have something great going. And you can increase it and you can optimize it, but doubling it might be out of the picture. What really happened was, we had I had a team of 30, outbound SDRs, who weren’t doing outbound. They had never made cold calls. And ever there was no phones on the floor. There was no dialer to use, okay, you’re writing personalized emails, and they were spending they were getting, you know, a list of accounts or leads every week, and then just blasting them with messaging that somebody else had written. And this, I mean, the emails they were sending were like, five paragraphs long, they mentioned the word segment, every single sentence, it was all about us. And so there was a ton that we did, we went through command of the message bootcamp with all of our sellers, and all of our SDRs, we had a nother command of the message bootcamp with SDR. So getting our messaging on point, getting them into the same language. And using the same sales methodology as our sellers. Were getting trained on that was huge, that they were a part of it. I think it costs a lot more because we have a big team to have them part of it. But it was so important, because that’s it’s an investment, right? We invest so much in them early on, because we want to hear for the long haul, and to matriculate up through the organization. So that was a piece of it. A big part of it was like we went to Target and got a soccer ball wrote objections on it. You know, can’t talk right now I’m third person, and we would toss around in the office every day, the first time we ever did cold calls. We we got to play for the team, all the managers got on the phone. We tried to make it really fun. We’re tossing the soccer ball around. We’re practicing our pitches. And then the first time we ever did a call Blitz with our team, we booked it. I think in the day we booked 20 meetings, but in that hour and a half long call Blitz, we booked 12. And so that was it. I mean, I remember as yours, you’re like there’s no way we’re going to book meetings on the phone. People don’t, there’s no way people are going to answer. And I think for all of us who have been SDRs and probably thought the same thing in our first three or four days as we were training. And then you get on phone people do answer the phone. And anyone who says cold calling is dead is I don’t know how they’re

Jan 23:25

it’s interesting. comes up all the time, right? And it’s like this and nothing more effective. There’s nothing more effective than a SDR who can handle the phone.

Lauren 23:41

and it just makes them so much better as a seller to because you’re audible ready, you can put it you know how to answer questions, you feel you build that competence. I don’t think that emails or sending videos builds the competence, that cold calling does in any way, shape or form. Because it’s a live call, where it’s not an inbound call where somebody is saying I want to talk to you. It’s completely outbound, and they might not want to talk to you. And you need to go through that rejection. It’s the right of passage, honestly. But it builds it builds you up. So so that was a big piece of it. Getting people to cold call, because that just, I mean, like tripled the amount of meetings that we were able to book as a team, right? We’ve just never leveraged that channel. We also aren’t doing anything on video. We also weren’t following up with webinar registrants or attendees or people who downloaded content that was just in a black hole in the abyss. And so we created reports and dashboards for them to get those warm leads because you’re still going out bound and pulled it pulled out bounding on your target accounts. But there’s also warm leads from those accounts engaging know the name segment, so let’s call them. So like I walked into, would you say

Jan 24:54

there are a lot of people that know Segment I mean, come on, if you don’t know Segment.

Lauren 24:58

I know it’s so that So I have to say that helps so much, right? It’s like it was walking into a goldmine. It first I was really shocked. I was thinking they’ve never cold call. They’ve never written personalized emails, their outreach instance was, I can’t even tell you what it looked like it was just a complete mess. And it just felt like, wow, I did not know I was walking into this. But I quickly realized, and I’m really optimistic by nature, if you don’t know that already, and was just thinking, wow, this is the best possible scenario, because there’s only one way to go from here. And that’s up. So that’s what we did.

Jan 25:39

You would get hired by yourself, Lord, with that optimism. Cool. Yeah, makes makes a lot of sense. And thanks for clarifying. We had a similar journey from going from five to 12 meetings in the last six months. I don’t know like we similar things as you you said like it started with hiring the right people, right? Hiring for the positivity mindset and hiring for grit. And, and then just, you know, getting getting more structure into that, I think, for onboarding and I think that that would be my next question is onboarding them in a huddle. And in a team, and was was great because they could help each other. And so what do you think makes up because again, you love processes, you love to set people up for success? What do you think is like the source of a successful SDR onboarding? And I think it’s two months that you actually which is quite long, which is quite long, we I had two weeks

Lauren 26:49

pay no, no, it was three weeks prior. And now it’s two months, but they’re still productive during those two months. By that I mean generating pipeline. So something I didn’t mention, when answering your last question about going from just increasing your productivity by 100.

Jan 27:08

I’m increasing. It’s for 12 to 25.

Lauren 27:13

Yeah, one of the other big pieces is the feedback loop. We’re constantly asking feedback. I’ve been an SDR, I want their job. I know that admin work sucks. And it takes up way too much time. So what can what things can we automate in their workflow? What things can we remove from them so that they have less clicks, less places that they have to go to, for multiple things on? So we try to do that with onboarding to reduce the amount. We’re constantly going back? How can we make their workflow better? Because at the end of the day, it’s how fast can you get through these loops, and get people into sequence and, you know, pull them through that sequence and sprint on them? And so we try to, that’s what we teach in onboarding for like the one, you know, success. Or the one thing that hinges on the success or I don’t know, I don’t know, your actual question. Was it what makes successful onboarding? Yeah. Okay. I wanted to make sure that there, um, gosh, I don’t know, there’s so many things. I don’t know if there’s one golden ticket to have a really successful onboarding program. I think, what what we’ve recently done, it’s been, we just finished with our first cohort, we totally copy outreach and Sam Nelson and his a doji format. It’s a little bit different, just for our business, but it’s really similar where the people that come in, they have a dedicated manager, and that manager, she was a top SDR on our team. When she told me she wanted to be a manager. I was ecstatic because it’s the dream person that you would want on your management team, someone who’s so overly optimistic, so excited to help other people to build, and just incredible person and energy to be around. And she, her name is Kelly Lyons, she manages all of the brand new people that start. So we have 11, starting on August 23. And she’ll manage them for two full months. And then we’ll have our next class come in. And once the next class comes in, and in this class graduates, they move to their future managers and teams. I think what has made it the what’s increased the success rate of people coming out of onboarding. In the beginning, we had a ton of live trainings, you went from this person, we scheduled this, that’s exhausting for the trainers, you’re constantly training the same thing over and over again. So we said let’s record for the ones that we can record. Let’s record a great version of this and engaging, you know, really high energy presentation. And then let’s have either an Ask me anything or a q&a session right after they watch the recording, or in a live exercise, because that live trainings do make a huge difference. So we’ll have them watch like anything that’s process related. And then they can go back, they can rewatch it, they can, you know, if they, they want to learn at their own pace, then we’ll do a live exercise or q&a with the trainer, or somebody that’s trained on that topic. So that they can ask any outstanding questions so that we still get that long live aspect that is really helpful. And then for most of them will have either like a certification or a presentation. So after they go through all the tools, then they’ll do a PG pipeline generation and presentation where they, they we we give them one of their accounts that they’re going to get, once they are, once they around three or four weeks to get their countless get one of their accounts. They pick. They they identify the best prospects, because we’ve done prospecting training, LinkedIn training, all of that, then they choose, they tell us why they chose that, then they write it a personalized email to them, then they create a personalized video for them. And then they do a mock call live with the trainer with their manager. And that’s, that kind of wraps up everything that we’ve just taught them when it comes to the tools and then applying them. So we try to, I mean, I’ve read so many articles and case studies on like how people learn, and it’s in remote world, you have to still incorporate that even more so because you recognize like, you know, it’s not easy to just sit on zoom all day long training after training. So we do a ton of shadowing where they they get an SDR mentor and they shadow them for two hours watching their workflow asking questions as they go. So I think there’s a lot of components that are necessary, but the certifications and the presentations really tie it all together and help them apply what they’re learning. So if I could recommend anything that would be that would be it. Have some have some badges, certifications presentations to help people apply what they’re learning.

Jan 31:51

That’s fantastic. I remember I work for a startup so I didn’t get like a trophy but like like at Salesforce for example. You get like this trophy, right? Like here. I have a lot of friends here. So copying some some ideas.

Lauren 32:09

I send them a ring light and a whiteboard. You go in the book fanatical prospecting, but just

Jan 32:17

you have to read it.

Lauren 32:20

That was the most probably the most influential book that I read as an SDR.

Jan 32:26

Yeah, same here, I would say this and Chris Voss, the negotiating book. And I was ever split the difference. Yeah, exactly. And also am Gap Selling. I find my own challenger sales. I haven’t read gap selling gap. So every we have a book club. So we’ll read one book every month. And so this is right now on the on the reading list. And we are closing down. Lauren, you just to jump on our next call. There are two questions that I would like to ask you can decide which you want if you want whatever. And the first one is like what would you tell to like your when you go back when when you were an SDR? What would you tell your younger self, from what you’ve learned?

Lauren 33:17

That’s a good question. Um, I would probably be something about work life balance. And even though I got to travel a lot for work, and traveled outside of work. I was so obsessive about it. Especially for my first three years, where it was everything I lived and breathed. And not that I think it like there was nothing super detrimental that came from that, but I think there’s probably, you know, fun nights or weekends or trips that I missed out on and would have loved having those memories if I if I you know, didn’t work every Sunday. And so I think I’ve, you know, hopefully mellowed out over the years a little bit with that, but that would probably be the biggest one because at the end of the day, if you’re showing up and doing great work, you know, it’s important to refresh and every time that I go on vacation, or take a week off, you just realize how much you needed it. And it shouldn’t get to that point. You should do that before. Before you get to the point I really feel like I’m gonna burn out If I don’t take a week off.

Jan 34:25

Yeah, no, thanks, Lauren. Last one is how do you keep your team motivated? Oh gosh,

Lauren 34:34

that one is tough. I feel like I have done a terrible job at that during COVID I am. I love being in person I love going around the floor hyping people up, giving them high fives doing team huddles going outside, you know, tossing a ball around getting excited for a call Blitz. You know, we try to make them really exciting and have big stretch goals. I think probably this is so sad to say it in my own hands even I don’t even feel like I’m like that motivating. It’s probably we do I send out an SDR newsletter every other week. And I’ll write, it’s it’s long form. And it’s like, all of the details that they need to know for everything that they need in their job. It has everything in it.

Jan 35:22

I would love to get this, I would love to get this. Oh, my God. Well, it’s just internal stuff, like directly. Still still so interesting.

Lauren 35:30

Yeah. And so I’ll usually right at the beginning of that, all right. You know, I’ll talk about how we’re doing and how far we’ve come. And I think that, you know, I’ve gotten feedback from last years that it’s really helpful to see and like, hear the way that I’m thinking about, how we’ve grown as a business and where we’re going. So I think being really transparent with data, and just showing them the chart of how far we’ve come. I mean, that one that was in the outreach case study. That’s, that’s so exciting for them to see. Because they’re part of that. And they’ve they’ve helped build that. And it’s also really motivating for the managers. Yeah. So I don’t know I lean into data a lot. But I feel like, I wish I want to learn from people I want to learn from you how you move motivate your sex, because I feel like it’s it’s tough right now. Because it’s like who wants to have another meeting on the calendar and you don’t want to overcrowd their their schedules. But I yeah, I can’t wait to around the office. And I need to do a better job about motivating people remotely, because I don’t think I’ve cracked the code on that one, quite yet.

Jan 36:33

Yeah. No, it’s it’s a difficult one, like what we do is, we have every like, we have the morning huddle. So in the end, we let the reps share a motivational quote. Right. So they nominate each other to share something motivational, whether it’s, you know, whether it’s football, whether it’s a book, they wrote a poem they read, so they they share a quote, and then they say, how that’s going to impact how they think. And that’s quite fun because they nominate each other.

Lauren 37:05

I love that. Okay, that actually reminds me this, I don’t I haven’t done this. But my one of my managers who is a fantastic culture carrier, her name is Diana Atkinson. She has former SDRs who are now AEs, or product marketing managers come into her meetings and share what advice that they would give themselves, you know, when they started the SDR role, when she also has people on her team take turns sharing their why. So why are they here? Why are they passionate? And that is huge. Yeah, that’s so I need to do we need to do that more, because it makes a big difference.

Jan 37:41

Yeah, we are like, I’m a Simon Sinek. Ambassador. So I did it with the entire company. And I have a podcast episode on this. If you would like to listen to that. I can I can share this with SDR nation, I did one and it’s 20 minutes, it might fit into your schedule, if you would like to. I know that you have to run. And how did you like that? How did you?

Lauren 38:05

It was great. Thanks for asking all the questions. Yeah, hopefully I think I ended up taking I didn’t, I looked at them beforehand. But I didn’t type any notes out. So

Jan 38:13

and that’s exactly what I want. Lauren. That’s exactly what I want. Because there’s so much scripted unreal content out there. That’s not the stories, right, the stories to share right now. They are so actionable. There’s so much more than reading another blog post that, you know, it’s not maybe written by you. And it’s this real stories that make a true impact. I feel so I’m, it was a great conversation, one of the best I had so far. And I had 15 by now. So thank you so much for that. Yeah,

Lauren 38:42

yeah, thank you for reaching out, and it was so great to meet you. And if there’s ever anything I can do to help, please let me know. And I’ll keep consuming all the great content that you’re putting out. I think if everybody that posts on LinkedIn could just realize, don’t make it about you. It doesn’t, if you’re doing it for likes, it’s never who’s gonna like it. It just needs to be actual, like you said real. Like, I’m never going to post any article that I posted. Hopefully, you’ve seen this. I’m not. And that’s my only thing that I have three on LinkedIn, or like blog posts, I’m never gonna post something that’s just like, high level. It’s like, if I’m an SEO leader, or I’m somebody that you know, the audience of who’s reading whatever I’m writing, I want them to be able to go take something away and implement it. People don’t give examples, or actually how they did something. I’m just like, Okay, this is nice conceptually, but I want to actually see a real life example. So I can apply this to what I’m doing. So I appreciate that you, you look at the content you that you produce the same way.

Jan 39:46

Thank you so much. Yeah, yeah. Great, Lauren. And there are a million other questions. I would like to ask you, there are a million other things I would speak to you about, but you’re busy. I’ll let you go with your day.