Chris Ritson is an established sales coach, supporting outbound teams on their journey to high performance.
With a passion for the role of SDRs, Chris spoke at our event in July 2023 - The Best SDR workshop EVER.
Here are the best bits from his teachings on strategies for SDR success.
A lot of SDRs start their days, end their days and don’t really know what happened in between.
We do 50 calls, 100 emails but have no idea what worked and what didn’t.
This session is all about making your day a success with better skills.
Luckily skills can be learned and developed. So if you struggle with any of these now, don’t worry, practice makes perfect.
The role of an SDR
When it comes down to it, the role of an SDR is to start and continue conversations with good-fit prospects.
Your day-to-day consists of
- A good list of great fit prospects - so your target is in the right place on the right people
- Producing good messaging to connect with those people and start the conversation
- Using good communications and sequences to own the process and further the conversation.
- Handling objections so conversations continue, instead of coming to a halt.
We become so obsessed with the step of creating great messaging, whether that is cold calling, email etc. But it doesn't matter if you're not sending it to the right people in the first place, it won’t work. That’s where it all starts.
Break your job down in this way to keep things simple. Your job is to start a conversation first. If you can’t book that meeting right now, just keep the conversation in a place where it can continue until the right time comes.
Our targets make us think of our jobs as very transactional. But we should think of them more as conversations to nurture over a period of time.
Know your list, protect your time
Not all accounts are made equal.
Whether you have been given a list by RevOps or have built your own list, you own the power in your day so work out which accounts in that list are worth your time each day.
Get to know their match to ICP, where the account might be in terms of timescales and anything else that might influence their likelihood to buy. Then spend your time wisely.
Sales scripts are in
In your calling toolkit, the most powerful tool you have is your tone of voice. It’s four and a half times more powerful than the words you actually use. So how can you lean into that, to benefit your sale?
Take the words that you use off the table and into the realm of your control. Get to know them.
Most successful actors don’t just improv. Even Leo.
Why? Because he knows that communication is all about body language and tone of voice.
On calls, we don’t have body language to use so we need to lean into tone more. So have your script, know it and know what you want to get out of it. Then use tone to your advantage on each call.
Quantity/quality balance of email
We’re all guilty of thrashing email time out to hit the numbers, not really thinking or giving them any real energy or effort.
But that doesn’t mean you have to individually write and personalize each one either.
Good templates will allow you to do something well, with speed.
It will also allow you to hone in on the parts of your email that need focus to have the biggest impact. You don’t need to write them all a-fresh.
I swear by four different email templates, so I can spend my time and tailor only where it’s needed.
SDR sequences
The biggest problem I’ve seen with sequences is that SDRs care about the first two steps, don’t get a response then sack off the account, just adding more accounts into the start. Only to repeat the process.
Often, reps feel they don’t have enough to write about through the sequence. But remember:
#1 Your prospect probably hasn't seen what you’ve written at the first step.
#2 They definitely haven’t remembered it.
If you still feel like you’re repeating yourself, counteract that by thinking of three problems for each persona - you probably have these already. This is enough to write the emails for a 15-step sequence.
Crucially - every single step counts. Every step is an opportunity to build trust with your prospect, but we discount that all the time.
A lot of the meetings you book will happen in the last five steps, so always keep going.
Coach yourself to eat the frog
This is a short one - but it's powerful.
Always do your least fun task, or the task you are most afraid of, at the start of the day.
I promise you will have a considerably more productive day.
‘Not right now’ is the 2nd best answer in sales
Everyone says ‘no’ is the second best, but I disagree.
‘Not right now’ just means they’re not ready to buy…yet. If you go back to what your job is as an SDR it is to start conversations. So if they don’t convert now, you continue the conversation until you have a more binary answer.
Compound interest theory tells us that if we start diarising future calls with people to check in, we’re starting the next call on something we have already built.
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Chris’s talk was part of Jimmy's Best SDR Workshop Ever in July 2023, where we explored some of the best sales techniques with the best in the biz. He spoke alongside Chris Ritson and Tom Boston, and you can learn from their talks here:
Jack Frimston on cold calling.
Tom Boston on social selling for SDRs.
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