Ernie Owusu

I do think that sometimes companies aren't realistic of when it's time to bring on a sales representative. Um, if you don't have product market fit, that is not time to bring on a sales rep and you can use them to identify what the market wants and, you know, have conversations. But, Sales develop are, are it's prominent accelerator. Right. So being very aware of that. But I think the biggest thing is like, you know, just the hiring profile. Like people have so many opinions on like someone's experience and, and, and what they've done and what school they've gone to. And I, I've seen it for years that that's just does not matter. It really doesn't matter. Like I, I've seen people that were literal. just graduating from college, outperform people that have been selling for 10, 15 years in different, in different functions. So I think I wish people would spend a little bit more time trying to focus on the main core traits for what their business needs, whether it's like super gritty SMB SDRs or like high business acumen, strategic BDRs, and align that to who they're hiring as opposed to. oh, this person went to this school and played football, so we should hire him. Because fo players are great salespeople. , they're all biased. They're a little bit , in my opinion, from my experience. It's safe. But uh, anyway,

Nasser Oudjidane

Hello and welcome to our series of Scaling Stories, a discussion with leaders about their lessons building teams at some of the world's fastest growing companies. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Ernie a wsu, the Senior Director of Sales Development at sixth cents. Ernie, a huge welcome. Thank you for taking the time to get started. Could you share a little bit about you and your background? 

Ernie Owusu

Yeah, definitely. And thanks for having me. So again, my name is Ernie owusu, uh, currently working at Sixth Sense. And I'd definitely say I have a bit of a unique background. Um, you know, I had the opportunity to graduate from college, went to uc, Berkeley, but uh, when I finished that, I actually, uh, extended my, my playing career into the N F L where I was a, I was an N F L athlete for a period of time, and. Uh, that experience was fun. It was amazing. It was a lifelong dream achieved, but, uh, when I finished, I had to try and figure out what I was gonna do next. So, talked to a lot of people, tried to figure out what skills that I had that actually got me to the nfl. I could parlay into my next thing. And all signs and roles led to sales. So I took a little bit of faith and started my first job as a sales belt representative. Had a lot of fun. It was really hard at first. I was bad . At first. Um, but I loved it. And, you know, I made a career out of it where I eventually became a rep, then an account executive where I was closing business, and then actually moved on to leading and building, uh, SDR teams.

Nasser Oudjidane

Awesome. And what a journey and this pod is gonna be all about SDRs, sdr, hiring and, and development, then notorious, um, in terms of the highest attrition rates in the industry. , why do you think that is? Do you think the problem is to do with the role itself, the hiring process? How would you, how would you think about that?

Ernie Owusu

‍ Yeah, so it's definitely a combination. Um, you know, ultimately the job is very hard. Like in, in few jobs are, you know, literally, you know, , that's the word, yelling at you, screaming at you, cursing at you. And then, you know, we have to pick my phone and do it again. Uh, but essentially what I've realized from my time as being an s c r leader is the kind of main three, three main things that I've noticed that like once you keep your eyes on and can really zero in on, you'll have a situation where you're not gonna really lose too many people. And I essentially call them the three C. So, Career culture, compensation, and career essentially means, you know, once you have a sales level representative, typically the average tenure is roughly 14 to 18 months in seek before they try and find another role afterwards. So it's critical that once you hire and build these teams, you actually have a defined path, very objective of what they need to do to learn, uh, and develop skills to eventually move on to the next role that they'll take. Compensation is critical, right? Because if you think about the role and how challenging. If they're in an environment where they're not getting paid appropriately, or they're not seeing the benefits from the work, from a monetary standpoint, they're not gonna be very happy. And as a result, they, uh, will, you know, burn out or try and find another opportunity. And I say last but not least, the, the one of the most important things, just overall culture, right? So again, it's a tough environment and you can really beat down your team and not make them feel supported and not appreciate them. And I've seen a lot of organizations do that, and they do that through lack of autonomy through. An environment where they're seeing at the very bottom of the totem pole. And I've noticed that when you have teams where you have all three of those things intact, um, you know, you can have really strong performance and keep you over a long period of time. And from my experience at, at Success where, you know, I essentially, I took a team of roughly five sales develop reps and built it, you know, to roughly 50 or so. Um, I had years where I only had like 2% attrition of people that we did not want to leave. Right. You know, that regrettable attrition and a lot of it is basically, uh, aligned with the fact that. Through three Cs. It's a part of our daily structure. We talk about it very constantly, and our team does feel supported.

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. And on the last point, the last c regarding construct, does, is it applicable to say that the sales context, uh, is important there? Meaning are there sales reps that are built for large enterprises, um, and some sales reps that are, would you describe as culturally fit for SMBs in terms of quick.

Ernie Owusu

Yeah, I'd definitely say so. So different kinds of motion, whether it's SMB or a large strategic, does require a certain skillset set. But I think the beautiful thing about being a salesman representative is it all can be learned. Now, granted, you know, when I do hire people, we are very conscious of what, what skills and characteristics they already have. We kind of know where they might. Be best fit. Uh, but the beautiful thing again is like, it all can be learned. And if I think about the difference of someone who's operating an s and b motion versus large enterprise or strategic s and p is like constant rejection, very fast paced. You have to think, you know, very organized, very transactional. versus strategic has a little bit different thought process where maybe you won't get as many nos, but you have to do a ton of research. Understand organizations have stronger business acumen to try and find ways to land that meeting. So, but again, the most important thing is with those things, you can create a team where they have the ability to learn those skills and ultimately be effective in the role.

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, absolutely. And for the benefit of our audience who are largely talent and people leaders, what's your framework? , what could you advise them in terms of what they should be looking for in high quality SDRs? What type of profiles do you look for?

Ernie Owusu

Yeah, that's a great question and you know, I'll kind of go back to what I did. We've, we've experienced hypergrowth at success. You know, again, I took a team from roughly five sales, 11 reps. Uh, it's roughly 50 in honestly, under three years. And a big thing that I noticed, there's actually this book called Leading Sales Development. I think for anyone out there who, uh, is either, you know, working with a team of sales development reps or building the first one, highly, highly encourage you to take a look at that book. There's a lot of. Strong data on what to look for and why. But the main things they have in there, and again, this, this data comes from Salesforce, SalesLoft Alpha, send some really strong sales development programs where essentially what they did was they took a look at some of the top performers, why they performed the way they did, what kind of characteristics they had that they could basically pick out to identify their next top talent. And essentially what they notice is these four core traits of curiosity. conscientiousness, business acumen, and grit. And if you could find someone who has all those four things in, in their profile, granted, you know, you'll look out for the red flags. You don't wanna have someone who has those things we all look out for. But if you, if you do have those four core traits and I've seen it, I'm a testament to that, then you can hire, you can hire a team that performs really well over time. 

Nasser Oudjidane

And would you say that applies to, back to what we were discussing, enterprise strategic sales and s and SMB.

Ernie Owusu

Yeah, I would definitely say so. So I, if I had to look at, for example, you know, the strategic aspect, right? Uh, an SDR who has high business acumen will be very effective in the role, uh, you know, in the SMB motion. A, a BDR or SDR who has high grit will be just as effective, um, in that role because they have, they have to take the cost and rejection and just keep hounding the pavement.

Nasser Oudjidane

And have you defined each of these traits? codified, like what, what does curiosity mean to you and, and, and the success recruiting team? 

Ernie Owusu

Yeah, that's a great question. So if I had to give everyone like very tangible things to look for with those four qualities, I'll just kind of go down the pecking order here. So, so grit. Grit can be defined by, uh, basically someone working towards a long-term. and having experienced many plateaus or setbacks, but still being just as passionate, achieving that goal over a period of time. And, you know, we ask people about like their greatest challenges they've ever faced. The, the achievement that they've, they've accomplished that they were most proud of, right? And through that you can kind of see whether or not they had those ups and downs and they were still focused on that main goal. And they, and honestly, whether or not they achieved it is irrelevant as long as they kept that persistence and that attitude towards that. Conscientious, um, is basically someone who is constantly trying to find ways to improve themselves day in, day out. If they go a conscientious person, like they might write a one sentence, a a 30 sentence, uh, paragraph, right? The next day they'll take a look at that paragraph and say, okay, maybe I can change this one word or here, or put this one sentence in here to make it even better. The next thing will do the exact same thing again. So people who have a knack for constantly trying to improve their craft and make themselves better are typically very conscientious. Um, if I look at business acumen and business acumen, it's not in the sense of like, do they understand how an org works or how revenue is generated, or anything along those lines. It's more about, for an s specifically with SDRs is can they connect the dots? Can they take a piece of information they've seen online about a. Or a persona, tie back to their product and explain in a concise way why they should buy your product. That's more or less what we're looking at for, for business acumen. And then curiosity, this last piece here, uh, what I've always noticed, again, a very tangible thing for, for curiosity. The SDRs that I've hired who before they get on the call, have either done research on like a, a thought leader or influencer on specific tactics that make them effective as SDRs. They've read books, they've read podcasts on the specific tactics to be effective in the role. They tend to be phenomenal sales development reps. And they have that curiosity. And the reason why that curiosity is really important is because someone who has that is always gonna be finding ways to hack the system to improve. And as a manager, especially as you're scaling out a team, you actually will have to spend less time with them because they just, they're constantly improving their craft.

Nasser Oudjidane

‍ Yeah, that's fascinating because you also haven't mentioned things that are perhaps traditionally associated. Objection handling or the ability to close, uh, and stuff like that. You know, sell me this pen. 

Ernie Owusu

Um, yeah, and, and you know, there's a reason for that because again, this book, leading Sales Develop, they talk about that. So one thing that's kind of like, um, I don't wanna call an archaic, uh, stance on sales own rep is like, I have to have this rep who. You know, graduated from an league school or they were a salesperson in their past, or, uh, maybe they have two or three years of industry experience. Like those things are great, and if they have those four core traits can essentially be multipliers. But we're not looking for like your traditional sales experience or your traditional things that people are looking for. Because like, at the end of the day, that's great, but it doesn't matter over the day that tells us that those four core traits are, are, are more important.

Nasser Oudjidane

And, and from your experience, have, have you thought about. I dunno, perhaps adding things such as like coachability. Is that important to you? Like when perhaps you give feedback and this person could exhibit really high, uh, indicators on all of those core tricks, but he's not listening to you? 

Ernie Owusu

Uh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. And, and the thing is, again, I, I highly encourage I to take a look at this book cuz there are things like coachability, there are things like EQ to take a look at. Like, does this person have the ability to listen to what I'm ac what I'm actually saying and repeat back to me? Rather, not a robotic way, but actually it actually, listen to what I'm saying, right? So there are some things that like you don't wanna ignore, uh, because they are, you know, typically really strong signs. But again, I, I've been very consistent with hiring my teams on those four core traits. And as I mentioned earlier, if there's something that's like a huge red flag, like. , they've jumped around that five companies in four years, or, or you know, they, they show up late to the interview or we do an assignment. There's like a lot of typos and there's spell those things you can't ignore. So we don't wanna be blind to outside factors that maybe aren't included. But, you know, our, our biggest thing is when we, we don't compromise those four things. If we see them, then we get really excited because we know that person has a potential to be really strong on our team.

Nasser Oudjidane

And what happens when they have exhibited them? How do you measure? Codify that what's, what's your framework? And also if you could also touch upon the, perhaps the evaluation. So is, for example, a mock call part of it? Uh, yeah. Or, or something else to kind of test the, the, the phone skills, the writing skills.

Ernie Owusu

Yeah, sure thing. So I'll, I'll first talk to you how we kind of codified it. So for us, we are very binary. It's, um, whether you have it or you don't have it, and there's no in between. And a, a big reason for that is because if we're undecided about whether or not someone, uh, has business acumen or has grit, or has conscientiousness, then they're not, they're not exemplifying enough for us to feel confident and as a result, we're not gonna take them. So, For us, it's very binary, zero and one. You either have it, you don't have it. If you have all four, then that's a check for us right now with our overall process. Right? So we do include aspects to kind of see. Like their ability to perform some technical tasks, like we will do some kind of mock calls where we're not expecting 'em to be perfect. If I had done that my first time out of the NFL, tried to do a mock call, it would've been horrible and I probably wouldn't have got the job. So we, we do give them that grace on that. But, uh, we do mock calls, which are really helpful to see kind of how they handle pressure and how they can beat an environment where they're potentially not comfortable. Uh, one thing that I'd highly encourage you all to do if you have like a technical product, , if you have a product that, um, maybe they're, you're expecting your, your, um, SDRs to talk to senior leaders. We do a writing assignment where we ask them to, we basically take one of our customers, take that main persona and, and ask 'em to write an email on how that person should buy our product. And what's important with that is like naturally some people are just gonna get help. So the questions you ask in that interview have to be specific enough for you to tell like, does this person actually know what our company does and why this person should buy our product? Or did their friend who's in SDR help them write this email because you know, they wanna make, they wanna get the job. So there's some things like that, like with calls and, and, and emails where we can kind of get a sense of like what we're getting, what's the person gets in seat. But again, we always try and tie those back. Those more, those main four core traits. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. Uh, do you ever, um, associate or evaluate them in their current role? Let's imagine that you've got an SDR who's, you know, been doing it, uh, at another company for 8, 9, 10 months. Yeah, it's gonna be hard to sell 6 cents because if you throw them on the hot seat, they don't know your value prop. They don't understand the problems of your core customer persona. But in eight months in the role, they should be. Pretty good at selling what they do. So are you evaluating when perhaps, you know, during the introductions phase or somewhere down the line, can you sell what you are selling now to me, and would I buy from you? Is that, is that something that's ever evaluated? . 

Ernie Owusu

Yeah, that's a good question. So, you know, again, we don't really look too much at specific characteristics from, you know, whether or not you have sales career or, or whether you've been in marketing, whatever it may be. But, um, there is an expectation. I will say, if you've been in SDR beforehand and you draft an email or do a mock call and it's not on par, then. first, we'll kind of give 'em the benefit of that and see whether or not they've actually had coaching. There are some environments where there're SDRs who they were the only sdr and they report to the CEO and that CEO never sold before. So they're trying to learn things on their own. But I will say if, if we are getting someone who was an SDR beforehand, we do expect some of their skills to be a little bit more polished because. , you should have been effective in the role if you were at least doing some things well, but, um, aside from that, we're not too hard on them. I think if there's anything that I will say for people, if you're, if you are adamant about hiring an SD R who was an SD beforehand, uh, I'd be very conscious of how much time they had in seat at the other organization. Again, a lot of SDRs have this, um, expectation of like 14 to 18 months. There's, there's gonna be promotion. Your top performers typically are the ones that companies are promoting. And if that person is looking to leave at like year, at the year mark, or, you know, 13, 14 months, there's a chance that there might be a situation where maybe they're not performing in their current role or, or there's something that you're not quite seeing the interview process. So just kind of have the, the red flags go up a little bit and do some digging into that. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. Yeah. Or perhaps even several SDR oppositions of eight, nine months. 

Ernie Owusu

Exactly 

Nasser Oudjidane

What, what's, what's adding up there.

Ernie Owusu

And I will say that that's actually kinda the sweet spot. So if, if there is someone who, um, wasn't an SDR beforehand, I've noticed that, like, that 7, 8, 9 month mark, they might realize their, their company does not have any path for them. And then those top performers who, you know, want to proceed in their careers and, and grow, then start looking because they wanna make sure they're getting there. And I've had a lot of people who, um, do have that experience and they pin up pretty well for us as well. 

Nasser Oudjidane

And when you look at the combination of the, the knowledge of the market and your own experience leading your current, uh, your team, where have the, where have you found success in terms of the backgrounds of the candidates? You and I have had this discussion before with there's this traditional archetype of being an athlete and. , you know, that isn't correct. So, yeah. What have you seen with actually, uh, the people who are performing today, people that have, uh, you know, hit quota and are growing in your company? Where, where do you buy them?

Ernie Owusu

Honestly, it's all over the place. We, we have people that are college grads. We have people that are. You know, um, layering their careers, doing, doing career switch. So it, it really doesn't matter. Um, and I can say for myself who was a former athlete, like I'm not biased towards athletes cause I've also seen some athletes that just don't pan out very well. Um, and again, so I think people have this misconception that you have to hire a certain profile and like all athletes are super gritty, they're coachable, they're gonna be relentless, super competitive. , that is a, I mean, that's an association that we have with athletes, but not all athletes are like that, right? So if you kind of fix yourself on what you expect people to be, because what people are telling you, they're gonna be like, they may not be what you actually expect 'em to be. And as a result, you're gonna hire someone who, um, is not best fit for the role. So I, I would just really caution people to hire a profile because they're being told to do so and look more so what the traits that the person might have.

Nasser Oudjidane

Right. And when you think about the, the process, , you hire like a sales process. Yeah. How are you working hand in hand with your talent acquisition team with regards to the funnel, the structure, the rounds? 

Ernie Owusu

Uh, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's a great question. So I, I will say our competitive advantage in terms of recruiting is we run a very tight process and I treat it very much like, like a sales process. So I wanna make sure from application in to. But that all happens within 17 days, and that's a very aggressive ask, but we're all aligned in terms of our talent team as well as our BDR team to make sure we're hitting that. And, and the reason for that is because, you know, even in our current situation where there's a down market and, and things maybe are a little bit dicey, SDRs are still getting hired like no time. So if you have someone who's really strong and you're waiting three, four, or five weeks to try to land that person, there's a very good chance they'll find somewhere else and not be on your team. So our process is Essent. You know, they, they come in, whether it's through, um, you know, on our website, our, our talent team finds them. It's a referral. And we have a very strong relationship with our talent team where they're screening those candidates. And again, like, you know, I, I treat those, if you think about like an SDR role or a sales role, I treat those as like qualified pipeline. Like, so our, our talent team is qualifying the candidate and we trust them because, We know kind of what questions they're asking, what they're assessing for, and once they push 'em through, because we've kind of all vetted out our process together. I know this is someone that I want to make sure that we're, we're asking some, some good questions to. So essentially our process is very tight. It's the talent team who does the screen. They, they pick out some of those main core traits we're looking for. Then after that, a hiring manager will meet the person, and at that time it's like half like asking questions, but also half selling them and getting excited for the opportu. and then, uh, at that point, we'll even do it on the call. If we feel really strongly about someone, we'll ask them for time on the call just to make sure that we're aligned and we can get them through the process as quickly as possible. But that, that last step will be basically getting as many stakeholders as possible. It'll be sales, some marketing, uh, some BDR leaders, even that time, some, some SDRs themselves to evaluate them. Then eventually, you know, if that all pans out, it might go to me and we'll, we'll send, we'll send an offer, but, um, We've run a tight process because we know it's really hard to keep a really strong candidate. Cause there are so many different opportunities out there, and we've seen that it works really well for us. Who's responsible for closing? Uh, . That's a great question. So I, I definitely like to like, be that person who's kind of pushing over the edge, but I also know that like I'm not the expert here and I think that's the good thing that we have between our talent team and myself. We know our roles and like I, even though we're in sales, we do feel confident in our ability to do that, but like, this is their job and they're the best at that. So we, we kind of leave it to them to, to negotiate, to close and to make it happen. And I will say at time does nerve wracking, especially with good can, because I wanna just like jump in and help out. Uh, but I haven't seen very many situations where our talent team hasn't come through and they've done an awesome job. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. And you can, you can almost do the pre-close as well where you've, you know, you've, you can do the assessment at the same time when I'm trying to get that person in. 

Ernie Owusu

Exactly. Exactly. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Let's talk about onboarding Now. What happens after they've accepted an offer? What does your onboarding process look like? 

Ernie Owusu

That's a good question. And I will say, um, for anyone that's looking to bring on SDR team, sales development team, um, the onboarding path that you have is critical. I'd say that that piece, especially if you're hiring people that have experience or no experience, like the, the, the strategies and tactics you teach 'em upfront, it's really hard to break those habits as they're going through the process of learning how to be a great BDR sdr. So you really have to be strong with how you're doing that. For us, it's, you know, roughly, I'd say like a four to six week process. We're doubling down on just like our culture and like what, where they're gonna go in their career and what it's gonna look like to be, uh, an awesome employee at 6 cents doing it into tactics and what our product does. And eventually, you know, one thing we really try hard to do is just to get them on the phones and email as quickly as possible. And, uh, using a Socratic approach of just asking questions to make sure they're pulling out the answers on their own. But we've noticed that it's, it's really easy just to. send videos and PowerPoints and have them read it and expect them to do it. But the best way to learn is to actually like, get on the phone, you know, write an email, look at an account, try and get a meeting with someone as opposed to taking a longer route. 

Nasser Oudjidane

And you mentioned that during this process there's, there's product, but there's also, um, best practices with regards to the Socratic approach. How much time are you investing with? the qualification aspect and trying to identify problems rather than like know our product 

Ernie Owusu i

nside out. 

Yeah, so how are you thinking about that? I think there, there's a big misconception that SDRs and BDRs need to be product experts. Their main job is to understand the business and get a meeting with a qualified, with a qualified opportunity or a qualified account. Or lead, whatever you wanna call it. So for us, like we're not ex, we're not doing like a one week deep dive into, into a demo and expecting to be like a halfway sales engineer, halfway switch consultant. They just need to know the basics of what a product does, why our personas would need that, how to help 'em do their job. And then through time, we'll we'll continue to educate them with, you know, product knowledge and. , you know, they get demo certified, things like that. But we don't heavily invest in demoing because, um, though it's great, that's not the majority of what they're doing, the majority of what they're doing is calling people, emailing them, using social. So it's better to learn those practice and what to say through using our product as opposed to focusing on how to actually, um, do a demo of the product. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. And I know this is quite a, a difficult question to ask, but what would you say are pretty. KPIs for an sdr, like just foundational stuff in terms of calls and emails, what, what do you think should be the minimum?

Ernie Owusu

Yeah, that's a great question. So it, it definitely depends per segment. So like, if you're like a large enterprise versus smb, SMB is gonna be a lot higher volume. So like higher calls, higher emails, very transactional versus, you know, that larger enterprise is not so much the case. So if I had to kind of put something in the middle, Um, if I was gonna do, and, and without getting into a rabbit hole here, but like personalized emails, I'd say about 25 per week. Overall emails. So a mix of like personalization and automation, say like 200, 300 calls. Calls is challenging because it really depends on the infrastructure you have and how efficient you're making them. But if you can set up a system where your team has the ability to make roughly 150 calls per. At a minimum, you have some teams that do like hundred 50 a day, but if you could do at least 150 calls per week, then you're, you're in to choose. And the last one is for social. For us, those are our main three channels, at least 25 messages per week. And, and we use minimums just to make sure that, um, we're not creating an environment where they're doing too much volume and compromising quality. . 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. And with regards to like the development of the SDR into the, the, the next position, whether that's going into SDR management or whether that's going into account executives or, or something else. How are you, how are you communicating the culture of constant learning? How are you delivering continuous feedback? How are you holding them?

Ernie Owusu

Yeah, good question. So, one thing that I think has been helpful for us and the big reason why we have such a hot, such great low attrition numbers, um, it's very objective for what it takes for someone to be eligible for an interview, not necessarily to get the job. So it's based on performance over about a year, year and a half. And if you hit certain benchmarks, then you start increases in. Where you start getting paid more, you start getting more responsibilities, you start getting trusted to take on more opportunities to learn how to basically do whatever you want to do. So a great example of that is if someone wants to become an account executive, which is typically what most SDRs want to do, uh, you'll come on board, you'll wrap. You'll be in C for about four to six months, uh, based upon performance. Then you'll, we'll bump you up to a senior bdr, senior sdr, and at that point you can start doing these things we call at bats. So you can take a call that maybe isn't like an opportunity in the AE is, is excited about, or it's not something that we can really sell to. And we'll coach you through like a process of like you take that call. You qualify them, you try to get different stakeholders in and try to push a deal through, but obviously not ha like handling as may as you can at a given time. But that gives them real practice where they can get feedback, learn different skills, and eventually when it comes time for 'em actually interview for the role, they're at least like somewhat ready and have some skills they can leverage to be effective. . 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah well, awesome marketing team that you have where you have all of. You know, leads in the ether that you can give to the team as well. 

Ernie Owusu

That's exactly, . Exactly. , exactly. 

Nasser Oudjidane

It's a great, uh, yeah. Great marketing team. I mean, based, based on comp structure, how do you think it should align with your sales strategies, company goals? 

Ernie Owusu

Yeah, that's a great question too. And you know, specifically SDRs, I've heard a lot of different strategies. I've heard of competable activity on meetings, on qualified pipeline, on closed. Um, that partially depends on, on the segment. If you have like a very quick sales cycle, like three weeks, four weeks, and maybe it might make sense to cop them on clothes if you have a long set cycle of like. 12, 14, 16 months, chances are they're not gonna reap the benefits of that. So the thing that I've always tried, I've been tried and tested and, and you know, I'm most confident is, is just qualified pipeline right now, the caveats to that is it's challenging because, you know, essentially sales reps are responsible for getting the meeting. The AE has to be the one that creates a qualified pipeline by, you know, , interesting. Multiple stakeholders progressing opportunity. But, and sometimes sales member reps don't like being comped on qualified pipeline, but you kind of have to do it because if you don't have someone who's pushing the AEs to actually push the opportunity to qualify, then they'll just sit there and you'll lose deals because they get deprioritized. So, um, we've done that. It's a mix of like qualified pipeline versus first meeting that's occurred with a clear next step. And because of that, um, our team loves it and we still hit our goals. . 

Nasser Oudjidane Y

eah. There, there is a dependency on having good account executives. 

Ernie Owusu

Exactly. And exactly 

Nasser Oudjidane

And a good product. as well. Cause I've, I've also been, um, reading about this and Mark Rebich has, you know, that Sales Acceleration formula book, um, from his time at HubSpot and he changed the com structure to. The, uh, retention of a customer, the expansion of a customer. Um, and that's kind of associated with more, with the, the closing roles. But it's still an interesting thought experiment to look at how do you line the incentives rather than we're all selfish, but we're all gonna try and, you know, make money. And if you don't align the incentives of the business, then this could actually jeopardize a SaaS business, which is ultimately trying to grow ARR.

Ernie Owusu

100%. And I think at the end of the day, the rule thumb is aligned, the comp to where the business needs to go. And from my perspective, a sales manager rep is there to build qualified pipeline that ultimately closes. So that's what you have to basically put them towards. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, absolutely. But what is the minimum threshold for the account executive to accept the meeting from the sdr? Is it, uh, , do you have a sales accepted lead in terms of some sort of formula, like bant or something else? 

Ernie Owusu

Yeah, so that definitely varies. So again, if you're at like the SMB motion, that's, that's very high qualification, uh, where you use like bant or some other kind of, uh, qualification criteria where once the rep or the AE qualifies it, then that pushes it forward, just so accepted, not for qualified. That might be like, you know, they have, this is an, this is a project they wanna complete within a period of time and they've had multiple people including into the conversation and this is a real deal. For us, again, it's like get that s a set for the lead and make sure that, um, you qualify it appropriately and be comfortable on that.

Nasser Oudjidane

Got it. What piece of advice do you hear when folks are building SASS SDR teams that you think is total bs? Like is there any myth that needs to be put into trash here? ?

Ernie Owusu

Yeah. Well there are a couple things, so you know, I do think that. Sometimes companies aren't realistic of when it's time to bring on a sales loan representative. Um, if you don't have product market fit, that is not the time to bring on an sales rep and you can use them to identify what the market wants and, you know, have conversations. But it. Sales develop are, are it's prominent accelerator. Right. So being very aware of that. But I think the biggest thing is like, you know, just the hiring profile. Like people have so many opinions on like someone's experience and and, and what they've done and what school they've gone to, and. it, I, I've seen it for years that that's just does not matter. It really doesn't matter. Like I, I've seen people that were literally just graduating from college, outperform people that have been selling for 10, 15 years in different, in different functions. So I think I wish people would spend a little bit more time trying to focus on the main core trades for what their business needs, whether it's like super gritty SMB SDRs or like high business acumen, strategic BDRs, and align that to who they're hiring as opposed. , oh, this person went to this school and played football, so we should hire him. Because spoil players are great salespeople. , they're all biased. They're a little bit , in my opinion, from my experience. It's say, but, uh, anyway.

Nasser Oudjidane

‍ Here's one for you. Have you experienced a positive of. onboarding or hiring SDRs in batches, in groups and, oh, 

Ernie Owusu

yes. Most, most definitely. Most. That's if you're hiring, if you have a hiring, uh, an aggressive hiring number. Critical that you do that critical. Even, even the difference of hiring an SDR on week one of a month versus week two, and they're, they're, they're not aligned with the week makes a big difference in not only the manager's capacity to onboard them, but also those two individuals ability to onboard quickly. And I've only seen that because part of it is, it's like, They'll have questions and they might feel comfortable asking their manager. They might feel comfortable asking other people, but they're gonna ask each other at the very minimum and grow together. Uh, they'll have more opportunities to practice together. So if you are hiring at least two SDRs and have the ability to hire them, start on the same date, that is mission critical to do that and finding a way to do that. I would definitely prioritize that. We've, we've always done that whenever. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Okay. Got it. What tech do you use? Feel free to shout out any products that deliver value.

Ernie Owusu

Yeah, definitely. So, uh, bias over here, the main tech we use is Six Sense. Uh, so Six Sense basically helps companies identify, um, when other companies are ready to buy their product. And as an sdr, you know, being able to see that makes your job a lot easier. Um, so we use, we use SalesLoft, which is our main sales engagement tool. Uh, we use lintel as well. Lintel is actually a new product that we, we integrate into success that allows us to buy contact data, um, need really strong contact data to make sure you're actually making calls and emails. Um, we use Drift, which is a chat on our website that allows us to pick off conversations when phone's browsing around our website. Um, lean data from an operational standpoint is really good for routing leads and making sure that, um, you, you're honoring that speed to lead to be effective in the role. Um, Alice is another one. It's kind of, uh, if you like, gifting. We, we've been using it for almost four years now. It's been really effective, so I, I prioritize that one. Um, I'm trying to think of what else I might be missing. Um, I say, yeah, at, at a minimum those, those main things. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Do you give your SDRs a budget for gifting? 

Ernie Owusu

We do. And you know, it's interesting because our product allows companies to see when other companies are ready to buy from them. And because we only send gifts to companies that are like actually interested in our product, we convert a high amount of those gifts like I sent into meetings.

Nasser Oudjidane

That's pretty good yeah. Moving into closing questions, um, what's one piece of advice you wish you had when you started your career in sales development?

Ernie Owusu

Yeah, that's a good question. Um, I'd say anything to be easier on myself, um, my first quarter as an sdr, I literally hit 50% core entertainment and it was demoralizing, especially coming from like, you know, a high performance, you know, a high performance environment where I was an NFL athlete and then going into a role where, You know, people were calling me and I'm not calling them. I'm also, I'm not good at it. , that was, that was tough. So I think be being easier on yourself and also knowing that the sales role is 100% a skill. If you could reach out, if you could reach out to your manager, to mentors, to coaches, people will find ways to help you improve. And, you know, your ability to, to really zero it on those and find ways to grow will dictate how well you do in the role. So I think being easier in. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Are you easy on yourself now? No. .It didn't go away. I'll given you the advice I, last thing I do the advice Fair. Is there anything that you recommend our audience listen to, read or watch for inspiration? You've, you've mentioned, um, the book that I think was written by, The VP of sales at, uh, Alphasense.

Ernie Owusu‍

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So as an SDR leader, definitely get your hands on leading sales development as an SDR rep. Fanatical prospecting, even as an SDR leader, it's called Fanatical Prospecting. For me, that's like. The Bible, if you want to call it, of how to prospect really well. It teaches some things about mindset tactics. I, I definitely get your hands on that. Um, for sellers out there, this, I guess an old school book, but it's, it's still very strong, the Challenger Sale. Um, my, my team uses that methodology when we're trying to get meetings with people. So I, I'd get your hands on that as well. Um, yeah, I'd say those main ones.

Nasser Oudjidane

Awesome. Last one. What is one thought, if any, or phrase or value that you live by it? 

Ernie Owusu

Hmm. Well, . That's a great question. If I had to think of one thing that I live by, I mean my thought process in life, I, I always just wanted to be the best and, and conquer anything that I, I possibly can. And like I, I've always like envisioned myself as, if you wanna call it a serial alpha, like whatever I'm doing, I don't wanna be the very best at it in any way I possibly can. Um, I think it's probably, that's probably part of what drew me into sales. And you know, I think for myself, for anyone who's doing a career transition or whoever's like, starting something new, like hoping attestment the fact that you can like be a high achiever one function and find out other ways to do it again in another function. And, um, for me, I like take a lot of pride in the fact that I was able to do two things really well. And I'm excited for the fact that one day when I'm not in tech that what the next thing I'll do. I'm gonna attack her head on just a second day with tech in, in football. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Love that. Ernie, this has been a pleasure.Thank you for your time. 

Ernie Owusu

Yeah. Thank you.