13 lessons learned in 2022
And the best of the newsletter and podcast of 2022
The last newsletter of the year is finally here. Hope you had a fantastic weekend and a great start to your week.
I had a long weekend, between the world cup and seeing some family and interviews on Monday and Tuesday. So that’s why I’ve sent the newsletter today.
In the last few days, I was taking some time to reflect on 2022, about prospecting, sales career management, and SDR leadership.
Here are my 13 lessons learned in 2022:
13 lessons learned in 2022
#1: Focus on what customers want
Before 2022, I was always jumping on the new shiny tool, tips, or things that I thought could be cool to use or for my team to use. But in the end, do our prospects care about that? Does this help them or educate them? Are we giving them a great buying experience? If not, I won’t use it.
Yes, a few tactics that I found helped us improve our open rate, but the goal is to start a conversation and see if we might help them. Example: not just following, but educating or making them laugh when you follow up.
#2: The impact of open rate or connect rate on your outreach
The reason for optimizing your open rate or connect rate:
If you send 10k emails with 30% open rate: you get 3k opens. 5% reply rates 150 replies. Booking rate 20% → 30 demos.
If you send 10k emails with 60% open rate: you get 6k opens. 5% reply rates 300 replies. Booking rate 20% → 60 demos.
Just by improving your open rate, you double the number of demos booked.
#3: Use your prospects words, not yours
If you sell a SaaS, use G2 reviews to find the words your customers are using.
The words they are using in video case studies, for example for Chili Piper: I used to say “Chili Piper double your inbound conversion rate”
One Chili Piper customer says: “Chili Piper helped us increase our conversions to an opp and cut days out of our inbound sales cycle.”
#4: Above vs below the line
Have separate sequences and messaging for personas above and below the true decision-making line.
The reality is that the true decision maker at most organizations, the one who actually signs and makes the final decision is almost certainly a VP+ level.
#5 Always be A/B Testing:
Brad Norgate, Top Enterprise SDR at Cognism talks about this on this episode.
7 things you can A/B test: subject line, first line, CTA, use-case, time of day emails and calls are done, personas, and industry.
Only test one thing at a time. Otherwise, you are not conducting an A/B test properly. At least 100 data points to get statistical significance.
#6: Combo prospecting & multi-touchpoint days
This year I read Combo prospecting and which talks about multi-touchpoint prospecting via call, E-mail, LinkedIn, voicemail, within the same day.
It creates familiarity with your name and gives them the option to respond on their preferred channel of communication.
#7: World-class data on sequences & emails
Cold email open rate is 40%+
Cold email reply rate is 5%+
Email Positive Response Rate > 22%
Cold Sequences: open rate of 60%+ and a reply rate of 20%+
#8: Outreach
It’s more focused on quality than quantity.
No surprise here but if you think about your prospects’ inboxes. They might get from 20 to 200 emails per day and the same, for cold calls. So the odds they will reply are really low. So every time we send an email we need to think about how we can stand out.
For us, it was a challenge because the mindset of the team was based on what we were doing on the mid-market team, focusing on volume and cadences based on use cases. Whereas in the enterprise segment it doesn’t work.
Now we’ve tried and are improving our messaging. Here’s an example from a CMO sharing on LinkedIn, Mia’s email (one of our enterprise SDRs).
#9: Point of view
The biggest thing I see that’s missing in prospecting is based on what we find about the companies we are prospecting and how we show them we might help and understand them. That you are a peer.
It’s knowing about the main pain points of a certain industry or a buyer persona. Or understanding the impact of raising a Series B for a company, yeah that’s great but it means more pressure for the exec team to deliver.
#10: “Love makes you blind”
When I got laid off, I didn’t see it coming, and that’s something I learned because I was in love with my job and didn’t see the signals of the layoff coming. I’ll be mindful of that in my future roles.
#11 More cross-collaboration than I thought
As an SDR leader, when I was working in the mid-market segment we were more focused on our team than working with other teams.
Was reading Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company book thanks to Amy Volas' recommendation. Not a big fan of the term “whale hunting” but the image of it’s the reality of Enterprise sales.
You need 20-30 people to go after 1 large account and sell them your solutions.
So going prospecting on your own won’t have a big impact.
#12 Account-Based Sales Development or ABSD
I learned about “Account-Based Sales development” thanks to Lars Nilsson, VP, Global Sales Development at Snowflake, and the importance of focusing on an account instead of leads and collaborating with marketing, the AE team, and the other teams.
#13 Can’t be picky
In my job search, before COVID I could be picky about the company I wanted to work for. Right now it’s not the case anymore so I won’t check all the boxes I mentioned in a previous newsletter: How to find and do an SDR job you love, and I’m fine with that.
There you have it. My 13 lessons learned in 2022!
I hope you found some value in this newsletter. I hope it sparks you to sit down and think about the lessons you learned in 2022.
2022 was full of learning for me.
I’m sure 2023 will be the same or more!
Happy Holidays and see you in January ✌️
Elric
Here’s a quick best of the newsletter and the podcast in 2022:
Top 3 newsletters of 2022
#1 - How to hit your quota in Q4 easily (Tips + Calculator)
#2 - My prospecting process to book more qualified meetings and close more deals.
#3 - 7 tips for boosting your cold email open rate, and getting more replies.
Top 3 podcasts of 2022
#1 How to get an SDR job within 2 weeks (without sales experience) a 5 step process, how to use video, and what to include in your resume - Anand Gopinathan, Business Development Manager at Solid
Listen to the episode on:
#2 Email deliverability 101, the steps to ensure your emails hit your prospect’s inbox, how to improve your open rate - Jed Mahrle, Head of Outbound Sales at Mailshake
Listen to the episode on:
#3 Buyer personas, Multi-channel, prospecting Attribution, Tips for future SDR leaders and new SDRs - Matt Roberts, SDR leader at Mosaic
Listen to the episode on:
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