7 lessons about Enterprise prospecting
That I've learned in the past 6 months.
Read time: 4 min 39 sec
Today, I’m going to share with you 7 lessons about Enterprise Prospecting, that I’ve learned in the past 6 months.
If you join the newsletter recently, 6 months ago I made the decision to move to the enterprise team and got promoted to Enterprise SDR manager. I had previous experience in this segment but not in the US. Then I really struggled in the first 3 months and was wondering if I made a good decision. I started to do some research. I usually love to read or listen to a podcast to learn about a new topic. But couldn't find a lot of resources about Enterprise prospecting.
That’s great because there is a big opportunity to create content. I’m already preparing episodes on the podcast about Enterprise prospecting with Enterprise: SDRs, AEs, and SDR leadership. Super excited about those episodes.
I started to talk to other Enterprise SDR leaders and SDRs. Then I started sharing what I was talking about with our team, and trying new strategies and tactics.
Last month, our Enterprise SDR team had one of their best month this year.
Today I’m going to share 7 lessons I’ve learned with my team, and by talking with other Enterprise SDR teams.
Let’s go:
My 7 lessons about enterprise prospecting
#1 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 same, with 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. Where in the enterprise segment it doens’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).
#2 Account plan
That’s a new topic for me. I never used one of those in the past.
But what’s an account plan or what’s the definition of “Account planning”?
Gartner definition:
Account planning is the process of mapping out important details about a new prospect or existing customer, including information about their decision-making process, the companies you're competing with to close them and the overall strategy to win them over, retain and grow them.
After starting to build our first account plans.
For me, it’s a living document. That every team uses on a daily or weekly basis, where we document what’s relevant for prospecting and see how we can help the account based on the research we make.
There are 4 pillars inside of this doc:
Account Research
Prospects research
Your point of view
Action items
#3 Research
On the mid-market team, we were spending up to 10-15 min per account to research.
Chatting with other SDR leaders, we’ve learned that their teams spend 2-3hours researching their accounts per day. Other teams use Monday to research their accounts.
Here are a few things they are using during the research:
10-k, annual reports & earning calls
Public companies need to publish
But you can find the growth strategy of the company, competitors for each product, business units, the structure of the company, etc.
A lot of useful information you can use when prospecting those accounts.
Don’t use keywords on your sales Nav search
The accounts are so big so when we started to use save searches with specific keywords we were not finding all our potential prospects. So we use “function” and seniority.
#4 Bottom-up
Something I was not doing in my previous roles: the bottom-up approach.
SDRs teams are more focused on the Top-Down approach.
What’s Top-Down: you start with the C-level and they refer you to the people in charge of the team for your product. I was using this strategy after reading Predictable Revenue
Bottom-up: it’s the opposite, you start conversations with the bottom of the org and then talk to their managers, etc.
Learned this from KD (Kevin Dorsey) and Morgan Ingram, let’s take Chili Piper as an example:
Low (End-users): SDRs & AEs
Connect with them on LinkedIn.
Easier access, more access points, non-threatening questions, and they can give you so much!
The goal is to find out if the problem you solve even exists. The 'hidden' problems tend to live here.
Because you connected with the end users within the organization, you’ve built a network of mutual connections with the decision-makers.
Now, when you send a request, instead of 0 mutual connections, they’ll see 30.
Middle: managers, Sr. manager
With the info, you have from the low. You contact their managers to talk with them about the problem, if they are aware of it, and if they are trying to fix it.
Top: Directors, VPs and C-Level
Influence: when you know what managers are trying to fix the problem, you can come to the top and give them different solutions. Show them what you know and how it’s impacting them.
And here’s the feedback about this approach from a CRO:
#5 KPIs and goals
Here’s a quick benchmark from other enterprise SDR teams on their goals and KPIs:
Territory: 50 accounts per year per SDRs.
Average: 50-200 touches per account
Average: 200-250 activities per week (cold calls, cold emails, LinkedIn)
6-7 accounts per week - other companies have 50 accounts per year per SDRs, so almost 1 per week.
Goal: add 40 new contacts per week into a cadence
Goals:
18 first meetings per quarter and goal of 15 demos
#6 More cross-collaboration than I thought
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.
#7 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.
What about you? What’s working for you with enterprise prospecting?
In those past 6 months, I learned a lot and will share those learnings in the next few weeks and months.
I hope you find those 7 lessons helpful.
✌️
PS: if you have resources, or know a potential guest for the podcast to talk about enterprise prospecting, let me know.
New Podcast: #5: The mindsets of a high-performing SDR, having a growth mindset, and how acting helped her perform in her sales roles - Helena Klaus, Co-Founder, SDRs of Germany
In this episode, I talk with Helena Klaus, Co-Founder, SDRs of Germany. Helena is Mattia's Co-founder (Episode #3). If you want to listen to the conversation with Mattia here’s the link.
We talk about the mindsets of a high-performing SDR, what is a growth mindset, how acting helped her perform in her sales roles, mindset starts with your inside, and 2 tips for new SDRs.
SDRs of Germany: https://www.sdrsofgermany.com/
That's all for this Sunday.
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See you next week.
Happy prospecting,
Elric
PS: Here're the 3 last issues if you miss them:
If you want to read the previous ones, you can here.
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