How to prep Q3 to smash quota: SDR Game Plan with AI

My 5-step framework

Jul 02, 2023

Read time: 4 min

New episode on the SDR Game Podcast: How this AE hit 400% SDR quota without a single cold call with Julia Carter, Full-Cycle AE at Marpipe.

Listen to the episode here: YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

Hope Q2 treated you well, and you're ready to smash Q3!

Let’s talk about exceeding your quota.

Every quarter, I use a framework that not only helps me reach my goals but also maximize my potential.

And today, I'm going to share that with you.

We often face a challenge in goal setting.

We focus on the target, for example, “Your Q3 expectations are: 60 qualified demos” without having a clear plan on how to achieve it.

I've made this mistake, and perhaps you have too.

But I've learned that goals are more manageable when broken down into a plan, a daily game plan to be exact.

Here’s my 5-step framework:

Step 1: Analyse

Step 2: Game plan

Step 3: Schedule

Step 4: Monetize

Step 5: Test

Step 1: Analyse Q2

Firstly, we need to analyze Q2.

Review your performance:

Make a list of all the meetings you booked by prospecting channels
How many emails did you send? How many qualified demos did you book?
How many calls did you make? How many qualified demos did you book?
How many LinkedIn messages did you send? How many qualified demos did you book?
How many videos did you send? How many qualified demos, did you book?
How many people did you add to your cadences?
How many accounts did you prospect in total?
What’s the quality of those accounts?
What work? What didn’t?
Etc

If you're new and don't have numbers yet:

You take the average of the team
If you don't have a team, focus on activities then review your previous week and iterate at the beginning of each week.

After reviewing your metrics, think about:

Do you want to do more activities?
Do you want to improve your prospecting skills to improve your conversion rate?

Step 2: Game plan for Q3

Now time to plan Q3 based on your review.

How many business days in Q3 2023?

Let’s see in the USA, do the same for the country, or the region you working on.

July: 19 days - with 1 public holiday
August: 23 days
September: 20 days

Total: 62 business days

But August is a tricky month.

A lot of prospects are taking vacations.

So I like to think August is 12 business days, 50% of the month.

So we have around 51 business days.

To get 60 qualified demos with an 80% show rate.

You need: 75 meetings booked.

After reviewing your metrics in Q3, you booked:

20% of your meetings via LinkedIn with a 2% conversion rate
45% of your meetings via cold calls with a 1% conversion rate
35% of your meetings via cold emails with a 0.32% conversion rate

To assist with your game, you can use ChatGPT-4 to help calculate your daily and weekly activities.

Here’s my prompt:

Act like the best SDR in the world. I need you to help me prep Q3. I'm going to give you my metrics and results from Q2 so you can give me the activities that I need to plan for Q3, and I will also give you the number of business days for each month I will need to know.
Daily and weekly for each one of them
# of calls
# of emails
# of LinkedIn messages
# of videos
Goal: meetings
Reply "okay" to say you understand.

Here’s ChatGPT reply:

My reply:

Business days:
- July: 19 business days
- August: 12 business days
- September: 20 business days
My goal for Q3: book 75 meetings.
My results from Q2:
use the % for each channel because I don't book the same amount of meetings per channel.
- I booked 20% of my meetings via LinkedIn with a 2% conversion rate
- booked 45% of my meetings via cold calls with a 1% conversion rate
-booked 35% of my meetings via cold emails with a 0.32% conversion rate
-And I didn't booked a single meeting with a video

Here’s ChatGPT reply:

Step 3: Schedule your game plan

Schedule your game plan.

Time-block your days to ensure you consistently complete your revenue-generating activities.

Daily gameplan

Calls: 2 blocks x 1h - 33 calls
Emails: 3 blocks x 1h - 43 emails
LinkedIn: 1 block x 1h - 15 messages

6h of Revenue Generating Activities that you need to do every day to hit your quota in Q3.

Step 4: Monetize your Revenue Generating Activities

Calculate how much you and your company earn for each activity to motivate yourself.

How much $ do you earn for each activity?
How much $ does your company earn for each one of your activity?

Let’s say our commissions for Q3 are $10k USD and our goal for sourced ARR is $100k USD.

My prompt:

Calculate how much I earn per activity with my commissions and how much revenue the company generates per activity.
My commissions for Q3 are $10k USD (on target earning) and my goal for sourced ARR is $100k USD.
Make sure you it per channel: Cold email, cold call, and LinkedIn message

ChatGPT reply:

Now you can motivate yourself by seeing how much money you earn for each one of your activities, and how much revenue you bring to your company.

You can also think about, the opposite, if you don’t do your activities you’re leaving money on the table.

Step 5: Test

One thing that I hear a lot from SDRs, they get bored with doing this role.

You get bored if you stop learning.

By testing new things, you will learn different ways to prospect.

And you?

What are you going to test this quarter?

For me, account-based prospecting with cold emails, and LinkedIn.

Last quarter I wanted to focus on cold calls, and as a founding BDR, I need to figure out the messaging, so it wasn’t successful for me to figure out 2 things at the same time.

I want to double down on my strengths this quarter.

You can still use the spreadsheet I created instead of ChatGPT

You can find it here, and make a copy.

Remember, the goal is to make quota attainment manageable and consistent

To recap, to hit quota in Q3, try this:

Step 1: Analyse

Step 2: Game Plan

Step 3: Schedule

Step 4: Monetize

Step 5: Test

It’s not easy.

But it's easier than seeing 60 qualified demos with no plan.

Next steps?

Review your Q2 performance.

Use ChatGPT to create your Game Plan (or use my spreadsheet).

Make a list of things you want to try in Q3

That's all for this Sunday. Let’s crush Q3!

Quick Reminder: If you like my emails please do “add to address book” or reply.

See you next week.

Happy prospecting ✌️

Elric

As soon as you're ready, I can help you in 2 different ways:

Check the previous SDR Game newsletter I sent, here's the link.
Check my podcast, where I interview top-performing SDRs, you can watch the episodes on Spotify, and YouTube.