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From 2 BDRs to a 50-person outbound powerhouse: Inside @pigment2141 's Enterprise Sales Machine.
A Former Facebook/Meta sales leader reveals the recipe for scaling Pigment from 50 to 500 employees through innovative outbound strategies.
Discover how to:
Build a 4-tier BDR Academy that retains top performers for 2-4 years
Structure compensation models across experience levels
Implement weekly performance metrics that drive results
Create an enterprise-grade tech stack for outbound prospecting
Develop business acumen in junior BDRs
Transform BDRs into Enterprise Corporate Sales (ECS)
Who is Alexis Valentin?
Global Head of BDRs at Pigment
Got expertise in outbound and customer acquisition at major tech firms like Facebook and Dropbox.
More context about the Pigment Sales team:
ACV: $100k
TAM: 50k accounts, companies with 1k+ employees
Buyer personas: Finance, HR, and Sales teams
Markets: NA, and EMEA
Some takeaways:
Unconventional Career Paths
The creation of an "Enterprise Corporate Sales" (ECS) role represents a fascinating innovation in BDR career development. Rather than pushing BDRs to become AEs after 18 months, Pigment allows them to stay in pipeline generation for 3-4 years while developing deep expertise.
Compensation Evolution
Progressive Pay Structure
Level 1 BDRs: 50-50 split between meetings booked and conversions
Level 2 BDRs: Purely measured on accepted pipeline
Level 3-4 (ECS): Compensated on pipeline volume plus closed deals
Counter-intuitive Management Principles
Team Size Philosophy: The focus is explicitly not on growing headcount but on increasing productivity of existing BDRs. A 20% improvement across 50 BDRs equals adding 10 new hires without the organizational complexity.
Operational Insights
Meeting Quality Over Activity: Some of their most successful BDRs aren't at the top of activity metrics, challenging the common wisdom about pure activity-based measurement.
Weekly vs. Quarterly Management: Despite having long sales cycles (3-6 months), they manage BDRs on a weekly basis rather than quarterly, creating urgency in a typically slow-moving enterprise sales environment.
Controversial Stand: The most surprising takeaway is their stance on remote work - if they could restart, they would only hire in-office BDRs. Their reasoning: complex product knowledge transfer happens better through informal office interactions and lunches with experienced colleagues.
Connect with Alexis:
Chapters
00:00 Scaling from 2 to 50 BDRs
00:47 Alexis Valentin's Initial Challenges
02:29 Building the AdBond Tech Stack
03:58 Hiring and Training Strategies
04:55 Metrics and Performance Measurement
12:33 Compensation and Career Growth
17:50 Evolving Skill Sets and Industry Focus
23:21 Optimizing BDR Activities
25:53 Leveraging Marketing Signals for BDR Success
26:26 Scaling Insights for Effective Prospecting
27:41 Prioritizing Accounts and Engagement Strategies
28:25 Growth Team Philosophy and Account Management
32:34 Segmenting Teams by Company Size
35:00 Hiring and Productivity Strategies
38:32 Enhancing BDR Efficiency and Training
42:41 Adapting to Market Changes and New Techniques
43:59 Reflections and Future Plans
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