Sales Management Podcast
75. The first 90 days as a sales development leader with Paul Matthew
What is an SDR leader thinking about in their first 90 days? This episode digs into how Paul thinks about preparing for and executing within his new position. If you're going into a new role or hiring someone as a new manager, this episode is worth a listen!
What is an SDR leader thinking about in their first 90 days? This episode digs into how Paul thinks about preparing for and executing within his new position. If you're going into a new role or hiring someone as a new manager, this episode is worth a listen!
Welcome to the sales management podcast, your source for actionable sales management strategies and tactics. I'm your host, coach, crm co-founder, corey Bray. No long intros, no long ads, let's go. Today I've got a special guest. I'm joined by JR Butler, founder and CEO of the Shift Group, and we're going to be talking about recruiting athletes onto your sales team. Hey, jr. My guest today, paul Matthew, sales Development Manager at Zora. The topic that we're going to be talking about is the first 90 days as a sales development leader. Paul has recently joined the organization. He's in the first 90 days right now. This isn't some hypothetical conversation with a consultant who might have done it one time at Bandcamp. This is somebody that's in it right now with some actionable takeaways for the audience. Paul welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Yes, this is actually in the first 90 days.
Speaker 1:What day are we on, if you might know or you can approximate it, because that's a ridiculous thing to know.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, we are on approximately day 22 to 24.
Speaker 1:Day 22 to 24. Let's back it up. This is a new company. You have not worked at this company before, correct?
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is a new organization.
Speaker 1:You're coming into this organization, you're managing a team of folks. Have you ever met any of these people before, beyond just some casual interview encounter?
Speaker 2:I had not. No, this is a brand new team, new relationships.
Speaker 1:New company, new relationship, the person that you're reporting to have you worked with them before? I had not. No, okay, new, new, new, new, new. Let's talk about you get the offer, you sign the offer. The day you sign the offer, where does your mind shift?
Speaker 2:Throwing away all my old knowledge at my past company and creating some memory space. No, just kidding.
Speaker 1:Heart-hard reboot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly no, it goes to just envisioning yourself in the org and envisioning what you want to do and what you can do from the start to try to make an impact. I think, especially if we're talking about a BDR leadership role, the first 90 days is going to be a lot about building trust with your direct reports so that they want to go to bat for you every day and know that you'll go to bat for them. It's about establishing that foundation and really building those relationships early and often.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you're preparing to build relationships. How do you do that tactically?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's getting to know your people and when you're in the door, a lot of those relationships are going to be established in one-on-ones. So, before being like a dashboard diver and going into numbers, I think you have to care personally and challenge professionally. As Kim Scott says, managers really need to find out what drives each individual on their team to go about this role that we call BDR and SDR. That's pretty freaking tough, as most of us know, so it's really just trying to figure out hey, what's the next step that they want to take in their career professionally? What personal goals do they have, excuse me, and how can you, as a leader, show that you're going to make it your mission to do everything you can to support these goals from the start and really moving forward?
Speaker 1:Got it. So for those of you listening that say what's an SDR Sales development? We're talking about folks that prospect. So Paul works for a company that sells business software, so these folks on his team are reaching out to new prospects and trying to get them to opt in to a sales opportunity. That's the goal and it's hard because do people want to be sold more stuff in July 2023? Some do, some don't, and that's his team's mandate. So, as you think about so, it sounds like the goal out of the gate. As you come into the organizations, make sure you have some one-on-ones and start to establish some trust and credibility with each one of these folks. What's the reception? Don't get into too many details. I mean, I think it's not about your business, I'm just curious. You know, when you go in here, are you concerned that there might be some folks that say, oh, who's this new guy? I'm just going to keep you on my own thing 100%.
Speaker 2:I think that's a risk that you're at with being new to any company, right? There's people that have that tribal knowledge and you're an outsider until proven otherwise, right. So I think it's really important to, especially as an SDR manager, slash leader. You need to lead from the front right, pull up your sleeves, do the work that you're asking of your reps. You know, in my experience, I found the fastest way to build credibility and equity and trust with your folks is by not showing them that you're afraid to make a call yourself. If you book a meeting every now and then, great, but also better.
Speaker 2:Yet if you fall on your face and get hung up on, I think that, you know, shows that you've got some thick skin too and you're, you know, willing to do the role that you know you're asking them to do every day, right. So you know, as you mentioned, you know SDRs trying to generate qualified opportunities. You know qualified pipeline for the business to give them more closeable opportunities and more forecasting. So you know you're going to do that through making calls, doing account research, targeting individuals on LinkedIn, crafting messages to personas or individuals that fit the person that you're working with or you're trying to sell to. So, as a leader, you know, one of the best things you can do, in my opinion, to really earn those stripes is, you know, get in the weeds and, you know, start doing the work, or at least trying to do the work, that you're asking of them every day.
Speaker 1:So one reaction to that might be that it takes a lot of time and if you're doing that, you're not doing the other things. But it sounds like what you're saying is that's a cheat code or a shortcut to establishing trust and if you do that now, it's going to prevent you from having to invest a lot of time in other things in the future that might become headaches 100% and you know this, this role specifically.
Speaker 2:You know the number one thing is coaching and development of your people, right, so you have to make time for that. You know obviously there's going to be other internal meetings that you know happen where we're discussing state of the business, but you know you have to make it a priority to help contribute to your, your people's, growth 100%.
Speaker 1:Got it All right, so you're coming in. You want to establish trust. How do you assess the current level of talent and commitment to the company?
Speaker 2:Um, you know, I think it's. It's really about, you know, those those early meetings and trying to understand each individual's process as they go about their day, right, I call it auditing the process. You know, one of my previous mentors, you know, shed some light on what that's all about, but basically it means unpacking each of their processes, from how they, you know, organize their day and their calendar to how they go about conducting their calls, to how they go about email framework, really taking a deep dive into what they do each and every day, Um, and then trying to identify, you know, the spots that they're going really well in the areas of opportunity, um, and and effectively coaching to that right. So I call it auditing the auditing the process with, uh, with each of your direct reports.
Speaker 1:Okay, audit the process and then you've got a good idea of where, where people are strong or people are weak yeah, 100%. And then, coming in from the outside, you've got somebody that's there, that's strong. How do you leverage them in order to do some of the things that hey, you're new, they've been there, they're crushing it? How do you get more out of them in a way that's beyond just executing on the job, maybe something that can rub off on some of the teammates?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, I think it's. It's important for you know, especially coming in new, to be able to leverage, you know, a team lead or someone that you know has experience or who has crushed it in the role, uh, so that you can have some of your own. You know tribal knowledge, learnings yourself, um, but also, you know, give those individuals a platform to to share their learnings, to saturate their knowledge among other members on the team, uh, to help those individuals grow, um.
Speaker 2:But going back to you know one of the first points it's like you know, if this individuals doing well, odds are that they probably don't want to be an SDR for the rest of their life, you know it could be the case, but probably not. So you want to find out what they're shooting for, um, and really help them understand that. You know you'll do everything you can to, you know, introduce them to internal stakeholders that might play a role in that next promotion that they get right. Facilitate those relationships, uh, and really just demonstrate that, uh, you know you have their best interests in mind, um, and you're not just viewing them as a? Uh is a cog in the wheel that's going to help you hit your number.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Love that, and I think that brings up another interesting point is that as a new manager, you've obviously got your team that works for you. You've also got all these other people around you. You got to figure out what the career path is for these folks. Yeah, Probably not number one on your priority list. There's probably a lot of other things that are happening too. What are some of the other things that are just thrown around that you say, oh wow, that's important. It's maybe not urgent. That just comes on the list of someone switching companies. If there's someone listening out there that might think about switching companies, they're like oh wow, there's going to be some things to consider. What are some of those top things that you've observed?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's going to be a lot of, obviously, product knowledge is going to be very important, so prioritizing that. But you have to make it a goal to try and work cross-functionally as well, Not just operating in your space in your team with sales development. But when you talk about career paths you have to get to know who's who in the zoo, as they say. Who's AE leadership, who's customer success leadership? My past organization actually had a few BDRs become solution engineers, which I thought was a really interesting career path. So a lot of that depends on what the needs of the business are at the time when individuals are up for promotion. But if you can make it a priority to try and build those cross-functional relationships, it can really pay dividends to helping your people get promoted into those roles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's great. And then if you get people promoted in the roles one of the things I always say is that sales development manager their customers are the folks who are getting the folks into the next role and if you can get them teed up and just in really great shape to go do a good job for that next role, as opposed to someone that just shows up and doesn't know what they're doing then you're the winner and they should build a statue of you inside the company.
Speaker 2:That would be amazing. But the other thing is, if you don't really enjoy seeing one of your people get promoted, then you're in the wrong line of business.
Speaker 1:You should be a manager.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I think that's one of the more awesome things about the role is being able to say to yourself hey, I played a small role in helping this individual take the next step, which is a pretty fulfilling and awesome feeling.
Speaker 1:So, as you come into this company, what are some things that you might have wanted to do faster. But, man, you just got so much stuff to do. You've got to deprioritize these. They're tempting items that you want to jump on, but it's just not quite time yet. What are some of those things?
Speaker 2:Re-vamping some of the dashboards on Salesforce might take a backseat to a lot of other things. I think looking at some of the reports and some of the metrics that you want to aggregate can be something that is important, but it might not be pressing right now. What metrics and KPIs are we looking at that relate to success? So things like that diving into some of the tools that are used on a daily basis Maybe you're taking a deep dive into some of the sequences or email cadences within outreach and thinking about what these look like. What type of messaging should we be incorporating? But I think priority number one is aligning with your team, aligning with your boss, which a lot of times, in an SDR manager role, you're going to be reporting to some sort of director of sales development or business development. So finding out how you can partner with your individual boss and drive towards the goals that he or she has in place for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love that. One thing that I would do if I were coming into a new role, just knowing how things work, is I would negotiate access to sales operations and sales enablement and vendors. And here's the problem. I see people so many times get stuck because they need that new report. Oh, but sales ops is busy, okay, cool. That's a reasonable thing to say, I guess, generally. But if you've got a new person coming in, that's going to be taking over a new team. That's a catalyst that's going to drive some kind of motivation and event. So if you're thinking about coming into a new role, make a list of things that you're required to be successful and you're going to better chance you're going to get it then than you are 90 days into the job when you're like, hey, I need more sales ops support 100%, and prioritizing and even just listing out your tasks is so important, right?
Speaker 2:Because it can be easy to get lost in the sauce, as they say, of everything that you're supposed to be doing in this role.
Speaker 1:You've got some good sayings over there. Who's doing the zoo?
Speaker 2:We're trying, man. We've come up with a few over the years. You get lost in the sauce if you're thinking about everything you need to do and not exactly prioritizing or even just listing tasks out. Right, and jumping from task to task without completing the task at hand is not something you want to get into.
Speaker 1:Yeah, multitasking is one of the most ridiculous things that people. I'm good at multitasking. That's not a thing you can't. Psychologically you can't be good at multitasking and I don't have the papers to cite or quote, but I've heard a lot of people that have PhDs from really smart schools say this.
Speaker 2:If you want to have you know what the task, then you can multitask right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly yeah. You can try to do a lot of things. I agree with that, it's just you can't do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:Are you hiring right now? I am, yes. Okay, I have a question on that front. If you're hiring right now, how does your I'm going to use the word confidence, because I can't think of a better word how does your confidence around running the hiring process vary in a job where you just started versus an organization that you've been at for a long time and you kind of know the hiring culture a little bit better? Now you're parachuted into this place and there's obviously people that can second guess any decision you make.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really interesting way of looking at it, I think you know. Going back to our topic around, hey, you know, what should you prioritize? What should you do? You definitely need to understand the ideal candidate profile that your organization is looking for, but that also has to align with what you're looking for as well. Right, and hopefully the soft skills that you value as a leader closely align with what your organization is looking for, right? You know coachability in a SDR role is crucial. You know grit, work ethic, humility those are going to be you know some. You know main attributes that are pretty across the board relevant for this role, right? So it's just about you know learning about what those soft skills are. That your organization, you know values and candidates, what you look for and what questions you know you can ask to. Really, you know, identify that and the people that you're speaking to.
Speaker 1:How do you interview for?
Speaker 2:coachability. I think you know one thing that's pretty simple is just asking, hey, can you tell me about you know a time that you learned something new? You know how did you go about. You know understanding that, you know that concept. Or maybe even just asking, hey, you know, can you talk about a time when you received feedback from a mentor or supervisor and you incorporated it to achieve a positive result, understanding, you know how they learn.
Speaker 1:What if the response is vague and non-specific?
Speaker 2:Then we've got problems. Corey, no, you can always, you know, try to try to dig in there and, you know, ask some more clarifying questions. Right and to your point. I think it's like you know, we want specificity in the answers, but we want them to be concise too, right.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're going down the path, so you're so close to one of my favorite sayings, which is that the team needs to be specific, concise and accurate. And if you're all three, what happens in concise, specific and accurate?
Speaker 2:Then you sell that person on the dream of joining your company. Yeah, because they're a good teammate.
Speaker 1:So let's look at the antithesis of each one of those non-specific. They're just going to come at you with general generalities. Oh yeah, it was good. How's your conversation with Thomas? Good Concise. One of my favorite sayings I've heard is the more you say, the less you know. Yeah, because you just give this blizzard of BS and you just get completely lost in it. And the accuracy piece, it's like if you're lying to me, then we're done.
Speaker 2:And we love that. On interviews, just imagine how prospects would love to hear that on the phone, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly so I was researching you yesterday cyber stocking as they say. It looks like you've been an account executive three times too, yeah, so how has had several closing roles impacted your ability to be a sales development manager?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's helped me not have too much of a bias towards the SDR side of the house. Right, I think a lot of times when we are talking about the AE and the SDR relationship, in a perfect world there is extreme alignment between what a qualified opportunity, what a qualified sales opportunity, is and isn't, and there's one definition and that's agreed upon by both parties. However, at times we see, hey, sdr department has a certain perspective on what that stage one definition is. Sales leadership has their definition of what that stage one is and there may be misalignment on certain examples. So I think it's helped me understand both sides of the house and making sure that we're being fair in terms of defining what is a stage one, what isn't, and making sure that we're being even on each side of the house.
Speaker 1:Would you say that empathy is a good way to summarize what you said? I think so. So you've seen it both sides and it's yeah, you basically torn down that us versus them barrier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and you know, obviously we want the stage ones right. That's how we get our variable comp on the SDR side of the house. But you know, in terms of building those relationships with you know, your AE partners, you don't want to have a point of contention on things like that because it'll build for an unhealthy relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's funny. One of my friends, paul Butterfield. He always talks about this idea of the hook a brother up close. I'm curious what your thoughts on this are, just because I just thought of it and it's funny. So the hook a brother up close obviously is when you're talking to a prospect and you're like, hey, I've went away from my quota, can you hook a brother up? And then internally you're talking to the AE and you're like, hey, why don't you just accept this for me so I can hit my goal, because I want to get promoted? What are your?
Speaker 2:thoughts on that.
Speaker 1:What are your thoughts on that and how do you deal with it?
Speaker 2:You know, I think that's pretty funny. You know, going back to certain lines, I haven't heard that one before but I'm definitely gonna take that one. You know, I don't think there's any fault in going the hook a brother up route. I get it, I understand it. We're all trying to, you know, do our best, hit our number and crush it, but I don't think that's sustainable for long term success. Right, because if you are going about your career with the hook a brother up mentality, then you know that you're just not really putting your best foot forward. Right, and you know you're not going to get promoted and grow into you know different roles if you just go by the hook a brother up mentality, because sometimes life doesn't always hook a brother up and you gotta out and earn it. It does not.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's little things like this that create a house of cards for someone's career, and there are people out there today who made their careers off of little things like this. Because here's, here's what happens. It's a super slippery slope. You go from that position to now you're in a sales role. You're in a sales role, you've got a channel partner. You've got a deal that isn't going to get signed this quarter and I've seen people do this and it's disgusting. Here's what happens. They go to the channel partner and they say, hey, why don't you sign this contract on your paper so we can book it as revenue? And then we'll give you a 60 day out cause and if you can't close the customer in 60 days, it's just gone. But at the board meeting we can tell a board that we hit our number and it's.
Speaker 1:That's fraud, and I've seen people do it very slow. Yeah, and I think that you've got the ethical test that I was always taught. Which is, I think, is amazing, is that if it was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal tomorrow, would you be okay with it? And if the answer is yes, to do it. If the answer is no, don't do it. That's the simplest ethics test that I've ever seen.
Speaker 2:Very effective and simple.
Speaker 1:Yeah, keeps you from keeps you from doing other things. Other thing while I was cyber stocking you as I saw that you won the coach. It's funny because I never do this. For those of you that listen to the profile or the podcast, you probably never heard me say cyber stock, but I just met Paul and I wanted to learn a little bit more about the guy before I invited him on here, and he seemed like he got a good, a good background. He also won coach of the year during his first year in management. How do you get the coach of the year award your first year in management?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I think it's about being people focused, right.
Speaker 2:And one of the best pieces of advice I got before you know, getting into leadership at all is like, hey, you're not an IC anymore, you're overseeing a team and you know your team performance is a function of caring about your people, right.
Speaker 2:It's no longer a primary thought of how much money can I make, like, you know, what is my accelerator going to look like if my team closes this many deals? You know managers hitting their team number is a function of getting on the ground level and really showing that you care about each individual and how to you know, support their career goals. So I think that's, you know, one of the main reasons that helped me is you know, like I said at the beginning, get new into management role, whether you're brand new into the space or joining a new company is, you know, roll up your freaking sleeves and get in the weeds with your team and you know, be close to the work that they're doing and, you know, show them that you're willing and wanting to. You know, get on that ground level with them and make time for that right. Like we talked about, you're going to have a lot of other tasks but, you know, make time to support the growth and development of your team.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't skip the one-on-ones, Don't skip one-on-ones Yep, exactly Cool.
Speaker 2:That's where you know you align and define on the strategy for that individual and how to execute on it right. So, yeah, no, you can't take shortcuts. Yeah, no shortcuts.
Speaker 1:Did you keep them remote or in person?
Speaker 2:For.
Speaker 1:Both hybrid, hybrid. So does everybody come in the office sometimes, or do you have some folks that are just up in La La Land sometimes, or all the time.
Speaker 2:No, we're good La La Land, I know La La.
Speaker 1:Land is I'm just imagining like Northeastern Wyoming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that might be where some of the tech La La Land resides. No, we're pretty good about, you know, being in on the same days throughout the week.
Speaker 1:Got it. How does coaching change between when someone's in the office and someone's not in the office?
Speaker 2:You can walk right up to them and ask them what they're working on. No, they love that right.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, especially if they're on the phone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:I was speaking to the phone, check out this number that's calling me and I'm like, oh, dang it. Oh, look at who I have a missed call from. This is hilarious. Oh yeah, that's legit. I have a missed call from 0000. So if that's you and your sales engagement platform, you probably need to tune up. You know, it's probably my dad does this hilarious thing. So my dad, he doesn't get sales calls because I mean, he gets calls for, you know, by soft worries. He gets these on the landline at the house from people that are trying to sell window repair and things like this and they always call it dinner time and it's annoying. And so he started doing this thing where he answers the phone and he says hotel security, I need your name, room number and the nature of the emergency and the people. It's really funny, you got 11. I feel like that's okay for the sales profession because the folks that are calling him are trying to take advantage of seniors and that's not okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is not. That's where we we draw the line, yeah exactly All right.
Speaker 1:So you got folks that are in the office remote. If you were to give advice to someone, you got somebody remote. They're struggling activity levels. What would you look for on the diagnosis side of coaching? And then what would you do? Live in that coaching conversation?
Speaker 2:You know, I think when it comes to activity right, and someone's not making enough calls, not sending enough emails, you know, the worst thing you can do is say hey, Corey, you made 100 calls last week, you're supposed to make 200, go do more.
Speaker 1:He was poking me in the chest while he was saying that Just over the zoom and the chest poke over the zoom doesn't work. That's right, that's not a I don't think it works in person either, but it definitely doesn't work over zoom 100%, but you know more simply.
Speaker 2:I think it's just asking a question, right? So instead of hey, corey, you're not doing enough, go do more, it's hey, corey, we're supposed to be making 200 calls a week. You made 100 last week. You know what happened, man. And give them the opportunity to say you know why they fell short, right. And I think it's like if you go that route and give them the opportunity to speak their piece, their defense walls are less likely to come up right, and they're more likely to own up to why they didn't, you know, come out of the gates drawn that week.
Speaker 2:Well, corey's shoot man came back from PTO last week, had a heck of a time in Maui and, just, you know, didn't quite bring it from the beginning of the week and that's why I felt short. I'll pick it up next week. Right, and I think the magic there is they are more likely to be accountable, you know, because they committed to something. They did it right, yep, for the work that they did or did not do. So I think it's really just, you know, coming from a place of asking hey, this was the expectation, we fell short. You know what happened? Right, and using a soft tone with it right, because tone is everything you know on the phone, with customers and in our everyday communication.
Speaker 1:Tone is important. Well, this is great, Paul, super helpful. Anything else that you want to add that we didn't touch on yet?
Speaker 2:Um, you know, I don't think so. I think you know. The whole encompassing theme is you know, roll up your sleeves, do the work. Another, you know? For comparison, what I like to you know talk about is you know, one of my mentors said that effective BDR managers are performance drivers, not passengers. You know, drivers own the performance. They are responsible for the team coming up short if you miss their goals and they own that right, whereas a passenger might say oh, you know, johnny had a horrible month last month, didn't get a single stage, zero opportunity, so that's why we missed our goal. So be a freaking driver, not a passenger.
Speaker 1:Love that and you're hiring. What are you looking for and how can folks reach out to you?
Speaker 2:Yes, Um, I'm looking for people that are humble, hungry and smart, and uh feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I am hiring and uh looking, looking for some great people. Alrighty Paul Matthews. Sales development manager.
Speaker 1:Zora. I'm Corey Bray, host of the sales management podcast. If you want to check out the free version of CoachCRM, Head over to coachCRMcom. We got a lot of good stuff for you and let's do a giveaway on the coach course. If you want to check out our coaching salespeople course, shoot a note to free stuff at coachCRMcom. Free stuff at coachCRMcom. I'll flip that over to you. Like and subscribe. Sales management podcast Apple, Spotify. See you next time.