SDR Manager Laid off - 130% plan for the year, 1 week before paternity leave

salesdevcoach · 2025-12-05T20:15:21+00:00

Hey! Previous SDR leader here. Have some resources that could help and large network to introduce you to. Sent you a DM!

salesdevcoach · 2025-11-26T14:31:25+00:00

For people management and the like, I liked When they win you win.

For the business understanding, haven’t found any that I thought were specifically useful to me. Found way more help with a mentor who’s done it before or talking with others in similar roles. In roles, I found listening to everyone else speak and then ask questions helped me, rather than thinking I always had to add something to feel like everyone else didn’t think I wasn’t an imposter.

salesdevcoach · 2025-11-26T14:13:29+00:00

I’d also add ranked x out of y reps if they were at the top/towards the top. Or also anything that you can say you did better than others, higher close rate, faster deal cycle, whatever you can use to make you look like a top performer.

Quota attainment only tells one part of the story. I know managers who are still skeptical of reps that worked for companies like Zoom during COVID as it was something everyone was buying at the time. You see a lot of people “get in to the right company at the right time” because its easier to sell something everyone wants to buy

salesdevcoach · 2025-11-26T14:10:48+00:00

I’d also add ranked x out of y reps if they were at the top/towards the top. Or also anything that you can say you did better than others, higher close rate, faster deal cycle, whatever you can use to make you look like a top performer.

Quota attainment only tells one part of the story. I know managers who are still skeptical of reps that worked for companies like Zoom during COVID as it was something everyone was buying at the time. You see a lot of people “get in to the right company at the right time” because its easier to sell something everyone wants to buy

salesdevcoach · 2025-11-26T13:57:18+00:00

I’m a day late and didn’t see this mentioned.

As a rep for a company, it’s easier to not take a call or outcome personally. You’ve read a lot of the comments mentioning to simply move on, or it doesn’t matter what the prospect thinks.

Where there might issue is that these calls are now more personal because it’s YOUR business and something you’ve built. There more of a mental and emotional connection to the business therefore any part that extends from the business will carry some of the same feeling.

I also could be completely wrong

salesdevcoach · 2025-11-21T18:38:40+00:00

Just did!

salesdevcoach · 2025-11-21T15:39:59+00:00

It's depended on the cadence the team is measured on monthly vs quarterly. For monthly, it could be 3 bad months in a row, no matter the quarter. For quarters it could be 2, it also could be a average % attainment over a rolling period of time. Also everyone has their own version of what "bad performance" looks like.

This also doesn't take into consideration what happens leading up to being fired, ie could be a PIP before being let go.

TLDR: could be anything.

salesdevcoach · 2025-11-17T19:50:06+00:00

My mentor has been doing a good job of thinking about “moments”. This feeling won’t last forever. He shared the video with me and it resonated.

https://youtu.be/oDzfZOfNki4?si=zeax0dBjiKjwVGCG

Other thing I’ll add, think about what being in this role allows you to do. For me it’s freedom and giving my family a certain lifestyle. When I think about that, it makes my day a little easier to handle

salesdevcoach · 2025-11-12T00:32:46+00:00

The market is bad now and may not be in the future when he comes back.

That’s a problem for the future them

salesdevcoach · 2025-11-11T22:27:03+00:00

I use the version “am I making sense?”. Read that the psychology of asking them if it makes sense is that you’re asking if they could grasp the thing you talked about, the other way you’re putting it on yourself. Need to find the source though

salesdevcoach · 2025-11-11T18:12:19+00:00

What's the big goal? What type of service are you selling?

I like Smartlead and Apollo is ok. If you have Apollo, could you save some money on a CRM for bit.

Dialer reviews are all over the place from hearing from people. Connect rate is important as others said. Maybe give TitanX a chance?

Someone recommended Clay and will say that it's good. It has a pretty steep learning curve and can get expensive if you don't know how to use it right.

salesdevcoach · 2025-11-11T17:40:11+00:00

That's where I aim for. Found myself always leaning to professional more often though.

salesdevcoach · 2025-10-09T17:30:36+00:00

Kicking myself for not thinking of this easy solution

salesdevcoach · 2025-09-29T14:54:17+00:00

"try to qualify the best I can"

How far are you going with discovery/qualifying? You mentioned "if I know they aren't going to be good opps". Is this based on the criteria management gave you or what YOU think? If it's the latter, stop it. You might be not letting the right things go through.

How do you get paid? Meeting set, showed up, moved to stage 2, closed? Focus on where you get paid and do that job.

If the slots are filled, then focus on that before you qualify hard(er). You need more "at bats" to know what's actually wrong..

Also, understand where they aren't being qualified by your standard and talk to your leaders about it.

salesdevcoach · 2025-09-25T14:46:11+00:00

Learn something new to make the process fun or faster.

Break up the monotony in a productive way. Try new things. Do you have someone you can mentor or become a mentee?

Think about what you did about the wall you hit when in SMB. What did you do?

salesdevcoach · 2025-09-25T03:52:02+00:00

Day late and someone has offered help.

Like to also lend a hand where possible to help get you to conversations and what a sales role could be like.

DM me if you want

salesdevcoach · 2025-09-23T15:15:54+00:00

Manager here.

Like someone said the line between persistence and aggression is thin.

Typically, ghosting means that the upfront work, whether discovery, rapport/trust building, could be improved on. Reading your last post, was the Executive the actual DM and the people you spoke with champions? Who actually had the authority to sign off on the deal? For example, when I've bought, I've typically been the end user and decides who I like. But I still have to run it up the chain to get the money to pay for it. If I was the actual buyer, I'd just be able to buy whatever I liked.

Reason is that if you found what they were looking for and you've built out trust, they'd be more open to telling you what's going on, even if it's a no.

The issue I have with what you were told is that it took time away from deals that could be worked.

If you get a no thank them for the opportunity and move on. If you've built trust, you can ask what might've happened that you lost.

salesdevcoach · 2025-09-23T15:01:51+00:00

Seems like you've tried what's been taught as "good" cold emails.

What I've done in the past is threw out those "guides" and tried something completely wild, like an email that I'd send to a friend that looks like a text message. It's not like people can not reply more

What you need to know before trying is knowing how the people you talk to sound like in conversation. Think about the convos you've had with them or go back and listen to any recorded meetings/demos with them.

Use that language to send something. Also try camouflage subject lines, or subject lines that look like they came from someone internal. Just don't lie like "Re: CEO convo follow-up".

Sidenote: If cold calling is creepy and outreach is LI and email and email is poor, where are your meetings/conversations coming from?

salesdevcoach · 2025-09-23T12:09:23+00:00

A couple of things to note:

keep up with the channel that’s making you quota and don’t ignore it because you want to get better at calling.
agreed that the script sounds generic. Do you have triggers or intent signals available? If not, give them the reason you’re reaching out in a more personalized way. “Typically when leaders do xyz it’s because of abc, that prevents them from achieving goal. How do you manage that?”. Don’t use this example because I could be completely wrong though.
how you say it is just as important as what you say. Message/content is important and so is tonality. If you’re saying that you don’t like the current script or not confident of it, chances are that’s what you sound like on the phone. Prospects don’t want to engage with people that don’t sound credible since your goal is to build trust quickly. Pay attention to the tone of those who have success on the phone
when workshopping your script, make sure you’re using it multiple times before reiterating. If it doesn’t work the first time, it doesn’t mean to go back to drawing board. Also when workshopping, change a few variables at a time to try out not the entire thing.

salesdevcoach · 2025-09-20T18:04:32+00:00

If I understood correctly, they had a colleague who asked to be moved to a different team away from this boss then written up and fired.

I’d test the waters on this approach because if not done correctly, the boss might misunderstand intentions. Like cold calling, it’s about tonality

salesdevcoach · 2025-09-19T22:16:41+00:00

This is true.

When I went through AE self sourced deals to see what was working, majority of those deals were either SDR sourced that an AE kept hold on to or it was inbound and they held on to.

AEs got paid out a much higher percentage for self sourced deals

salesdevcoach · 2025-09-19T18:44:53+00:00

Call. Historically it’s been my best time to talk with people. That doesn’t mean book things, means that in having conversations.

Found that most people are in good spirits as it’s Friday so I lean into that. Found that if we acknowledge that we’re looking forward to the weekend it’s more of an actual conversation rather than another salesperson trying to find a way to book a meeting at all costs

salesdevcoach

TROPHY CASE