Cold to Committed Read online

  © 2019 by Kyle Vamvouris

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever,without the author’s written permission, except in the case of brief quotations from the materials. For more information, address Kyle Vamvouris at [email protected]

  ISBN-10: 1729798594

  ISBN-13: 978-1729798591

  Printed in the United States by Amazon Direct Publishing

  Second Edition

  I would like to dedicate this book to my

  15-month old daughter, Delphi.

  You are small with a big personality.

  World, you better brace yourself!

  “Character consists of what you do on your third and fourth tries.”

  James A. Michener

  Table of Contents

  Introduction, vii

  Chapter 1: Dissecting the World’s Greatest Prospectors1

  Chapter 2: Account Qualification and Grading13

  Chapter 3: Building and Managing a Pipeline25

  Chapter 4: The Importance of Authority35

  Chapter 5: Everything You Need to Know About Cold Calling49

  Chapter 6: Story Telling and the Art of Captivation67

  Chapter 7: Overcoming Objections81

  Chapter 8: Everything Prospecting95

  Apollo.io117

  Chapter 9: Metrics, Organization, and Workflow119

  Chapter 10: Strive to Be the Best141

  Index, 145

  Introduction

  You may be reading this because you’ve just started in the world of sales and the position you are starting at is a sales development representative (SDR). Perhaps you’re an account executive who wants to keep your pipeline full of new opportunities. You could even be the Vice President of Sales and are looking for ways to increase the production of your salesforce. Whoever you are, I think we can all agree on a common bond:

  We want to make more sales!

  When I was 21 years old I dropped out of college because I wanted to follow my passion and become a standup comedian. There are few things in this world that give me the experience of euphoria and being on stage is one of them. As you can imagine, my parent were not super excited about this decision, I don’t blame them. Spoiler Alert! I am not a stand-up comedian and you are still reading a sales book. The balance between advancing my career and doing stand-up comedy was hard for me. I decided to put comedy on hold while I pursued a career in sales.

  I first became involved in sales as a membership advisor selling gym memberships at a sports club in a suburban neighborhood (I know… It looks great on a resume). This was my first real experience with overcoming the challenge of “outbound” lead generation. Suburban gyms are very different when compared to city gyms because they don’t get as much walk-in activity. Less inbound opportunity means you must go out and create your own.

  I would give fliers to local businesses, put them on cars, and hand them out door to door in neighborhoods. I was brought up in an environment of “torch the land until they come.” The idea was to spread a wide net and repeat this as often as possible with the hope that you would eventually catch a few fish. The best sales reps were the most active, making calls and hitting the streets. I did whatever I could do succeed. That drive led me to my first role in tech sales, a sales development representative (SDR).

  That environment was something out of a movie. Hundreds of people in cubicles with headsets on were trying to book meetings and close deals. Employee turnover was high and expectations were even higher. We had a team of around 90 sales development reps all with the same goal—book more meetings. Everyone wanted to get promoted as fast as they could. The only way to get promoted to account executive was to hit the company-defined quota and, it was a real grind.

  But...I did it. I worked hard and earned my promotion to account executive. I was an account executive for over a year at that company and then, moved to a startup as part of a group of their early sales hires. This is where I discovered the importance of building and managing a pipeline. Pipeline simply means how a sales person tracks potential clients and where each of those potential clients stand in the sales process.

  My first month on the job I booked more meetings as an account executive than the entire sales development team. That team obviously needed help and the company quickly got me involved in their training. This sparked my passion for Sales Development and this is what drove me to write the first version of this book, published in January of 2017.

  After a successful book launch, I really wanted to build an SDR team from the ground up. I found an early stage start-up that was looking to grow their sales development team. They had a few reps already, but those reps lacked direction. They didn’t have a manager and they were not trained on how to effectively prospect.

  I designed and executed a new process, created scripts, and implemented a robust training program. As the team continued to increase in size, I was responsible for training all the new sales development hires. I also continued to improve our prospecting processes for better lead conversion. Our conversion rate went from 3% to 20% and growth was so explosive that it led to a strong series B round of funding.

  If my career is the solar system, prospecting would be the sun; poetic, I know. Prospecting is the processes of searching for and scheduling meetings with stakeholders who are part of the decision making process at a company. This is the part of the sales process I love the most. Of course, closing a sale makes me excited. But, there is something very special about speaking with a person who has never heard of your product or service and then, piquing their interest in it. It’s repetitive and challenging and, there are not too many people good at it.

  I recently read an article about Ali Reda, the man who broke the 44-year-old record for most cars sold in a year—he sold 1,582 cars. To give you context, the average car sales per year for a DEALERSHIP is 1,000.

  He said something that really stood out to me:

  “They would rather deal with someone that’s real than just a face on a billboard.”

  What Mr. Reda was saying here is powerful. Buyers want to deal with someone real. As technology advances and the manual parts of your job get automated, the last piece left is you—a human being speaking with another human being.

  That’s why it’s important that you become a master at having conversations. You must understand how to genuinely connect with other people, because this is what will lead to your prolonged success in sales and life.

  In this book I lay out techniques and strategies that you can implement to become a better SDR. My goal with this book is for it to be an aid to help you succeed as a SDR and to lay the foundation on which you will build your sales career.

  I know these techniques work; I’ve used them myself and with my team. This does not mean what I say in this book is the only way to succeed. It is one very successful way. You can experiment with other techniques as well, in order to find out what works best for you.

  ✓Work Hard ✓Improve ✓Repeat.

  Dissecting the World’s

  Greatest Prospectors

  Take a magnifying glass to any company and you will see a multitude of different cogs turning and moving each other. Each piece is important and each piece has a place. Without a quality product or service, there wouldn’t be a company. Without marketing, the company wouldn’t be promoting their products or services. Without salesmen/saleswomen, the company wouldn’t have any customers. Arguments about which is the most important cog will be constant, however, they all have one thing in common: They rely on the interest of potential customers, or for the sake of this book, Prospe
cts.

  Building interest in a product or service is a problem that many start-up companies and small businesses experience. Some will hire teams of Prospectors (Sales Development Representatives) to scour the internet and reach out to companies they believe are a good fit for their product or service. Here is the classic flow: find accounts, call accounts, book meetings, find more accounts, book additional meetings. Sprinkle some emails in there, send them a white paper, call them back!

  This process repeats until a harsh lesson is learned; prospecting is hard, time-consuming, and has quite the learning curve. Companies spend a fortune seeking out people to perform the “busy work” of prospecting, but they forget the most vital part: investing in those people to ensure they develop the skill sets they need to succeed.

  Here is the one of the many things I have learned over the years: there is no shortage of “good” ideas in sales. From new tools that focus on finding contacts or sending emails faster, to new scripts that promise to “dramatically” increase conversion, everyone has just the trick to blow revenue out of the water. Don’t get me wrong, tools are important and have a huge impact on productivity. My argument is that sales is more about the people who do it, than it is about the tech stack they have access to. Many companies throw money at tools instead of education for their salespeople. Because of this, I wrote this book for anyone who wants to learn the basics of how to book a meeting with a cold prospect, regardless of the tools that you have access to.

  I have spent much of my professional life studying those who I believe are the best prospectors in the world. I have always felt that if I learned from the best people, took the most effective strategies they had, and combined them with the effective strategies of others, that I would be the stitched-together version of all the best prospectors in the world. It’s like Frankenstein’s monster that closes a lot of deals, but doesn’t get attacked by a village. I set out to learn what the most most successful prospectors do and, it turns out, they have a lot in common (shocker, I know).

  Even with the commonalities, each has different methods and way of doing things that they feel work best for them. The first question I’m going to tackle is an important one: what are the habits, beliefs, and activities of the most successful prospectors? While reading through these, I want you to take a note of which areas you feel are your weakest, as well as where you feel strongest. At the end of this chapter you will reflect on these and use it for direction on where to focus on improvements.

  Traits of Highly-Successful Prospectors

  Organization

  Every exceptional prospector I have spoken with can show me their process down to a “T.” They have their targeted accounts organized and their strategy for each mapped out. This is something that doesn’t come naturally for a lot of people. Becoming an organized person takes commitment, discipline, and execution. Throughout your sales career you will need to keep track of multiple tasks, all with different levels of priority. Failing to stay organized can cause things to slip through the cracks and could cost you many great opportunities.

  Another reason why organization is so important is because you control it. Sales is a world filled with variables that you have no control over, but they impact you. A hurricane can cause one of your closing calls to be delayed; a family emergency can cause a meeting to be cancelled. Are you going to let this stand in the way of hitting quota? I hope not...

  The variables you can control are the biggest levers you pull to impact your own success. A commitment to excellence in all areas you can control maximizes your chances of being successful month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year.

  Effective Time Management

  A key component of organization is time management. Sales development reps need to focus on mastering time management first. Booking meetings, follow-up with warm prospects, and sending tailored emails can be challenging to juggle. Even the best sales development reps have missed quota because of just one deal a deal that may have been attained by doing a better job managing time.

  Activity and Priority Blocks

  The best prospectors block off their day by activity and priority. They block off times to focus on specific tasks and are selected based on priority and opportunity cost.

  For example, suppose 9am to 11am is the best time to make calls because it’s when your prospects are most likely to pick up the phone. When you are organizing your day, you should make sure that between those hours you are only focused on making calls, not sending emails or researching accounts. Take a look at an example of how to block off your day.

  Work Smarter

  Many people suggest that you should “work smarter, not harder.” This is great and all, but why do we have to make a choice? I want to work smarter AND harder. Staying organized falls under the “smarter” category—it’s mandatory. Mix this with some good old-fashioned work ethic and you have combined the first few ingredients in the recipe for success.

  Adapt Your Strategy to Their Needs

  One question top-level prospectors ask themselves often is “What will it take to get this account from knowing nothing about my product or service to becoming interested in taking a look?”

  This is a powerful question, because in order to get the attention of your target accounts, you must be able to adapt your strategy to their needs. What works for one account might not work for the next. There will be groups of accounts that do require the same basic strategy, but being able to adapt is important. Even more important is knowing when you must adapt.

  Ask Yourself Why?

  If you ask someone successful at sales development what their process is for booking a meeting, they will likely respond with “Can you tell me more about the account you’re trying to book a meeting with?” This is because the characteristics of the account being targeted have an impact on how you go about setting a meeting. Because of this, each step of your process needs to be met with the same question: Why?

  What steps are necessary for me to book a meeting? What does each step do, what’s its purpose, and Why is it necessary? To be clear, you should have a process that you follow that fits most situations. What sets the best prospectors apart from the rest is their level of understanding and their ability to adapt parts of their process when necessary.

  I’m not sure about you, but having a constant stream of new accounts sure does get me excited!

  Strategy and Efficiency

  Strategy is important when you are generating new accounts. Successful prospectors have a clear process for how they search, enrich, and prioritize. They have drilled this process down to the mandatory components, so no time is wasted. Their goal is to make this process as efficient as possible, and efficiency leads to more potential clients.

  Discipline and a Positive Attitude

  To be successful in sales (I would even argue in life) you must have a strong mindset. There is a lot involved in having a strong mindset but what I would like to focus on are two main traits I see in very successful SDRs (sales development reps). Top performers are disciplined and have a positive attitude, even when times are tough.

  When you lack discipline in any area of your life, it can carry over and impact others. All human beings want to be comfortable—it’s ingrained in us. We want to take the path of least resistance to get to where we want to go. The problem? To be successful you sometimes have to take a path of resistance. Success does not always come easy. To make it through the hard times, you must be committed to self discipline.

  The hardest part of self discipline is the “self” part. The easiest person to lie to is yourself. Lies come in the form of excuses. For example, “I don’t have the time” is really just your mind telling you “I don’t want to do that.”

  I have a trick that I use to help fight the desire to take the path of least resistance. The second I don’t feel like doing something, I now have to do it. When my alar
m clock goes off at 5:30 a.m., my brain sometimes says, “hit snooze and get another five minutes of sleep.” When this happens I say “you messed up brain, now we have to get up.”

  When I make a commitment to myself, I keep it. Do I mess up? Absolutely. However, I stay reminded of my commitment to follow through on what I tell myself I am going to do. Doing this allows me to course correct quickly when my self discipline slips.

  Commit to having a positive outlook. Negativity has the power to stop momentum in its tracks and you cannot afford to let that happen. When you spend every day being disciplined your actions will lead you to success. Don’t let negativity drag you back to square one. Negativity comes from internal thoughts as well as external forces.

  You Must Avoid Negativity!

  Avoid Toxic People

  There is a famous anecdote that sat you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. No truer words have ever been spoken. If you spend your free time with toxic people, then their mentality will infect you. Alternatively if you spend your time with driven people, you will be inspired to push your limits. If you have not removed toxic people from your life, now is the time to do it. It is hard enough to stay disciplined. You can’t afford to let the negativity of others hold you back.

  Take Action

  Success is a slow process and requires you take action every day. Daily action may not feel like it does much. Will reading 30 minutes tonight really help me book more meetings tomorrow? Maybe not, but finishing that sales book may. The challenge we all face is that it’s a lot easier not to do something than it is to do it. We all make excuses. If you believe the ones you tell yourself it will stifle your growth.

  If you are not growing, you’re dying!

  Positive and Negative Impacts

  While you’re pursuing a career in sales, you will run into many personalities. Everyone you interact with will have an impact on you, your mindset, and even your success. There are two types of impact—positive and negative. Cling to the positive and that will help you grow into a stronger, more successful person. If you get caught up with the negative it will cause you to become stagnant and keep success out of reach. The worst part is you will believe that you are not successful because of anything, other than yourself.