SDR Success Techniques

I almost fired our best SDR last year. It wasn’t personal. He was a good guy, worked hard, and always showed up on time. But month after month, his numbers weren’t improving. Emails went unanswered. Calls never connected. Demos? Non-existent. We were both frustrated. I started to wonder if he was the problem. Maybe sales wasn’t his thing? Then one afternoon, we grabbed coffee. Instead of talking numbers, we talked openly. I asked him straight-up: “Why isn’t it working?” He took a deep breath and replied: “I’m following our playbook. I send hundreds of emails, but honestly, I’m just guessing. I don’t really know who’s ready to talk, so I try everyone.” It hit me like a ton of bricks. We’d built a system based on volume and hope, not precision. It wasn’t him. it was us. We’d given him the wrong tools, the wrong strategy. So instead of letting him go, we completely changed how we did outbound. We stopped guessing. We started paying attention to signals: Who’s visiting our LinkedIn profiles? (Tracked via Teamfluence™) Who’s engaging silently with our posts? (Tracked via Clay) Who’s spending serious time on our website? (Tracked via RB2B) Suddenly, our SDR wasn’t sending cold messages. He was following signals that said, “Hey, I’m interested. Talk to me.” Within a month, his reply rate doubled. In two months, he became our top performer. Today, he leads our outbound team. It wasn’t about effort. It was about timing and having a system that showed him exactly when to reach out and who to reach out to. Outbound isn’t about sending more messages. It’s about knowing exactly when and how to engage. If your SDRs are struggling, ask yourself: Are they failing you or are you failing them? It might change your perspective. It certainly changed ours. #Outbound #SalesLeadership #SDRlife #RevOps #LinkedInSales #SalesLessons #GTMStrategy #B2BSaaS #SmartSelling #GTMEngineering #AIOutbound #Teamfluence #Clay

20 rules that took me from the worst SDR in SaaS to hitting above my target. (Save this for later)  1. Time block all your activities  2. Track what's working weekly  3. One thoughtful post per week  4. Document your wins and process  5. 10 cold calls before 8am local time  6. Be the best student in the company  7. Pick up the phone it will only help you  8. Build Sales Nav lists of past customers  9. Study your customer stories in and out 10. Video messages over templates every time 11. Create content about your buyer's problems 12. Share what you're learning, not what you're selling 13. Attend events or local events to hear the buyers talk 14. Your LinkedIn profile speaks to buyers, not recruiters 15. Read all your messages out loud before you send them 16. Send 100 manual messages before touching automation 17. Take one skill from a top performer and add it to your toolbox 18. Comment on 5 prospect posts daily (real thoughts, not "great post!") 19. Find one AE to work directly with to understand the business and feed them good meetings 20. Email your executive team and ask what's the one thing that a rep at this org does not do that you would love to see then do that thing Being an SDR was the most humbling and valuable experience of my career. 10/10 would run it back if I had to make a choice. It taught me how to hunt when times are good. More importantly, it taught me how to hunt when times are rough. And trust me if you're building your own thing or in sales in general times will get ROUGH. These 20 rules aren't theory. They're battle scars turned into a playbook. Take them. Test them. Make them yours. Then come back and tell me which one changed your game. P.S. Which rule stands out the most to you?

𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫: How to avoid bottom-funnel issues in B2B sales? According to Forrester, 74% of deals stall in the late stages, and that’s where the big revenue slips happen. Most CROs – myself included in my earlier career – get caught up in obsessing over the top of the funnel. We track meetings, the number of calls, and the pipeline generation. But let’s be honest: If your #sales teams can’t close the deal, then none of that matters. So how should SDRs approach deal closure? Here are some practical tips directly from a CRO's desk: After years of leading revenue teams, one truth stands out: 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐨𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 — 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐲, 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞. Every interaction becomes an opportunity to educate, solve, and build trust. Instead of pushing for a signature, they guide prospects through a journey where each step feels purposeful, relevant, and aligned with the buyer’s goals. This approach not only drives conversions but fosters long-term relationships rooted in mutual respect and shared success. Last week at HubSpot's INBOUND 2025, CEO Yamini Rangan reminded us all that 𝐁𝟐𝐁 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐛𝐮𝐲 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬. The message was clear: Companies don’t just invest in another tool — they invest in results such as retention, growth, and efficiency. To compete, vendors must align across functions to deliver tangible value to customers. 𝐌𝐚𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐞 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲: in #B2B sales, decisions are rarely made in isolation, but involve multiple stakeholders — each with different priorities, levels of influence, and concerns. To navigate this effectively, it’s critical to identify and understand the roles of champions, blockers, and decision-makers within the account. Tailoring your messaging to each persona — whether it's equipping champions with internal selling tools, addressing blockers’ concerns with empathy and data, or aligning with decision-makers on strategic outcomes — transforms your approach from transactional to consultative. 𝐒𝐮𝐫𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲. In complex B2B sales, objections are not roadblocks — they’re in fact buying signals. The most effective closers don’t wait for resistance to surface at the final stages; they actively seek it out early. This proactive approach allows sellers to address friction head-on — whether it’s budget constraints, competing priorities, or stakeholder skepticism — and turn potential deal-killers into opportunities for deeper engagement and trust-building. How do you prevent investing tons of resources and time into a deal - only to see it being blocked at the last minute? keen to hear your insights and best practices.

AI compressed the SDR job into minutes. Did that make them less valuable? Opposite. But the playbook fundamentally changed. Old way: - Get a 50K contact list - Prospect via email, phone, LinkedIn New way: - Specialists own a channel - Systems run outbound across all of them Two moves for SDRs to stay ahead: 1. Go deeper on things AI can't touch Everyone's automating email now. That's exactly why picking up the phone is becoming rare- and valuable. Double down on: - Complex deal navigation - Building real relationships - Threading accounts (the stuff that actually takes judgment) 2. Learn the technical side of GTM Stop waiting for prospects to fall in your lap. Learn to use: Clay, Roverlead, FullEnrich, Common Room, lemlist, Instantly. The real edge: → Spotting high-intent signals across millions of data points → Scoring 1,000 high intent prospects in minutes instead of weeks → Running 10 simultaneous workflows without blinking The teams winning right now: GTM engineers building large-scale systems + SDRs closing on the phone. One side feeds clean, high-signal data. The other books the meeting. That's the 2026 playbook. How are you adapting in your org?

I'll say it once...and I'll say it forever...if you're leading an SDR team / department and you're NOT paying attention to what happens with your team's work after they hand it off to AEs... You're relegating your team / department to a support function rather than a strategic one... SDRs can't keep being appointment setters while prospective buyers are more discerning and more risk averse than ever And just tossing meetings and opps over the fence that meet "qualification criteria" isn't going to cut it unless your company is signing contracts like there's no tomorrow ��️ Take into consideration what sales deems as "quality pipeline" (*cough* it's likely more than just persona + need *cough*) ➡️ Identify how your team can support sales in getting 1 step closer to "quality pipeline" (within reason) ➡️ Set benchmarks for conversion rates towards "quality pipeline" standard ➡️ Partner with sales and sales enablement to come up with a playbook for SDRs and AEs on best practices to hit "quality pipeline" standard ➡️ Make sure everyone -- AEs, SDRs, AE managers, SDR managers, etc -- knows what quality is and isn't, and coaches/reinforces to that standards; consider discovery scorecards, next step sequences, plays for objections during discovery, etc ➡️ Leverage data to identify what needs the most work and what must be true to improve, i.e. further coaching, enablement, disposition training, tactic, campaigns, etc

The best SDRs set up meetings for their AEs like they're blind dates. They get prospects excited to meet with their AE. Put yourself in the prospect’s shoes. You get a call from someone you don’t know, from a company you haven’t heard of. They do a decent job in the call and you’re intrigued. And then… They set you up for a call with someone else. This process feels like a nurse handing you off to a doctor. Who then asks you the same exact questions the nurse did. Not a great experience. Let's do better. Here’s how to pull this off: ✅ Tell the prospect what they’ll learn First, ask your AE what prospects learn from their first conversation. This excludes any language about platforms or dashboards. I’m talking education around “why change?” Second, watch a recorded disco/demo from your AE. Or ride shotgun in a few sales calls if your company doesn’t record them. Here’s an example of what this might sound like at the end of a cold call: “I’m really excited for you to meet with Tom. You mentioned that staffing welders and figuring out how to automate high mix/low volume parts are top priorities. My Account Executive will walk you through how other manufacturers are solving these two problems so that you’re not having to push back orders. You’ll also walk away with a plan for how you can tackle traditionally tough to automate products.” Don’t mention “demo” at all. ✅ Humanize your AE Talk about your AE’s experience. Hype them up. After you tell the prospect what they’ll take away from the call with your AE, you could end with: “Oh, and Tom has about 7 years of experience walking the plant floor. Not to mention, he’s had dozens of conversations with Operations leaders in the last 6 months. There are some really big trends we’re seeing and everyone’s dealing with the labor shortage right now. You should get a few ideas you can bring back to your team." ~~~ Lesson here: Take that extra step at the end to talk up your AE and get the prospect excited about them as a HUMAN + what they can learn in that first call. Your AEs will love you. And the prospect will be much more likely to show up.

I’ve been called the “SDR Team Turnaround” guy. When a company needs a boost or a revamp, they call me (AltiSales). It’s never easy, it’s never smooth, but here’s the step by step on how to completely turn around a struggling team. 1. Assess what’s wrong using data, not opinions. Every SDR will say “no one answers the phone” and “inboxes are crowded”… regardless of the connect rate being 1% or 8%. They’re right, 8% is still 92% no answer. Still, opinions don’t matter 2. Set up your North Star vision of revenue. Say you want SDRs to get $500K in revenue per year, your ACV is $70K, you need 7.2 deals. Imagine SDR meetings convert to revenue at 10%, then you need 72 meetings held per year or 6 per month. Now your team has to have a 10% connect to meeting on the phone, with 1500 dials and a 3.5% connect rate, you get ~5.2 meetings via phone every month. Email and LinkedIn are valid channels too but conversions vary widely. 3. Track TRENDING data. Cohorts matter. Week over week, and month over month across every micro-step. Phone, email LinkedIn. Phone —> dials. connects. Pitch. Conversation. Ask. Meeting set. Email / LinkedIn —> messages sent. Replied. Sentiment. Positive outcome (referrals count!) Now optimize conversions from step to step. 4. Align the team. You NEED a great leader. Struggling teams have a broken culture. Ghost dials happen sometimes. Excuses become the norm. To turn it around, you have to have a leader that has a RELENTLESS winning mentality and does not tolerate mediocrity. Your team needs to understand that revenue is the end goal, but if we did not hit revenue goals last month / quarter, we inspect the next best metric: MEETINGS HELD. Didn’t hit that? We inspect Meetings Set. Didn’t hit that? Conversations No? Connections / email opens / profile views Also not? Activity (calls + emails). I will NEVER ask a rep that has hit revenue quota, how many dials they made. I will ALWAYS demand that a rep on a PIP send me a daily report of the total calls made that day, and a summary of conversations w/ links. Act as a coach, get the best of your team by managing each rep differently. If they want to win, they’ll love you for it. If they’re here to just get by and get a base pay, they’ll quit quickly. THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT! In any case, as you all start your 2026, I know many leaders are being asked to turn around a struggling team. I hope this helps. Hit the 🔔 on my profile to get notified of my posts. If you need more advice, hit my DMs. Remember I always share how to go from #SDRLeaderToCRO Have a FANTASTIC 2026 people 🚀

One of the greatest opportunities I see for the next generation of client-facing professionals: Being the ones who can read and exercise the norms, whether with colleagues or clients, and still infuse their own personality into the work. Those who can master this will be the ones who build stronger relationships and ultimately win more business. Sure, the pendulum has swung hard toward AI efficiency. And proficiency in it will likely be an essential skill. But over-relying on it? That comes with a hidden cost: it can dull the skills of empathy, discernment, and human connection. I suspect it might become tempting to believe that the safest path to employment and promotion is to keep your head down in automation:  Follow the prompt exactly, never straying from the template, and assume that originality is too risky. But customers can feel when you’ve disappeared behind automation… and it seems that they don’t love it. According to Salesforce, 52% of customers say they’re willing to pay more for a great customer experience, and they define that experience as one that feels more personal and less automated. That means the professionals who keep showing up with genuine connection won’t just feel different (in a good way!), they’ll be the ones winning more trust and more business. This humanness will be the differentiator. Some easy ways to practice this is to start by noticing the social norms, and then thoughtfully adding personality to them. Like: ☑️ Pay attention to how experienced colleagues communicate with clients. What tone do they use in emails, how do they open conversations, how do they handle pushback? How can you use that as a framework and then infuse your personality into it? ☑️ Notice how client meetings start. Do they jump right into business, or spend a few minutes building rapport? What do you know about the client that you can chat about beyond asking about the weather :)  ☑️ When you send a recap or follow-up, include a warm line or a small personal detail you remembered, instead of relying solely on a template. Because if more than half of your customers are willing to pay more for an experience that feels human, it’s a skill worth exercising to make sure they get it! #YouthSkills

The best SDRs I’ve ever worked with, the ones consistently booking 20–30 qualified meetings per month — all share the same traits: 1. They treat sales like a process The top performers don’t wait for inspiration. They have a religious approach to execution. Time blocks in the calendar. Daily goals. Ruthless focus. They know that pipeline is math. They don’t hope for outcomes, they reverse-engineer them. So if it takes 100 touches to book 5 meetings, they map it out and hit the inputs. Every day. No shortcuts. 1. They master compounding The best reps don’t just “show up.” They get noticeably better every week. Their cold call opener gets tighter. Their follow-ups become more thoughtful. Their messaging feels sharper. And the thing is — you don’t need to tell them what’s broken. They’re already reviewing the tape, looking at reply rates, testing subject lines, and figuring it out before you even ask. That’s what we call compounding competence. And it’s the #1 differentiator between a top rep and everyone else. 1. They use AI to multiply themselves This is the unlock that most reps miss. The top SDRs at Forge don’t just rely on hustle. They build scalable outbound machines around themselves, powered by AI agents that do the heavy lifting. → One agent to handle inbox rotation and warm-up → Another to personalize outbound messages at scale → Another to enrich and verify leads in real-time → One more to track performance and optimize sequences They’ve built their own “sales tech stack” that runs 24/7. So while average reps are sending 50 templated emails a day, top reps are delivering 1:1 context at volume and booking more meetings with less noise. They’re not scared of AI. They’re pairing with it to become unreasonably efficient. 1. They obsess over the right metrics They don’t get distracted by open rates or vanity stats. They care about 3 things: - Replies - Bounce rate - Opt-out rate Because they know: if reply rates are strong, bounces are low, and unsubscribes are minimal, they’re talking to the right people, in the right way, at the right time. And if any one of those three is off? They stop. Diagnose. Fix the system. ——— So no…there’s no “7-step framework” that makes a top rep. But if you’re: - Improving every week - Scaling yourself with AI - Measuring what matters - And executing with discipline... Then yeah, you’ll probably outperform 99% of the market.

3 things I wish I knew before building an SDR team from scratch Hiring SDRs is easy Building a high performing SDR team? That’s a different game If I could go back here’s what I’d tell myself before scaling an outbound team from the ground up 1️⃣ Activity isn’t everything. Execution is You can force 100 dials a day but if reps have zero confidence, no real coaching and a weak delivery it won’t matter. Teach them how to have great conversations. Not just hit numbers 2️⃣ A bad process will kill a great rep If your team is struggling don’t just blame them. Look at the system 🚩 Are they calling the right people? 🚩 Is the messaging clear and repeatable? 🚩 Are they set up with the right tech and data? Reps fail when leadership doesn’t set them up to win. Period 3️⃣ SDRs won’t stay if they don’t feel like they’re growing If you treat this as a churn and burn role you’ll have a revolving door of talent But if you coach, develop and invest in their success they’ll stay longer, perform better and maybe even become your next AE Want an elite SDR team? ✅ Build a strong foundation ✅ Give them the right tools ✅ Invest in their growth What’s one thing you wish you knew before stepping into outbound sales? 🤔