Learn how to onboard remote SDRs with some tips, tools, and more from the B2B sales experts Michael Hanson and Hailey Pobanz. Read the webinar transcript.
By Amy Ingraham on November 03, 2020
We have partnered up with B2B sales experts to answer your questions on remote SDR Onboarding. Learn how to set new reps up for success with an SDR onboarding plan made for virtual teams; developed by the pros.
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: As of today, let’s just give a couple of minutes. So, people get online Hailey Michael. How are you today?
Michael Hanson: Doing great. Great to be here with you both, and thanks for the invite, Bloobirds.
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: Yeah, great.
Hailey Pobanz: timely as well. I have a new hire starting next week. So, onboarding is fresh in front of my mind. Good timing.
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: Perfect timing. I see people getting online. I think we can start just briefly. Well, I’m Celia. I’m an SDR manager at Smart Protection.
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: I’m thrilled to be here today with Hailey. She’s an Enterprise Sales Development manager at Gitlab, and we’ve Michael Hansen, a sales expert and founder of GrowthGenie.com. And would you like guys just briefly to introduce yourself to our audience today?
Hailey Pobanz: Sure. Yeah, happy to. So, I manage a team of Enterprise sales reps at GitLab, an all-remote company that provides software developers tools. I have been based in the Netherlands, and I started at GitLab as an account executive. Now I manage the team that I used to work with. Which I think gives a unique perspective and has a team of eight that I manage.
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: Great. Michael?
Michael Hanson: Yeah, so, I’m the founder of Growth Genie, as you mentioned earlier. So, essentially we are a sales consultant that empowers B2B sales teams to have better conversations. Most of our clients… We actually help them with outbound messaging. So, building outbound playbooks cadences and doing a lot of training and coaching with SDRs. But also with Account Executives. I know there’s… I feel there’s a big push in the industry at the moment actually; to get Account Executives and closes to do a lot more outbound. So, yeah, I look forward to learning from you both and showing my own insights.
What are the most positive aspects of a remote SDR team?
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: Great. Well, thank you both for being here today. And also, thank you to those of you who made it to this webinar. For those who haven’t, don’t worry; we’ll be sending the recording afterward. Before we get started, I also want to thank those who have submitted questions before the webinar.
We’ll get to those first, and if you haven’t and are willing to get some insights from both Hailey and Michael; please drop it on the chat, and we’ll dedicate the last 10 minutes of this webinar to solve those. So, yeah, let’s start with one of the first questions. So, on more positive notes, onboarding SDRs have changed most of us clearly. And Ken Roos asked: What is the biggest unexpected positive that’s come from remote onboarding? Michael, Would you like to get started with this one?
Michael Hanson: Yeah, sure. The answer I’m going to give is slightly strange because it’s actually a negative that turns into a positive. I think one of the negatives of remote onboarding is almost like small things.
The first week or two weeks of onboarding are essential to get to know the person. It is a lot easier if you’re in the office and can go out to lunch to do things like that.
But having said that, I think the whole getting to know part a lot of companies are making more of an effort because they’re like this is really difficult because I’m not in the office with Celia and Hailey meant to be meeting this week.
So, there are some things that you can do, which I think we’re going to be talking about later to help build that culture essentially. But yeah, I think it’s vital for any SDRs managers or people who are onboarding SDRs. It’s actually getting to know the people that your onboarding as people.
What are their Hobbies? What do they like? Where are they from? What are they up to outside of work? Because if you get to know people on that level; it’s going to help essentially with their role and essentially building them into that company culture. And what I’ve noticed through this year is that where previously when companies were remote onboarding; they weren’t paying that much attention to it. But now it’s like okay promote is the norm at the moment. So we are doing remote onboarding, and we must make our new hires feel part of our culture essentially. So, that’s a negative that’s turned into a bit of a positive.
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: Great. Hailey and you guys have been remote since day one, but what would you say to Ken Roos.
Hailey Pobanz: Yeah. Well, I kind of can continues what Michael was saying. This was something that obviously we’ve been remote from day one. So the unexpected positive for me was going through the onboarding experience at GitLab and onboarding team members at GitLab.
Because getting to know each other becomes intentional and purposeful, you’re not running into someone while you’re grabbing a coffee. You’re taking 25 minutes out of your day to have a coffee chat; and you get to know people on a different level that way, and I think that’s really nice. Also, at your own pace. I don’t sometimes know first thing coffee in the morning isn’t the right time to have a purposeful conversation with someone who started but taking that time out of your day can be really positive.
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: Perfect. Well, moving to the second question on first impressions are everything. So how can we set up SDRs for Success? We can all remote week one on the job. Also, what should the first week look like in terms of scheduling and training covered?
Michael Hanson: Sure, I think it’s essential we discussed this as a group before we did this session; that not everything is essentially like theoretical. So what do I mean by that? It’s not just your own Zoom calls all the time; getting trained about stuff or your own learning management software is important. There’s a mixture which I can see you’ve got on the screen here of theory and actually the practice.
So for example, if you were learning about the ideal customer profile and the challenges; you’ve got here on Day 2. Is really important that there’s then an exercise about; okay write down who are the three job title you sell to. What are their main challenges? and how is your company solving that?. I think that’s really important because Zoom fatigue is real, right? So you see all these LinkedIn posts about Zoom fatigue; But if you actually sit on Zoom calls for like eight or nine hours, your head is completely all over the place.
So I think, especially in that first week and when your new; it is important to set that culture that, like we don’t just, we’re not just in Zoom calls all day. Essentially you’ll learn a bit, and then you’ll practice a bit, and it’s just switching things up as well. Please don’t make it one dimensional try to create different things and make it fun essentially.
Hailey Pobanz: Sure, and I get levels while I think one of the ways we’re successful with remote. And this isn’t just for when you are onboarding, but if you’re trying to run a remote company nowadays. Is allowing things to be in sync. So having asynchronous communication and working. And what that means is that you know, every meeting you have there’s a notes document. There’s a lot of things that you can be doing self-paced; and it puts a little bit less pressure on having all-day meetings in place. And oh my gosh, they’re brand new. They need to be in meetings all day to get all of this. Actually, you can provide them with a lot of that upfront to do a lot of that self-paced learning.
When the entire company works that way, they can interact and asynchronously engage with their colleagues; giving them a little more flexibility. The first thing here is old as I take the first 15 minutes and last 15 minutes of the day. It is really crucial for having that in-person moment, like knowing when not to be in sync. That’s good for starting them on a new routine and a new Rhythm. Like I get that we’re all remote, we can help people get comfortable with that work. But if you’re not and everyone’s getting used to it; having that moment in time at the start and the end of the day can really help people get on getting on a new… Get on that sort of new schedule, for example.
Michael Hanson: I think the point you mentioned about self-paced is a great one as well, Hailey. Because I think you shouldn’t treat every SDR the same. You may have a standard onboarding you got for week one or more month one; naturally, some people will learn faster than others. Some people will learn less quickly.
Michael Hanson: So I think it’s crucial to pick up on that; and you may get typical onboarding maybe like a week before they start actually calling people. Maybe they have someone who’s like look I’ve done two weeks. I think I get it, and I think I know what I want to do; “I think I’m ready to do some cold calls”. Let them go ahead; let them start calling if they’re hungry to do it and let them do it.
And again, if there’s someone in week 4, he’s like, look, I’d like to learn the use cases a bit better because the cold calling I’m going to do is targeting this industry. I’m not quite comfortable with it; give them another couple of days. So speak to your SDR, see how they’re getting on, and don’t treat everyone the same because I think if you have a very rigid onboarding agenda, it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, and it probably won’t work for some people.
Hailey Pobanz: I think that also kind of size to what we spoke about when we were connecting on this earlier or last week was; at GitLab, for example, we DAFU, right? So we have a GitLab issue for every new employee, and they can go through those things. And there are personalized tasks for each type of role, but there are flexibility and freedom.
So if you’re trying to set up that onboarding practice and trying to do things a little bit async and give that flexibility having one tool, having a tool to do that or a place; Where not just the new hire sees what I need to do to onboard; but what the manager sees they need to do, what their onboarding buddy does. That sort of thing can really help enable that. And so yeah, I know we’re doing questions at the end, but solving shadowing plays a big role in that beginning part as well with the little question from Laura and listening kind of to the day-to-day. And so I don’t know Michael the companies you’ve worked with or experience they have.
Like at GitLab, we do a lot of you know, you join in on calls together. Many things are recorded. Our teams do weekly cold calling sessions to practice their command of the message, which is the strategy that we use internally. So there are those things and then a sink we can’t record things in Europe here. But in the USA, Our team uses Chorus to record those calls, so when you’re on board, you can listen to some of the calls that your AE makes. Calls your teammates make and start to get familiar as well. And again, that’s self-paced and not required to then sit on Zoom again.
Michael Hanson: Yeah, definitely, that’s a great point in what about the AEs. We were also talking about shadowing if it’s talking about learning like the products. There’s no better way than actually getting on a call with an AE and just sitting in the background, seeing how they’re working as well. And I think many Discovery questions that an AE often uses, like questions you can use in cold calls. So I think that’s a great point.
And as you mentioned, it’s always like Chorus and Gong. They’re growing exponentially. It’s because essentially, you know; it really enables and empowers SDRs to listen to their peers see what’s working and not working. Then obviously, once they actually start making cold calls as well, they can give feedback. I think peer to peer feedback is a great thing. One of the things that I’ve seen is that sometimes smaller SDR teams struggle because they can’t like bounce ideas off each other. Whereas bigger teams. They’ve got so many people that they can bounce ideas off. So, definitely, the peer to peer feedback is a good one, too.
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: Great. Also, something that really helped me and from my experience with shipping the CRM, and that really helped me in terms of training and all the onboarding. So we shifted from Salesforce to Bloobirds, and it really skyrocketed the numbers that the attempts they were doing. They knew what Cadence to follow up, and all that pipeline management was just so straightforward, and it acted as a to-do list that it was just so easy to onboard new SDRs because they had something to follow, so yeah, great points. And also, I would add that the CRM because, for me, it was life-changing. I think in the last three months, though, really nice.
What should the first 30 days of a remote SDR look like?
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: So let’s move to the next question and Beyond these first weeks, the first 30 days of an SDR really determine the future success. So what got all remote onboarding should we have in place, and what are some workflows and metrics that are important for ensuring success. And what kind of quota should they be responsible for in this first month?
Michael Hanson: I’m going to let Hailey on to this first because I give GitLab the most amazing onboarding process.
Hailey Pobanz: Well, thank you. The last thing you mentioned was about quota, and that was something that I think is really valuable is that. If you can have that first-month be quota-free, you really should. I think that onboarding someone new is an investment in them today as well as the future and giving them that time to get really successful and maybe even have a quick win if they don’t have a quota and then by the end of it like Michael said if they’re a quick learner, they want to dig in right away. It’s going to get that quick win in the beginning. I think that’s a big part about getting an SDR ramped is confidence in what they’re selling and part of that is
Hailey Pobanz: Is just having those early wins having some successful conversations. So in GitLab and I can obviously share the link to our handbook. I think for the first 30 days, it’s also essential for them to understand the process both from inbound and outbound and on the Enterprise side. We have an obvious outbound process framework that goes through putting together account plans with their EA, templates for that, as well as templates for outbound messaging
Hailey Pobanz: It’s just the Snippets and things that we use in Outreach. So getting them familiar with that and it’s a blueprint that they can start with, and then, for example, things in Outreach can also be templatized. And we do a lot of Snippets that the SDR can use their own language their own personalization, but then pulling Snippets that as management we can track which then allows you to help them be successful continuing from there.
Hailey Pobanz: I could keep rambling, Michael. So I’m going to let you take over from there.
Michael Hanson: five-thirty days is a long time. We could be here for hours. But yeah, I can see customer interviews on that. Like recorded customer interviews, I think obviously, if you can actually get them to speak to a customer, that would be even better. Essentially you saw it on the first slide there. I thought it was good about the bluebirds onboarding because they only have like a day essentially on the product.
The rest is all about the customers and their pains because essentially the job of an SDR or even an AE if they’re doing outbound if you were trying to book a meeting or you’re trying to do, is pure curiosity. You’re not trying to sell a product as soon as they’re interested in the products’ ins and outs. You’re like, okay, that’s a great question. But let’s get on a meeting. All you really need to think about is who the top people we sell to, what are the industries, what are the titles, and then what are the Pains of those people? And how do we help sold those?
Michael Hanson: It’s really the core of what you’re focusing on, and I saw that was in the first week of the Bloobirds onboarding, and then the customer interviews come into that because then it’s like asking your customers when you came to us before you became a customer. Why did you come to us? Like what problems were you looking to solve? So that’s going to be really helpful and then things as well as trigger events. So trigger events for a company using software that you integrate with, or companies gone through a merger and acquisition.
Or companies hiring a particular role that you help so essentially looking at those triggers and again asking your customers where they’re like any triggers that essentially made you buy our cyberspace. So I think that’s really important being customer-centric, and it’s funny because, with all the pandemic stuff that’s happened this year, A lot of people are like, oh you need to be a lot more customer-centric if you’re in sales and marketing and be more like customer success customer service. I’m like, well, you should have been doing that way before.
Michael Hanson: It’s not like a new thing customer-centricity is as cool to sales and marketing as customer service. And then I think Hailey made a great point about like commissions and quotas one of the problems in sales as we have so many of these different like acronyms whether it’s like SQL and all these things. I think it just with the companies I’ve worked with. Literally, every company has different acronyms, and we assume that people know them.
Michael Hanson: Like spell out the acronyms and then be very clear like okay, you got a commission for a qualified meeting, or you get 1% of a deal closed or whatever it is. It’s like confirm exactly what you mean by a deal closed. Act as the first year is it the lifetime of the deal and again a qualified meeting? What are the qualification criteria to be extremely clear when it comes to commissions and quotas? Often, there’s a big breakdown of communication, and it’s only when they start getting results that the conversation comes about? They actually realize that, you know, you haven’t been aligned on that subject?
Hailey Pobanz: I think that’s such an important part because at the end of the day what people are paid on so what their quota is what’s going to drive their activities if they are interpreting it one way than what’s expected them that’s going to change their entire workflow. So I think making those things as clear as possible and if it’s confusing lay it out in every in the simplest way possible.
Hailey Pobanz: Words like an item by item and make that really simple for them to be then able to go and be successful on and then the last thing I want to say I was talking about the personas like you mentioned a bit we talked about that last week as well, and for GitLab, the example here is that every company is going to be different. So do you have a really technical product? Is your product pretty easy to learn? Enterprise sales? Commercial sales? Using these different things to change the onboarding slightly, but for GitLab, the product is very technical, and if I can start an Enterprise SDR, it would be working with large customers or large prospects.
Suppose I can quickly understand how our personas buy, their needs, and their problems. They can go into a call and ask questions and get curious and start booking those meetings, start getting opportunities there without fully understanding the product because that can be your win and those first 30 days and then doing a deeper dive in the product throughout that first quarter, for example. But again, be already ready for what fits your company’s needs and what fits the needs of the team you’re hiring for.
Michael Hanson: Yes. It’s a great point. About you actually need to understand the product, so actually get Pipeline and get meetings. I mean some of the customers I’ve worked with like we’ve helped and got results and I still I would say like ten percent it a product, but I know the Pains of their customers, and that’s what I’m really drilling into them to understand. So that’s a great point.
How many remote SDRs can one SDR manager handle?
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: Great. Okay. So what about a manager’s maximum capacity? How many SDRs can one SDR manager handle virtually?
Hailey Pobanz: I think when we first talked about this. I was thinking about Celia, who’s managing a team of 10 now. My opinion was that 8 is the max. I manage 8 individually now. I think eight is the max. If you want to be… I think SDRs coaching is important. Coaching is a big part of this, and with eight-plus, it starts to get a little bit more difficult. So I think six is ideal 8-10 would be Max, and then you want to start thinking about smartly expanding your leadership team.
Michael Hanson: Yeah, I agree with that. I got in mind we were talking before and we all kind of agreed on this subject. When we work with clients at Growth Genie, Typically, we don’t deal with yeah teams. Ideally, as you said, kind of eight SDR’s we can go up to 10, but as you said, it is tough dealing with such a big team. Obviously, it’s different from what we’re doing because we’re not working with companies full-time instead of getting a group in an SDRs session. If it’s any more than that, if it’s like 20, it isn’t easy to manage everyone.
And as you said, even eight is a lot; six is Ideal. So I think if you’re working for a bigger company here, I actually spoke with someone the other day that had managed like 20 SDRs. And I said if you need to speak to leadership, and yet somehow I think once you’re getting over 10 SDRs, you definitely need more managers, and I actually come from the world of SDR Outsourcing. So before I started Growth Genie, I work for a company called CloudTask, who did SDRs services, and it was the same with them. Like if we had an account of more than 10 people, so once we go up to 11, As I said, a second manager was always involved. So I think it’s pretty standard.
How to help remote SDRs buy into the company culture
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: So lastly, one thing that seems to get lost in translation sometimes is the fun part of startups and tech culture. So, how can you help your remote reps by into company culture and be part of the team from far and maybe some tech tools to help?
Hailey Pobanz: I think this is something that we’re always iterating on like if I had the prescription, I don’t like, I’m still trying to get it right. And by that is you have to, it has to be purposeful and meaningful and connecting more. Some of these are the things I’m actually using with my team right now. We use; HeyTaco!, which is something that you can say, you can do a taco emoji and slack to talk about to Michael for his great work on the webcast.
Hailey Pobanz: Those sorts of things and what it does on a management side is it keep track keeps track of how many people in the team are sending tacos who’s receiving that you can use that in discretionary bonuses, for example, or just fun things at the end or maybe free lunch. The Atrium I really like as well because what it does is it provides some team-building ice breaker type activities. Still, it gives you a Slack notification so you can set it up for your team.
Five minutes before maybe you’ve got a daily stand-up, it gives you a topic those sorts of things to reconnect because what I find happens to me and what happens to everyone else is that you have this team. And when we all work in an office, SDR floors are loud, active, and now we’re all just like looking around alone in a room, and how do you recreate that? It can be tough, and I think having those little ice breakers or team building things sort of… even though we all know each other to reconnect with that kind of helps the conversation starter.
Michael Hanson: Yeah, definitely. I think the cultural aspects it comes from those moments where you’re having lunch together. You’re having dinner together; you’re playing sports together. So I think of past companies I work for where I was part of big sales teams. We had a football team we played with, I went hiking at the weekend, or you know, we had lunch every day. So I think if you can kind of recreate that culture remotely, that’s going to help a lot. It’s funny. We talked before about all of these, and the only one in my suggestion is uber eats. I’ve never heard of the rest of them. So it was quite eye-opening for me to see all these tools that are out there essentially, and I think especially in the first week when someone’s not as comfortable.
They don’t know their team. I think getting like a voucher for Uber Eats or HeyTaco! It’s going to make them feel really loved, and I think it is actually a good thing for them to understand because like direct-mail And e-gifts and things it’s becoming huge in sales at the moment. So I’m actually a friend of Alex Olli, who started a company called ReachDesk not too long ago. They’ve already got 50 employees like growing massively, and essentially it’s sending e-gifts and direct mail and connects to your CRM. So it’s a tactic you can actually use for sales and marketing, and yeah, why not use it with your staff as well.
Like I’ve spoken at a few events recently, and the organizers sent me. I’ve actually got them here. I’ve got some like macaroons that they sent me, like “Thanks for speaking.” And obviously, I’m always going to remember them. It’s those little details, and you know, we’re all in the midst of getting a million emails million LinkedIn messages, but hardly anyone’s going to send you a gift, right? So I think that really from a company perspective if you’re doing a small detail like that, 99% of other companies aren’t doing it. So it’s really going to help you stand up.
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: Great. Yeah, I really like one that’s full of random coffee, or did you enter a virtual meeting, and then you’ll just meet people from the company. It doesn’t have to be salespeople. It can be anyone, someone from the engineering team, marketing. And it’s really nice in terms of getting to know the internal company, the different departments and so on because and they do speak not as an SDR with the sales team, but that’s it. That’s the only view they have virtually. So I think it’s really nice. They can see some faces and make their way through the company.
Hailey Pobanz: I think that actually makes me think of one last thing Celia and like you said, having that random coffee with people outside of the sales or outside of the SDR team. If you set up a new hire with the onboarding Buddy, find someone that’s been with the company for a while and on another team. There’s a lot of value in them getting set up with the company. There’s going to be a lot of people they’re working with every day on their team that’s going to help them get set up with the SDR stuff but having an onboarding buddy that’s also just part of the company and has been there for a while can help with the making them feel part of the culture.
Michael Hanson: That’s a crucial point, Hailey, and I’m so surprised we’ve been here for like half an hour, and we haven’t talked about that before. Integrating with other partners is so important. I mean, that’s how business works and everything. I think like products and customer success marketing and sales; It’s all becoming one.
If you haven’t seen it, I recommend Googling the HubSpot flywheel, and it talks about that kind of circle everything being integrated, and it’s the same from a cultural perspective. I actually got into sales because I used to work in an account management company, and I ended up becoming friends with all the sales teams and kind of like their banter, and I was like, what do I can say? I was like, I want to be like these guys and be part of that crew. So I think it’s essential.
Michael Hanson: And sales isn’t for everyone as well. But there’s I’ve also seen a lot of salespeople that they get into the marketing or get into products or will get into customer success. I think it’s good to open that door for them. And essentially not just made them feel part of the sales team or the SDR team but make them feel part of the company that they’re working for.
How to improve remote SDR cold call skills
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: Great. I know that we have some questions. Just let’s go to those now. The first one… So Ikram Belarbi, sorry if I mispronounce your name asks, how do you make sure they improve their call skills remotely? What would you say to Ikram?
Hailey Pobanz: I think one of the things that our team does, and I think a lot of times do, is we have a weekly cold calling session where we do mock calls. We use our sort of sales training framework that we have for that, but we’ll do some concise ones where it’s just that like, you’ve got two minutes to book a meeting, and then we also do ones where we’re going through the qualification questions for that discovery afterward.
Hailey Pobanz: So having those mock calls are really great, and it’s encouraged. Like I find my team, we have much more success with those when it self-run. So the SDRs actually lead it. Someone is a moderator every week that rotates. Someone is the, you know, the prospect, etc. Rather than it always coming from management. I find that that way, you also get more collaboration, which again builds confidence, which I think is what drives forward sales skills on the phone.
Michael Hanson: Yeah, I completely agree highly. Another thing to bear in mind is that we’re talking about onboarding here with new hires when you’re doing role-plays with new hires. Don’t go into super hard on objections be suited up with them because I’ve seen it before as we’ve worked with companies. Then the SDRs managers brought me in for onboarding with new SDRs, and they do role plays, and they give in like ten objections, not like I would only do that for like the most seasoned SDR you need to ease them in gently.
Michael Hanson: So I think don’t be don’t be too tough on them at the start as the kind of peace them in gradually. And then just in terms of like improving your performance on calling remotely. Like Hailey was talking about the Chorus and there’s Gong. I’m sure everyone knows the company in the UK called Refract. So I recommend looking at it, which is very similar to have some cool recording tool essentially, and I think it’s not just good for managers and coaches, but then it’s also good in like, we’re saying that peer to peer feedback. So something I’ve always encouraged is for fellow SDRs to go in give feed or more seasoned SDRs to give like a new hire some feedback.
I also found that SDRs like listening back to their own calls because often you can’t think like on the spot you’re not able to think. “Oh, that call went really well,” or it didn’t, and I’ve seen as well sometimes SDRs think they completely botched calls, and they’ve actually been quite good, and they only understand that when they listen to them back.
Hailey Pobanz: Even have a Slack channel for that at GitLab for the SDR team. People will share their conversations, whether it’s maybe a LinkedIn conversation or the link to the call. And they’ll be like, “I could have done this better.” What’s your feedback? That’s another great way to do at sync as well.
Michael Hanson: I love that.
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: Yeah, something that I do that it’s enjoyable for my team is that I send the messages and the calls that other SDRs do with me, and we’ll say how would you improve this, and they’ll start judging others SDRs, so that’s better than just judging themselves. So it really helps.
How to help remote SDRs integrate into the team
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: So Georgia Irving asks: From the employee’s perspective, how can a new SDR in a team make themselves known without feeling they’re a nuisance or like they’re pestering people they don’t know?
Hailey Pobanz: I think we touched on this a little bit. The RandomCoffee is great because you can have a Slack channel for it, and anyone can join it, and you’re just going to get assigned random people,e and people are open to that. I think it needs to come kind of top-down culturally in terms of that openness. Part of our onboarding at GitLab is that you need to do 10 coffee chats with random people, and you can ask anyone you can ask Sid, our CEO, to have a coffee chat. I mean, you have to Foster that from leadership and bring that down, but ways that you can start to do that is through, for example, leveraging Donut. I think that’s a really great way to do it.
Michael Hanson: Yeah, as you said, Hailey. I think we talked about things like having a virtual lunch or virtual dinner instead of having one in person. If you’ve got like clubs within the organization, so the last company that I used to work for, we had like a football club like a rock climbing session, and we have slack channels for all of them.
So like getting to know the person identifying their hobbies and then sticking them in the group and then naturally of your like a football fan or rock climbing fan or whatever and you’ve got people who like those things. You’re probably going to have conversations with them and Strike Up friendships that way, so that’s really important. Just wanted to mention one other thing is just Changing topics lightly sign is really important with SDR Onboarding is the mindset aspect because a lot of SDRs would have never made sales before, so maybe their first time cold calling the first time sales.
I think it’s vital to set the expectation that they will get rejected a lot because if the and I think no one gave me a mindset talk when I first started in sales. I was like, “Oh, sales is easy, like the Kitty sales guys making commissioner” I remember the first like a couple of months was difficult because, like you’re sending emails, you’re not getting any replies or like you’re not even connecting with people on the phone.
So I think it’s crucial to establish that like in sales essentially. You’ve got to let your ego go and know that you’re going to get a lot more “No” than “Yes.” Even if you’re the best salesperson in the world, you’re not going to convert all of your leads. So I think that’s really important to embrace rejection and say that, you know, every “No” that you get essentially gets you closer to a “yes.”
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: Great. So, Laura Orgajo Asks: how do you solve shadowing? How can the new hires hear and listen to the daily day of an SDR?
Hailey Pobanz: Oh, I accidentally threw that question in and during the presentation, so we answered it, I think.
Celia de la Hoz Sacasa: Okay, so I think that would be pretty much. It’s perfect. Well, thank you to all of you who have attended this wonderful webinar and for some of your enlightening questions Hailey and Mike. It’s been a pleasure to be here with you today. We will also be sending the recording afterward. So in case, you miss it will choose and everything there and if you are looking for more all remote resources, make sure to check out GitLabs SDR workflow and onboarding Playbook, all available online.
We’ll send the link to the chat and follow Michael Hanson on LinkedIn for daily tips on B2B sales coaching and check out GrowthGenie.com. You can also follow me on LinkedIn and, of course, bloobirds.com. They’ve got a ton of more resources on SDRs’ best practices in onboarding, and we’ve also posted the resource in the chat. So thank you again, and see you at the next webinar, guys!
