Evaluating Sales Development Calls with Steve Richard

Reading Time: 15 minutes

Overview: Steve Richard walks us through the evaluation of sales calls. He gives a sales rep real time feed back on a call with a customer.

About the speaker: My mission and life’s work is to help sales professionals become wildly successful. I believe that the quality of sales conversations matters, yet the profession of sales largely misses the mark on teaching sales reps how to have great conversations. After 10 years as a sales trainer I learned that the only way to achieve my mission was through the use of technology to help more sales professionals worldwide.

Hey, everyone, it’s Steve Richard, it is Friday afternoon, January 15 3:18pm. On a Friday when I’m recording this, which means is. It’s time for Bud heavy here, we’re gonna do some beer and call coaching. Because that’s what I do on Friday afternoons. Let’s make this happen. We’re gonna go deep here sales development calls, breaking them down. As marketers listening to this, you’re probably wondering are my team’s following up? What are they doing? With all the leads that I’m producing? How come more of them aren’t becoming opportunities getting in the funnel? We’re about to answer those questions and answer questions about what are the best and most important skills for a sales development team. With that, let’s go. This is a call shared by Peter Cook, one of our sales development reps. Awesome. Okay.  

So right off the bat, the first thing I’m looking at with this call, is I want to get a sense for if he’s having the right kind of conversation. There’s a vocabulary of the top performers, we set up some key word topic trackers, based on the transcript of what’s happening in the call. He’s talking about automation, which I love seeing in these spots right here. For the marketers there. And he’s asking about the lead source, which is great scheduling the next meeting, which is great. He’s talking about challenges related to the buyer, which is great. I’m gonna light up a few of these things. And let’s let it rip.  

Peter: Hey, Brian, this is Peter over at ExecVision, and how are you? Hey, I’m good. How are you? Good things. It looks like you were able to attend our webinar last Thursday. Is that correct? I wasn’t able to attend the full webinar. I registered for it. And I was waiting to receive the recording, but I haven’t actually viewed that yet. Okay, okay. I actually spoke with Glenn Donahue back in October and need some time, but unfortunately, that had to be cancelled. Are you familiar with ExecVision at all? I am. Yeah, I follow you guys on LinkedIn and your founder, you get some pretty cool things to share. Are you guys I understand you guys are using Dialpad. Are you using like a conversation intelligence tool, kind of in conjunction with Dialpad. No, we’re not. We’re not using Dialpad.  

I love this. Let’s talk about what’s happening here as I break it down. Whenever you do call coaching, you want to try to be positive, productive. First and foremost. I’m also going to be using a coaching framework called observe, describe prescribe that I learned from my friend Kenan. Shout out to Keene and check out Kenan a sales guy stuff, awesome. I’m simply going to be observing in a positive way a lot of the things that Pete’s doing and a lot of things that are happening, he does an awesome job of the namedrop. He does an awesome job saying my understanding is you’re using Dialpad.  

Turns out they’re not they’re using something other than Dialpad, but the fact that he has some of that preliminary connecting information will get this prospect and assistant to. This is textbook is a nightmare cold call. So clearly this part of it is working.  

Peter: We’ve actually changed to another dialer technology platform. Okay, are you overseeing the sales reps. I’m overseeing the inside sales reps, we have a very small inside team of 5 people and their outside team of a little over 30.  

So he’s getting the team structure which is great. We love to see that he’s qualifying against the team in the size. But the guy just said we don’t use Dialpad we use another dialer The most obvious thing there is and this is where you know shame on me. I should make my comment a little better. I’m gonna use observe describe prescribe. I’m gonna switch this to Pete. Actually I might even add tag him on this because I really want him to hear this. Pete you do an awesome job getting him to say they switch to dialer, but you never asked what it is. Alright, and that’s using observe, describe, prescribe. Now that we’re into this a little bit, he’s a little slow talker here a prospect. I’m going to speed this thing up to one five and crank it.  

Peter: Would you want? I mean, I know you said you haven’t seen the recording yet? Would you want to, I guess take a look at the webinar recording and possibly reconnecting to later this week or next. I’m just to kind of take a deeper look into how we could potentially help you guys. Well, tell me a little bit more about how you guys  

That sort of surprises me. You go back to the webinar here. Ask him to listen to the recording. This is gonna be one of those ones where I’m gonna use that the prescribing the form of a question. I’m just I don’t know why we’re doing asynchronous coaching here. Pete and I are not here at the same time. This is one of those ones where we can sync up later on. I just be curious like, Hey, man, why are you gonna let the fish off the hook? I mean, this is a pretty good looking prospect here. Why were you going to tell him go back and listen to the recording when you got them? And unfortunately, the prospect himself said, hang on, what do you do?   

Because I knew the webinar was a little bit for how to jump off on another call. And it was all about I guess, how to build a team. Things to look for things like that. But you mentioned, you had some supporting things that was associated with dialer technology. I’m curious what that is about. Right. So what we do is we don’t actually record the calls.  

What we do is we help teams leverage their call recordings. They live within a very user friendly library where you can go look at the calls, whether their web conference, or their phone call. Highlight the calls, comment, annotate, share the calls were the goals. Then we actually have some AI in there too, that will, you can customize the verbiage that your team uses a lot. Based on what verbiage, you put into the software, you can actually have calls center, you’re in Yes.  

There we go. I like this messaging. I can see some of those topics lining up around messaging related to challenges. We solve for messaging related to automation and software and the technology. This is some dang good messaging. I’m actually gonna highlight that green. And not only am I going to highlight in green, so this is a great job. But this is one of those ones where I want to make sure we don’t lose that because the way he phrased. How sisynced. It was really solid. I’m going to share this with a couple of people. I’m gonna share this with our our SDR. And I’m going to share with some of the other SDRs on the team. So Angela Goldman here and and that team of for the rest of the SDRs.  

Angela’s in marketing, because I want her to hear that voice of the buyer, the lead. Because again, this came from an inbound lead. So check out Pete’s messaging here. Very good. All right, and I want to share just that selected, highlight just that snippet, so they can focus on that. I’m just going to say, Angela, please add it to the ExecVision sales library. And tag it SDR training. So far, this is pretty good, pretty textbook with that, with the exception of those things that were confusing. Let’s go.  

Peter: Is that similar to the Gong? Right there one of our competitors? Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, have a look at that. I tried to see if there was any interest internally, with a greater size sales team to do that. And at that point, we wasn’tgetting enough. Enough call recordings from them, we were able to get transcriptions but not call recording. So now that we move over to a different type of dialer, to actually start getting more recordings that includes the outside sales team. We just roll that over in December. Once we get some verbiage, you know, we ended up recordings on or build on that it might be or   

Here’s another thing that I’m doing here. Because Pete has previously commented on his own call and broken it down. It’s almost like a window into his brain. So as I’m listening, I want to see what he’s saying. He’s saying we’re recording outside sales team tune started in December. No need to explain coaching intelligence, which is our other offering. They record but I have to ask which dialer so he’s figuring out a lot of these things. Himself  

Peter: To look at something Yeah, absolutely. And we actually this year, funnily enough, like, literally, today’s our first day that we’re kind of rolling out this second thing that we’re doing. Teams that I mean, I know you said you do have a dialer in place, but for teams that are recording calls,  our our technology is still applicable to being able to coachingplans. Having managers being able to put all that into one system where it’s very easy to go back with your your reps and kind of go over what you said even without the recordings. So there’s definitely a duality. If you have the recordings that’s obviously going to be more valuable but if you don’t we still are doing coaching intelligence as opposed to traditionally conversation intelligence. But what uh, what dialing technology are using just out of curiosity.  

Connect leader. Connect leader, okay. I’m pretty sure we are actually integration partners with them, which is pretty interesting. So were you planning on going and listening to that webinar? Or is that just something that was kind of piqued your interest and you might look at it? I’ll probably look at it yeah, it just piqued my interest. Building on it yourself. Team and just like you, the leader of your company and what he has to say about I’ll check this out. I really thought it would be more around. I mean, I just have to look for the first part of it might be different once I.  

I’ll pause there and kind of break that down too. So this is a little bit of a failure on me as one of the founders of the company that Pete saying. I think we have an integration with Connect Leader. Connect leaders a dialing technology, kind of like a connecting cell. And connect leader monster connect more in that category, but they also have regular dialing more like a Xant, Salesloft and outreach. And they also have finally, cadence capability. So it’s all of the above. And they’re one of the players in market never heard this before. They just switched from Dialpad to Connect Leader. 

But Pete should know that he should know that. That’s a failure on me. You gotta separate training and coaching training is teaching someone something new, I had a training moment, they’re not a coaching. I didn’t tell him that we have that. I’m gonna put in that comic and the thing about it is I’m going to say please, ask, or Julia, how to see the integration documents. And the reason I’m doing this is Pete is about to get promoted. He’s a pretty dang good SDR has been hitting numbers for a long time. He’s right on the cusp of getting promoted. He might have been This is the sort of thing as an account executive, he has to know right off the bat. So if you can get with Julia who does implementations. I’m eating going to @ her here. So that she sees this.  

That she knows to send those documents because we could send the integration documents to this prospect. Awesome. So so far, in terms of if I’m a marketer, or if I’m a chief revenue officer or sales manager anything and this is the call that I’m getting. I’m pretty happy. We’re talking about level setting here. This is this is a prospect who didn’t even attend the webinar that was promoted. He signed up never attended it. Pete was able to pivot the conversation with the prospects help that was one sticking point he said you know, I was about to let the fish off the hook.  

Fortunately, the fish said no, I want to stay on the hook and see what happened. And now we’ve got a really good conversation about what’s going on and this is someone we can help they got 30 or 40 reps using Connect Leader This is a great fit for us  

To listen to the rest of it instead of just 15 minutes. I thought it might be more about building out teams once you get it internally. Like how that would be structured you know how cadences things more around that. Because from the talent, we kind of I almost said we had that nailed down but more direction of what we look for in that versus right. Just because I’ve been so many failures and not looking for the right thing. You’re frequently work we understand what you’re saying.  

And I actually did just look up we actually our integration partners with Connect Leader. If you are using that as a dialer, that’s definitely intriguing there. I obviously, if you’re familiar with Gong. You’re I’m sure you’re familiar with what we’re doing. And clearly you guys are all forward thinkers. If you know you’re taking time to listen to webinars about how to build up teams. I definitely would recommend giving that a listen. But I’m not sure if you’re comfortable with this. But if you would want to listen to this and.  

I love that we’re going for the time. But hold up. Pete, if you’re listening to this, hold up Pete. Change the offer, this guy’s like, Oh, I thought this was more of a team building. All that sounds great. That Gong competitor called ExecVision. That technology that integrates with Connect leader is wonderful. But really I need help building a team. So this is where I would say you want to think about your offer. So Pete’s offer leading into some scheduled time for one of our account executives. That’s a typical offer for a sales development rep, business development rep account development rep, you name it. 

Change the offer, what can we use as an offer? And the answer is use me put me as the bait on the hook. Because I work with teams all the time to help with team building. I can share my slides with Brian. Get on the phone and do a private call with him. And it sort of feels like he didn’t hear him. So get me on a private call with Brian. This will be very valuable when.  

Peter: Put down some time to see you know how we could actually pair with Connect leader in the upcoming weeks. I would definitely be interested in that if that’s something you’re open to. Yeah, well, I’m very much a straight shooter and to be honest with you, I’m okay having a conversation with you about that. But I know for sure that there is zero interest with our large outside sales team and doing anything associated with that at this point in time, because I was trying to sell the idea of utilizing Gong or a type of technology for that. And didn’t want to do it. Was a no. Only thing they wanted at that point was just technology. As far as the recording.  

They wanted a recording, because that’s what they were sold before on another platform. And the only thing that they got, which is the export transcript that we wanted to record. And so I’m just I’m just telling you that because I don’t want to mislead you and say, Hey, this is potential good lead, this might potentially turned into something because I know that I couldn’t bring something on board, unless there was a much larger interest in the organization. No matter how bad that I might think, Hey, I could utilize this for my team. I don’t have enough people yet to justify that, from an organization standpoint. Does that does that sound fair? No, that’s very fair. And just so I’m just for a little more clarity. It sounds like you’re someone who obviously sees value in having.  

I love this now we’re hearing some really classic objection handling. This is what Pete has been trained to do. He does an awesome, I’m even going to highlight that objection handling right now. Green because this is beautiful. He immediately flips into almost unconsciously, he’s not even thinking about it. I want you to hear this again. Because this is just old class, listen to, you’re gonna hear this kind of like. Feel people, I’m only me Listen to how he pivots it with the empathy. He’s gonna bring empathy. And after that, he’s gonna bring it to back to trying to book me in the organization, no matter how bad that I might think, Hey, I can utilize this for mantine.  

I don’t have enough people yet to justify that, from an organization. Does that sound fair? No, that’s very fair. And just so I’m just for a little more clarity, or it sounds like you’re someone who obviously sees value in having like a conversation revenue intelligence tool. More than than others. It also sounds like you’re building out that inside team. So you’re growing the team are scaling it? Yeah, I’m actually actually rebuilding the team. We had a team that wasn’t so successful, and started all over again. So I’m in charge of rebuilding a team.  

That is so awesome. He emphasizes, actively listens and redirects. Back to the topic that matters. Pete Well done on this just changed the offer. Get me on the call.  

Peter: Okay. That is that is a lot clearer. And then you said that team is it’s currently five people in the outside team is 30. Yes. Okay. While I do appreciate the honesty, because obviously, I don’t want to want to waste your time or my time. But I mean, if you want to, you know, take a look at us, so you can kind of see down the line, when that does fit. You definitely would have us in addition to Gong in your back pocket. I definitely wouldn’t be interested in that just so you kind of have a better standing in where we play in that space.  

Yeah, yeah, I would be open to that. Give me a couple of weeks to listen to the recording and say like call back in three weeks or so and we can compare calendars. I’m always interested to see what’s out there. That’s that’s fair enough. Okay, I appreciate that. I’ll give you some time to listen to recording and I’ll shoot you over an email in the next couple of days and if it’s something that you’ve seen. You want to learn a little bit.  

Ah Ha and he walks away. Let’s score this this is going to be fun and interesting. All right, does the rep open the call with implied or explicit permission continue that sounds natural. He’s just so good at this I mean, that was very smooth pre call research was just dynamite. Name dropping and existing technologies. Just smooth clean simple got this guy and system to cold call turns into a nine minute call. This is how you do it. Common challenges.  

Talking about those issues around recording I thought that was quite solid. The value prop very solid around the tech. Going to give him a five but really good status quo. He got he really got all that he sort of suck the marrow out of that one that was very good. The only reason I’m gonna give you a four. Only reason it’s a four is because you didn’t ask about online meeting tools. For the field like zoom WebEx and stuff like that. The outside what they call outside reps, I should really actually use the same terminology for the outside Rep. Sometimes they call it field reps, sometimes outside reps. Question. Does the rep ask questions about team total number?  

Yes. You could have gotten more out of that. Okay, objection handling. This is where I started to slide back, that was solid objection handling, but he missed the mark on the offer. This is where I’m going to go for some lower scores in the conversation skill. This to me, the biggest thing is he didn’t hear. He was so interested in trying to figure out about Connect leader if we have that integration. So Pete, this is the one. And by the way, three is average three is a good score, he did objection handling. Well, he just didn’t connect it to the right offer. The next steps he asked for the time twice. That’s good. Didn’t connect the dots, though. So Pete, this is the area of focus, for this call.  

Need to worry less about the integrations and more about what the prospect says. his immediate needs are. He needs help, and advisory on building the team. So it doesn’t fail again. You use me as the bait on your hook to use a fishing metaphor. Oh, let’s see how we calibrate. Alright, so now what now that we score it? Pretty good. Okay, five and a four, five and a five one. He did not applicable. I thought it was a common challenge. But sometimes we don’t have alignment there.  

This is good. So I would go back to him and argue on this one that you did ask for next steps two times, just because you don’t get it doesn’t mean it. And so you did it. It was solid. But let’s see what he has to say here. Need to stop jumping around, dictate the flow of the conversation. But do that around what the prospect is saying.  

So you show you’re listening. And I love this. Because what this is demonstrating is when you flip the coaching paradigm on its head, get every one of your reps to listen to one of their own calls per week and score it and comment on it just like Pete here. He says he’s going to self correct based on this. He heard it he heard the same thing I did. And when I get together with him. I’m gonna go Pete if there’s one thing you’re going to change about about this call that you could have changed. If you go back in time, what would it be and he’ll say I should have focused on it’s right there. 

I love this, I need to listen to the prospect and focus on the things that they’re saying that matter to them. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. So this is exactly how we do it. Final thing I’m going to do is I’m going to go into the keyword topic because one thing that dawned on me. As we were doing this. Is how people talk about Field Sales forces. So we have a lot about field reps and field enables. This is a tracker, this is a keyword topic tracker that you’re looking at. But I don’t know if we have anything on outside salespeople we don’t.  

I don’t usually hear people refer to it as the outside sales teams. But that word, outside sales, or the outside reps or the outside team. All those phrases are really different ways of saying field reps, or those kinds of things. I added that. So now moving forward, whenever we’re qualifying on team, we’re going to get a tracker, that’s going to go into the calls for those for the SDRs calls. Because we have again those trackers set up for that. Alright everyone, that’s your call coaching call camp for today. Enough about that for today.  

I’m going to go ahead and finish up this fine American beer Budweiser and bid you adieu. Thank you so much for watching this. I hope it helped you learn a couple things. And if I can help you in any way connect with me on LinkedIn. As you see I’m here to help first and foremost, and I’m here to sell second. Have a good one.