Gabe Moncayo, CEO and Founder of AlwaysHired Sales Bootcamp, was recently interviewed on The Addicted To Growth Show, hosted by Travis King and Kevin Mulrane. They discuss how the roles of SDRs and salespeople have changed, their new responsibilities, and how companies are adapting and setting different expectations for their new hires. They also speak about creating consistency and a personal brand on social media, and developing a content-marketing strategy to generate new leads. In this second part of our two-part series, we will outline some of the key questions covered in the second half of the podcast. The Addicted To Growth Show (Travis King and Kevin Mulrane) Episode 11 - Consistency, Personal Branding in Sales, and Content Marketing with Always Hired Co-Founder, Gabriel Moncayo Questions: As a company, once you have started to develop a new content-marketing strategy and plan, how can you scale it? The first thing you would see happen after implementing a new content-marketing strategy would be a ton of engagement on your company’s social channels, Personally for us at AlwaysHired, when we have good posts on LinkedIn, we can go to our website, we can see our traffic increase, and we can see the referral coming from LinkedIn. It is very easy for us to drive traffic from LinkedIn. You’re going to see an increase in traffic to your website, and, as a result, you’re likely to see some new leads come in. Depending on your company’s conversion rate from your website, which is probably different per channel, typically more website traffic equals more leads. The second thing you will see is people will start inbounding on your LinkedIn and sending you direct messages. At AlwaysHired, we are seeing DMs come in to our team members on LinkedIn after seeing our social media posts. After 90 days, what you can expect to see in the next month would be something like two net new leads. And, they will probably be pretty warm, with anywhere from a 30-50% conversion rate, depending on their qualification and your industry. You will start generating actual leads and pipeline by the end of the 90 days, specifically inbound leads through LinkedIn messaging. Through consistency, you can expect an increase in website traffic and an increase in net new leads. As a sales rep, how can you craft your social media content and posts to better align with your goals of acquiring new leads? If you start to ask yourself who you are spending your time with, who your target audience is, who you are engaging with on LinkedIn, what kind of content and questions you are responding to, who is tagging you, and then develop a strategy that aligns with your goals, this will better prepare you for lead generation. Over a period of time, you will start to see that you engage with a mix of sales reps, sales managers, VPs of sales, and marketing personnel. From there, you can ask yourself, what do these people want to know? How can I give them what they want? Who else do they follow? What other brands do they look at? What are they posting? Once you establish yourself as an online presence, tailoring your content, your posts, and your interactions and engagement with the audience you aim to attract, the leads will start to come in. You may have to challenge yourself a bit and talk to people who are different than you are. How has the business landscape changed and what are the new expectations of employers and sales leadership? Communication styles and expectations of leadership teams and executives have changed dramatically in the last five to ten years. Nowadays, an executive doesn’t necessarily care if you make a mistake, they just want to see you are trying, you are receptive to feedback, you are working hard, and that you care about your career. It doesn’t always matter if you say the right stuff at the beginning. Managers and leadership just want to see that you are making a concerted effort, and if you do make a mistake, if you own up to it and admit it. The strongest play you can make when you do make a mistake is to admit to it, learn from it, and try again. That is usually enough to create momentum and show your boss and employer that you are a diligent sales rep. It is realistic that as a salesperson you will have good months and bad months, strong quarters and weaker quarters. As long as you are creative and consistent, and you have a desire to learn, grow, and evolve, your sales leadership team will allow you more flexibility in your role. What are sales leaders and managers looking for when they hire someone today? It used to be that one of the only things leaders focused on was experience. They looked for someone who had been there and done that. What we quickly learned was that an SDR with three years of experience wasn’t necessarily a good fit for an SDR at a specific company. Realistically, if someone has already been an SDR for four years, it can be tough to give them a new SDR role, and that realization changed a lot of the perception around sales. Before, there wasn’t much risk associated with hiring an AE from one company and placing them in an AE role at your company. That was how you hired AEs. If they had been an AE, sold software, had reputable references, comparable deal sizes, sold in a similar market, then they would be considered qualified for the job. You can’t really take that approach with an SDR. If an SDR was hitting quota, usually they would get promoted over a three-year period. This didn’t match up with the concept of hiring based on experience in a particular role. Then, what happened was that managers began to hire inexperienced reps, which didn’t work either. Some of them were successful, but the churn rates were too high. What people realized is that you need to find someone who is willing to do whatever it takes to be successful, and then you need to tell them what you think it takes to be successful at your company. Creating that clarity of expectations and that honest relationship with your new hires, will ultimately give you, as a sales manager, the strongest and most qualified team of salespeople. From a recruiting standpoint, what are some changes we can expect to see in the future? Some companies have started to remove the SDR position altogether. A lot of these are SAAS companies serving SMBs and the small business market. They had pretty good retention which is why they had SDRs in the first place. Now, a lot of companies that are selling to SMB that took on SDRs within the last couple of years are starting to get rid of them. A lot of enterprise organizations are still keeping the traditional SDR/AE model, but newer start-ups, instead of building out this traditional SDR bullpen, are having the executive team take on the role of AE and building out the sales department from there. What is social selling in this new market? The goal of social selling, especially in the first 90 days, is not about generating leads and revenue. It is about building the brand, building engagement, and building community. As an SDR, your manager still needs to manage you to leads and sales, but you need to know that your content cannot be constantly about selling. You have to maintain your indifference. You have to focus on the value of the product you are marketing. It is important to also have a clear vision of your expectations in terms of lead generation and expected conversion rate. There has to be a balance between creativity and community, while understanding the way that it impacts the business. In the midst of all of this industry change, what is the most important thing to keep in mind? Most of the people that sales representatives will see online who are posting or generating leads also have the same thoughts as the representative who isn’t posting. “Are people going to judge me?”, “Is my content good enough?”, “Is this really working?”...At the end of the day, the successful reps say, “I’m just going to try, I’m just going to do it anyway.” That is the difference between a top sales rep in a sales environment and a struggling sales rep. Everyone has the same doubts in their mind, but the successful employees choose to act regardless. About AlwaysHired Sales Bootcamp AlwaysHired Sales Bootcamp is an intensive remote live instructor-led sales training program connecting hard-working and motivated job seekers with high growth technology companies across the country. Founded in 2015, it has 250+ alumni working at companies such as CallidusCloud, Google, Mulesoft, Okta, Yelp, Lever, Demandforce, and more. For more information please visit https://www.alwayshired.com/. For media inquiries, please contact gatekeeper@alwayshired.com.
