#609 - How to Hire SDRs Who Are Actually Built for the Job | Sam Nelson

30 Minutes to President's Club | No-Nonsense Sales

In this episode, Sam Nelson shares his battle-tested framework for building high-performing Sales Development Representative (SDR) teams. He d

Key takeaways

Prioritize hiring candidates with backgrounds in high-pressure or 'unpleasant' roles, such as teachers, waitresses, or door-to-door sales.
Use a mock cold call during interviews with three rounds of immediate feedback to measure coachability rather than initial execution.
Simplify onboarding by focusing on one product and one persona initially to avoid overwhelming new hires.
Implement 'fast start' SPIFFs to encourage SDRs to front-load meetings at the beginning of the month, benefiting AEs during closing periods.
Utilize novel, high-value rewards like a $400 chocolate bar to create unique motivation and FOMO that standard cash bonuses lack.

Main topics

SDR Hiring Signals
Interviewing for Coachability
Onboarding Frameworks

Notable quotes

If someone has been in the top 1 % of something, it's a pretty good indicator.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a tactical manual for SDR leaders looking to sca

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) When new SDRs would come in, we would sit them down. I would give them a list of local businesses and Speaker 2 (0:04) a script, Speaker 1 (0:04) and they would sell pizzas to these local businesses. And you realize in the most cold, awkward cold calling session that you know that you'll ever have, it's actually not that bad. Like even the most awkward one, like we're knocking this out of the way. I've never had any experience and it's not even that bad. I Speaker 2 (0:16) do this at Harvard Business Speaker 1 (0:17) School a couple of times a year. Everyone always like gives you the death glare, especially at Harvard. They're like, are you kidding me? But then by the end, everyone's laughing. Everyone realizes, hey, like I can do this. Speaker 2 (0:30) Today, we are sitting down with Sam Nelson, who is a multiple-time President's Club Achieving SDR Leader. He built the SDR function from scratch at Outreach, and now he runs SDRLeader.com and has quite literally worked with SDR leaders at over 2,500 companies. And today, he's going to be taking us through a clinic on his learnings around hiring, onboarding, and motivating SDRs. So Sam, welcome to the show. Let's start with the back... ground that you need to look for when you are looking to hire Speaker 1 (0:59) SDRs? Okay. So there's one really great litmus test is you definitely want to look for someone who's come from something less pleasant than what they're going into. Actually, like right out of college is pretty good. I mean, we look back fondly at college, but it's actually a lot of pressure, right? Like every test could like tank your scholarship or, you know, ruin your grade. It's actually SDRs have a lot more pressure than most other professions. but it's actually less than college in most cases. So new grad is actually fine for that. Someone who has done door to door is excellent. For example, someone who's been a waitress, like one of the universal ones that in the SJRleader.com community that people bring up all the time is teachers. Less pleasant job, a lot more stress. They come into this, it's an easier job. They make more money. Yeah. Speaker 2 (1:49) Are there other things you're looking for? other accolades, athletics backgrounds, music backgrounds, like parts of the country that they're from, what they majored in. Like, I feel like as an SDR leader, sometimes you don't have the benefit of hiring somebody with work experience. And so you kind of have to look at their pre-work experience as a proxy to figure out if they can do something really freaking hard. I mean, they're getting pounded with rejection day in and day out. Speaker 1 (2:15) Yeah, totally. Well, it's weird because, yeah, they either have SDR experience. And that is not always like a positive sign. Actually, like most of the time when someone has been in SDR before and they left for some reason and they want another SDR job, most of the time that's a negative signal. People don't like when I say that, but it's true. It's not always the case, but it can be the case most of the time. So you need to really like if someone has had another job, you need to really dig into numbers, really understand why. they left really kind of verify why just so you understand so if they have past experience of course you're taking a past experience the thing is most of like the top performers in my experience have been people who have had no experience at all and Speaker 2 (3:01) so how do you Speaker 1 (3:01) how do you vet that there are a couple things that i found to be extremely reliable for top performers one is they've been in the top one percent of something before so like you said athletes college athletes are A great example of that. If they're a college athlete, they're in the top 1 % of that. You have to have a certain, you have certain intangibles to get there. Sports isn't the only way you can do that. If someone is like, I don't know if they were like top in the state in robotics or they have like a top 1 % ELO rating in chess, doesn't matter. But if someone has been able to rise to like the top 1 % or something, usually they will be a top performer. So it's not relevant. A lot of people aren't that way. You want to figure out if they've been at least somewhat competitive. If they haven't done anything competitive, it's a disqualifier. If they've been in the top 1 % of something, it's a pretty good indicator. I Speaker 2 (3:53) actually want to go back to what you said about the former SDR piece. You talked about you've really got to dig in on their numbers. I actually think this might actually take us now to the interview itself. So it sounds like my big proxy that I'm using to figure out if I should take an interview with somebody is... I feel good about them if they've done something really crappy in the past. They've done a very unpleasant, challenging job. I get on the interview itself. Let's actually just talk about the interview. I've got a 30-minute interview. I'm an SDR leader. I'm assuming we've already passed the basic recruiter screen, but this is the first time that I might be meeting this person. Can you just start with high level? How do you recommend an SDR leader run that 30-minute interview? And then let's get into some of the questions that you have them ask. Speaker 1 (4:36) Yeah, you want to like start off kind of put the middies at the very beginning because they've got nerves and that doesn't necessarily get you like the most accurate indicators. So they're really excited to talk to you. Background looks really cool. Just try to figure out what what why they applied. Another thing, another important part of that is just kind of asking why they applied is it's really hard to overcome them not wanting to be in sales. Like sometimes people will apply because. They just, the other things didn't work out. Speaker 2 (5:08) So there's this Speaker 1 (5:08) one person that I interviewed that was like valedictorian at this cup at, uh, in college were extremely bright, extremely, you know, he could be extremely successful, but he just wasn't excited about it. It didn't work out. Speaker 2 (5:23) Um, Speaker 1 (5:23) you, they need to be genuinely excited about sales. So you need to dig into why they're excited about going into sales. Yeah. Speaker 2 (5:29) Okay. So step one, warm them up a little bit, help them get the nerves out. This is cool. Step two, why did you apply in the first place? Do you actually want to be here or did you just spam apply a bunch of jobs? Where do I take things from there? You Speaker 1 (5:41) kind of want to like pull on that thread a little bit more, figure out what they're excited about, what they want to do. One thing that I like to do at some point in the interview is understand how goal oriented they are. So I like to start by asking, do you have goals? Yes, and we talk about their goals. What do they want to do? This also kind of helps you understand whether this actually fits into the puzzle or whether they're just saying they like sales. Speaker 2 (6:05) They ask Speaker 1 (6:06) if they have written goals. If they have written goals and this fits into their written goals, it correlates extremely strongly with top performance. I'm surprised by how few people have written goals. And I'm also surprised by how well it correlates with top performance. Now, it's very easy to lie about that. And so... You have to use like interrogator tricks to figure out if it's actually true. So someone says they have written goals, say, oh, interesting. Like, do you write them down or put them on your computer? They say they write them down. Like, if you've written them down, like, like why? And where do you put them? Why do you put them there? How often do you look at it? If you ask really specific questions about their written goals, it becomes very clear to you as the interviewer if they're telling the truth or not. Because it's very easy to know what the right answer is. It's very hard to stand up to scrutiny if you dig in that way. Speaker 2 (6:54) Where do I take the call from here? Because up until this point, it seems mostly behavioral. Are you doing anything related to screening for the ability to do the job Speaker 1 (7:03) itself? Doing a mock cold call on the call is still very effective. So we'll send them a script ahead of time and just let them know that we'll be doing a cold call on the call. Speaker 2 (7:15) And Speaker 1 (7:15) then just run through the call with them. And then as soon as they make a mistake, cut them off and just say, okay, so this is actually a little bit better. If you do this, it's for this reason. Let's like run it back from the beginning. They go again. We do the same thing three times. And I've never met someone who just like executed perfectly without three corrections. Yeah. But by doing it that way, you kind of get a feel of like what the ping pong is when you go back and forth with this person. You kind of get a vibe for like, what would it be like to coach this person? Are they? you know, do they get flustered or do they take feedback well? And so that's the way I like to do role play. Give them the stuff ahead of time and just have it be a collaborative back and forth thing so you get a sense of what it's like to coach this person. What will you send them Speaker 2 (7:59) in the script in advance? What does the actual script look like? I'm sure we have some people listening that are like, I don't really have a good script for an SDR cold call. Speaker 1 (8:07) I mean, we just did the script that we used at the company. Yeah. So like whatever your other SDRs are using, just send