Shownotes
What if making more calls is actually hurting your sales results?
Across 65 SDRs, the ones booking the most meetings aren’t the highest-activity reps—they’re often making fewer calls.
If your outbound feels like a grind with inconsistent results, the issue might not be effort—it might be the model you’re using.
In this episode, Ray breaks down why the “numbers game” is outdated—and what actually drives consistent pipeline today.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
• Why high call volume creates more problems than it solves in modern outbound
• The hidden operational costs behind “cheap” SDR strategies
• How top-performing reps approach prospecting differently—and why it compounds over time
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Welcome to The Ray J. Green Show, your destination for tips on sales, strategy, and self-mastery from an operator, not a guru.
About Ray:
→ Former Managing Director of National Small & Midsize Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he doubled revenue per sale in fundraising, led the first increase in SMB membership, co-built a national Mid-Market sales channel, and more.
→ Former CEO operator for several investor groups where he led turnarounds of recently acquired small businesses.
→ Current founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we currently help IT companies scale sales: www.MSPSalesPartners.com
→ Current Sales & Sales Management Expert in Residence at the world’s largest IT business mastermind.
→ Current Managing Partner of Repeatable Revenue Ventures, where we scale B2B companies we have equity in: www.RayJGreen.com
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Transcripts
We manage 65 SDRs that prospect outbound for MSPs exclusively. And the ones who are getting 10 appointments a month, 15 appointments a month—the ones who are getting deals that actually convert into a sales, like in-pipeline—they are not the ones who are making the most calls out of the bunch.
The people who are blowing the doors off in terms of results are getting smoked in terms of volume by other people who aren't getting results. This actually isn't anything new, by the way. Like, this is going—you know, going back 15 years in sales management—I've seen the exact same pattern. And it is this mindset about volume and sales being just a numbers game, and prospecting being this lower-level thing and just "grind it out" type of stuff that you just push as much volume as you can and you expect to get really good results.
And it's the same as when I started in management; it is the same now. But even more so now, I would argue that that is not the way to get maximum results. And I am—I'm now, I feel like I'm on a mission to change how B2B companies, especially MSPs, think about outbound.
Because forever, the playbook has been the same: like, you just—you hire the cheapest person that you can find. If they, like, barely speak English, fine. Like, if they'll work for free as an intern, even better, right? Like, get anybody that you can to sit in that chair. And then have them—give them a script and have them make the most number of calls that they can in a day, right? Like, just play a numbers game. Like, "Hey, here's a script, here's a list, and go." Like, make 150, make 200 calls a day.
Like, listen, if that's your game, like if that's the game that you were playing, you will get some results. Because at volume, with enough activity, like, a blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while. But here's what comes with results when you do outbound that way:
One is you—you've now got the nightmare of keeping up with a lot of data, right? Like, a lot—the list issue is a—is a big deal for a lot of companies. Because if you're cranking out 150 or 200 calls a day, think about what that means in terms of lists that you have to keep that person busy. You've got to go get raw data, then you've got to clean it, you've got to verify it, you've got to enrich it, you've got to make sure they're qualified, make sure they're in your market. So you set up all these other processes, like, you know, "Hey, let's—let's send them direct mail and see what comes back," or you try to get AI to do it in—in really small chunks, or you hire yet another person—like a cheap overseas person—to make calls before you have your next cheap person make calls. And even then, you're still going to have data issues, right? So that's one.
Two, because you've hired, like, anybody with a pulse—like the cheapest person you can—you're going to experience a shitload of turnover. You didn't hire the right person to begin with and you're probably not paying them properly. You've created a job that no high-caliber person or even high-potential sales person—like not even with a ton of experience, but even a high-potential sales person—wants that job. Like, nobody wants to go just pound out 150 or 200 bullshit calls a day. So you're going to churn through reps—like anybody that's willing to do the job at the price you're willing to pay—and you're going to play musical chairs constantly replacing people, which requires building a whole another machine in and of itself.
And third, you've got to invest a ton of your time—or somebody's time—into quality assurance. Because you've hired the bare minimum, you've scraped a list, and now you've got somebody that's out there making a ton of phone calls with your name attached to them. And you may not know exactly what they're saying, or you at least have to make sure that they're saying what you want them to say. So you've got to—to sit down and—and spend a reasonable amount of time listening to calls and spot-checking and making sure this person's putting stuff in the CRM and making sure that they're following the process because, again, when you start with lower quality—or not the right person in the seat at all—then the likelihood that they're executing that job really well is pretty low. So you've got to spend a chunk of your week now in QA, or somebody else's time on—on your team.
And even after all of this noise, you—you might get a couple of appointments a month. That's what the volume game will produce. It will produce some results. And given the lifetime value of an MSP deal, maybe that's fine, right? Like for—for you, maybe that's fine on paper. But that is a lot of shit to manage for a couple of appointments a month, especially if those appointments don't show—because this—this type of approach, usually have a lower show rate—if they aren't high-quality appointments, if they aren't qualified, if they don't convert into actual deals. Now you're managing this whole thing for something that now finally creates a couple of appointments a month but doesn't turn into any deals. By the way, if you—if you like this kind of stuff in—in the frameworks that you can actually use alongside it, I actually break a lot of this down weekly in my newsletter; it's raysemail.com. You can sign up—completely free.
So here's the next piece. This—this approach, when you're—when you're going about it this way with—with prospecting—like, it also burns through your market. Because right now, there is more competition in the MSP space than there ever has been before. There are more people marketing, more people selling, more MSPs that are kind of skimming the surface with prospecting like this, right? Like, there are more companies that are now reaching out to prospects in the same area and while when you take, like, the volume approach like this, you look and sound like everybody else. Like, you—if you've got a vertical or a geography and you're barely touching the surface on the market potential because you're—you're more focused on the activity and checking the box and getting it done than you are on the productivity, the outcome, the results, and doing it the best possible way.
Which means you're not maximizing the value of your market or list. So if I give two companies the same data—two MSPs the same data, the same list to prospect—and one is going to take this approach and get that person in the seat and give them that script and make that many phone calls, and somebody else is going to do it a different way—which is more qualitative, more targeted, and focused on results as opposed to activity—in terms of per-lead basis, think about what the value difference is.
For the SDR, like, it creates no future for the people that you're bringing on, right? Like when your—your mindset is, "Hey, just give me somebody with a heartbeat and put them in the chair and have them make as many calls as they can for the least amount of money that I—that I can pay them," like, you're not looking at them as somebody who can grow into another role. And that's a huge missed opportunity for—for any B2B company. Because the SDR—that—that role—is one of the hardest jobs in sales. And if somebody proves that they can do that well, they can do a whole bunch of shit, right? Like, you—you should be sending them through the organization, not treating them as disposable. Like, they are doing grunt work and hard work that other people don't want to do that's filled with a lot of rejection that you're developing a lot of skills, you're learning a lot about your—your prospects and your—your future customers. And then you say, "Okay, let's—we're going to churn you and—and leave." And then we're going to try to find a salesperson full-time that hasn't done that part of it, right? So it's just a missed opportunity.
And—and then there's the obvious one: like, this approach is old. It was old when it was given to me 10, 15 years ago in sales. And I—and I said, "There's no way." I got my first management job and I'd been in that environment—I'd been, you know, making—actually, I didn't—I didn't make the calls; I got in trouble all the time for not making the—the volume of calls. But I got promoted into management, and like, one of the first things I did was kill the—the call minimums. So like—guess what? I look at my comp plan and what my goals are, and none of them have anything to do with calls; they all have to do with results.
That mindset is just archaic. And yeah, you'll squeeze out a couple of appointments—I'm not saying you won't—but there's a way to do outbound right now that requires way fewer calls. It lets you attract a way higher-caliber salesperson, lets you maximize the value of your market and your list and your data, and gets you substantially better results. And the way to do that is really simple: you play a longer game with your prospecting, right? Treat your outbound with the same respect that you treat the rest of your sales process—and hopefully, you treat the rest of your sales process with the appropriate amount of respect.
Like I said earlier, like, we run a fractional SDR program. So we've got 65—just over 65—SDRs prospecting for MSPs, and I'm telling you, I'm looking at the people setting the most appointments every single month and they are not doing it by churning through raw lists and churning through reps and maximizing the number of calls that each person makes every day. Like yes, there's a sufficient amount or—a reasonable amount of activity that needs to occur to get a result, but the people with the highest activity, their—their outcomes are not correlated with the highest amount—the best results, I'll say.
Like, the people who are getting results consistently—the MSPs that are hiring good people—they're getting a decent list, they're—they're enabling—like, they're allowing their reps to do research to—to maximize the value of their actual time. They're looking at prospecting campaigns over the course of six months, not six days. Right? So they're looking at the ROI of their prospecting activity over the course of six months and their SDRs kind of building some pipeline, tracking some notes, improving the—the quality of the list, they're doing some marketing to them, and they're not looking at it and saying, "Oh, you know, we made like three calls or two calls last week, we didn't get it—like put them back in the—the deal and call them again in six months".
Right? Like the people who are—are really killing it aren't banking on one—one call and hoping for a conversation. They're building pipeline, right? Like just like a salesperson builds pipeline. They're tracking dispositions, they're tracking when prospects are out—when they've—they've got a contract coming up and they say something, they track that in the notes. They're tracking when prospects—like why they don't want to set an appointment. So when they call back, they've got some context, they've got some intel, they've got a reason to call. And because of that, they don't need to build this volume-based machine.
They don't need to hire a $3-an-hour person to make one call and then hire a $6-an-hour person or $5-an-hour person—or the cheapest person they can find—to make the next call. They don't have the same quality issues, their list is more valuable and it gets more valuable with the way that they're prospecting, and their reps are in a better position to grow. And I'll give you a real—a real example. We have an SDR, Lazan, based in South Africa working for an MSP. When she started, the owner told us, like, "We want her to read this script. Like don't let her deviate".
We had a conversation with that MSP owner. We said, "Listen, like give us some flexibility here. Like you've hired us as sales experts. Trust us a little bit here. Like give us some autonomy and trust us on this." Six months later, Lazan is a top-five SDR in our program. She's crushing it on appointments, right? I mean it's like 5, 10 plus appointments every single month. And the business owner is now going to her and saying, "Hey, what other list should we go after? What other vertical should we target? Like what else can we do?" She's ascending in the organization. She's helping them grow. She's helping—like she's conveying and delivering the R&D and the intel that she's learning and getting on the calls. She's getting that installed back into the company. They're now asking her for—for input. She's giving it. And they're working together and—lo and behold—their shit's getting a lot better. They are getting a lot more sales and a lot more opportunities.
That's what happens when you stop treating outbound like a numbers game and start treating it like a craft. I am on a mission to change this, and I'm telling you, the way that I'm talking about works. And I hope it helps; I hope it's resonating. Adios.
