In sales, your learning and development is never done. But the foundation you build will not only accelerate your progress, but be something you refer back to throughout your entire career. So, where do you start?

In this episode, Luigi is joined by Andrew Palummo. A fresh face at Qualtrics in March 2021, he went on to win SDR of the Year for the Asia Pacific & Japan region. Join Luigi as he finds out exactly what Andrew's ramping journey looked like.

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Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn.

You'll find Luigi on LinkedIn too.

The Create Pipeline course equips you with everything you need to succeed as a professional salesperson, whether you're still ramping, or ready to perfect your skills. Find out more.

Why are you saying. Well, unfortunately I had a week off because I got a bit of the man flu. I was dying there for a week, so I actually missed awake. And I was really excited to talk about the opportunity that comes when a new quarter starts again. So here I am a week late, but something that I really was giving this a lot of thought, because just before the quarter was ending, I was seeing a lot of content or seeing a lot of people discuss the fact that it's the last day of the quarter.

Keep going, keep pushing, get those last minute deals. That would be challenged by that. Right? Because as a sales professional, one of the things that separates us from everybody else is our ability to plan or think about this. We're not rushing our prospects to a point a decision. We're not doing those deals, you know, signed today last day of the month and you get those discounts.

Right. That's the reason why there is such a, still a trust gap between buyers and sellers. When we pull out those last minute, try kind of tactics to get people to sign great sellers ensure they have a robust pipeline, then yes, there are times when. Has momentum. There's a massive trigger or reason for a deal to maybe that sometimes would take three months.

They're more closed in two weeks, but that's not a norm. And I think my message, and I just want to sort of rely before we get into these incredible topic for this week is just think about your pipeline. Now it's the start of the quarter. You've got a little bit of time up your sleeve now to build your pipe.

Now, the key thing to remember though, is the outcomes that you get and the sales results and the performance that you're going to achieve these. As a result of the work you did last quarter. So if you have pipeline any pipeline, deficiencies, if you had any issues with your pipeline, you need to get onto it now because waiting to the end of the quarter to, to drag those last-minute deals across the line means you're going to have a vicious circle.

Each quarter, you chasing your tail that creates a bit of nervousness, anxiety, stress it, stuff that you want to reduce. You want to reduce those feelings, those emotions, because they're the. That can trigger certain actions that lead us to a point of trying to drag opportunities that are just not ready to get to that point a decision. So that's something I want, you know, I want it to really talk about before we get into today's topic.

"So, my name's Ellis, I work at DocuSign as an ABR. And the reason I started Sales IQ was because I really needed that guidance and that training to make sure that the outreach that I was doing was hitting the nail on the head. So I was lucky enough to start the program early on in this role and since then I've been pretty successful and last quarter I finished on a 185%. So I've seen some huge results by adopting the principles."

Our next cohort is starting soon. So to learn more, go to www.salesiqglobal.com, or if you have a team of sellers, talk to us about our in-house offering. Control your pipeline, control your destiny, with Sales IQ.

And what I love about this particular charities edge is very great. Look, he hasn't got a years and years of experience under his belt, but what he does. Is it incredible attitude and mindset, what comes to learning and the fact that he's really taken the time, not just as an SDR, just to master the role of SDR, but he was even going deeper funnel to learn more about what else happens post that lead to AA transition so that he could really.

But the world of the AA and how that could impact his area of the funnel. And now that he's moved into the AA role, what I've absolutely loved of saying him he's appetite and willingness to continue to learn, continue to build his capability. So that being at number one, SDR it wasn't luck. It wasn't just because he had a good list of accounts.

He had a good patch. He had a good. And bang. He was able to make magic happen. He did it based on being very intentional and deliberate with the way that he focused his time. And again, that's where this relates to thinking about your quarter. Success has got to come from your level of intention or how intentional you get and how focused you.

I'm really planning your time so that you can allocate your time to, you know, the high payoff activity, the revenue raising activities that are going to yield you results. So I can't wait to get in into this episode with Andrew. Again, it's a great episode because it shows that anything's possible.

Welcome to the show Andrew

And pretty much, I, I like a lot of people. I fell into sales, but because it would the, I guess it, the catalyst was a good friend of mine now. I met him at a dinner party and long story short, he came. I told him my story. And he pretty much said like, have you ever considered a career in sales?

And I said, well, not really. And he just kept pestering me throughout this, a dinner party, to be honest. But yeah, I started looking at the job description. And I was just a lot of the words in those jobs, job descriptions really resonated with me.

I thought I w would be raised right away for county executive roles. But I'm so glad that I didn't skip this initial step especially in terms of what I've learned in terms of outbound cold. Oh yeah. Cold outreach and outbound prospects. Yeah. And like, I guess what resonated with me was.

The, so I'm a numbers back. I have got a numbers background, but like the, the engineering profession just didn't suit my way of working. I'm a people person by nature and just that plus other things like autonomy and having a commercial acumen and was, yeah. Other kind of things like that, where, what resonated really with me.

My cold, the the quality of my cold emails. So that was very much my strategy. Like, get my numbers up first, get it up to a point where I'm comfortable operating at that level. And then from there look into, into ways that I can really put hyper-personalized my approach to some of these prospects.

Cause you just you're so aware of your surroundings and everything, but I knew that it was going to be like that. I just had to get myself up until that point. Outbound prospecting was like second nature. And then I can start spending the rest of my time or the rest of what's left of my energy for the day on quality. And, and in, in the hyper personalising.

You know, I'm definitely not the first SDR at culture SAP Qualtrics. And I, I definitely won't be the last, but there was a guy before me who kind of paved the way. Yeah. In terms like he, he smashed, he set a lot of records firstly, ours globally at our company. And to see him hit his numbers with a third of my activity, that's, that's kind of what.

I guess like how I designed my strategy. I knew that numbers were a part of this game, but at some point I'd had to get better at quality because there's people like this guy who's doing literally a third of my activity per month and still smashing his target. So yeah.

Yeah, he was of the same, the same methodology who was doing lists outreach. But getting more than these colleagues that were doing triple the volume that he was doing, because he was spending a lot of time finding trigger events and hyper personalizing and making sure his outreach was super relevant and he extended his cadence out to 18 touches.

Over 15, I think 15 day outreach period. Now, before we jumped into this session, when we're in the green room, you spoke about the fact that you'll ha you have a very specific sequence that you using. Do you wanna talk us through that, that sequence, that you're, or that cadence that you're using to reach out to prospects?

She mentioned it on a whim in, in the middle of a paragraph. And I literally pause. I was like, wait, hold on a second. This is what, what was that? And she didn't even speak about it at all. She was, it was kind of like, oh, obviously. Sam Nelson's a AGOGE sequence. And then she went on and I was like, what do you mean it obviously?

So, yeah, I looked it up and I was like, this, this is, this is exactly what I was looking for. So very early on in my career, I was very much hunting for a sequence that would suit me and how I'd like to work. And given this guy before me, who, who paved the way as his is, shout him out locally. He paved the way before me and by, I did look at his sequence and it, one of the things that really bothered me about it was it was 0% automated.

So one of the, one of the key benefits to, to Sam Nelson's a AGOGE sequences that it's, it's 33% automated. And I think that's pretty good for an outbound prospecting sequence.

Yes, it was the automation. But the fact that the way that Sam Nelson's designed it is that it doubled doubles down or could Drupal's down on the initial research that you do on the prospect so that when you're looking for your trigger in that cold email and, and how you personalize that. Initial email, it doubles, it doubles down on the time you spend on that because the follow-up emails yes, they're automated, but they're very clever in that they just say, have you had a chance to read this in the same email thread?

It essentially brings that email back to the top of their inbox with no extra work or effort on your part. You've just reutilize that research that you did in that initial email. And that's, I think that coupled with Tony uses combo methodology has really hit, helped me hit the response rates and open rates that I've achieved over this past year.

In very few words, what your initial email included and there's also a phone call. So this is the one part where I've diff I've kind of changed the AGOGE sequence to a degree. The original traditional AGOGE sequence has all three of those things. So email LinkedIn connection requests and phone call all on the same day.

I actually changed the phone call to the second day. Otherwise the AGOGE sequence. Exactly the, almost exactly the same as how Sam Nelson originally intended it.

You found the sequence you've played around with it. You're executing it and you've been able to achieve. Insane results. That's that's, that's helped you be calm, SDR VR, but for many sellers that are probably listening to this, they're probably going, mate, I've already got a sequence I'm using outreach sequence, but I'm not hitting the result.

What, outside of the sequence and what are some of the other things that you've done in your role that's allowed you to achieve the outcome?

And I didn't realize what was going on at the time. I'd never been exposed to one. But essentially he was like, we're going to accredit. A certain amount of points for the number of job applications that you submit, the number of responses you get back from recruiters whether they be external agencies or internal talent acquisition people, and the number of interviews that I.

You know, I get invited to, I guess, so, and straightaway that made me very results driven, which I love. I'm not a time driven person. It's it's all about outcomes. And so I. You know, there's the story tells itself. I ended up with Qualtrics, but the thing is, I, I S I, I love that approach of working. So I applied it to my outbound prospecting.

So I believe one of our one of my colleagues out of our Dallas office, Trent Dressel, he actually has his own YouTube channel and has a great YouTube video on this on how to set up your end point system. For me it's yeah, I set up a, a daily goal of points and I credited certain outbound, outbound tasks or daily activities to a value of points.

So mine's pretty, mine's pretty trivial though. So one cold call, one cold email sent one seek one new prospect added to a sequence, one LinkedIn task, whether that'd be a connection. Or a LinkedIn InMail, they're all worth one point. And yeah, it's, it's very clear what I need to do every single day in terms of being productive and, and, and completing outbound prospecting tasks.

It's great for making sure that you productive every day. But one of the other main, main reasons why I set the system up and I've been telling my fellow SDRs this as well, is that like, we could be prospecting till midnight every night. There are so many people out there that are suitable for our products or services that we're trying to sell.

And what the appoint system does is it draw helps you draw that line in the sand. So at the end of the day, independent of the number of meetings that you've booked for an account executive, or if you're an account executive and I'm abating meetings, you book for yourself, you can close that laptop lead and say, and be happy and satisfied with the level of work you've done.

And that that's one of the main reasons why I set it up for myself as well.

And get new prospects interested or even excited about the product or service that you're selling. But yeah, it's anyone who's listening to this right now. And who has a profession in sales? You have your highs and your lows. So you have weeks where. Yeah, literally a week or two weeks when nothing's working for you.

And if in my, in my opinion, if you've set up some sort of system to hold yourself accountable and you've hit that goal every day, you can't feel bad or, you know, beat yourself down and say, oh, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm just not a good salesperson or, you know, whereas as long as you're putting the work in, you can only be happy with that.

It's that classic case of control. Or you can control, worry about what you can control. And your daily activity is a hundred percent is in your, your, in your hands.

Those incremental steps that we take every day, that's going to lead us to a particular outcome. And I would love to understand, like, if you, obviously, you. You've you've achieved a great outcome, right? SDR the you've got yourself, the promotion and you're developing a career path for yourself, which is awesome.

But if you had the opportunity to go back and start your career again, as an SDR, what's one or two things that you'd do differently. After reflecting on, on the time so far in the role?

There was a lot of learning at the start, but everything that I've oh, you know what, actually, no, I take that back objection, handling over the phone. So that's something that I'm still not the best at. But at the very early on, I was like, are, you know, I don't, I don't need that. You know, I'll, I'll do my calls or I'll, I'll be email heavy, you know, I wouldn't do, I all avoid my calls.

I'll set up a sequence without calls kind of thing. And I think a lot of people are like that as well. Cold calling isn't the best. But when you want to use something like the AGOGE sequence, those calls. The critical. And because it's, it's another, it's another medium for those prospects that say, oh yeah, that's right.

I need to get back to that person because you know that classic case just because they're ignoring you, it doesn't mean it's as no people are just busy. Right. So. Even if you don't get through just them seeing that miss call them, seeing that voicemail is huge for you getting a response on your email.

So I guess like my objection handling is a lot better than what it was five, six months ago. But it still has a lot of work. And I think that's because like, I, I avoided it to a degree when I first started. So I think, yeah. I think that, yeah, that'd be my answer.

So there's so many different ways. Like you can always be improving in this profession. There's never a time. You go on like this easy, this is the golden bullet. This is how you always approach people. And it's always going to work. That's not the case. And Yeah, you've always got to be listening and learning, I think for sure.

I mean, what outreach has been able to do is amazing. And you've taken the opportunity that's in front of you. To be, you know, to give yourself the best pathway in achieving success in a sales career. So I think that's awesome. And before we finish up, mate, where is the best place for our listeners to find you connect with you if they want to ask you a question following now, listening to this episode?