How Leveraging SDRs Can be a Catalyst for Growth (with Gabe Lullo)

Angela Frank: 00:00:00

Welcome to The Growth Pod.

Today on the podcast we have Gabe Luloo, who is the CEO of Alleop, a sales development agency that works with industry giants such as ZoomInfo, Salesloft and Adobe. He has trained over 8,000 salespeople across diverse businesses.

And during his tenure in Alleyoop, he has personally hired and managed more than 1,500 SDRs.

With over two decades of experience in sales, marketing and executive recruitment, his strategies have significantly driven Alleyoop'sgrowth growth and shaped its corporate culture. Gabe, welcome to the podcast.

Gabe Lullo: 00:00:32

Angela, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. By the way, I'm a huge fan of yours, as you know, and so I'm excited to dig into this.

Angela Frank: 00:00:39

I am very excited. We have chatted very minimally about sales on the podcast and today you are going to be sharing how SDRS can be a catalyst for growth.

And I think this is going to be such an insanely valuable topic. But before we get started, can you share a little bit about why SDRS can be the growth unlock a business is looking for?

Gabe Lullo: 00:01:00

For sure. So the role itself is actually relatively new, but old. And what I mean by that is it was really never called the SDR role.

Actually, I sit down with owners and founders of companies daily that don't even know what SDR means. It really started in the SaaS and tech space about 10, 12 years ago, and it was appointment setters or cold callers or prospectors.

And that's really where we came up from.

And so companies like SaaS and tech and companies like ZoomInfo, for instance, they were using only full sales cycle reps to do all of their growth and their business development.

And we found that it'd be a lot better use of their time to separate the prospecting function from their day and separate their closing function of the day. So that's where SDR really came about. And it has grown now into almost every facet of every industry.

There's over 850,000 SDRs on LinkedIn today, and there's probably a lot more that call themselves something of various different names. And so it's a really big role and it's a big opportunity for companies to take advantage of that, of that role.

Angela Frank: 00:02:06

I love that I personally have found SDRs to be such a valuable part in a growth strategy.

You touched on it slightly that there is a difference between an SDR and an account rep, and that SDR is focused more on that beginning, beginning the sales cycle, appointment setting, things like that.

What is really the other differences between an SDR and what somebody would more traditionally think of as a sales rep or an account manager type role for sure.

Gabe Lullo: 00:02:33

So if you look at the sales journey, right, you have marketing, then you have sales development, SDRs, then you have account executives and then you have client success or customer success. And that's really the journey, if you will. And with customer success, you call account managers too.

So that SDR function, that is the front of the lines, they are the go between, between marketing and sales. And so they're working with marketing because technically, you know, they're only selling time.

They're getting someone to say yes to a demo, they're not getting someone to say yes to a contract or pay anyone any money. So really they're just selling time.

And it's, and it is a more advanced version of marketing, if you will, but it's not yet sales either because again, sales is about, you know, revenue closing deals. So, so it's about pipeline creation and that's in the prospecting functions. We all heard of prospecting, right?

So SDRs, they're focusing 100% of their time and attention on just that prospecting piece.

So to answer your question, what they're not doing is they're not doing relationship building, they're not doing multiple follow ups, they're not doing, you know, demos and detailed, you know, explanations of the product. They're not answering very, you know, nuanced or detailed questions. They're not really looking to get the revenue piece.

They're just getting more transactional, more high volume, definitely personalized and relevant relevancy there. But they're just trying to get as many meetings and many exposures in front of the sales team as possible.

Angela Frank: 00:03:58

And for a business who's considering bringing an SDR in, when does it make sense for them to do that? And are there any industries where SDRs don't work?

Gabe Lullo: 00:04:09

Yeah, so there's definitely controversy and there's definitely two sides to that coin.

My focus is that if you're a founder led sales company and you're the head of your company, but you're also the salesperson, it would make sense, in my opinion, to drive your growth early on with SDRs funneling appointments to you as the founder and selling the opportunity and selling your product or service at that point, not bring in a VP of sales, because if you bring in a VP of sales, the biggest thing they're, the first thing they're going to do is they're going to want to hire a sales team. So usually companies don't have the bandwidth to hire a VP of sales and the sales team that falls underneath them.

So I always believe in founder led growth. Now there's a lot of founders out there that aren't salespeople, they're more product driven guys, developers and coders. And that's great.

But I can tell you, you know, if you are a founder led salesperson, I would bring into STRs early on it. If you're not, then I would look at bringing in an AE and having an SDR support that account executive.

Angela Frank: 00:05:07

And when somebody is looking to bring an SDR in, when does it make sense for them to bring that person in house versus when does it make sense to leverage a company like Alleyoop and outsource that SDR function?

Gabe Lullo: 00:05:20

Yeah.

So what's unique about Alleyoup, which is a big difference between many of our competitors, is we actually help our clients bring in the team after they work with us. So all of our SCRs are hireable, all of our data and technology stack is all transferable.

So many clients come to us at the early stages, we build them a sales development function and then they take it over and buy it out from us and bring it back in house, including the people and the assets with it. So I say that because it's not self serving with what I'm about to say is not for me to just get more customers.

The reality is it's about that 10 to 12 number of SDRs and it makes just mathematical sense.

If you're going to have an SDR manager, if you're going to have technology, if you're going to have data, it's not the cost of the SDR that is the expensive part, it's the cost of the enablement to support that SDR and manage that SDR and stack them with best in class technology and data to allow that SDR to be successful. That's where the money really is the most expensive part. Most people don't see that. Right.

So in our eyes, economically it takes about 10 to 12 SDRs to build up a team that it makes more sense to not outsource it anymore and bring it in house. But if it's less than that, it does make sense to use an agency. You're going to have a lot of better pricing available to you.

Angela Frank: 00:06:41

Yeah.

And I think too, just talking from my own experience, I've seen startups and growing companies really struggle with putting someone who is maybe in a different function and now putting them in charge of sales and tasking them with bringing SDRs in house and figuring out all of the systems in the infrastructure to support that, in addition to trying to set the SDR up for success. So I love what you were saying about making sure that the infrastructure is there, the support is there and the expertise is there.

And then once your team grows, then it would make more sense to bring them in house. When you are seeing somebody bring an SDR onto the team, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see that you know people can easily avoid?

Gabe Lullo: 00:07:26

Yeah, there's a lot of people that are trying to get into the sales role and SDR is usually the starting point. They call it entry level, the lily pad. And I do appreciate that.

And we have hired significant amount of SDRs over the years that really came to us without any experience.

But if you're doing that and if it's your first, what we call founder str, if you're not doing it with us and you're doing this yourself, I would be very careful to not do that until you have some leader SDRs first, some experience SDRs first you want to bring in, it's going to cost a little bit more, but you want to bring in better experienced SCRs that have done this role already.

And unfortunately there's a lot out there right now because the disbursement and the turbulence of the SaaS market over the last few years and put a lot of SDRs out of work.

But it's a great opportunity to find some great SDRs who have done this role, have them come in and then they can mentor and Foster the newer SDRs if you're looking to save some money on payroll. So that's how I would look at that. I wouldn't just my.

The biggest mistakes I see is people are hiring SDRS as an entry level job and it's their very small team. And the tenure, the tenure's not as long as they need it to be.

Angela Frank: 00:08:35

Yeah, I love that.

I think that if you are somebody who's growing a team, you try to look at low hanging fruit opportunities, but you're also trying to be mindful of the budget.

And so just like with your what you're seeing with SDR as I see people in the marketing world doing the same thing, hiring very junior people when spending a little bit more would really get you those greater returns.

Speaking of returns, when someone is working with an sdr, what are some of the key performance indicators that they should be tracking and are there any industry benchmarks where you would know, okay, this sdr, I've brought them in, they've Become acclimated. And now I can sort of benchmark them and know how their performance stacks up.

Gabe Lullo: 00:09:16

Yeah. So we have scorecards built into all of our KPIs and metrics.

We at Alleyu take the analogy of the basketball terminology in the name of our company to heart. So we have a very sports, very competitive analogy throughout all of what we do. But so our scorecards are very specific.

And tracking those daily, weekly, monthly KPIs are very important because it allows, it's not about a micromanagement. It allows the SDR to know what they're good at. It allows an SDR to know what they're capable of.

It gives them the confidence they need to attack the market and it also gives them ways that they need to improve and where they need to get better. So the KPIs and the scorecards, our SDRs love it because it gives them their quote unquote batting average.

So if you know your batting average when you go to the plate, you know, there's a good chance you're going to knock it out and you know those numbers. So to be specific, you know, connects is something we really look at heavily. Dial count is something we look at heavily.

Emails that are being sent, conversions from those conversations to meetings, those are the top that we look at. And then we couldn't take a look at how many meetings we're booking, what our show rates are.

So we book a meeting, but just because we book it and then no one shows up, you know, that there's really not value there. So we look at the show up rates and then we also take a look at, you know, scoring of those leads. How can we get more of these?

Are these the right people we're talking to? Do we want to, you know, change and pivot our messaging? Because we're not talking to the right people.

So that's the waterfall of metrics that SCRs are typically looking at.

Angela Frank: 00:10:51

So it sounds like you provide really great infrastructure with what you guys do at Alley oop. What are some things that people should consider when outsourcing the SDR function to an agency?

Gabe Lullo: 00:11:02

Yeah, the big thing you want to look at is are our reps going to be dedicated to my account? There's a lot of companies out there that are in call centers, maybe in other parts of the world.

They're kind of disconnected, they're maybe on different time zones. So I always look at something where they've done this before and they're dedicated to my account. That's super important.

Secondly, are there multiple channels that the SDR is working in. Are they doing phone, are they doing email, are they doing LinkedIn? Are they able to create videos? Are.

Is that in the SDRS world or is it across multiple people? There's some agencies out there that separate that we don't.

We think it's best that the SDR manages all those channels because it creates a more organic dialogue. I think the phone actually more right now is, is not only important, but it's bouncing back in a big way.

You know, with AI and with automation and with all these tools. There's a lot of spam filters, there's a lot of emailing that is happening that is not working as effectively as it used to.

So the phone is having a resurgence.

And using the phone, some may think that's crazy that no one talks on the phone anymore, but frankly, that is the biggest way to get meetings in a B2B world. So making sure that those things are in place are really, really important.

Angela Frank: 00:12:17

Amazing. And Gabe, you are somebody who has helped thousands of salespeople become better at what they do. You are the CEO of Alley oop.

And I'm sure all of this keeps you busy, but I'm curious to know what's next for you. What are you working on?

Gabe Lullo: 00:12:31

Yeah, so right now we are actually adding some new programs to our, to our company. So we're really excited about that. We've launched something called Plug and Play last year that is really designed for enterprise accounts.

You know, companies like Peloton and other big brands are able to take our team and actually plug them into their infrastructure, which is really great because it allows big companies to take advantage of our best in class services without having to, you know, focus on just a small endeavor. So we're working on that and that's really good.

We're also adding, speaking of this content, you know, content is creation is becoming a big place right now in the sales development world. SDRs are becoming very well known. They're content creators and we're spending a lot of time on LinkedIn.

We're spending a lot of time on social because it creates, you know, you know, brand awareness, it creates social proof and it also gets our SDRs to just to stand out as industry experts. And it does attract a lot of meetings as well. So we're having a lot of fun on social.

Angela Frank: 00:13:36

I love that. I think that is all so exciting. From being able to help enterprise clients to doubling down on that content arm.

I'm really excited to see how everything pans out for you. If anybody is listening to your conversation, and they're like, man, I need an sdr and I needed it yesterday.

Where's the best place for them to get in touch with you? Or alley oop.

Gabe Lullo: 00:13:59

Yeah, our website's great. Alleyoop IO. It's not alleyoop.com. that's a totally. That sells makeup, so we don't do that. But Alleyoop I.O. is a great source for information.

You can always put in a form, and it'll be directed right to our growth team. If you want to connect with me individually, directly, I'm on LinkedIn. Just Gabe Lulo, and I respond to all my DMs.

Angela Frank: 00:14:21

Amazing. And all of that is linked in the description. So if any of that sounds good to you, it's right there for you.

Gabe, thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed our conversation, and I know our audience got a lot out of it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Growth Pod.

I look forward to seeing you in the next one.