The Ultimate Sales Development Rep Training Program

In this course, students will get introduced to the tools and technologies used in the trade. These will include foundational tools, outreach tools, marketing tools, lead generation platforms, social media, and CRMs. Students will learn the basics of each and gain experience in using the different tools and technology platforms that they will need to be proficient in to be successful in an entry level sales role.

In session 2.2, we are going to discuss tools that provide critical information you will need to know your product or service as well as your customer. We call them Foundational Tools.

Today we will focus on the Sales Story and the Product Sheet.

In session 2.3, we are going to spend some time on the last two foundational tools, which are standard questions and standard objections.

Both of these topics will be covered in more detail later in this program, but we wanted to introduce the concepts in this particular lesson.

The key takeaway is that your new employer should have a list of standard questions (with a decision tree) and standard objections. Make sure you have access to both.

The Telephone

This is still the most useful tool in your "outreach" tool-kit.

• 92% of all customer interactions happen over the phone.

• It takes an average of 8 attempts to reach a prospect.

• The best time to prospect is between 4:00 and 5:00 PM.

• 80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after a meeting.

THE COLD CALL IS NOT DEAD!!!

The Voicemail

I leave voicemails for a living!

• The eternal debate - to leave or not leave a voice message

• Isn't it easier to just send them an email?

• Responses to voicemails are generally richer and demonstrate a greater level of interest. So what a salesperson loses in quantity, they gain in quality.

In this session, we will discuss email and text messaging as effective outreach tools.

Although it should never replace the phone as the primary tool of choice, email has become a vital outreach tool that helps you hit volume, maintain proper follow-up, and offers an effective way to supplement your phone call effort.

• Critical to learn how to write concisely and clearly.

• Recommended reading:

  • On Writing Well, by William Zinsser

  • HRB Guide to Better Business Writing, by Bryan Garner

Text Messaging can also be an effective communication tool, but should be used for follow up only in the B to B space. And, only after you receive permission from prospects.

In this session, we will provide a general overview of marketing tools that are in place to support the sales effort.

Collateral: Collection of documents and media used to support the sales of a product or service. This can include brochures, newspaper ads, websites, banners, posters and stationary. It can also include newsletters, blogs, promotional items such as samples of the product or t-shirts with the company logo, and mass mailings or emails. Support all aspects of the buyer's journey - from awareness to consideration to decision

White Paper: A white paper is a persuasive, authoritative, in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem and provides a solution. White papers are used to educate their audience about a particular issue, or explain and promote a particular methodology. They're advanced problem-solving guides

Case Studies: A case study, often created for product development, is commonly used to capture functional requirements. A use case provides one or more scenarios for how a solution/system/product/service achieves a specific business goal. Case studies can be really useful when it comes to showing prospects how successful other people within a similar industry has benefited from your product or service.

References: A positive story your customer can share about the successful delivery of products or services used to create demand and sell impact. A critical tool when your buyer's reach decision stage. It provides credibility and might be the one thing that gets buyers to make a positive decision.

Welcome to session 7 of Lesson 2. Today we shift our discussion to Technology. As a reminder, Lesson 2 is only intended to give you exposure to the tools and technology of the trade. We are focusing on what we believe are the most important areas of technology in your role as an SDR in order to build awareness and prepare you not only for a job interview, but to be a day 1 ready employee.

In this lesson, we are going to discuss the Customer Relationship Management System or CRM. A CRM is often used by different departments across the organization for a variety of reasons. However, we will focus on the aspects related to your role as an SDR.

CRM Demonstration - A Quick Introduction

CRM Demonstration: Overview and How to create a contact in HubSpot

CRM Demonstration: Log Activity and Send Email

CRM Demonstration: Schedule Follow Up and Building a Plan

CRM Demonstration - Managing your Pipeline

Today we will begin our discussion on social media. Given the breadth and depth of this topic, it would be easy to get lost in it AND spend too much time on platforms you are already familiar with. Instead, we will focus our discussion on two topics – inbound selling and personal brand.

In this session, we will discuss Social Media and how it can help you develop a personal brand that is aligned with your role as an SDR.

To be clear, this is not a workshop on personal branding. That is a whole course by itself. Instead, we will focus on how to use Social Media to build your brand and how NOT to use it in a way that hurts your brand.

With that said, let’s at least define what I mean by personal brand.

A personal brand is exactly what it sounds like. It is essentially the book on you, or what people think about when they think of you. In a professional setting, you want to establish a brand that helps you do your job.

LinkedIn Demonstration

In session 2.11, we are going to discuss lead sourcing and how you can combine Social Media Platforms with Lead Sourcing Technology to make your life a little bit easier when sourcing new leads to reach out to during your outbound effort

UpLead Demonstration - Lead Sourcing

In session 3.1, we begin our discussion of the science behind selling, which is really Part 1 of the core content for this program. Some of the concepts may be a bit advanced for the SDR role and you may not need to use these techniques until you move into a sales associate. However, we wanted to provide a proper foundation for how to think about selling in the 21st century and more important y to explain the “WHY” behind the key concepts. I’m a firm believer that if we understand the WHY, then we tend to absorb the material better and use the techniques the right way.

How do we do we better understand why and how buyer’s make decisions? By taking a deeper dive into the following concepts…

1. Learning how persuasion works – something I think is rather important since as a sales professional you are in the persuasion business.

2. Knowing and understanding your buyer’s motivations

3. Recognizing where your buyer is in the decision-making process

4. And last, understanding how emotions impact a buyer’s decision.

Over the next two sessions, we will spend time learning more about the science behind persuasion and some techniques that can help you improve in this area. Today, I’d like to share a video that will give you a good primer on this topic. Take a look and I’ll be waiting on the other side.

In this session, I’ll introduce you to the 2 methods of influence that I’d like you to think about as you begin your career in sales. We will take a deeper dive with the first method, which is covert messaging and discuss the second method in the next session, which is overt messaging.

In this session, we will focus our discussion on the second method of influence, which is overt messaging or the Central Route of Influence.

Before we understand the Central Route of Influence, we need to learn a bit about the Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion, which is an advertisement and marketing communication model based on academic research conducted by Richard Petty from Ohio State University and John Cacioppo from the University of Chicago, and is also the basis for Hoffeld’s arguments on influence in the Science of Selling.

As we have learned so far, the buyer’s decision is influenced by your message as well as things that are peripheral to it. While we need to keep the peripheral in mind, our goal is to ensure our buyer’s use the central route when making a decision. A first step in this direction is to better understand who your buyer is and what motivates them both at a professional level and personal level. We do this by developing a buyer persona.

In the last session, we introduced you to the concept of buyer personas and how they can help you connect with your prospective customers. Today, we will discuss the Jobs-to-be-Done theory.

We will demonstrate how using this methodology will ensure we connect our product or service to the buyer personas, align our messaging with how customers actually view our product or service, and build a foundation for your sales story to be used on a go forward basis.

In the last session, we will round out our discussion of the Buyer’s Decision by focusing on the journey many buyers take when making a buying decision. Understanding where our buyer is in their journey is important, because the messaging we use is different depending on the stage they are in.

In the last session, we will round out our discussion of the Buyer’s Decision by focusing on the journey many buyers take when making a buying decision. Understanding where our buyer is in their journey is important, because the messaging we use is different depending on the stage they are in.

In this discussion, we will begin our discussion on the power of small commitments and the six whys, or the SW term in Hoffeld’s Sales Formula.

As you recall from our discussion on the buyer’s decision, there are two routes that buyers will use to process a buying decision, which are the Central Route and the Peripheral Route. While the Central Route is the more important of the two, especially in a B-to-B market, the peripheral route should not be ignored. With that in mind, we will show you an approach that leverages both routes, but first let’s take a quick detour to talk about small commitments and objections.

In this session, we will discuss the first three whys and provide a few steps that will help you secure small commitments from your target customers.

We will cover the following whys…

• Why change

• Why now

• Why your industry solution

Although we may present the whys in numerical order, they could come up at various times. If you recall, in previous sessions I mentioned that conversations need to flow naturally and should not be forced, which means topics will come up at different times with different people. Handle each topic as it comes up naturally rather than forcing a prescribed order by actively listening to your prospective buyers. Again, we will cover more on conversations in lesson 4.

We are taking a quick detour in this session to discuss competition. I thought it was important to provide you with a basic foundation in how to think about competition since we began to see its impact on the why your industry commitment in the last session, and we will certainly see it again when we tackle the last 3 whys.

In session 3.12, we will cover the last 3 whys. We will discuss the concepts at a high level and then return to them in Lesson 4 to see how they can be applied during a conversation.

- Why you and your company?

- Why your product or service?

- Why spend the money?

Today we are going to pause for a moment and recap what we have learned so far in Lesson 3. We will discuss the following topics.

• Persuasion

• Foundation

• Framework

• Leveraging both routes to persuasion

In this session, we will discuss the Emotional State of the Buyer and how it can impact the buyer’s decision making. Emotions are powerful when it comes to making decisions. Whether that decision is to eat broccoli or to buy a product or service.

In this session we will cover the following concepts:

• How to identify the buyer's emotional state

• Nonverbal communication

• Unfiltered communication

• How to change your buyer's emotional state

• Emotional cognition

• The Hawthorne Effect

• How to trigger positive emotions

• And, finally, how to change non-verbal behavior

As we discussed in the last session, a buyer’s emotional state can have a positive or a negative impact on their ability to make a decision. So, ensuring your buyer is in a positive mood rather a negative mood is important if you want to convert a buyer from a lead or prospect into a customer. Unfortunately, we can’t change their emotional state if we don’t know how to identify it in the first place. That is our topic in this session – how do we identify a buyer’s emotional state.

Here’s our scenario. You used your proficiency in thin slicing and determined that your buyer is in a negative mood. Now what? Should you just end the call and hope they are in a better mood tomorrow. Well you could, or you could try to nudge their negative mood to a positive one rather than wait for a sunnier disposition. And, today we will discuss the first strategy for doing just that, which is emotional cognition.

In this session, we are going to discuss the impact that observation has on our emotional state.

Although no one likes to be micromanaged, it has been proven that observation is a powerful tool to ensure your team is producing the way it should be, whether it’s a football team or sales team, people will more likely do what you inspect than what you expect. That’s a hard truth for a lot of people to hear, because we like to think that we all would do the right thing and work hard whether we are being observed or not. Unfortunately, the science tells us otherwise. This phenomenon is known as the Hawthorne Effect.

To date, we have discussed two techniques that can be used to change a buyer’s emotional state, which are passing positive emotions on to your buyer through emotional cognition and leveraging the Hawthorne Effect. In this session, we will discuss the final two strategies which include triggering positive emotions through conversation and changing your buyer’s nonverbal behavior.

We have finally come to our last session in this lesson, and today we are going to attempt to pull all the key concepts of Hoffeld’s Sales Formula together in one cohesive conversation.

In this session, we will begin our discussion on Lesson 4 where the focus will be on the conversation. We build our career one conversation at a time and in sales conversation leads directly to revenue. Given its importance to your career and your job, we dedicated a whole lesson to this topic. In addition, by covering this topic it allows us to move from the theoretical discussion we had in Lesson 3 to a more practical execution of those topics in Lesson 4.

In this session, I’m going to introduce you to some of the basic building blocks of a conversation as well one fundamental rule that you should try to adhere to in every conversation that you engage in.

In this session, we are going to share a Ted Talk with you from Celeste Headlee. This is a little bit longer than our typical videos, but definitely worth it.

I came across this Ted Talk the first time I had to prepare a workshop on the topic of conversation, and it had a big impact on me. Conversation is one of those simple to understand, but hard things to do, but Celeste Headlee does an excellent job breaking down the do’s and don’ts for you.

In this session, we will quickly recap the Ted Talk by Celeste Headlee and finish our intro to the fundamentals that should be adhered to regardless of whether it is a personal or professional conversation.

I hope you enjoyed the Ted Talk by Celeste Headlee. I think it provides some very practical advice on how to have better conversations. I also think it demonstrates, antidotally, that striving to be great at conversations is becoming a bit of a lost art. So why not separate yourself from the competition by improving in this critically important area.

In this session, we will round out our introduction to conversations by discussing Career Conversations, which will include building a framework that you can use as a guide whenever you engage in them.

In this session, we are going to begin our discussion on the Challenger Sale, which is perhaps one of the most significant and comprehensive studies conducted on sales success in a generation.

In this session, we will dive into the teaching aspect of the Challenger Rep, or perhaps a better way to say it, the commercial teaching aspect of the Challenger Framework.

In this session, we are going to discuss the second element of what distinguishes a challenger rep from the rest of the pack, which is tailoring the message to the audience to ensure resonance.

Welcome back. In this session, we will discuss the final element of the Challenger Rep and that is the ability to take control.

Before we jump in, a little perspective on this last pillar of the challenger rep. Taking control is not easy, and often it takes time and a lot of confidence building to be able to do this. And while some people may be naturally gifted at it, we can all develop this skill.

We are ready to wrap up our discussion on the Challenger Sale. In this session, we will bring everything we learned to date in this program and connect it to the Challenger Sale concept.

We are on the homestretch for Lesson 4, and to round things out we are going to take a deeper dive into the power of questions and how to deploy them the right way.

In this session, we will take a slight detour to discuss the Social Penetration Theory and how people disclose information.

The goal in this portion of Lesson 4 is to understand how to ask questions that will allow us to leverage the Challenger Sale framework and the science behind selling to maximize our success. However, we cannot accomplish this goal until we have a better understanding of how human beings actually disclose information. In other words, we need to, once again, listen to what science is telling us.

In this session, we are going to discuss the methodology for asking questions recommended by David Hoffeld in the Science of Selling.

In this session, we are going to walk through the three-level question methodology and explore each level with practical real-world examples to help solidify the concepts in your mind.

Today we will wrap up Lesson 4 with a recap of the concepts we have discussed. However, we will move quickly through the fundamentals, since we did a comprehensive summary at the end of the Challenger Sale discussion, which will leave us more time to connect the three level question methodology with the 6 whys and reconcile it with the Challenger Sale Framework.

In this session, we will begin Lesson 5 as we start to introduce the concept of New Business Development as it relates to your role as an SDR or Sales Associate.

In this session, we are going to cover the importance of volume and demonstrate how understanding individual data points will help you predict outcomes bases solely on your activity.

Now that we know the importance of volume, we will spend time in this session talking about research and how it will help you find the leads needed to generate volume and to help prepare your for conversations when you have them.

Now that we have made it clear that volume and research is critical to your success as an SDR, we will now bring everything together as we discuss the third pillar of New Business Development, which is planning.

In our last two pillars of Business Development, we will focus on the actual execution side of things. Today our focus will be on the Outbound effort, or to put it more simply, the cold calling you will need to do in order to prospect.

In this session, we are going to discuss the importance of follow up, which is often a weak spot with many sales professionals. My hope is that at the completion of this program you will realize that the difference between the top 5% of sales professionals is not due to ability, but persistence, and follow up or lack thereof is how we measure someone’s persistence.

In this session, we will wrap up Lesson 5 with a brief summary of what we learned in our discussion on New Business Development.

Welcome to our course on overcoming the science of networking. In this lesson, we hope to give you a basic understanding on what networking really is, why people don’t like to do it, and how you can overcome those reasons in order to benefit from the positive impact networking can have on your career.

In this session, we are going to break down the science of networking to give you a better sense of how this stuff works, and then offer you a way to think about the process where you can test your network in various ways.

In this session, we are going to show you a method that will help you overcome the science of networking, and hopefully, put you on a path towards networking success.

In this session, we will offer some basic tactical steps you can take to start building your network in an area of interest.

In this session, we are going to discuss a very special type of networking scenario - the live event.

If networking in general has a high ick-factor, then the live event takes that unclean feeling to a whole different stratosphere. It is one of the few things we, as human beings, all seem to have in common….we all hate attending live networking events. But they keep getting scheduled by different organizations, and we all keep attending them, so they must add value or we all would have mercifully put these occasions to rest a long time ago.

Welcome back. Today we are going to sum up Lesson 6 and discuss how it can help you secure a job in sales, but also help you perform in sales as you build a book of business.

Welcome to the final session for the core portion of the SDR program. You have completed 6 lessons that included 65 modules of content on what it will take to be a successful sales professional. Today we are going to review everything that we have learned in this program as well as highlight the key takeaways. Additionally, we will close with what a day in a life will look like when you start your sales career.

Thank you for enrolling in placeable’s Job Search Training Program. Job search is one of those simple-to-understand, but hard-to-do things, often making it a frustrating endeavor. The process of finding a job reminds me of hitting a golf ball (something I don’t do well). The ball just sits there and doesn’t move, but I still can’t hit the darn thing straight.

Our goal is to offer techniques that will improve your ability to find and secure a job. This is complex skill to master, but by taking this course, you are taking the first step at doing just that… if you master this skill, then you will have a considerable advantage in the job market as you build your career.

In this session, we will have an honest conversation about the resume. I’ll say up front, this is perhaps the least important aspect of your job search. And this may come as a surprise to you, since most people that I have worked with over the years seem to spend a significant amount of time working on their resume. Don’t get me wrong, we need to have a resume, and it might as well be as strong as possible, but the resume can become a crutch if you are not careful.

In this session, we will walk through how to develop a baseline resume for your job search.

What is a baseline resume? It is an acceptable version of your resume that can be used to conduct effective job search. You may revise it from time to time to reflect the job you are applying to, but it is and will remain your foundational document going forward.

Although it is less prevalent than a resume, the cover letter continues to be requested by some employers. Especially when hiring at the entry-level. If you are in the market for a new job and your experience is limited, you will likely need to write a strong cover letter. Today we will talk about this topic and how to make sure you create a compelling cover letter in case it is needed.

Today we will begin our discussion on social media. Given the breadth and depth of this topic, it would be easy to get lost in it AND spend too much time on platforms you are already familiar with. In this program, we will focus on topics related social media that can have a direct impact on your search. In later lessons, we will discuss how social media can positively impact your ability to prospect and network, but over the next two sessions, we will focus our discussion on two topics – inbound selling and personal brand.

In this session, we will discuss Social Media and how it can help you develop a personal brand that is aligned with your Job Search Effort.

To be clear, this is not a workshop on personal branding. That is a whole course by itself. Instead, we will focus on how to use Social Media to build your brand and how NOT to use it in a way that hurts your brand.

Welcome back. Today, we are going to spend some time on one particular social media platform before we move on to other topics. While other social media platforms are geared toward your “social life”, LinkedIn is perhaps the most critical platform for your professional life. Don’t get me wrong. We need to make sure your brand is consistent across all platforms, but LinkedIn is where you will spend most of your time when it comes to your career branding.

Welcome back. In this session, we will discuss how to prepare for your job search in a way that will save you time later in the process.

To be clear, this is not the last time we will discuss preparation in this course. For example, we will cover this topic again but from a different perspective when we discuss building a networking plan or the work you need to do to prepare for a job interview. Planning and preparation will always need to be done as we get ready to tackle different topics, such as knowing more about a potential advocate you are about to meet or a potential employer at a career fair. However, there is one topic that we already know we have to tackle, which is you. So, why wait…let’s do the work now.

In this session, we will share a Ted Talk with you from Celeste Headlee. This is a little bit longer than our typical videos, but it was well worth it.

I came across this Ted Talk the first time I had to prepare a workshop on the topic of conversation, and it had a big impact on me. Conversation is one of those simple to understand, but hard things to do, but Celeste Headlee does an excellent job breaking down the do’s and don’ts for you.

In this session, we will quickly recap the Ted Talk by Celeste Headlee and finish our intro to the fundamentals that should be adhered to regardless of whether it is a personal or professional conversation.

I hope you enjoyed the Ted Talk by Celeste Headlee. I think it provides some very practical advice on how to have better conversations. I also think it demonstrates, antidotally, that striving to be great at conversations is becoming a bit of a lost art. So why not separate yourself from the competition by improving in this critically important area.

In this session, we will round out our introduction to conversations by discussing Career Conversations, which will include building a framework you can use as a guide whenever you engage in them.

What exactly is a career conversation? I’m sure the title we used is descriptive enough to give you an idea, but let’s offer a few examples to drive it home. A career conversation can be…

Any conversation that is within the context of your career, which includes…

• Selling

• Negotiating

• Networking

• Interviewing

• Discussing your Performance

• Dealing with a Conflict resolution issue

• Or Managing and leading someone

In this session, we will quickly recap everything we have learned so far in Lesson 1 before moving on to Lesson 2.

The goal of this lesson was to get you ready for a job search. Just like any project, the job search project takes a lot of planning and preparation.

Welcome to Lesson 2 of our Job Search Training Program. This entire lesson is dedicated to uncovering job leads and discussing several methods to convert those job leads into actual interviews. Prospecting is perhaps the biggest difference between those who excel at job search and those who do not.

In this session, we hope to give you a basic understanding on what networking really is, why people don’t like to do it, and how you can overcome those reasons in order to benefit from the positive impact networking can have on your career.

In this session, we will break down the science of networking to give you a better sense of how this stuff works, and then offer you a way to think about the process where you can test your network in various ways.

In this session, we are going to show you a method that will help you overcome the science of networking, and hopefully, put you on a path toward networking success.

In this session, we will offer some basic tactical steps you can take to start building your network in an area of interest.

In this session, we will walk through the work you will need to do to build out a network with purpose.

I want to say up front there is nothing fancy going on here. You need to put the work in. You have to come up with enough names that will lead to the right amount of volume that will create the network you want to create.

In this session, we will begin our discussion on what I consider to be the most potent weapon in your career arsenal that most often goes unused – the informational interview.

Welcome back. In this session, we will discuss how to prepare for the informational interview and start to tell the beginning of the story as we engage with the common contact.

Welcome back. Today, we will discuss the end of the story and the three critical tasks you need to accomplish before ending the conversation.

Today we will discuss a very special type of networking scenario – the live event.

If networking in general has a high ick factor, then the live event takes that unclean feeling to a whole different stratosphere. It is one of the few things we, as human beings, all seem to have in common – we all hate attending live networking events. But they keep getting scheduled by different organizations, and we all keep attending them, so they must add value, or we all would have mercifully put these occasions to rest a long time ago.

In this session, we will have a brief conversation on the best way to work a career fair. The one event where you can completely focus on your job search without anyone putting his or her guard up.

Welcome back. Today we will provide a recap of our refresher on networking and close with a discussion on the two things that separate people that are average at this from those that excel in it.

Welcome back. Now that you have a better sense of how to network and the different techniques to build your network such as informational interviewing, live events, and career fairs, it is time to leverage all your hard work by using your productive relationships to land a job interview.

Method 1 is all about getting referred to hiring managers. To do this right, we need to rely on our productive relationships.

In this session, we will discuss the metrics we recommend as you continue building your network as well as the follow up cadence to cultivate it.

Welcome back. The rubber has finally met the road and in this session, we will discuss how to actually ask your network for an introduction.

In the last 3 sessions, we spent time on how to use your network to provide job leads, advocate for you, and, in the best scenario, introduce you to a hiring manager. In this session, we will pivot to Method 2, which is a much more direct approach.

In this session, we will break down the components of the proposal approach to provide a framework as you move forward.

In this session, we will discuss the last method of converting job leads into interviews, and that is the application.

Welcome back. Today we will sum up everything we learned in Lesson 2 before moving on to Lesson 3 and our discussion on execution.