Newsletter #11
SDRs: "I will never buy from your company because of your mistake" is usually not true.
“Because of what you did as SDR, I will never buy your company’s product.”
If you are an SDR, there is a good chance you will receive some version of this response at some point in your career. Maybe the prospect didn’t like the way you reached out or maybe you made a legitimate mistake.
It is important to think clearly about messages like this before making emotional or irrational adjustments. [1]
It is usually not literally true.
People who say this are often not actually decision makers
We sell primarily to sales leaders. When an SDR tells me they get a message like this I’ll smile and say:
“Good news, I am a psychic and I predict that this person is not actually a qualified decision maker.”
And sure enough, the person who said something like, “I will never buy software from a rep who uses an emoji in an email” is usually an AE. [2]
I am sure at some point I will say that and be wrong but so far it hasn’t happened.
How can I be so sure?
Well, for sales leaders, making absolute judgments about a software solution based on how the SDR reaches out (even if the SDR made a legitimate mistake) is unlikely to lead you to the optimal software.
And even though buying suboptimal software alone might not sink this sales leader, that type of irrational/emotional decision often indicates that other irrational/emotional decisions are being made.
For sales leaders, the consequences of poor decision-making are immediate, measurable, and visible. And visible to a lot of people whose monthly finances depend on those results.
In sales, poor decision makers do not spend much time in those roles.
Maybe in other departments it is easier to make poor decisions and fly under the radar unless something tragic happens. I just have a hard time believing it’s common.
Consequences for other departments might not be immediately visible in the same way as sales, but they can be very severe. Other departments (hopefully!) have different, but reliable ways to hold leaders without a revenue number accountable in the short term.
You will often find that the person who said this is not actually the right person to reach out to.
When a decision maker says this, they might not mean it literally
Sometimes, I’ll hear about this, or see someone on LinkedIn say something like this who is definitely a decision maker.
It’s possible that they said this without it literally being true.
They may feel that way in the moment, but not long term. E.g., I occasionally tell myself and others that I’m not drinking diet coke again, but the long-term version of myself tends to disagree.
They may be trying to make a point, and phrasing it this way is a good way to get attention. [3]
You may have annoyed them, and they want to annoy you in return. Not to alarm you, but yes, SDR work sometimes annoys people.
Why am I pointing this out?
Since receiving these types of responses can be emotional for SDRs, they will sometimes make irrational adjustments based on them without digging into:
Is this an actual buyer?
Is this literally true?
Is this (sample size of 1) is part of a broader trend that warrants adjustment?
If an SDR makes adjustments based on their emotional response to this type of message, without considering the previous three questions, it can do a much more harm than good.
There is often valuable info in these responses from prospects, but you need to think about it clearly before making adjustments.
I am going to do a livestream next week on “How to Think About Rejection as an SDR”. You can subscribe to Sam Nelson Live with this button.
[1] Especially when it could be an excuse not to do work that you don’t particularly enjoy doing.
[2] Or a sales trainer. Sales trainers are unlikely to be decision makers for enough potential seats to justify cold outbound. But, even though they shouldn’t be in sequence in the first place, they will respond this way so often that it ends up being a high percentage of these types of responses.
[3] If you are a decision maker, you can reliably go viral on LinkedIn with the following script: “If you do [sales best practice], I will never buy software from you.”