Opportunity Briefing #8

Last night I got dinner with 3 TopSDRs who are based here in New York. All of them are working at great companies, but at very different stages. One is at a Series A startup, one is at a Series F startup (i honestly didn’t know that existed) and one is at a publicly traded company. Here are a few things I learned:

• Sales people like meeting other sales people - we’ll do more in-person events in the future. Maybe we’ll even come to different cities and do meetups across the country
  

• Come for the product stay for the people - Product was ultimately the most important factor in these guys’ decisions to join their respective companies. This makes sense because without a good product salespeople are setup for failure. However, once it’s been established that the company has a good product, it all comes down to culture + team environment.
  

• Gifting is big right now - Each of the reps mentioned that they are all doing some kind of custom gifting campaign right now to target accounts. I heard everything from craft beers, to customer coke bottles, and coffee mugs with alma maters on them. TBD if it works!
  

• What other people think DOES matter - One thing we talked about was how people’s perceptions of you internally matter a lot. At the end of the day, when senior people are in the room deciding who to promote and who to let go, their personal feelings about you WILL surface. Make sure people know who you are AND like you. Honestly, this can be as easy as just showing up every day with a positive attitude. Don’t underestimate how far that goes.
  

• If you get hung up on your losses you will lose - Each of these guys had tons of war stories about people yelling at them, telling them to F-off etc. However, each of them actively recognized the importance of just moving on. The reps who fail are the ones who get hung up on their failures.
  

• Surround yourself with people you want to be like - One of the guys at dinner explicitly said that he looks at his AE and thinks “that looks cool, I want to learn how to do that”. IMO that’s how everyone should feel at this stage in their career. If you don’t look at the people around you and think “I want to be like that” then you might be in the wrong place.

We have a lot of opps in the pipeline including the one I sent around last week (reposted below). Also, if anyone reading this makes a referral and I place them I’ll pay you a percent of our fee.

Please send this letter around to other friends/colleagues in the SDR world!

And stay tuned for in-person events near you!

-Andrew

One new opportunity in the pipeline today:

Company Overview

• Female-founded business based in NYC, empowering non-profits to build relationships with grantees and efficiently distribute and track funds.

Role Details

• Position: Senior Business Development Representative

• Compensation: $90-100k OTE

• Location: NYC (~3 days per week in-office)

Team & Growth

• Current Team: 2 Account Executives and 1 SDR

• Path to AE: Realistic opportunity to move into an Account Executive role within the next 6 months