During my time at #Rainmaker16 this week, I had the opportunity to sit in on a breakout session that provided a unique perspective from the founders of 3 companies: Crystal, Datanyze, and Sigstr.
Drew D’Agostino: Founder & CEO of Crystal (helps professionals communicate more effectively with personality data). He previously co-founded and served as CTO of Attend.com (an event management software company in Boston).
Ben Sardella: Co-founder and CRO at Datanyze (an all-in-one sales intelligence platform that helps companies find and reach prospects). Ben previously served as VP of Sales at Kissmetrics.
Dan Hanrahan: Sigstr founder & CEO (previously lead go-to-market teams at iGoDigital and ExactTarget).
Alongside these 3 fine gentlemen, Sean Kester (VP of Product Strategy at SalesLoft) served as moderator and led the conversation.
The session started with how each founder uses their own solution to help their sales development teams, or more simply put, “eating your own dog food.” Each founder was then asked what they do to set up their SDR teams for success.
Ben: “We all want a lot. But we also want to be effective. I’ll take personalization over mass volume. Segment your audience into specific buckets, then build your templates around that and measure effectiveness.”
Dan: “Personalize content based on a specific vertical and equip your sales development team with that material.”
Drew: “Include screenshots of your solution and how it relates to the prospect by including their data. A strategy that is around personalization but that is also scalable goes a long way.”
Dan: “Look to your sales development team for feedback on what specific content will resonate best with that particular audience.”
Question from the moderator: “How has the landscape of a sales development team changed during your career?”
Drew: “The more you leave out the better (with email). It can come down to one line of information that triggers a response.”
Ben: “I’ve seen promotions and progressions into the most important titles of the company originate from the sales development team. Sean is a prime example of that.”
Question from the moderator: “What are some traits you look for when hiring for a SDR position?”
Dan: “Curious. Self-starter. A willingness to help. I’m looking for them to hit their activity benchmarks then do what interests them most.”
Question from the moderator: “What are you most excited about with SalesLoft’s announcement of the Sales Development Cloud?”
Ben: “The ability to use data to strategize your engagement.”
Drew: “It helps professional communicators accelerate their relationships.”
Question from the crowd: “What motivates you most as founders?”
Ben: “First off, I’m naturally just a competitive person. But I also want to make sure we’re doing all we can to ensure our sales development team (and any other team at Datanyze) is set up for success.”
Drew: “Relationships and people. To help people know others and to be known.”
Dan: “Seeing that growth of your team and seeing the culture form. It’s all about the people.”
A big thanks to all of the rockstars on the SalesLoft team for putting on such a great event. And thanks to all of those who stopped by our booth to say hello. The Sigstr team had a blast meeting many new friends and catching up with old ones. See you all next year!
About Datanyze: Find your perfect prospect information - Uncover, research, and connect with the right prospects and companies at the right time. Import target people and company profiles with one click into SalesLoft and create better alignment.
About Crystal: Communicate based on personality – Get access to millions of personality profiles and learn the best way to communicate with your customers. Use empathy and intentionality by tailoring your outbound messages to fit the context of the buyer.
For more on SalesLoft and the Sales Development Cloud, check out the press release here.
