What I wish I'd Known About Sales With Andy Laws

Hi everyone and welcome to What I Wish I'd Known About Sales, the show where we learn all about the highs, lows, and lessons from the front lines of selling. I'm Martin from Lead Forensics, and today's guest is Andy Laws, sales development leader at Databricks and founder of RevRocket, where he helps companies design and scale sustainable pipeline generation systems. Andy spent years building and leading high-performing BDR teams, including during the incredible growth journey at Braze from series through to IPO. For all of that though, Andy actually started out in sport, playing cricket for Middlesex and coaching for several years, and that background shows in how he approaches building teams today. So if you're responsible for pipeline or trying to build a career in sales development, there's going to be a lot to take away from this conversation. Welcome to the show, Andy. Thank you for having me and thank you for the very warm welcome. All good, all good. So let's get into the questions then. So As mentioned, Andy, before building SDR teams and pipeline engines in tech, you were actually a cricketer with Middlesex and spent years coaching as well. How did that sporting background shape your approach to sales? Yeah, sure. I mean, it feels a very long time ago now. Under this youthful exterior is a very old man. But yeah, look, I think having exposure to elite-level sport gave me some, some really interesting insights. Firstly, really actually understanding what competitiveness looks like and what the sharp end of, um, the spear really looks like when you get to, to that level of sport. Um, kind of accompanying that is like, what does high performance look like? Um, you know, the small 1%ers, the individuals that, you know, I was fortunate enough to, to play with, that, you know, I played with or gone on to play for the likes of England or, you know, big franchise teams, the way they approach things, you know, is incredibly impressive in terms of the detail that they operate with and the discipline that they operate with. How to operate and thrive under pressure, you know, playing in front of crowds, you know, whether it be on the telly or, you know, obviously huge scrutiny from the media. Working in teams and kind of spending a lot of time around the same people day in, day out in highly pressurized environments and highly competitive environments where you're not just competing against other teams, but also even internally within the squad as you try and fight for places in, you know, a first 11, or you're fighting for a finite number of contracts. What good and bad leadership looks like. You know, I've been very lucky to work under some phenomenal coaches and phenomenal managers and leaders, both inside and outside of sport, and also some not so great ones. And I think having that experience has definitely kind of paved my own way within leadership. And probably something that I didn't make good use of at the time but is very relevant now, and also within the sport of cricket, is the use of data. Something that I now use every day and is integral to my day job. In hindsight, I wish I'd used a little bit more of it because it was there for me when I was playing. So lots of things that I took from my sporting career that I now try and take into my day-to-day in the job that I do. I mean, in sport generally, data over the last 15, 20 years, even in the last 10, has just ballooned. It's completely transformed some sports, um, you know, basketball with a 3-point shot, etc. Um, so yeah, I think that's, that's a great point. Um, so when you transition from, um, sport into, you know, software as a service, sales development, what surprised you the most about that profession? I think for a lot of people, no one, not many people come into this career as a preordained or predetermined path. You know, there, I think there is a growing number of students and graduates that are recognizing that the SaaS industry is a pretty fun and sexy place to come and call a career. For me, I really knew nothing about it, and my perception particularly of sales organizations was, you know, one of a slightly sleazy, like car salesman or Wolf of Wall Street type environment that up until, you know, I really started to entertain the idea, it really put me off. And then I started to get to know people in the space. I'm now— my now wife was working as an SDR when I was looking at it, and, you know, she was giving me some insight. And the realization I came to is just how phenomenally talented, intelligent, and like the level of caliber of particularly people in sales organizations is and can be, gave me the confidence to be like, right, okay, this actually is probably an industry and a career path that I'm interested in. I think that was the thing that really kind of opened my eyes up. No, absolutely. So you've gone obviously from individual contributor to leading business development teams at companies like Braze and now Databricks. What were the biggest lessons you learned during that transition? Um, I think going from an IC to a leader, you, you very quickly realize that you have less immediate control over your destiny. That's the first thing, you know. Ultimately, as an IC, you are solely in control of your business, whereas, you know, as a leader, you're responsible for the people or your, um, in, in your support, but then also, you know, a myriad of other stakeholders, processes, mechanisms, you know, whatever else exists in your ecosystem. So you have to get comfortable with that and understand like what, what, where are your leverage items and where isn't and how do you focus your time accordingly. I think you very quickly when you get thrown into, you know, your first leadership role, get the appreciation of how important it is to get to know the people that you're responsible for supporting and understanding that everyone is different. And, you know, actually getting to know those people as people is fundamentally the most important thing that you need to do, because that's going to be how you get most out of them as the professional. Coming from a sporting background, I found over time anyway that setting up a very clear culture and having a very clear set of non-negotiables and combining that with senior or high-performing members of the team that are able to kind of support and police that, leads to a generally autonomous functioning culture and team, and it's something that, you know, I really believe in. And then the final thing, and we might touch on this later on, is the more repeatability and scalability you can bring to your business and bring to the people within your business, the less aggressively you're going to have to run as a leader because you're not having to run you know, different ways of working for every different person in your team, but also allows you to go and focus on areas of your business that you need to focus on. So maybe it's hiring, for example, but if you've got the ways of working for the team set up and they know how to run with that, it should again run semi-autonomously without, without you having to kind of continue to come back and poke your head into it. Yeah, I think that's a great point about the culture and kind of setting things up to just work. So, um, that actually leads me on to the next question, which is, at Braze, you're part of the journey from Series C through to IPO while scaling the BDR function. So what did that experience of scaling it out teach you? It's hard. It's really hard work. Um, things move really quickly, and when you've got a very clear North Star and, you know, you've got tremendous product-market fit and, you know, you have a a really exciting product or service. You know, there's nothing more exciting, but at the same time it moves really, really fast. So, you know, being able to set systems up that are going to allow you to keep pace or get ahead of things is really important rather than having to either get weighed down in the minutiae of what's happening or you're going to have a ceiling because you don't have that system in place that's going to allow you and the team to scale. I think is a huge takeaway from that journey. Beyond that, a couple of other kind of primary learnings: expanding the exit routes for BDRs in my world was really important. You know, growth is only going to be inevitable when you're kind of going through this kind of scaling process, and ensuring that those exit routes are there for talented and developing reps, I think, is important. It allows for the healthy attrition across the team as you continue to kind of bring in that net new talent. The other side of that is ensuring that the readiness is there as well. You know, that we learned some, you know, albeit, you know, a small number of harsh lessons around high-performing BDRs moving into other roles and then actually not having the readiness that they needed. And that then put pressure on other parts of the organization and those reps that were previously in our purview, um, that probably we could have addressed earlier, right? Um, and then the final one is hiring is always on. I was basically a professional recruiter for about 18 months. Uh, it's one of, one of my favorite bits of the job, but Ultimately, hiring and hiring the right people will make or break the success of your team. And we did that really well at Braze. We hired brilliant, diverse talent with really high ceilings. And again, like, that's something that I carry around with me wherever I go now. Yeah, that's really, really interesting. So just coming back to the first point there about the exiting. How did that work? How did you set that up, kind of exit routes? So I think the well-trodden path for the majority of, you know, XDRs, BDRs, STRs, however you want to, whatever the naming convention is, is obviously down the account executive route. And, you know, fundamentally, most organizations will look at the BDR organization as the primary talent pool for the account executive team. But that's not to say that when you're scaling very quickly that there isn't going to be exceptional talent that is interested in coming into the business from external, and ultimately sales directors and sales leaders will hire the best talent that's available to them at any given point. And the other thing is, depending on the speed at which you're scaling and depending on which, uh, or how often reps are being pulled out of the BDR team, you may need to accelerate or slow down the reps exiting your team with consideration for readiness, with consideration for ensuring that the pipeline doesn't get eaten away because talent keeps being pulled up into the rest of the business. So you then start to look at, well, if we aren't going to continue just to flood the AE org with BDRs, is that going to cause a blocker? And if it does, what are some of those alternative routes that you then have to look at? And there's, you know, people get into the BDR role also and decide, you know, maybe I'm not interested in going down the account executive route, but they've had exposure to working with marketing, they've had exposure to working with partnerships, they've had some exposure over lunch or, you know, working in customer accounts, working with customer success or account management or whatever it might be, and that might be of interest to them. So I think there's still opportunity there to move into other parts of the organization. And then you get into the same realms as you would do with readiness for an AE role. You go to the hiring managers and leadership those different functions and work backwards from the core requirements and then try and put the, the necessary skills and knowledge enablement in place, maybe even certifications and shadow hours and whatever else it might be to enable that. And then when jobs come up, you put them through the interview process and you start to work out whether there's a fit there or not. Yeah, very good, very good. So, um, you obviously talk a lot about building sustainable pipeline generation systems. What does sustainable actually mean in the context of outbound sales? Big question. I think from a macro perspective, like the way that I think about sustainability is ensuring that the bizdev organization is actually delivering value, right? Like, are we sourcing opportunities that is going to convert into revenue? Right. And, you know, there is a, you know, somewhat of a split responsibility a lot of the time with SDR and BDR functions, whereby there is a case of education of the market and making sure that we have coverage across whatever the TAM is and staying top of mind with people. But the reality is, is like the real ROI and the reason that we're paying these people and paying, you know, the department that I'm responsible for is to source and accelerate revenue. Right? So how is it that we are, as an organization, ensuring that that's actually the case? I think on a micro level, for me, one of the big learnings that I took from certainly my time at Braze is ensuring that reps are equipped with and empowered to use the necessary data that allows them to understand how do I go and hit my quota. And, you know, even with the quota, like, What impact is that then having on the revenue number for me or for my team or for the company? And then trying to work backwards from there, right? So, you know, how is it that I report on those key data points? You know, who are the critical stakeholders that are going to positively or negatively influence what that kind of process and system it is that I'm trying to set up is? And then what are the kind of tactical execution plays and what's like the art that then comes with that, right? It's like, you know, how many calls do I need to make? How many emails do I need to send? How many accounts do I need to touch within a week or a month? How many prospects do I need to be talking to at any given time? And then it's into you kind of like, what does my pitch look like? You know, am I personalizing my emails? So on and so forth. So like it's kind of multi-layered, like start with the overarching strategy and then kind of feed into the tactics after that, but have data underpin all of that wherever possible so that you get consistency in the way that you're operating. So basically a huge amount of stuff to have to think about. It's easy. Yeah. And what would you say the biggest mistakes are that companies make or individuals make when trying to scale SDR teams or outbound programs? Thinking that they can get rid of them and just replace it with AI. Right. Okay. I think is the first one. I think, you know, I'm part of it. I feel really fortunate that through communities like SDR Leaders of EMEA, for example, there's been a really buoyant conversation about the role and influence that AI is having. And I certainly know that probably through the back half of 2024 and 2025, the hottest topic we were all talking about was, you know, VPs of sales or CROs or senior marketing leaders testing the viability of whether AI products were going to be able to fully replace BDR orgs. And, you know, a lot of the feedback that came back was, you know, there is some positive impact there, but there's also a lot of negative impact with TAMs being burnt through very quickly with a lot of AI slop. And actually the differentiator a lot of the time is the human interaction that BDRs are able to offer and provide. I, if I give you a kind of like slightly less sarky attitude, an answer with less attitude, I would also say I would also say just like the way that the function is set up in terms of like what it's trying to achieve. I'm not a big believer in BDR organizations being set up with primary target meeting set, for example. I think particularly with the introduction of AI, the responsibility and the opportunity now exists to get more out of the BDR SDR function by moving them slightly further down funnel in their responsibilities. So, you know, if you really must have a meeting component, sure, but if you're going to comp anything else, like comp them against some lower mid-funnel metrics as well, whether that be qualified opportunities or sales accepted opportunities, or even, you know, a revenue component in there as well, and have them responsible for slightly more of the sales cycle depending on the level of complexity of what it is that you're selling. I think that's probably where I would I would say the biggest mistake is, because otherwise you just end up with a very top-heavy funnel of opportunities that AE teams are then flooded to work, and that's not necessarily going to be the most efficient use of their time. Absolutely. So what signals or data points do you think SDRs should be paying more attention to when deciding who to reach out to and when? Yeah, good question. I think the days of the good old-fashioned MQL are dead or dying, certainly. And I think, you know, part of the challenge that BDRs or SDRs now have is making sense of some of that noise and the levels of intent, right? And understanding what is actually going to push the needle on who's window shopping versus who's imminently starting an evaluation versus who's actually in an evaluation. Really simple things that reps can take a look at on a day-to-day basis is, you know, people that are, senior people that are moving jobs, for example. I think people are always looking to make an impact early and they're likely to have had reiterations of budgets. Always a good sign. I think multiple people from the same account turning up to smaller forum events, I think is always interesting. I don't know whether I fully prescribe to funding rounds being a principal signal. I think it's definitely positive, but there's no guarantee that that funding is going to be used in the space that you're in. I'm also a big believer in— call me old school— of just looking at annual reports and, you know, company 10-Ks and looking at what the executive initiatives for the forthcoming year are. Right, and understanding that the likelihood is that the trickle-down impact on, you know, the influencing team or the evaluating team, you know, it's probably going to stem from those things. It's not necessarily going to change drastically unless something in the macro has changed too broadly. So I don't know whether that counts as a signal, whether that's just quality account research, but I'm still a big believer in that. Yeah, I mean, that sounds a little bit like something AI could help out with, or an agent could, you know, trawl through lots and lots of of company accounts. I can't also— back to the, um, the new comp, you know, the, you know, someone's just moved roles. Um, I've seen a bit of pushback on, you know, you see these LinkedIn posts like, I don't even know where the toilets are, and I've had like 10 people reach out to me. Um, so what's a good length of time do you think to— is it, you know, what is a good length of time to wait, um, basically when someone starts a new role to reach out? Yeah, sure. I mean, there's a, there's a good book for anyone that's moving into a management role or moving from one management role to another called the first 100 days. And really, that kind of— or, you know, most interview processes for leaders and managers involve some form of 30, 60, 90-day appraisal, right? So I think you can probably think about that kind of timeline where it's, you know, between 8 and 12 weeks is a reasonable timeline. I think there's also an element of fiscal timing as well, depending on when that person's coming in. You know, if that person's coming in at the end of a fiscal year and planning's currently going on, or it's the start of the fiscal fiscal year and projects are being kicked off, you may want to accelerate that. And maybe there's kind of a combination then of two things. But, um, yeah, I mean, if you're kind of in the middle period of the year or through the summer and their fiscal runs, you know, on a calendar year or on a Salesforce year, then you've probably got a little bit of time. But, um, yeah, I mean, as you said, like, on day 2, they don't even know where to get their lunch from, right? So, you know, you've got to be mindful of timing there, but Um, invariably they do, they do want to have an impact and they probably will have budget. I think they've got to make sense of where they need to burn their calories first though. Yep, yep. Um, so just coming back to the whole kind of, um, SDR leadership thing, when you're hiring SDRs, what qualities matter more than experience or perfect CV? Yeah, good question. Uh, I don't tend to look for experience, for what it's worth. Um, and you know, some of that is I didn't have any experience before I came became a BDR. Um, so I'm a big believer in transferable skills. Um, I look for coachability, curiosity, confidence, communication, creativity. Um, they're probably the big ones for me. Um, if someone is naturally just keen to learn and is also receptive to feedback, I feel like that's an individual that I can work with a lot of the time. I think the other one I probably left off there was competitiveness. Um, So whether that's competitive with themselves or competitive with obviously the people that are around them in a healthy, in a healthy fashion, then yeah, I would say they're the things that I, that I look for through an interview process. And I'll probe them through questions and then also through, you know, whatever tasks or take-home tests that we have as part of the interview process to try and get a gauge of those traits because they're not always super easy to measure. Absolutely. And you mentioned earlier about SDRs moving into leadership positions, and we hear this quite a bit actually on this podcast, and it's, you know, great SDRs, etc., BDRs don't always make the best leaders. So, you know, what skills would you say people in those roles should focus on developing early on? Good question. I think there's no getting away from understanding what the nuts and bolts of being a successful rep is. I think it kind of goes back to, you know, part of the reason why, you know, I'm not, you know, a professional county cricket coach is I didn't play 100 first-class matches or, you know, I didn't play 50 games for England, right? And, you know, I don't think it's essential, but it certainly helps to having walked a mile in the shoes. And I definitely also think it helps to, to know what good looks like when, particularly when operating under pressure. I think beyond that, really trying to exercise and understand emotional intelligence, human psychology, what performance management could and should look like, I think is important. I think it's very underestimated, again, even on the rep side, but also just proficiency with CRM and how it is that you can leverage CRM reporting dashboards to better inform yourself and understand, you know, guiding leading and lagging indicators makes a real difference as well. So yeah, I would say, you know, there's a myriad of things there, right? But a lot of it comes down to exposure and having that responsibility for caring about and being responsible for people, not just yourself. Yeah, yeah. And looking back at your early part of your sales career, your early days as an SDR, what do you wish someone had told you when you first started? Uh, I mean, the message came to me eventually, but just slow down. Um, I think I was so eager to, to get started and have an impact and prove to myself as, as much as anyone else that, you know, I was, you know, good enough and fitting to do the job, having not done it previously, that, you know, in hindsight, I was probably trying to run before I could walk. Um, and invariably Unless you're in a super scrappy startup, most organizations have a relatively robust onboarding process, and you know, you'll have the opportunity to have mentorship over and above whoever your manager is as well. And I think you just need to place a degree of trust in those people around you and in the process to get you from point A to point B, and, and understand that, you know, it will take a little bit of time. But if you know your foundations, that's then going to allow you to break through the glass ceiling much quicker than, than if you just kind of try and work things out for yourself or move too quickly. Yeah, so running before you can walk in that context, kind of what, what does that look like? What, how would you, how would someone know they're making errors by trying to jump ahead? Um, I think like, you know, for example, it can be really simple things, right? Like jumping into cold call sessions and not having, you know, scripts written out, or having, you know, a set of objection handling, uh, responses, you know, on a Google Doc before you pick the phone up, right? Like, don't have the arrogance to think you can go on and just wing it. Like, use that crutch, use that resource for your accounts. It might be, you know, spinning outreach up or writing personalized emails for an account without actually having gone and conducted some form of account research or, you know, proper prospecting, deep dive on individuals or on accounts, or just thinking you can wing personalization on the fly. One of the other traps that I fell into, and I see a lot of reps fall into, is they get 60 to 90 days within their kind of initial ramp period and tenure, and all of a sudden they move away from, you know, everything they've been given around persona and value selling and decide that they want to go and start being more technical, and they start selling on bells and whistles and this button does this and that widget does that, and all of a sudden they realize that they stop resonating with prospects. And, you know, it takes them 1, 2 months to actually have the epiphany that they need to go back to positioning value rather than the product. So, you know, all common mistakes that, you know, I've certainly done in my own time and I continue to see in reps, it's relatively common. Yeah. Yeah. So just onto the quickfire questions now. So one book every salesperson should read? The Qualified Sales Leader by John McMahon. I think You know, his, his pedigree is— goes without saying, uh, in terms of what he's been able to, to build and scale. And, you know, his, his legacy lives on with CROs all over the world. And I think it also provides a, a really valuable insight even to reps, um, both in terms of just like the core skills required to kind of scale your career, but also what goes into building successful sales organizations, why things are structured the way that they are., and how it, you know, is that certain teams and organizations have become as successful as they are. So definitely, definitely that book. Yeah, great answer. Um, one sales myth you'd like to debunk? I'll go back to my original point, which is like one of my biggest fears before joining sales is like everything's a Wolf of Wall Street environment. Actually, some of the smartest, uh, highest operating people I've ever worked with have been salespeople, and the way that they think about their business and the way that they think about accounts and the people that they work with is incredibly complex and they have— they find a way of actually simplifying it down. Um, yeah, I, I would say that. Okay. Um, one skill every salesperson should work on specifically this year? Uh, listen more. You have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Yeah, that's the— that is the classic, isn't it? Like, pretty much— well, not everyone, but a lot of people come on and say Don't talk so much. Yeah. Understand the power of silence. Yeah, absolutely. Is cold call actually, cold calling actually dying or are salespeople avoiding it or getting worse at it? Or what's your take? I don't think it's dying. I think there is perhaps to some degree a generational shift in the desire to pick the phone up with other mediums of communication coming to the forefront. I definitely think there's probably more regional nuance now than there probably was 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago, which we have to have consideration for. But I certainly don't think it's dying though. And by regional nuance, do you want to call areas out? I think, yeah, sure. I mean, like there's, you know, very strict compliance and data regulations in the Nordic or the Nordics and Benelux, for example. I know that places like the UAE use WhatsApp fairly frequently, for example, and then the US still has a very buoyant cold calling culture, right? So I definitely, having led both regional and global teams, understand that the way that the phone is used and when it's used does matter. But I still think the baseline is that it's a tool that should be leveraged by all reps. Great. Um, what's the biggest lie companies tell themselves about a pipeline? Um, whether it's real or not, I, I think they're, you know, understanding that comp plans are there to facilitate behavior. And no matter how it is that you structure your comp plan, you're going to end up with an element of gamification. Uh, it then comes down to the responsibility of first-line managers in particular to scrutinize the quality and the kind of real nature of that pipeline and call out anything that we don't think is real or is undervalued or overvalued. Yes, invariably the truth is somewhere in between all of that. Yeah. And what's something about salespeople that only other salespeople will understand? Oh, good question. They'll, instead of giving an answer, they'll give a question. Right. Does that make sense? Absolutely. They'll ask a question, they'll answer a question with a question. Yeah, absolutely. So, well, that's it for today's episode of What I Wish I'd Known About Sales. Big thank you to Andy Laws for sharing his insights on building sustainable pipeline, developing high-performing SDR teams and what it really takes to scale outbound successfully. If you found this useful, don't forget to share this with the rep on your team who really needs to hear it. And thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me.