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She Built a 40-SDR Team Booking 10,000+ Meetings a Year

SDR Hire Podcast · 2025-12-11 · 44 min

0:00--:--

Key moments - from our scoring

Substance score

47 / 100

Five dimensions, 20 points each

Insight Density9 / 20
Originality7 / 20
Guest Caliber13 / 20
Specificity & Evidence10 / 20
Conversational Craft8 / 20

Alla Ivanova, head of a 40-person SDR team at Belkins that booked over 10,000 meetings annually, shares how she scaled from individual contributor to leader of an outsourced appointment-setting operation. She systematized practices from top performers - discovering that consistency, persistence, and continuous testing drive results - and implemented frameworks that improved team KPI performance by nearly 30 percentage points in her first year as department head. Her top SDRs learned to manage six accounts simultaneously through optimized routines using email and LinkedIn automation, combined with strategic time management around peak response windows. Ivanova emphasizes hiring for learning agility and analytical mindset, using case-based interview scenarios to assess candidates' ability to diagnose campaign performance issues and propose solutions rather than escalate problems. She advocates for peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and presents a team-leader structure to maintain personal connection with individual contributors while scaling to 40 people. The episode covers Belkins' evolution from lead-gen shop to Martech company, how the SDR role has transformed with new tools (Instantly, Smartly, HeyReach, Apollo, Outreach), and what hiring managers should evaluate today: understanding KPIs like open rates, proficiency with core software, and ownership mentality.

Key takeaways

  • →Top SDRs should master consistent daily routines with specific time slots for checking emails when leads are most active, allowing them to prepare work earlier and handle multiple accounts efficiently.
  • →Systematize top performer practices by documenting exactly what successful SDRs do differently and building it into onboarding, learning paths, and knowledge bases so junior SDRs can replicate success at scale.
  • →When interviewing SDR candidates, present real-world scenarios and assess whether they can analyze data, identify problems with solutions, and demonstrate initiative rather than just asking for guidance.
  • →SDRs today must be multi-skilled go-to-market strategists who understand data analytics, stay current with industry changes, manage multiple tools, and think strategically beyond just sending outreach messages.
  • →Structure management of large teams (40+ people) through delegation to team leaders while maintaining direct access and presence in group communications so individual contributors feel supported.

In this episode

  1. 1From SDR to Head of Department: Mindset Shift to Leadership
  2. 2Building a System from Top Performer Practices
  3. 3Belkins Overview and Defining Top SDR Performance
  4. 4Scaling a 40-Person SDR Team and Managing for Results
  5. 5Hiring, Interviewing, and Identifying Quality SDRs
  6. 6The Evolution of the SDR Role Over Five Years
  7. 7Essential Skills and Technology Competency for Modern SDRs

Mentioned

BelkinsAlla IvanovaStefanApolloLemlistInstantlyOutreachHeyReachSmartlyGmailLinkedIn

Guests

Alla Ivanova

Topics in this episode

ApolloA/B testingLinkedIn outreachGoogle WorkspaceCold email outreachopen ratesappointment settingBelkinsOutreach toolsLemlist

Questions this episode answers

What specific performance improvements did Alla Ivanova achieve when she became head of SDR at Belkins?

In her first year, the team achieved nearly a 30 percentage point increase in KPI results across the department, and top-performing SDRs increased from managing a few accounts to handling up to six accounts simultaneously without productivity loss.

How did Alla Ivanova's top SDRs manage six accounts at the same time?

They used primarily email and LinkedIn outreach, which could be largely automated and run simultaneously, combined with disciplined daily routines - checking email during peak response windows, doing prep work before business hours, and following structured sequences rather than being active 24/7 in their inbox.

What does Alla Ivanova look for in SDR candidates during interviews?

She looks for people who can learn quickly and stay current with industry changes, take initiative by proposing solutions (not just identifying problems), analyze campaign data, understand KPIs like open rates, and handle technology tools like Gmail, Apollo, Outreach, and Lemlist.

What changed about the SDR role over the five years Alla Ivanova managed the team at Belkins?

The role shifted from straightforward lead sending to requiring expertise across multiple channels (cold calling, email, LinkedIn), faster adaptation to weekly tool releases, strategic thinking beyond tactics, and knowledge of marketing and psychology - making SDRs more like go-to-market strategists.

What's the one thing Alla Ivanova says SDR candidates can't overlook when preparing for interviews?

Understanding key performance indicators and knowing what metrics to monitor (such as open rates and campaign response data) to diagnose whether outreach is working - candidates should never claim unfamiliarity with basic SDR analytics.

What our scoring noted

Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.

Insight Density

9 / 20

There are a handful of real operational data points - 6 simultaneous accounts per top SDR, 30 percentage point KPI lift, the team-leader-of-six structure - but these are surrounded by sustained filler, vague encouragements, and platitudes. The signal-to-noise ratio is low across the full 44 minutes.

our top performing SDRs were able to handle up to six accounts at the same time without the loss of the productivity
we've seen almost a 30 percentage points increase in our KPI results across the team

Originality

7 / 20

The episode traffics almost entirely in well-worn SDR management ideas - systematise top performers, hire for curiosity, delegate well, the role is getting more strategic. The 'cold outreach always works, it just depends on time invested' internal slogan is mildly interesting but nothing here is contrarian or first-principles.

call don't reach. It always works. It just depends on how much time you're willing to invest into like your testing
what I see that a lot of SSD arts, they now become um, go to market strategists

Guest Caliber

13 / 20

Alla Ivanova is a genuine practitioner who actually built and ran a 40-person SDR team at a real appointment-setting business with verifiable scale metrics; she is not a career podcaster or abstract thought leader. Her caliber is solid but sub-VP, and Belkins, while successful, is a mid-market agency rather than a widely recognised enterprise.

She rose from, you would say a humble SDR to the position of head of SDR, leading a 40 person SDR team that booked over 10,000 meetings a year
before I've concentrated on the sales development part, I've worked for six years in marketing agencies delivering 60 campaigns for advertising for digital marketing project

Specificity & Evidence

10 / 20

A modest number of concrete figures appear - 10,000+ meetings/year, 30 percentage point KPI increase, 6 accounts per SDR, $100M valuation, team of 40 - and specific tool names are dropped (Apollo, Lemlist, Instantly, HeyReach). However, baseline numbers, cost-per-meeting, conversion rates, ramp timelines, and campaign-level evidence are entirely absent, leaving the claims under-substantiated.

we've seen almost a 30 percentage points increase in our KPI results across the team
our top performing SDRs were able to handle up to six accounts at the same time without the loss of the productivity

Conversational Craft

8 / 20

The host has done baseline research and occasionally lands a useful specific follow-up ('How do you determine if they have an analytical mindset?'), but he frequently paraphrases rather than probes, inserts lengthy personal monologues, and never pushes back on vague or unsubstantiated claims. The result is a collegial chat rather than a rigorous interview.

So what you're saying is when you're interviewing them, um, you would present them with a situation, a case.
I've had my fair share of screw ups when it came to like hiring SDRs

Conversation analysis

Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.

Share of words spoken

  • Speaker A69%
  • Speaker B31%

Most-used words

team29sdrs25linkedin18cold16part15results15belkins14experience13email12example11important11outreach11calling11marketing10course10system10

Full transcript

44 min

Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.

Speaker A: Our top performing SDRs were able to handle up to six accounts at the same time without the loss of the productivity. Never just bring a problem because then you would be associated with the person who create those problems. If you bring a solution, that's what makes you a hero of the day.

Speaker B: All right, welcome back to another episode of the SDR Higher podcast. If you are new here, I'm your host, CEO Stefan and this is a place where we talk about sales, hiring, getting hired as an sdr, an account executive and essentially building high performing sales teams from the ground up. Today I'm joined by Alla Ivanova. Alla is ah, a business development leader with over a decade experience in marketing, project people management, sales and more than seven years specifically in sales development over at a company called Belkins. She rose from, you would say a humble SDR to the position of head of SDR, leading a 40 person SDR team that booked over 10,000 meetings a year and helped the company grow towards $100 million valuation. And so we'll dig into how she built the team, how she organized it, the frameworks she used to the performance management, what today is the standard for being uh, a really good sdr. And so without further ado, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Yeah, thank you so much for the introduction. You did your homework.

Speaker B: Tried my best.

Speaker A: I'm excited to be here today and share some of the tips, ideas and general my experience.

Speaker B: I love that look, there are some because you know as everything else in marketing numbers really attract people and so I like asking, I like asking you know, questions about these specific. Especially when there are some big numbers. Is it, is it anywhere like publicly acknowledged that belt has achieved $100 million valuation?

Speaker A: I know that it's definitely out there. It's on LinkedIn, it's in our founders profile. We've been change in Belt ends over the course of especially five years after the COVID hit into becoming more global company and not just an appointment setting company or lead gen company but like more tech holding of companies. I think that's also a part of this growth. We try to add additional services, additional products under the one umbrella. That's definitely one of the key factors that allowed us to grow this far.

Speaker B: That's really awesome. You know you initially started at Belkins as an SDR and that eventually led to you know, growing the largest team at Belkins. And so you know, what kind of mindset shift had happened for you to like move from a, from a performer to land uh, ahead of SDR role into, into like a leader role?

Speaker A: Oh, that's a great question. It definitely has a change in the perspective since you need to step away from being the top performer and big star, for example, and you need to let other people shine, people from your team. Uh, if you listen to me, I often say we even. It means that I did something. It's one of the habits that I acquired that results are never just mine, it's the team efforts. And like another key change is to delegate. It's uh, probably one of the hardest things to learn for any new manager. When you're used to doing things your way, you know the best. And now you need to let other people make these decisions, make even their own mistakes, but that's the only way to let them grow. It's very challenging for me because I love to control stuff. But it's a good, uh, development for you as a manager. It's like a journey when you need to adopt this.

Speaker B: How did you manage with. Because as an sdr, you are only responsible for yourself and your results will be as good as how much you work hard or how much you're, you're uh, consistent with your activities, etc. That all changes when you become a manager because now all of a sudden it's not about like your, your uh, performance is not the dials and the emails and book meetings, it's everybody else's. And so how did you, I mean, I, I, I can, I, I remember how hard it was for me when I was like, well, I mean, I can be as good as I want to. Like, it doesn't matter if I can't really make others achieve same or similar results. How did you, how did you manage to kind of overcome that?

Speaker A: You said a very right thing that I actually tried for other people to achieve the same results that I, uh, used to have. That was my main goal, to create a system based on our top performing SDRs, how we can make like junior SDRs as good as them. Um, so that was one of the first things that I approached when I became a team leader and then ahead of the SDR department, making success a system, figuring out what exact steps do you need to take to be able to say I've done enough. And it's very, very important things for sales development because it's often hard to hit the perfect results and you never kind of feel this moment when you've done enough because there is always another email to send, another follow up to send, another call to take. And you need to have like some kind of almost a checklist that you can cross off and say I did well. And I saw that if we create these things internally into a bigger like knowledge base, onboarding system, learning paths, that would be like a ah, roadmap for any SDR to succeed.

Speaker B: Mhm. You said that you essentially took the practices of uh, top performing SDRs.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And tried to systematize it. So what were those like what does a top performer do at least in a company like Belkins? And obviously we should have started with just ext. Explaining what Belkin is for the audience.

Speaker A: Of course, of course.

Speaker B: Maybe you can, maybe you can tell us what, what Belkins is and then what, what's, what's a top performer at Belkins?

Speaker A: Sure. So Belkins now is a Martech company. But our uh, prime focus is on the appointment setting business. Everything that leads to appointment settings. That's our usually main KPI for the client that come in, they want to, to enable their sales department for greatness and we come in to give them those new opportunities, generate a hot lead for them. So the second part of your question was who is a top performer about what makes this person a top performer. Usually it's a um, very hungry and driven SDR that never stops, you know, that is very persistent, that has like a very strong work ethics because you need to do a certain amount of repeated tasks daily and you need to have a very good system where you almost follow the same schedule for every day, every task. And you should always keep, keep learning and digging for new things to test and that drives to explore new things. I think it really one of the key features for anyone at Belkins. Whether it's an SDR or a marketing professional or account manager, we always try to explore some new opportunities and if something is not working, we never give up, we keep going, we do our research, we always have a next idea to test. And basically uh, for our team we have this internal slogan, probably that call don't reach. It always works. It just depends on how much time you're willing to invest into like your testing and eventually you will get there. There is something that will work for you.

Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, so if I can summarize, essentially it is being consistent and persistent, doing huge volumes I assume, and then testing, changing things up until you find the ones that work. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's one of the like key factors. But there's also a soft skill skill part. You need to be really nice person, uh, to work with because we are a team and I think we have a great support system where like team leaders, colleagues, they always Share their knowledge internally. And like peer to peer learning is very important. Like what I said earlier is that uh, we tried to learn from our top performers. Uh, we have this built in now as a system for growth that anyone will eventually have to make a presentation of what works best for them, for the team, and share their knowledge with the colleagues.

Speaker B: Understood. Okay. And then you know, you, you took all of those best practices, you systematized them, tried to at least, and created it into like a playbook for onboarding, hiring, training SDRs. What were some results that you ended up having with a process like that?

Speaker A: Oh like one of the most notable results was in our first year when I became the head of the department. We've seen almost a 30 percentage points increase in our KPI results across the team. And that was really impressive because before that we thought like, maybe those numbers aren't achievable if you have this many accounts on different life stages and you have like a mixed team with junior and senior SDRs. But we've started hitting those numbers and it was really amazing to see it. That was probably the first part. And the second part was the increased productivity of the individual SDRs. Because when I started we used to have like few accounts for an SDRS that they managed at the same time. And then after a year our top performing SDRs were able to handle up to six accounts at the same time without the loss of the productivity. And um, it means the efficiency for the business without losing the efficiency. Efficiency for the client.

Speaker B: Mhm. Well that's insanely impressive. Obviously Belkins is ah, a is a legion outsourcing SDR outsourcing company. How were you able to have one person manage six accounts? Like what were the activities that this person was doing that they were using?

Speaker A: Yeah, so like you're definitely a bit limited in the amount of channels that you can use with this system. At that time our prime focus was on email and LinkedIn outreach. A lot of it you can automate and do simultaneously. Like later on when we've added ah, calling to the mix, we kind of recalculated that because you cannot scale calling as much. It's always connected to the time you've spent dialing. But if we're talking about like email and LinkedIn, I believe like it could be pushed even further, especially nowadays with the EI software. But you still need to be very careful about it because like at Belkins we kind of take pride that we are human first company and we try to monitor every piece of content that we sent out that's why this human sector is still very important. Yeah. But, uh, there are still, like, much more new possibilities for improvement. And if we're talking about the particular system that the SDR needed to adopt to be able to be this efficient, it's building, like a healthy routine of habits. Like, when do you start your working day? You need to start, like the same hours. Uh, you always need to check your email. There are particular time slot at the beginning of the workday by us where leads are very active. And you need to be in your inbox during those hours because you can catch some responses live and, uh, respond to them immediately. But generally you don't need to be like 24 hours a day inside your mailbox. You just need to know this, like, user behavior of how people and when they reply to you so you can focus on those particular time slots. And before that, you try to do all the prep work. For example, Most of Belkin's SDRs are in Europe, so we have this advantage hours before the business day starts in us where we can do all the reports, update, um, the sequences, do our research, and that's how we kind of can wish more, can. Cannot hear you.

Speaker B: That makes a lot of sense. And you did mention at some point, or at least I found it in the instruction in the, in the research that I did. At some point you were managing, I think at its Peak, around 40 people, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So, I mean, that's quite a lot of people for one person to manage. So, you know, what's your secret to like, finding, hiring and onboarding, you know, keeping 40%, 40 people on board while maintaining quality? Because it seems like that's what you were able to do.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think we were able to do this first thing that, like, it was very important for me to be present on all the interviews with the people we eventually hire. Because, like, when I first started hiring people, I didn't really knew the portraits. But with time, I think after the first year, I knew exactly who I wanted hire, like more people like Olena. So we built it into the, uh, hiring profile for the future SDRs. And I wanted to feel the same vibes even from the person that I knew I want to find for our team. So that was the first part. But of course, like, I was not managing 40 people alone because I wouldn't be as, uh, efficient. Like, you cannot remember all of their project details if you're managing 40 people. So we had a team leader system, uh, where I was focusing mostly on strategic work with team leaders and team Leaders were working individually with each scr but like we had also like some personal connections with SDRs. I was in all the project chats, I was available for the support. But for example like weekly one on one, I was not covering everything with the team of 40. I was focusing on the team of six team leaders and on our group calls, which I also find very important because when the team grows you still need to be available for the people, for the individual contributors and they need to know that they always have a direct line with you. So a lot of my focus was on um, keeping this direct line still open, especially with growing team and more new people coming in.

Speaker B: Understood. Interesting thing that you mentioned how, how you in the first year, you know, you probably made a lot of mistakes hiring people and you really didn't have a clear picture what you're looking for. But over time as you were interviewing a lot of people that changed. So uh, I'm curious how did that change? So what do you look for when you're looking for when you're interviewing an sdr? Like you know, after all of that

Speaker A: time I'm definitely looking for proceed only who is able to learn and learn fast because everything changes so fast in the cold treat industry. You need to always test new tools, look for new approaches. And I even ask like how do you stay in touch with everything that's going on in the industry? And I want this person to be active on LinkedIn even if not posting but at least like present reading the top voices and staying up to date. That's one thing. And um, another thing is being able to take action. Even though like ASDR works on accounts with a team and um, we don't really make solely decisions about like the strategy. We have an account manager, we always fill out with a client. But you are the source who sees everything. You are the one who communicates with leads, looks at the data and um, you having the voice is very important. For me it's kind of almost a red flag when person, like when we are describing some kind of case where I want person to say how they affect in this situation and their only response that they will ask someone I do want to hear that they will have some sort of plan. And it's also one of the things that I teach my team especially for them to like being able to advance to a more senior position. And uh, if you see a problem, you need to bring at least your idea of the solution. Never just bring a problem because then you would be associated with the person who kind of create Those problems even. And if you bring a solution, that's what makes you a hero of the day.

Speaker B: Got it. Okay, so what you're saying is when you're interviewing them, um, you would present them with a situation, a case.

Speaker A: Yeah, always, Always.

Speaker B: And you would then observe their response to it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: And I want to uh, feel that they have ability to analyze the data because you know, in the SDR world it's so important to be able to read these clues that you have like as early than you had them. Like being able to run um, a B testing understanding whether your campaign is not working from the responses that you get and which parts of it's not working. So like I'm looking for this analytical mindset because that when SCR will be able to give you more value from the responses that they just handle.

Speaker B: So how would you, how do you, how do you determine if they have an analytical mindset? Do you ask them a certain question or just.

Speaker A: I do, I do ask them a certain question. But like most of all, like the most important part for me is like imagining some kind of situation from the day to day SDR lives and just talking about it. Seeing what would be their approach to handling it or where they will go to look for some answers data like how they will analyze whether something is not working. You can get such an interesting responses from it and sometimes you will see, see an obvious mistake, especially if someone is junior. Like I do believe that if you like have like a very good logic to you, you can figure things out even if you have no experience in email. But if you can, that's definitely a good point during the interview

Speaker B: that that's always been very interesting to me like to talk with other sales leaders of how they recognize good versus bad. I've had my fair share of screw ups when it came to like hiring SDRs. Sometimes I would think that some because somebody's long in the role that you know, they're uh, they're a good fit and then it turns out that you know, they, they're kind of just slacked off every job that they had and anyway. But uh, on the other hand, what I've observed is very important as very important is the ability of a person to acquire new skills as the SDR job has been changing for, at a very rapid pace for the last five years in my experience. And you know, like, how, how has the SDR role changed in your experience as you've had so many SDRs under you over the last, let's say five years.

Speaker A: Years, uh, yeah, it definitely changed and changed a lot. I think five years ago it was more straightforward. Just like get the leads, send the message and you'll get some results. And it will be almost guaranteed if you use some kind of framework. Um, they were a bit less available back then because we didn't have gen gpd. You needed to research your literature, your education based uh, but now I think the industry is ah, over saturated. That's why everyone is kind of doing the same thing and results drop. So as an sdr, you should always look for new things to test. Uh, like you can never confidently say I know everything, there is nothing for me to learn. Even if you're a senior sdi, you need to doubt the status and go and have like uh, new course that you can take or try new tool, explore new M framework. Because like this education, it never stops. And the pace five years ago was slower. Like we did have like some major disruption one in the once in the year. But now like you have new software coming out like each week and it even hurts to test everything. So you should be more tech savvy now but also you play more roles. Back in the day you could have been just only cold calling SCR or only doing email outreach. And now you need to be experts in everything. And more than focus even on those things, you need to think strategically, you need to know marketing, you need to know like some psychology. And uh, it became a more complex world. And what I see that a lot of SSD arts, they now become um, go to market strategists. So it's not just uh, how do I send this message to elite, it's thinking about like a bigger picture

Speaker B: makes a lot of sense. I've seen similar things as well. And what I've kind of come down to personally is that I feel like the uh, SDR role has made like a complete circle where in the beginning you had essentially marketing, doing some kind of like templatized outreach, whatever then. And SDRs. SDRs were doing like cold calling essentially and there were no SDRs. Essentially we had uh, salespeople doing cold calls and then going over to those meetings or like you know, having online meetings etc. Then the predictable revenue playbook came out and then everybody started doing kind of cold email outreach. Right? And then it was the golden age of cold outreach. You know, you didn't even have to cold call. You would get like 10 meetings out of a thousand emails sent and like

Speaker A: it's a good time.

Speaker B: See like that was, that was I, I caught just the end the end of it because soon after I had started as an sdr, maybe a couple of years in those things kind of started to get saturated. And over the last couple of years we had tools like instantly and smartly where you essentially automate cold email outreach. You have tools like heyreach for example where you manage multiple inboxes to send cold LinkedIn messages. And then you have cold calling. And I feel like it has made a full circle where again the SDRs are mostly doing cold calling. And then you have GTM, um, for folks who are doing like the Automations email and LinkedIn outreach which kind of makes sense but it's just funny to observe how, how the role has changed. And so like when you like if, if you, if you were coaching somebody today when they're prepping for like an SDR interview, what is like the one thing that they can't screw up?

Speaker A: Um, understand is a key performance indicators for the sdr. You need to like understand the logic of what SDR does and where to look to understand whether it's working, whether the global reach is performing. Because when someone doesn't know or never uses the term open read, for me it's kind of like are you sure you came to the right place? Even though like I know a lot of folks nowadays they turn off the open rate because it can harm some of the. I know but like you still need to understand this. You should, what you should look for to analyze the campaign. That's what I want to hear. And um, also it's very important for the person to be able to work with technology, like to know the Google Office, to know the Gmail infrastructure, to be able to like set everything up for the uh, campaign even. Because if you are like still bad with software and um, SDR nowadays uses a lot of software, a lot of tools like Apollos and info outreach tools, Lemlist instantly and you um, need to be able to get to know these tools fast.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Do you usually hire more experienced people or do you hire people without experience, like juniors?

Speaker A: I've had different experience in this. So I did hire people where they never worked as an SDR before. Maybe they had one or two years of any experience after their school, like university usually. And I've heard like meet to senior SDRs who've already had like few, few years up their sleeve of the like SDR experience that were very similar to what we were looking for. But I almost never hired people from another SDR agencies so just not many of them. Yeah. And like the profile Is a bit different. Of course where a person has no experience in SDR world, you need to understand that they understand they know the basics of business communication. Because SDR usually emails not just from their perspective but on clients they have. It means adjusting the tone of voice to the person who you reaching out from or like uh, who you're reaching out to. And usually it's a great fit when this person had some kind of maybe support experience. Experience like any role involving like a lot of communication, especially written communication. Things like for example, for me for a long time like SDR was like a uh, communication in um, writing first, not the color. Ah, it kind of shifted a bit. But I do still find that a lot of best performing SDRs, they need to be great rate on the email now on the LinkedIn and the profile for those people could be a bit different than the profile for as I called calling SDRs.

Speaker B: Yes, I've observed something similar as well and it's just interesting to look at that. I know especially because I am actually surrounded by a lot of SDRS from agencies because here in Serbia in the Balkans there's quite a lot of sales, uh, development agencies, outsourcing agencies. And it's essentially the same type of talent. You know, they flow from one agency to another. What I've seen is like SDRS would crush one channel and they would be pretty like weak in other channels. So for example, somebody who's like they're not cold calling but they're crushing LinkedIn. And so for example, they're getting like five to 10 meetings a month with like senior cybersecurity executives just from LinkedIn, which is super impressive. Right. Without even picking up the phone on the other hand.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: There, there are folks who are like I'm not gonna do anything other than the phone, like let, let marketing send emails. Like I, I, I want to be a salesperson, I want to call people. Which is again just a different type of sdr. The Western world, United States especially like, like older, older school, like old school types of leaders, they expect your DSDR to just sit on the phone, call all day and then LinkedIn and email are just like secondary after. So um. Exactly, exactly. Which doesn't necessarily have to be the case. Right. They don't necessarily have to be only cold calling in order to be successful. There are different ways to succeed. But I would honestly definitely say that in this day and age, like you can automate everything, like it's too expensive, at least in my mind to give the SDR, like hey, go figure out LinkedIn and emails and every. No, I would rather have them like cold call and then have a GTM engineer for example do the emails and everything else. What do you think?

Speaker A: Well, I think that you kind of need to analyze what, what team you want to build. There's different approaches to that. Well for example from my perspective like even at Belkin our account managers were more like GTM engineers. But in order to scale it from the agency perspective, you need to divide roles for each person to take over the little bit for them to like being able to have more accounts that they handle at the same time. That's why like one person is like covering the strategy, another person is covering the lead gen and like lead validation. Another person is covering the tech setup and the SDR is focusing only on the communication with the prospects that actually like engage with or like driving more engagement from the personalized approach. And in this scenario the productivity is actually higher for the team, but the budget for this big team is also higher. That's why it's sometimes easier to have like one person that does everything. But there is also say would be not as like huge when you like have different people working together. For example, a lot of SDRs that I've interviewed, usually they are also responsible for the lead gen part. So they research the accounts they gonna reach out to. And like we found that it's one of the most hated jobs for the SDR to do because it's over patterning, it's not creative and SDR is almost like a salesperson. They want to have this conversation. That's where they good at. So like at Belkins and in the agencies we say hey, let's take away this part from their routine. Let us Ah use SDRs only for the parts that they are really really good at. Um, and at the same time there could be a few profiles of the sdr. Some could be very good at strategy, very like exquisite communication notes and they can write impressive personalized messages. But they're like the researchers, the quiet type, the introverts. They might not be very good at cold calling and uh, the person that is great at cold calling, one of my best hires but like oh my God, they were such a smooth talker but technology was not their strongest part. And sitting creating a dashboard in like Google Data Studio or filling in the CRM spreadsheets, it was a torture for them. That's why like for us it worked to highlight the individual talents of the people. And if someone as you've mentioned is great on the LinkedIn we kind of thought, how can we give more LinkedIn accounts to that person? Whereas they can be the most productive things. Goes with Colleen. Uh, as you're like, okay, someone can be.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, agreed. That's right. As we're kind of getting to the end and wrapping up, you know, if, if you were, if you were hiring today, what would you specifically look for today?

Speaker A: Probably I'm gonna look for the person that can do all and just they have more potential in today's market. And um, you should be able to flip, like switch to another channel once one channel is not working. So I don't want this person to be very stupid up at one particular approach, one tool or one outreach channel. That's what I will be looking for. And um, uh, I'll definitely be more focused on finding a tech savvy person who can bring me some innovative solution, how to improve the outreach flow. How can we charge the insufficient processes? Because like, if you can optimize your work, if you can even work less and have better results, let's do it. And I want, I always want to scale it. Or is it bigger? Yeah, that's what I carry. It's me from Belkins. Like I want to scale every.

Speaker B: So obviously you've left Belkins and it seems like that happened on completely like positive terms. What's, what's next for you? Because it seems like you're doing a little bit of consulting on the side. Is that kind of your main focus or what are you looking for? Maybe somebody in the audience might take interest or maybe just reach out and you know, ask for a little bit of help.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I do love helping individual businesses, uh, because I get to know the product. It's something which drew me to the SDR role to begin with, especially at the agency because you get to be a part of, of the team from another company, not really working for them, but working with them, um, almost as addition to their company. It's very like cool perspective because you can sit at a lot of chairs at the same time and be an expert in a lot of niches because you get to research each niche you work for. Uh, so like I love to help and share, um, some of my experience. How can we improve the processes if they have something in place? Or how we can build a strategy for the call, don't reach if they're just starting out, how can we create a nice setup according to one's budget, one's ambition, and uh, that they can even grow this system later on individually so it will Be set up for more like uh, time to come, time to follow and they will able to uh, hire more people to support it if they need to. I really love that part. But as a consultant there is like another part to it. You don't really own the results as much because you are not very integrated in the team. You get only the information they share with you and you cannot control the execution because for example in the agency I got to do the QA results. QA checks weekly, sometimes even more often different reviews. And when you're working with the client you uh, take on more like educative position and um, they might decide not to do something that you advise them to do. So one of the perspectives that I'd love to explore for myself joining a product team where I can have like more hands on um, role where I can affect more things. Plus before my work at Belkins, before I've concentrated on the sales development part, I've worked for six years in marketing agencies delivering 60 campaigns for advertising for digital marketing project. And I kind of want to have more influence probably especially now because you feel how much the results are connected, how much coldot reach uh, is affected by the marketing strategy, by the website, by the communication strategy, everything. So like going back to the trend that I've mentioned. Yeah. SDR has become go to market, uh, strategies. And I kind of feel that that's where you need to grow and to sit uh, more closely to the market inside where you always operate together to drive more results and you don't then say it's my lead, it's marketing lead or it's my lead, it's as yours lead. No, it works together because even if the email sent or LinkedIn outreach didn't drive the meeting booked immediately, you still run a small advertising campaign within the channel. Yeah. That person, they got to know your name, your brand, what you do and they might come back. So it still builds awareness. So it definitely one part of the bigger picture.

Speaker B: Understood. Uh, well, okay. If there's anyone in the audience who would like to get in touch with Alla Allah. How do we, how do we get in touch with you? Where, where can people find you? Are you on LinkedIn? What's your.

Speaker A: Yeah, of course. Yeah. LinkedIn is a great place to connect. I try to post more actively there. It's something that I've accepted as a new Year's resolution. Uh, for me. Yeah. At the beginning of the year. So you can definitely find me there. It's Ala Ivanova. Uh, yeah, you can I think find me by my beautiful picture.

Speaker B: I'll tag your LinkedIn profile in the. In the description. And I've. I've very much enjoyed this conversation today and the last time that we spoke. And I think you have a lot of things to share because you've done so many things and, and achieved so many things. I mean, we haven't even, like, we haven't went through even half of some of the, uh, the achievements that you've made, uh, over the last years.

Speaker A: People in the audience can request a, uh, second. What? Inside of our.

Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. Let's drop a comment if you want a second episode. But I really appreciate you for taking the time and sharing, and hopefully you will find uh, a nice product company that's gonna, you know, provide you a good home and that you can, you can really help them grow. In the meantime, we'll stay connected, and obviously LinkedIn is always there, and hopefully we get to do another episode.

Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's been really pleasure chatting with you today and the time before that. Please. It would not be our last set without it.

Speaker B: No, of course. Of course not. Of course not. All right, that's a wrap.

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