#130 The SDR DiscoCall Podcast - Saad Ghafoor

Welcome to the SDR Disco Call Vidcast and Podcast, a show designed for brand new sales reps working in the world of tech sales. I'm your host, Neil Buyen, and I'm going to be taking you on a journey on the SDR Disco Call Vidcast and Podcast. Did you know that you can watch this show live with the guests on YouTube? This show is available on YouTube at happyselling .io. Welcome back, you subscribers, you happy sellers, you fans of the SDR Disco Show. And this is an episode that I love having when we have people that have been on the show previously and coming back on board. My name is Neil Buyan, the host of the SDR Disco Show. And a big ask is if you're listening to this in your local podcast platform. please make sure that you go into Spotify and Apple and give this a rating and share it. And if you're on youtube .com on the happy selling channel, thank you for visiting, but make sure that you like comment and subscribe down below, because what you're telling the technical algorithm is that this is good content and other people should see it. And it helps us get the word. out there. So with this guest, this is somebody when they came on board, they were Wiser Elite number one SDR of EMEA, and your boy was his coach. But I'm very proud to reintroduce our guest. Guest, can you tell us who are you? Where are you based in the world? And what do you do now? I'm Saad Ghafoor. I'm actually based in Essex. And to answer your question, I've been on a long journey, but I'm actually an account executive now at a massive company called Clare Bay. Thank you very much. And welcome back, Saad. It's a pleasure to have you back on board, bro. And as you've said, it has been a journey. And that's what we want to find out today. But what would be really cool is if we could actually go back to the previous episode to see the older Saad and see what that was like. Yeah, absolutely. So I didn't actually put myself forward for it. And this is the crazy thing we talk about internally. So two of my AEs put me forward for it. And my SDR manager, who'd been there for me three to six months, put me forward. And people from CS saw it and they're like, yeah, you are definitely the best SDR. But if I'm being honest with you, I always used to walk around like, just this is the thing. The self -belief is so important. So I usually say, I'm not the best SDR because of the results I've produced. I'm the best SDR here because I've gone through all the trenches to get to where I know. And I'm a market expert. So what happened was they put me forward. So there's a list of a thousand. um strs right and then your manager writes your story every like writes like you've been nominated you've been shortlisted a thousand people then that gets cut down to like i think it was like 400 or 500 strs at that point you have to create a um five minute video on why you are the best str so there's like what do you do outside so i said i ran cold core power i was Name a creative time where you booked a meeting. Wow. Now that was a blast from the past side. And obviously, as you said, so many things have changed since then. How does it feel like, you know, seeing that and now coming back to where you are today, mate? Do you know what? I feel like I've grown a lot as a person, like when it comes to physically and mentally, because back then, even getting on the stage or talking, I was so nervous. And now... that's pretty much my whole job so when it came to uh not many people know this i was so nervous even just attending the event um then to be crowned i was like wow so yeah i can see the difference in my body language just talking about stuff as well love that i love that and for our listeners and for our watchers what we also like to do at this point of the show is to go on to sad's linkedin profile and as a general reminder with all of our guests their linkedin profiles will be within the show notes so if you're on apple and spotify just scroll down onto the episode it should be there and if you're on youtube make sure you go down into the description below and you can also connect with Saad if you want to pick his brain asking a question because he's lived that life of going from the SDR to finally getting into the account executive position But with Saad, he posts out a hell of a lot of good content. As we can see here, I can even see my forehead there, mate. But he posts out some great content and, you know, great tips. And my guy does do some coaching himself. So we'll be talking about that later on if you're interested to find out there. But obviously, like, you know, if we're talking about back in the day of the times at HackerJob and, you know, winning number one SDR on EMEA. And now you've come into that account executive role for the last year and a half. And, you know, you've got some great stats and highlights there, mate. But just help the listeners know. So, you know, you was number one, SDR Vermeer. You're then moving on to the next position. Tell us what happened to Sathka Foot. That's a good question. So one is when you move into a new company, you have to learn a lot of new stuff. And especially going from a startup to a massive company like Clepe, which is a part of Block, you have to learn the processes and what works in big companies doesn't always work in startups and vice versa, right? I think the one thing and the one piece of advice I'd give to anyone is if you think you're ready, do double the amount of work that you think you need to do. Because even as someone who went through all their skill set and when I'm pushing those to those nines and tens, for those that haven't listened to the previous episode, what I do is I rate all my skill sets and then put it at 10. I know I'm never going to be a 10, but... I tried to get close to it. And the reason I left my previous company was because I felt like I was stagnating, right? And so when I did this, when I became an AE, so I went through all the skill sets like discovery, demo, I thought I could do it quite easily to like a seven or eight. Realistically, you probably start at like a four or a five. And that is coming from somebody who did their most and did their tenure in an SDR role. The advice I give to people is... Obviously, as an SDR, you want to book meetings and you want to do really great. But even then, I was trying to stretch it, have a stretch call and have good discovery calls and call calls. So even if I was doing 10 to 15 minutes, like mini discovery calls and call calls, it still didn't prepare me enough for actually doing it with people. So my advice to anyone else who wants to make that same transition as I did, start doing discovery calls and demos with people. And the reason for this as well is because in an SDR, When you jump onto a call, you say, hey, I'm just introducing this person. And then you go back to making dials. Yeah. And Neil, you're very good at this, right? It's the non -verbal cues. And you used to tell me about this, right? Because I think Tony Robbins says it like energy creates motion or motion creates energy or something like that. A specific thing. But one of the things I didn't realize was I didn't have any non -verbal cues skills. And it's because... train myself for two years just to pass things on and not having a full 30 minute conversation where it's focused on and even doing things like this like a podcast or something like that it helps you do that yeah it doesn't prepare you for when you're selling yeah that's what i love that I love that and to pause you there because there are so many like avenues that I'd like to go down with you Saad um but I love what you say of like even if you think you're like running at a 10 you're probably not at that point yet so you need to double down on those things and really practice it and the reason why I love you said that is like for transparency this week I was doing coaching with somebody who has been in the SDR gig for about nine months now You know, they was having a little bit of difficulty with coming into a startup. They'd worked in sales before, but they'd never worked in tech. So for them, they were a 360 person now coming into an SDR role at tech before moving into the A position. And when chatting to this individual, they were telling me like, you know, I really want to progress. I'm showing that I'm hitting targets. You know, I know the product and all of this. And I think I'm ready. But, you know, there was a little bit of ego coming out here. from this person and i'm sitting on the other side said i've been here before i know what's going to happen right so i kind of challenged them and i just said to them so what makes you feel that you're ready for this a position and they said they know the product they've hit their targets what else is there so i said to them all right cool let's go get the job description of this future job that you want to get and i said to them like what can you do here and they highlighted and i said what haven't you done yet and there was like a lot of bullet points yeah they haven't had And another bit of feedback was they were told by their VP of sales that one thing that they really need to work on is their networking skills. And I said, what do you mean by that? He said, well, I've been told that I need to speak to the VP of sales more. I need to speak to our CRO. I need to speak to our CTO. I need to speak to the developers. And I'm like, why the hell do I need to speak to those sort of people? And I paused that person for a minute and I just said, all right, you want to be an account executive. Think about on the buyer's side for a minute. How many people do you think in the buyer's company that you're going to have to talk to? And he was like, I don't know, three or four people. And I was like, maybe up to 11 different people. Then I said to him, you're going to have to talk to their CRO. You're going to have to talk to their CTO. I said, you're going to have to talk to their procurement team. You're going to have to speak to the InfoSec team. And he was like, ah, okay. I see what you mean. And a little bit of humbling happened. i love how you've said like if you think you're there then you need to double down on these sort of things like discoveries and to your point where you i love that you've said it that okay you were doing like 15 minute calls and then just passed it on to the next person but then running 30 minutes and then those non -verbal cues as well yeah you know all of this stuff because i remember you when i was coaching you you was very focused you knew how to get to that point but it's what can you do more of But coming back to an earlier point that you said that was an interesting start is, right, you'd worked at a startup and now you're going into a larger organization and that is a shift, right? What was going through your mind of, right, you've been defined in one place and now you're kind of starting from scratch. What did that feel like for you and how were you navigating that, bro? Yeah, so for me, you come with a reputation, right? You win an award. There's an added pressure on you in that sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, everyone comes in. He's really good at doing it. But I've never cold called for your business. So I'm the work person doing it right now. Even though I'm the best SDR, I still have to learn like everybody else. So there's two things I always take into account when I go into a new company. One is you speak to all the BDRs because they're speaking to the customers every day. Then you find a top performer in your team and you copy exactly what they do. One thing that people don't do, which is something I was advised by one of my friends who's really experienced is figure out who can block your deals. Because like you said, right, that person, that SDR has to work on networking. It goes internally as well as externally. Yeah. I have my own, like for Clearpay, there's a compliance team, then an integration team. They're also part of the deal. And how we have a reputation and relationship with them affects how well the deals move. Right. You're saying you don't fake relationships. Yeah. But it's genuine, like you're working with someone, you're trying to reach a goal. And sometimes it may not be their priority, which to a salesperson is, I need to close this deal. That's the first thing I did as well, right? I walked into the company, I figured out, okay, who's going to support my deals? Who's going to maybe be a blocker? And I learned processes a lot and then applied them. The one thing I want to touch on as well, just to go back on a point, was the non -verbal cues and why it's so important. And I really want people to understand this. When I first jumped on Discovery Cause, as an SDR, right, you can just go, how much does it cost? You can give a range. Or you can just say the number and shout. Great. Great when you do that. However, if they look at your face and think any sort of thing, because this happened to me, right? I said the number, but he kind of saw in my face that I was thinking about it. And he said, well, you're thinking about it. So that means you can probably get a discount. Ruin me. Ruin me. Absolutely ruin me. Because nothing prepared me for that. well people know just to say the number and shut up but nobody tells you your face has to look a certain way yeah so those are the two learnings i learned from um those scenarios and again i'm very happy that you brought because it's relevant even for me within my business right in the last few weeks i've lost one deal and i've progressed a deal and both were exactly at the same price point but i realized it was the inclination of my voice of how i said it yeah so let's just say option like number one person um we got to the end of it and i just an arbitrary number i said it's it's 200 for the hour right but the way i said it to them it's 200 for the hour because in my head i was thinking is this too much for you as an individual and are you going to be able to like clear this from your personal development budget yeah right And truth be told, when we had the catch -up call with that person, there was questions, there was doubts, there was asking, can they defer payments and all this? And I was just like, oh, for God's sake. Right, it is what it is. But last night I did a discovery call with somebody and I showed the pricing and I said, so it's 200. And as soon as we get this through, we can then book in the actual session and I can send an invoice to your people team for your personal budget. And the person's response was, I like the pricing. And in my head, I could have gone like, yay! but i didn't i was just like okay that's cool yeah you know so it's it's it's the way that it's not so much like what you're saying it's like how you're delivering it and like you said with those non -verbal cues um but it's very important but it's a learning thing right it's and being confident with it one of the most underrated things i've learned is like energy is a key factor in seeing people succeed how you show up for something is how you show up to everything so especially when you do like because i've been an a for an hour like one yes five, six months now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're doing the same thing over and over again, right? But a cold call is always different in my opinion. In discovery, you get the same pain for some. If you can show up in the same way you did at the start, that's when you really win deals. And I noticed this when even in me, because my big focus has been on how can I use my energy better in cause because something we're talking about in transition is timing. Like your calendar shifts exponentially. So let me give an example. You go from just being an SDR, you are an SDR and an account executive now. So my calendar blocks looks very different to when I started, right? And what you also have to do with that is you have to manage your energy better because I can be transparent about this. There were some months when I was a BDR and I was behind target, but I was like, you know what? If I just lock in for two weeks, I'm good because I know I have to just put more effort in. You do that as an AE. You can't close a deal or a big deal in like one week or so. So your organization has to be really good for you to do that. And I think I was listening to a podcast and they said like, you fall to the level of your systems. So not your motivation. So my system is very simple now. There are days where I prospect. There's a guaranteed call block and there's times to book in demos and discovery calls. And then it's a reflection. And that's how. I allowed myself to really work on that because at the start, I was doing what every SDR does. I went ham on prospecting. Then you get over the deal cycles and you're like, okay, where's this deal at? Where's this deal at? Oh, but I need to self -gen. I need to get more pipeline in there. And that's the problem as well. You have to focus on, because you have to accept at the start, your win rate is going to be terrible. So you have to get more discovery calls than every single person in your team. but also that's very difficult because you've never booked discovery calls in that sense so that's why i go back to the initial point where you have to go internally and learn what works copy it double down on it until you become a good proficient efficient and good at what you do so for me my win rate was like 10 20 and i go up to like a good 40 50 by the end of the year and If you looked at who had the most meetings, it was me, H1 and H2. And that was the reason for that because I knew I'm the weakest person in this sales team. So I need the most reps. And that goes for any AE or SDR entering a team or whether you're in a startup or a massive company, you are the weakest when you enter. Whether you like it or not, no one cares what you've done before. So come in as a student, do the reps and then earn your stripes. And that's exactly what I did. I love that. And that's so strong. And it's so true as well. Because, you know, coming back to your point of the calendar piece, when I'm speaking to SDRs that want to become AEs, or I'm talking to an SDR that's annoyed by their AE because they haven't progressed staff or they haven't caught up or they haven't given them said, yeah, this is converted. I say to them, do me a favor, go and look at your AE's calendar. and tell me the difference between yours and theirs and the main ones are within the sdr ones you have these blocks for cold calling for emailing for prospecting for adding things to sequences and you've got the demos that you've booked in But then when you look at the AE's calendar, you've got travel time, you've got proposal, you've got admin updating your CRM, you've got catch -ups, you've got catch -ups with a VP, you've got catch -ups with the product team, or perhaps you're talking to the customer success team saying, you're going to onboard this customer. And it's nuts, right? And sometimes they look at it like, whoa, how do they do that? But as you said, like you go and speak to the people internally, see what their processes are. You imitate them or you mirror them and you... you practice on it. And I think what's beautiful with you, Saad, is the element of self -awareness. You know that you're not at the strongest point yet, but you're working towards it. And I think that's the difference between people that will either make it or they won't make it. Some people may feel it's just that easy transition. I made the mistake when I went into the AE life, right? I thought it was just like, you do, you put the meat in, you show the demo, you show a couple of slides and then boom, you send it over the DocuSign and it's easy. It's not. And as you said, you know, there are moments where things aren't coming, right? You've got to deal with that mental capacity as well. Like it's stressful. And I've said to people, you know, if you want to be an AE, it's one of the best ways and best earning potentials in your life. You can make a lot of money, right? But I equally, as I said to this person yesterday, I said, think of other options of leadership. And I said, it was Ray Bassey that gave me the best advice, right? He was like a mentor to Morgan Ingram, but he just said, Neil. If you want to make a lot of money in sales, then the AE life is a really good life to go. However, you know, if money isn't what motivates you, then perhaps leadership. But what you have to understand as a leader, you have people that are earning more than you, but you may get more fulfillment in helping those people succeed. Absolutely. So the reason I bring this in is I wasn't that much of a great AE, but I was a really good CSM. Because I was more poised on making the customers successful. And when I made them successful, more revenue started coming in because there was upsells, there was cross -sells. So, you know, but I think for anybody listening in, I had to learn the skills of an AE. I had to learn how to have commercial discussions. And, you know, to your point, speaking to stakeholders internally, like our professional services team, you know, I was helping the AEs when they were trying to close the customer and get them over the line. Because the AE could talk about the product. But they didn't really know, like, what is the customer success plan? Like, what's the mutual success plan? How are we going to do all this sort of stuff? Yeah. I just want to touch on that point, right? Just to go further on it. When you become an AE, you have to, like, genuinely accept you're going to be horrible for six months. Maybe more than nine months. Yeah. Depending on how many reps you get in the pipeline. That was the biggest thing for me, honestly. Second is, after you've done it for a while and you get a little bit better, is you realize that oh I did everything I did every single thing right in this deal and I didn't win it and you have to accept that that is the hardest thing for me honestly because I'm like I did a great discovery I did a great demo and we're touching that in a sec but the deal didn't go through because their budget got pulled or they left they left the team which in those scenarios obviously I look at myself like I should have known they were leaving but They were a champion who sent me to the other person and the other person has just said, no, we're not doing this, right? So those are the hardest to take. So yeah, get used to losing a lot when you move into a new AE role. 100%. And why I can relate to that again, I've had a deal this week where it's potentially on closed lost, right? So I've been running the pilot with the company. Everybody's loving it and they give all the signals we're going to move forward. And you know, that catch up QBR call just seemed, everything was stars aligned. And they're like, okay, send the proposal. Let's talk about a Q1. Proposals gone in, there's back and forth. Now there's complete silence and this person may not want to move forward. And I'm just like, I think that's the other bit you have to do as an AE or as a closer is you have to reflect back and not get caught up on your own bullshit of what you've done wrong, but realize what is wrong, but what needs to be corrected. And then when you get that next deal in. those are the things you did so like yesterday when i was doing my discovery call i was asking this person every reason as to why this wouldn't work right based on other things that have been lost um and then we got to it it was more of a it moved it progressed better because i asked all those questions that i didn't ask on the last one right but a point that i want to get in because we're going to come into discovery now uh i remember you said to me a few weeks ago like when we were catching up like the biggest eye openers for you was A cold call was very different to like a full blown discovery call. And that mindset that you had to go through that shift of like, you're like, rah, I didn't know that the 30 minute calls are, you know, so much more intense. Yeah. So for the listeners out there, like imagine you're talking to us, help them understand what is the biggest difference between like a cold call discovery versus an actual discovery when you're in that sales cycle. Absolutely. So with a cold call, right? Your objective, as much as people might say, is to sell the meeting. So you're selling either an idea or a problem you can solve, right? So for example, if Neil says to me, me struggling to get connects, I'll talk about, for example, Sales Infinity and how we helped a similar coach get there. Boom, that books the meeting, right? That's a good cold call, in my opinion, because you've had the pain, you dug slightly deeper, and you just ask, why is it important? when you move to a discovery call it becomes a lot more because you need to first of all figure out who's it affecting why is it affecting them and why do they need to change so it's a lot more deeper than that and then also you need to figure out what happens if they don't change so you go from asking surface level questions to challenging a business right so whenever i go into a discovery because i'm thinking why us why anything and why now but also I'm thinking what happens if they don't do any of this? And that sort of level is a lot deeper and harder to get. And you can only get that on a 30 minute call. The other part I'd say as well, right? Is you have to do a lot more of the selling, which I knew that, right? But I didn't realize how much more of a part of that there is to it. Like I'm very good because of how I've been taught as an SDR is storytelling. And that's what I lean into, right? But when you're storytelling on a call, you're not doing anything, right? When you're storytelling in front of somebody, the non -verbal cues come in and you're demoing you got to show that you got to show them that they can imagine themselves using something like this and how it's really going to solve its problem yeah the final thing i actually didn't think about as much right is when it comes to sales is how much internal politics affects too for example i've had deals where i know somebody wants it over the line because they want to get promoted or they want somebody else they want to take credit for it And as a seller, I never, I never really thought about that because I was like, okay, here's your problem. Here's how you solve it. Cause I was very, but then the personal element came into it, right? Like I have, I had a deal where some, we, we started like 15 minute conversation. We didn't even talk about the product that much. Turns out he'd done all of his research before and he knew most about us cause he bought us previously. And I asked him that, but he just wanted to see how I conversated with him if I was annoying. Cause he had a really. poor experience with a competitor and he was very educated in the system so all I had to do was show him what we did have a good discovery call understand his challenges and he literally said that to me he goes the reason I'm signing on with you guys is because you took time to actually understand my business and why it actually mattered to me and he was like I was being very blunt with you on purpose by the way because I'm very annoyed with so many sales experiences I've had and this is another thing you take into account when it comes to discovery right You think you become an A. You've got all this authority to ask so many questions, right? You don't. You're still another salesperson, right? And one of the things I had to learn very quickly is how to ask harder questions. So one, you earn the right by doing that. Yes, you have to earn the right to do that. I'm just making that explicit by doing research before you speak to someone. The second thing is I always use like a, I like to try calm it down. so let's say for example if i'm asking neil a very direct question a parent for that because i say hey no do you mind if i ask a really direct question his god then goes down he's like and then it's not that much of a direct question then that's actually i'll answer it yeah those were the biggest changes when it came to discovery and hopefully that can help somebody as well hell yes 100 and you're right like you're priming that person for what could be a tough question it's not really going to be a tough question yeah but psychologically they're bracing themselves for it And like examples of that is, you know, can I ask you a hard question? Yeah. And they're like, okay. And then you ask the question, they're like, ah, that wasn't really hard. But it's primed them because I think if you just interject and ask a straight up pain question, it will throw them off guard. Yeah. And they can come defensive. But to your point, discovery. is one of my favorite parts of the sales process, right? But you're not always just, it's not a one -time occurrence. It happens throughout the whole sales cycle, right? So it may be on the initial cold call, as you said, it goes deeper in the follow -up discovery call, but perhaps when you're doing the demo, you know, you're asking questions, okay, like, what was it like before? Now we're going to go show you a use case of how it could work. And then you ask the person, so how would you see yourself using something like this? what are the benefits or where is it going to save you time in the way that you do it today and then i made this was another mistake i made because tell us tell us um when i used to do demos like obviously i used to i used to rely because i thought when you're demoing you need to show how the product works i was so fixated on that like making sure i make every click perfect yeah everything shows correctly yes that's very important but remember you're still selling the product and One of the things is I'd go on like a long tangent of like, oh, all these amazing things. And I'd relate it to what they said, but I wouldn't ask the tough questions. So this is when I asked my VP of sales, I was like, how do I get people to open up a lot more? And he said, what and how questions. So this works for any person selling. Just find out what the problem you're solving. Hopefully you know that because you listen to this podcast. And then just plug in what and how questions. So for me, it was, we help boost conversion rates online. Okay. So I would do the show me, tell me, and then ask me. So that's what I used to do. I used to say, because again, I didn't know this. You have to prime people because people's attention spans are so less. How are you looking at your mind on the verbal cues? I'm also looking at the person I'm selling to and seeing their verbal cues, right? And I used to notice sometimes people were distracted with like open tabs. Everyone's got Slack open and stuff like that. So I'd be like, hey, now I'm going to show you exactly how Clearpay can help do this. Show them. and say how or what how do you see this helping x or what do you see this doing for you guys when you're focused on doing x yeah game changer for me honestly 100 and the reason why i love that is with these how questions right and what questions these are open -ended questions right so if we look at a closed -ended question it either results in a yes no or a fact so are you the a yes um are you the person in charge of the full sell cycle yes how many deals do you have to close this quarter 15 right those are qualification questions but they're closing questions the way that i tell people is rather than asking pain questions such as so what are your challenges right what's keeping you up at night you know the the the questions i don't like asking right they're very cheesy But I say, rather than looking at it as pain, try to look at it as a process type question. What you're trying to figure out is how they do those things today. And you're trying to figure out the gaps in their process. And that's where you see how your solution can plug in those gaps. So such as, how is this working for you today? Could you walk me through the process of what you're trying to achieve? Could you help me understand, like, what does that look like today? And where do you want it to get to? And what you find with your prospects or people you're talking to in general is they then talk a hell of a lot more. So they're like, well, the way it works today is we have this team, we use spreadsheets, we go to Excel, we then upload it into our content management system. And what we're trying to do is, because it takes around six hours, we want to get that done into three. They expel so much more. So asking those open -ended questions and, you know, as sellers, sometimes we're fearful of we need to fill the silence of the conversation and allow them to talk like even more, right? I want to give something there as well. Yeah, go on. Yeah. Because these are SaaS realities. Nobody tells you, right? And I want to move on to in terms of champion building because you're absolutely correct with discovery. I've seen this, right? I've closed deals where I haven't done the best discovery call. but I've had an excellent champion and executive alignment. Because this is the part that nobody tells you, right? You think, I do a good discovery call, I did a good demo, that means close one. No. In Sonoras, there are times where I've done a bad discovery, but I've had such an aligned champion because they understood it, or I've had executive alignment that said, just do it. And a lot of people struggle with this when it comes to building champions and multi -threading. This is just something I wanted to touch on, right? Yeah, yeah, please do. The advice I got was... a champion is a champion until they stop acting like a champion. What do you mean by that? What I mean by that is champions are somebody who push a deal forward, who tell you what's, and they're going to really talk to you all the time. So for example, in deals, I've had deals stored because my supposed champion has stopped talking to me. There's two ways you test it, right? One of them is you give them homework and see if they do it. That's when you know, are they a serious champion and they're on board? And also you have to know in your gut if, They go and they sell this internally. It's going to be a new deal and move up. They're going to move it. And that's why you have to test them. And that's very difficult when you're a new AE. You trust everyone because you want to be liked. And when you hear all these good things, you're like, oh, this deal is going amazing. Sunshine, some rainbows. I'll tell you this straight away. The nice people are the hardest people to close. And I'll tell you why. Because when they like you, they don't want to tell you the truth. I prefer selling to somebody who's quote unquote rude to me on a call because they give them to me straight. I remember I had a deal where I had this incredible relationship with this person, right? And they just wouldn't tell me the answer. And then they left the company and they were like, yeah, sorry, I just really liked you. I never wanted to tell you bad news. So for example, now when I have a champion, they either get homework or I'm testing them. Like, have you bought the software before? Have you done this before? What's the next step? So if a champion is like not wanting to do a next step, red flag, you need to go above that, right? They're not going to be champion. But there are some instances where now I ask the champ, like anyone I get on a call, I do a next step. I ask them like, where do you think this is going? So that's one advice I want to give to you when it comes to multi -threading. Always ask your champion before you go over the head until, like I said, they stop being a champion. They stop communicating with you. They stop doing the homework that you assigned them. And I know that sounds quite cheesy. It's like, you know, like, for example, if me and you were on a call, I'd say, hey, Neil, you know, typically the next step is to get the CFO. I can see Cassandra leads that team, would be able to jump on a call. And if they become a block at that point, it's because they want to have a discussion. And if they don't come back to you, then they're not a real champion. You have a decision to make, right? Do you want to put that to close loss or? Do you have a sufficient enough business case that you think you can actually help this business and it needs to go higher up for them? And that's what I learned. So one of the things I'd say is, for example, I'd ask them, do you mind if I email your boss? Again, that language is very important. Some people will say yes. Some people will say no, leave it with me. At that point where they either stop communicating with me or they just ghost me, I'm like at that point, I send an email to the seniors. I say, hey. I've spoken to your team. They mentioned this, this, this is a problem. This is how we solve it. Could we have a conversation about it? And that tends to go like, some people are annoyed. Like I've had, I've had deals where their boss is on the call now and they're on the call and they were airing. So that got me to the close one and vice versa where they've been really happy, but it's also the way I've done it. I've spoke about how great they are to have on the team. They really care about the business. This is why they want to get us signed on. And yeah, that's, that's what I wanted to say. I love that. I love that. And you raise a point because it brings me back to the discussion I was having with this new SDR this week is you will have to face a lot of politics within companies that you're selling to. There will be people that have their own agendas and you'll have people that don't like you. And, you know, it's not a case of being liked, it's being respected. And I like how you said, I'd rather talk to the person that doesn't like my guts, right? Because you're going to be real with that person versus the person that... is giving you all the signals and it's all happy ears and you know it's a great relationship relationship building is 100 key yeah with anything right one of my deals i did close last year was because of the relationship that i had with somebody that i coached previously and he took me to their ceo and it's his backing of me to the ceo to then introduce it to the whole team right but with the politics side of it sometimes you have to also remember that you can't take things personally so with this str person um they were getting annoyed with leadership because they're not giving them that door to the a life and i just said he he wants me to do certain things in his way and i said you have to do those things sometimes you will have to do with stuff with people you don't like in order to get to where you want to get to right and it's the same way with your deals you know when i think back on deals that i've done in the past where the vp of sales so my personality is i'm a nice guy you rub me up the wrong way and there is a different version of Neil, but he doesn't come out as much, but he will defend and he'll be firm on things. And we're at points where I'm thinking like, I could really F up the deal here and I could lose it. But in my head, I then say to myself, well, no, if you're not firm now, then you're going to be a pushover later on and they will take the piss with everything. But even like today, if somebody comes into my business and they want a discount, I'm of a mindset of, I don't do discounts. Right. If you go into a Tesco and you buy a can of Coke, which is like one pound 20, you don't go to the till and say, could I get a discount on the one? It is what it is. But I had a discovery call last night where, you know, we walked through the pricing, we did everything like that. And he openly said, is this up for negotiation? And normally I would say, well, it depends. And I just said, no, it is what it is. And I paused, I took a breath. I didn't say any more. and he was like okay and i said but what are you thinking and the difference here was was i offer like a coaching on a 45 minute that's how long a session is with me and this guy wants to buy like six of them and he says rather than making it 45 minutes could we make it an hour and in my head i was like yeah that's easy that's cool it's an extra 50 minutes that's nothing but in my head as a salesperson i then said that's fine on the basis something comes back in return And he said, what would that be? And I said, if we do these six, then midway through, I would like a case study from you to say what you think about this coaching that helps me draw in more leads. And he said, yeah, that's easy. But I positioned it as, I don't know what you're going to think about this is what I said first. And he said, all right, so I've primed him. And then I've said, this is what I said. Oh yeah, that's easy. I said, all right, cool. And then I added in, I said, look, if you. get me a referral and that person closes on the basis they close with me you get a free session he said i know a lot of people that i want to put and i said cool now so it's not really negotiation from my point of view it's what benefits us both but it's taking those pauses in those moments or rather saying yes yes yes quickly yep we can do this because you want to rush it it's slowing down a little bit you've reminded me of one of the biggest things i learned when it came to negotiation right it's the it's the selling to somebody who's bought stuff a lot compared to somebody so it's like an educated buyer versus a non -educated buyer yeah yeah non -educated buyers very easy like they've not done this process a thousand times right so they're very easy to negotiate at the point you get it done an educated buyer will kill you and i say this because i remember listening to 30 mpc they call it death by a thousand cuts And it really is that because an educated buyer will ask you for one thing, exactly in that scenario, he'll ask you for one thing, then he'll ask you for nothing more. Yes. And I remember when I was doing like one of the bigger deals, I can't really say who it was, but the CFO literally kept asking for stuff, like even over emails and continuously. And it was just frustrating me. If I knew what I knew now about negotiation, I would have gotten one call with her. I would have said, listen, I need to know. everything before i go back to finance and we talk about yeah because even at the last like this person like the last like they are literally like i'm gonna sign this contract now but i need this as well and i was at the point where i was like i just need the deal and i was like that like the emotion on that deal was so like i remember talking to my manager she's like they're so annoying and I was like but then I learned from it right I knew exactly what she is because an educated buyer knows they can keep asking for they're just testing you yeah they don't even want a discount they're just they're just trying to see everyone wants a discount right what an educated buyer is literally going like okay is this person a rookie or did they know what's up right and exactly what you said right now I get the full ask for yeah they want something I get something in return from it and also One thing I know is because I work for a big company, right? There's a big value to it. I kind of use a couple of tips where I just say like, okay, look, if you want a discount, we're going to have to remove this, this and this. Is that what you want? Because earlier you mentioned X, Y, Z is really important for you to do. That tends to really help me when it comes to negotiation. But the biggest thing is get the full ask first, because trust me, you will save yourself a lot of hassle. Because even when you're talking to somebody below the line, and what I mean by that is not the deal signer. If you can get your champion to tell you exactly what their CFO wants and then go back to your team and figure out a plan of what they need, you'll do a lot more. You do a lot more deals. You do a lot more quicker and you do it with a lot less headache because yeah, that's what happened to me. Yeah, I think I like how you said like getting on that core with them and getting like their full cards on the table of everything that they want. And I think a couple of things to think about and especially those that are thinking about going into an AE position. where you may have to even speak to procurement, these people are trained to be difficult and they are trained to ask you so many things. And it's that emotional element, which happened to me earlier this week, right? Where everything looked crystal clear, everything was wicked. And then we have the catch -up call and a whole load of things have changed. I like the options in the proposal, but what I'm looking for is this. And I'm in a call where the pricing has already been defined. And I can't really answer to what now that would look like. So I have to say then, well, I'm going to have to take a step back, look back at this, but I'll have the proposal over to you. Right. And now we've got in a back and forth ping pong thing and it's all going through email. And I could feel myself getting frustrated. Like, let's just move forward. Like it's clear the value you're getting, you wouldn't get it better anywhere else. I know that. But I then stopped myself and said, no, if we keep going back on him, we need to get on a call. We need to have this discussion. I need to understand where is this person's mind at and how are they valuing it? Because the way I value a proposal is different to how they're reading it. I would value it as here is a contained package of what you're receiving and everything you've asked for with the changes. But you're looking at this as an hourly thing and I don't price an hourly, right? So a lot of deals can get scarpered because there is a lack of communication or things haven't been communicated clearly. And sometimes you can't do that on. an email you can't do that over a phone it's sometimes having that I contact it so that you know those verbal cues and non -verbal cues that you're having but it was a learning for me but you know going through all of those things this is what's going to happen with multiple deals so as an AE you're going to have like maybe 10 to 15 deals in a quarter and all of this will have politics all of this will have different personalities all of these and you have to be able to make sure that you're able to detach yourself from it because if one deal blows up and it messes with your head, that emotion will then bleed into the other deals. And that's where you become desperate and you want, you know, sort of things. But, you know, being in a business for eight years, I've gone through a rollercoaster of emotions, you know? So I think these are really good things for our audience to hear because this is the reality of a life. And, you know, if I went back so many years ago, this is why it was tough for me. That's why I wasn't successful because I wasn't primed already. But I think if I took your advice of doubling down on the things that I was doing as an SDR. It would have made me much more better, but I've learned it as a founder in my own business where closing a deal is more important to me for my own business because it defines if I eat, if I have a roof over my head versus for a company. And I think the other bit is a bit that I always give to SDRs is, look, if you're in a quarter as an SDR and you don't hit your target, it's very forgiving. head of sales or development said well look this is what we need to do and then it may transpire into a pip which nobody wants to get into but you still have a chance but as an account executive if you're not closing within your first quarter you could be cut there is no forgiveness to it right and that and that's what you have to also remember as well yeah i think i think what helps me keep grounded in that situation is like i have a i get to mindset so think like there's a lot of people that want this type of opportunity or would want to be in a situation where you can and like you've got to think about right there's people that don't have prospects to call right now and sometimes you sit down i can't be asked to call but that i get to mindset has got me a lot through it like i remember there was a week where i was like i just lost two deals and they were guaranteed and i have nothing this month and i was like i know what i'm doing i have self -belief and so i can generate pipeline and i can close so just really going back to what have you done previously that's led to success that i get to do this mindset as well because there's a lot of people that don't get to face these challenges and it is a privilege as much as we sometimes hate it and you know just realizing that for me personally is like god's going to take care of you in that sense so that sort of has helped me believe like you need to understand there's so much out your control when you're in like so much more like a meeting getting canceled you can call it next week it gets rescheduled a deal getting cut when you've been working on it for a month and a half is a different story like that's that's time you've invested that you could put and time is your most valuable asset as an aid yeah and so what i've always lent into this right money will come and the success will come by the byproduct of me working really hard But it's always been about me getting my skills to a point where I'm like, okay, I've got it. And yeah, with AE, there's a lot more skills than I thought when I initially started. Yeah, anyone making that journey, please do start earlier. Once you feel like you're getting to a stage where mastery is coming in, right? Because when I was in SDI, I did over 20 ,000 cold calls and I had almost a one in three conversion rate from a cold call. right at that point and and emails as well and videos i was still doing very well in them i just lent more into cold calling so at that point i was like okay my skills are getting to the point where i need to make that next jump but even though i thought my skills were ready they weren't at that point and that's what i'd say to somebody if i could go back a year ago i would have done double the amount of discoveries with my head of sales or and demos because yeah it would have prepared me a lot and i would have been on camera more yeah definitely been on camera yeah that's the thing i love that and you know if for any listeners out there that are thinking about making that jump from your opinion side if there were you know there's multiple skills in sales there's you know discovery there's cold calling there's emailing there's you know learning networking within a business internally and all of these things but if you to say here are three skills that if for the next six to twelve months you really want to focus on getting better at In your opinion, what are those three skills they should be honing on? Do you know what? I want to say this and it sounds like quite cheesy, but it's learning. Like genuinely, I mean this because I hate when I read those stuff like, this is how you make yourself feel good and learn. But your ability to learn really defines how quickly and how well you're going to do in an AEROL. Because like you said, your counter of like three to six months, you're not here, you can be out. So I definitely say learning because I... learned so much when i moved into a new role about stuff i didn't even know i had to learn what you and i've said learned quite a lot but it's an actual skill to be able to take in something and then apply it straight away yeah the other thing i would say is i don't know if it's a skill but it's it's a confidence it's like i i think confidence is a skill now it's the ability to no matter what happens in a situation shake you off because i remember when i started right i was like no i'm not going to be a good a um damn like let's go there now i walk into calls and like no i've done what i said i was going to do why did i think that way before even though i was learning it would have saved me a lot of hassle if i just kept that same mindset instead of worrying about what's going to happen in the future and just actioning So I would say confidence. And the final one I'd say is I think definitely communication. And I don't mean the communication in the sense that you're wicked at calling or you can write a good email. I would say communication and influence. Those are two, I'll put them together because your communication skills are great. Your ability to influence is a different thing, right? Your ability to say something in a way that makes somebody emotionally attached or wants to make them do action. It's a very different skill set to have than being able to say the right stuff on a cold call. And that was the biggest thing for me, right? I have to get a CTR, a CFO to really believe in me and what I'm saying. And through my storytelling and skill set, I'm going to do that. Through my communication skills, I'm going to do that. But the inference is, I hate the word aura, but it's like there's a movement or there's a way somebody comes into a call that you can't shake their confidence. And if you show up to every call in that, whether you're doing cold calling or you're practicing discovery calls, that's how you win, in my opinion. I love it. Those are some great tokens of advice that you've given there, Saad. And, you know, before we end today's chapter, like obviously, Saad, you're doing coaching yourself. You're helping other sellers, right? Yeah. Could you tell us a little bit about what you offer to people or why do people come to you and how could people find out more about that? Yeah, absolutely. So I offer coaching for anyone trying to make the SDR to AE transition because I know how hard it is. But also I coach SDRs because I did quite well. And so anything from like cold emailing, social selling and cold calling and then discovery calls and demos and making that transition is what I really support with. You can find me on LinkedIn. I've got my email listed there. You can see my profile. If you're worried about something or you want to ask something, just drop me a message. I usually do reply within like. two three days because one thing nobody tells you is how much more busier you get when you're in a it's not just under blocks it's just you know the calendar blocks aren't there just for fun you actually have to do the activity and also one of the things i would say just to touch on that is the mental side is tested a lot more when you're in a so you have to focus on doing that i know i spoke to you before and you're like i'm really focusing on like doing my steps because that recalibrates me because i'm like the best ideas i have either when i'm walking or i'm in a shower i don't know why It just happens. At that moment in time, I don't think about anything else but maybe a deal comes in and I'm like, that's such a good idea. It happens at random moments. It does. It's because when you detach yourself from the situation and you're out of that environment and you're somewhere else, that's when the best thoughts come to you. Like for me, it's shower. Because I'm in the shower and I'm thinking, right, I'm going to get out of the shower. I need to go to my laptop. And then you think those thoughts of what you need to do in that email. or perhaps when you're in the gym and you know you're looking like looking to pump and get your gains and then you sit there on the rest period and then you think about that deal or that conversation actually you know what i should have done this those are because you're out taking yourself outside of the environment i think is also good and that's how you like the best advice my mentor david dupree give gave me was zooming out Because sometimes when you're so focused, then you completely miss everything else around. But when you're able to like, if you had a picture of something and you really look into it, you can only see that part of the picture. But when you zoom out or take a step back, you look at the bigger picture as to actually, could they have this? And would that then help in the renewal and could actually grow this account if I did it with this way? Because even when I was doing that discovery call with this individual, they wanted one -to -one coaching. But as you know, doing your research, you pointed was. this person needs to hit their probation by April. So as he was on the call, I went onto their website, I went onto the job description, I could see all these other things. And I said, by the sounds of it, you're like a founding SDR because I'm seeing other SDR jobs being posted. He said, yeah, we've got other SDRs. And then in my head, I'm like, this could be a team deal. So I need to work with this person, make them successful. They become the champion to then help me grow into that account. So zooming out is definitely a skill that, you know, we should all take on board. Just two points on that, right? yeah one of the things i needed to just mention was one having a manager is great because they have no obviously that your your goals are attached to them but they zoom out because they don't care about well they care about you personally but like they care about winning the deal they don't care about how you feel about the deal so the other thing is as i've gone into a bigger company you i've learned the buying process so one final piece of advice right is go on a buying journey Like go through a buying journey? Because I remember when I joined, I hadn't been through that. So I went to my SDR manager and I said, how do you go about buying stuff? What goes through your head? And he made this very important point. He doesn't talk about like, for example, again, to that SDR connecting calls. He says, this is how much revenue is going to generate to my execs, right? And it's a very different language and that's why you have to keep it that way. 100 % my dude 100 % golden nuggets and as mentioned you provide coaching and with Saad's details that will be in the description on the show notes on both podcasts and YouTube along with his LinkedIn profile so if you're interested in this or you want to talk about any more topics in depth that me and Saad have spoken about today feel free to reach out to him I'd love to see you having more coaching clients and helping you know transform your success and then spreading that to to other people as well so man it's like proud of you dude absolutely proud of you but for our listeners and our watchers and subscribers thank you so much for joining on this episode today as a gentle reminder if you're listening to this in your local podcast platform please make sure that you give this episode a rating and share it with somebody that may be going through that path or thinking about taking that step and if you're on youtube again a like comment and subscribe does go a long far away if you've got any comments or thoughts about what we've spoken about today do you agree Do you disagree or could you take some more? Let us know down in the comments as well. But Saad, again, pleasure to have you on board. I think we're going to have to get you back in for another part three, bro. I've got a feeling of that because there's so much more we can talk about. But thank you so much for joining on today. And I wish you a great week. And most importantly, bro, happy selling. No worries. Thanks, Neil. Cheers for having me.