Gary: In the opening episode of our podcast, we discussed how organizations can become dysfunctional. Typically, this occurs when their goals are misaligned or when key metrics don’t focus team activities on outcomes that line up to company goals, especially revenue. Remember that CEO I talked about in the first episode? Who told me that marketing is leads? That sets up an organization to fail due to the finger pointing that we’re going to talk about today.

Mere delivery of leads implies that marketing’s work is complete when a lead is handed over to sales, and it encourages sales to simply ask for more quantity, focusing on quantity over quality. Our guest today is Chris Stols, head of global business development at Lumar.

Chris and I worked together at Vidyo, a leader in telemedicine and video banking technology.

Chris taught me a ton about how an SDR team can be measured to focus not merely on lead handoff, but on metrics that align to company goals, namely opportunity creation that leads to qualified pipeline.

01:30
Gary: Chris, thanks so much for joining me on today’s podcast.

Chris Stols: Gary, hey, first off, thanks for having me on today. Really great seeing you to everybody watching and listening.

My name is Chris Stols. I spent the past 14 years or so building and scaling out business development teams at companies from your small startups, 25, 30 employees, right up through global publicly traded companies. Throughout that journey, I’ve also led marketing operations and sales operations teams. Currently, I’m with Lumar. We’re designed to help companies proactively identify, notify, and prioritize technical health issues on your website.

Companies globally are using us, relying on our tech, because we’re creating and offering a seamless workflow across marketing, development and product teams. At the end of the day, we enable departments to really drive efficiencies and focus a little bit more on those strategic growth opportunities.

Gary: In the last episode of the podcast, we talked about the difference between OKRs and KPIs with departmental and organizational OKRs rolling up to align departments with the outcomes that are important to the business.

I’ve seen SDR teams incentivized to set meetings with that being a key metric. Chris, in your experience, is meeting setting the right metric for the SDR team?

Chris: So that’s like the proverbial question when it comes to what matters. For starters, are meetings important? Absolutely. They matter. They’re a crucial part of the sales process. They’re typically the first touchpoint that an account executive will have with a prospective opportunity.

But to really understand where they fall in the grand scheme of things, we have to understand the broader funnel and the conversion journey. When I think of meetings and what they mean. They are a key component of the SDR funnel. They’re not the be all, end all of what takes place. Just like in marketing, when you’re going through the very top of funnel and you have your whole lead universe, a percentage of conversion rate of those move to marketing qualified leads of those marketing qualified leads, a percentage of those move to call them sales qualified leads, leads that an SDR has been able to qualify.

At that point, I look at it as the meeting has to take place, but that meeting may not show that meeting may show that meeting may have multiple outcomes. There might not be any opportunity there for us. So within my conversion rates that I look at to really, scale out, understand the health of a global BD team, I’m looking at how many meetings are set. But of those meetings, what matters to me most is which show up and most important, which stay in the pipeline.

04:06
Gary: Talk to me about that which stay in the pipeline, because that feels like we’re getting towards your OKR now. Help me understand that a bit more, Chris.

Chris: Yeah. So fundamentally, I mentioned this earlier, my background being in a mixture of sales and marketing ops and primarily focus on the BD realm.

I tend to think of these things as operationally, if I’m going to sit with you, Gary, we were going to talk through forecast, let’s say. We got to make sure that we have the right definitions, and we have agreed upon, process that’s going to get us there. So my OKRs that, you know, I’m held to the fire on that I live by are, just really 2: dollars in pipeline and opportunities being accepted into pipeline.

So, like I mentioned, those meetings do matter because they are a metric that gets me into the pipeline. But they are not the, final culmination of the SDR and marketing’s work because we need to stay in pipeline for that to actually happen.

Gary: That’s cool. So the OKR, so pipeline, obviously that’s what’s going to drive revenue for the business, the number of opportunities.

And you said that it’s the opportunities that are accepted by the sales organization. And meetings are one of your metrics. So I would imagine that you’re looking at least weekly, maybe daily. I don’t know how you run your teams, but you’re looking at a bunch of metrics which are probably your KPIs. Or I’ve heard the term KLI, key leading indicators, where you might know on the 15th of one month whether you’re going to hit your OKR or the following month.

Tell me a bit about that, about those combinations of metrics that help you adjust in order to make sure you hit your OKR?

5:50
Chris: Absolutely Gary. So at a high level, when we think, when I think of what do I need to hit my number at the end of the month, let’s say, for easy numbers, easy math, 50 qualified opportunities a month is my target of that 50.

I know at any given time that there is a X conversion rate from MQL to sales qualified lead. Based on the lead flow of how many leads are coming in. I can see the deficit. I could see that the SDR team may need to book five outbound per person. So as I look through that, I break it down one level further.

Now I know how many leads we’re going to need, but it’s reverse funnel. How many activities does it typically take to get that lead to say yes? How many activities does it take against like a webinar lead? So being extremely segmented and understanding the performance of your leads based on campaigns, based on the different nurture tracks they’ve gone through that helps forecast on the SDR side what’s going to take place with those.

So importantly I need to look at lead volume lead flow. How many leads per person, how many touches per lead. before we get to the Yes. And to do that, I’m leveraging a bunch of different tools on a daily, really hourly basis sometimes. I think the first thing I do in the morning, personally, I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now.

There’s platforms out there like Zoominfo, Engage, Outreach, SalesLoft. Those plug so cleanly into Salesforce. So my life revolves around a lot of dashboards and what I’m looking for in those dashboards are: how fast are we getting in touch with leads once they go MQL? What’s our speed to lead? That’s the primary one, because I haven’t found a study yet that shows the slower you are, the better the conversion rate is.

07:41
Gary: Five minutes. I’ve heard five minutes. When a person request raises their hand that you have to reach out to them, otherwise they’re gone.

Chris: Yeah. I have 14 years of data of my own that proves that as well. I don’t know if it’s five minutes for me, but I haven’t been that close to monitoring that. But frankly, if we get to them faster, there’s a higher conversion rate.

There’s no doubt. So daily I’m looking at speed to lead for Mql. I’m looking at how up to date our stars on their sequences? So a lot of people you’ll hear you have to make 50 calls a day and send 50 emails a day. Okay, that does make sense because you do have to have activity to get conversations.

But what do I care about? Conversations. So if I work with my stars and we talk about keeping up to date on your sequences, when you enroll somebody in, you’re committing that you are going to follow through with that lead because you’ve accepted it. Either inbound or you’ve selected it for outbound, and you’re going to run through it to its entirety through a mix of email, phone calls, social touches, videos, you name it.

All the tactics that are out there. There’s a right and wrong way to leverage those. But ultimately, as an SDR, we need to make sure that you’re getting the right volume of activity against the right people, against the right messaging, and ultimately, if you’re not up to date on those types of sales flows or sequences, those two terms are interchangeable.

That’s an indicator that we’re lagging on something. So if I see a rep that’s like falling behind on their enrollments, I know that that rep is going to potentially run into an issue that month where they’re not booking at a rate they need to be. So calls and emails, I’ve heard them called vanity metrics before.

I don’t think that they’re vanity. I think that they have a role in the overall health of the org. But at the end of the day, if you’re leading the SDR team, you really have to get your team to rally around conversations.

Gary: Now, that makes a lot of sense, right? But then once you see that activity happening based on your conversion rates, you’ve got a good sense that they’re going to, you know, three weeks down the line, you’re going to get the results that you’re looking for.

So it kind of starts there internally. I guess you just need to make sure those conversion rates are consistent.

9:47
Chris: That’s exactly it. That’s what the definitions come into being so important. So I talk a lot now about conversations. But with the outcome of those those are meetings with salespeople. At those meetings they’re going to be one of two outcomes.

It’s either going to stay in the pipeline or it’s going to go out of the pipeline.

Gary: A couple of questions that I had on that. You know, one is I’ve seen SDR or the BDRs, you know, I know that we call them different things. Right? But I see them reporting sometimes into sales, sometimes into marketing.

My sense is that if they’re reporting into sales, then you can tend to fall into that. Just give me leads kind of, behavior because they’re not part of the marketing organization. So help me understand where they’re best placed. And then a little bit more about what you are talking about the handoff. Because to me, that working together, that collaboration, that’s where you start to get organizations, GTM teams, that are all, you know, swimming in the same direction.

Chris: Yeah, that’s a, again, proverbial question. Two of today’s conversation, when you talk about, you know, sales and marketing and where the leaders are falling into, in my experience, if you look at what the BDR does on the day to day, they’re brand advocates, they’re out there. They’re engaging with people. I’ve never heard of us before.

And or they’re following up with people that have interacted with some marketing content, webinars, paid ads, you name it. So as a BDR, you’re using tools that marketing’s using. You’re using HubSpot, you’re using Salesforce, ZoomInfo. Apollo. There’s a whole list that we can go through of those, but you’re also becoming a persona expert, understanding the messaging that resonates with different stakeholders.

So I tend to gravitate towards the marketing umbrella where SDRs are under marketing. Because personally, I run a lot of ABM campaigns, a lot of call to actions where the coordination has to be there. What day, Gary, you’re sending out this message. What they my SDRs are following up with your message B in a personalized LinkedIn touch. So having that team integrated as a really well-oiled machine, it not only makes the top of the funnel activity smoother, but you think about an SDR and what they want to do in their career.

Most SDRs want to go into sales. Now that’s probably the most common. I see some go into marketing. In the digital marketing space. I see quite a few actually go into sales or marketing ops because again, they have that hands on with the systems. But if we just talk about the most common thing we see, progressing into a closing role, having that experience as an individual, under the marketing side, you’re going to be the AE now, that sees both ends of the business.

You’re going to understand lead flow. You’re going to understand the importance of having those those really structured handoffs taking place, between stars and sales and your value that to the point I see that happening all the time. you know, I’m lucky to work with a couple of great aces right now that were SDRs previously under marketing, and they perform, they’re really strong performers like extremely strong.

So, I wouldn’t name names. It’s okay. No names. But some of the strongest performers, not just here at Lumar, but other organizations as well. I’ve seen people that were in that scenario because they’re very well-rounded, and they see the business as a whole. And a lot of conversations that, you know, myself, you would have, you know, management level conversations around forecasting and pipeline.

Those reps come to the table extremely prepared to have those conversations because they’ve experienced it from both ends previously.

Gary: That’s great. And that leads me to start thinking about, you know, the handoff now. So I’m still a BDR. I’m still in marketing. I’ve got that aspiration. I want to be the AE and make the big commissions right and grow my career.

Tell me then about how that whole process that we’ve just talked about, builds that collaborative way of thinking and grows them into their next steps.

Chris: So the handoff, that’s a super important component of a successful BDR org, as well as a successful organization in general. I mentioned earlier around the different types of conversion rates that we look at.

The handoff is a conversion because we’re going to hand something off to sales, and X number of them are going to actually show up. What I need to do for this handoff to be successful is have the buy-in of both sales and marketing leadership, and that’s where BD comes in the middle to be that glue. So if we’ve already defined when MQL is, we’ve already defined our different sales stages in the pipeline deeper.

It’s equally important that we define what the handoff is. Because if we’re going to use a tool like Clari or some other forecasting tool, it’s only as good as the data that we put in. So with that handoff I’m looking at consistency. A great example would be, does the individual have the right type of title or persona that influences or buys us direct?

Does sales have a definition of what that is? So when I look at this handoff and I go to see, well, what does the organization need? And to have a sound process with a clear definition of what goes into pipeline. It all starts off with the meeting. And that’s why I said before, the meeting is a part of this process.

It’s not the ultimate component that we’re looking at.

So it’s the meeting with the prospect, that your BDR has set up with the prospect for an account executive to join, there’s a conversion rate there. Does that prospect join the call? If they do, that’s one step in the right direction. Next is, is there a further need that’s going to allow them to complete or at least move through our sales cycle to some point, ideally to close.

So defining what that next step is, is where we start. Some organizations will say, hey, next step is we’re going to do a comprehensive customized demo for them because we’ve got them out of discovery. And this is where we would go to show them the power of the platform. Another might be a different version of a discovery call.

There’s a lot of variations that could happen. It doesn’t matter what that next step is. The organization, we could define that. What matters is that we agree upon that, and that as I meet myself and BD leadership advocate for the sales reps, advocate for the BDRs, advocate for marketing, and keep the process sound and running together consistently. And that’s the key word, I say this to people often, the process, the process, the process.

It’s not because I love process that much. I love the outcome of process. Because when we talk about finger pointing, if we do a good job in the beginning, if we sit down, we really identify and define what the process is. A lot of questions that companies may ask that might not be organized. You could avoid uncomfortable conversations sometimes if you simply just have a really good process that you teach yourself, your team, and you follow it like it needs to be followed.

16:36
Gary: And is that kind of like a regular setting of that, you know, sort of regular communications between the AEs and your SDRs so that they’re continually refining that and learning off one another.

Chris: Yes. So when I look at the handoff, I take that one step further. There’s documentation I set up, that an SDR fills out, basically a synopsis, a cheat sheet of what took place on your call.

You provide that to your account executive, pending that person shows up. Now your account executive has a really comprehensive view of what you pitched them, what interested them. Snippet about their company. again, a cheat sheet to have that conversation. Now once that conversation takes place, does the account executive have a follow up action? Ideally they do. And if they do, that’s great.

That opportunity gets moved to a different stage. It enters pipeline and goes from just being a qualifying opportunity into something further. Again, companies will define that as needed. But for me, I’m looking at two key things. How many meetings are being set up that are not showing up, how many meetings are being set up that are showing up.

Then I take it one step further. Of those that show up, which of those are actually going into pipeline? That is an amazing coaching opportunity, not just for SDRs, but also account executives. And it’s also and the reason why for that, if you’re an SDR, we’re looking at the quality of the meetings that you’re setting. If you’re an account executive, we’re using tools that, like Chorus is a great example or Gong.

They’re able to analyze those calls. Maybe it is a coaching opportunity for an AE to do discovery calls different on those. At the end of the day, regardless of those outcomes. Since we followed a process, we had a good lead tracking mechanism set up. I’m able to go back to you, Gary, and say, Gary, look, these are the outcomes of all these campaigns that marketing was running by source.

I can definitively work with the team and tell you we’re converting the most of campaign A or campaign B, campaign C, and that completes the feedback cycle right there. And that’s the key is like you have to have the feedback cycle. Because if you do not, if any of those parts break down, you’re going to be in a position where the finger pointing takes place, where you’re simply saying, I gave you 50 leads.

If I can’t go back and say, here’s the exact conversion rates, here’s a process we follow. We were consistent. We’re never going to grow them as an organization.

Gary: Well, at that point, they stop focusing on leads, right? They start focusing on the outcome of where the leads go and how they convert, and where the BDR and the AE have collaborated on that.

Right. So you’re completely removing, in effect, leads because they’re not focusing on that anymore.

Chris: And that’s also exactly. And it’s, it makes it equally important. Then it’s like what do I comp the SDRs on. Like that’s a whole nother area because, you know, some organizations will say meetings and I have actually personally talked many organizations out of focusing solely on just meetings set, because I have a great experience of my own that I share.

I was looking one time, very large organization. We had a large headcount of SDRs. We were looking for more opportunities and the team was pumping on all cylinders. It was really impressive, but I looked into different third parties that book meetings for companies. I’ve done this multiple times. I’ve consulted with multiple people on similar roles to me in marketing.

The outcome I get every single time when I pay a third party to book meetings. Nobody’s happy. Marketing is unhappy. Sales is unhappy. Because those those meetings coming in, they don’t have one thing. There’s no cohesion with that. So, thinking of cohesion, I’m comping my reps on not only getting that person to show up to it, but getting accepted into pipeline.

20:35
Gary: But that’s icing on the cake. I always, always, always will fight for SDRs to get a percentage of closed won business because your job is not to close it, but as an individual, you’re going to grow, you’re going to get faster into that account executive position. If you’re focusing on getting real quality deals into the pipeline,

That’s fantastic because yeah, that what you’re doing is the more quality they provide, the more likelihood those are going to convert and then the more they’re going to get comped.

You know, going back to the meeting, setting things right, I think what I’ve done, I’ve done similar. What I found is that, either people didn’t show up or the people that did show up weren’t qualified, but they still expected to get paid for the meetings. They were set, but they weren’t. We weren’t focusing them on the outcomes that we were trying to get to in their push back was what we can’t control that.

But to your point, incentivizing the stars on accepted opportunities, percentage of close one business because they are part of that whole funnel that aligns them to focusing on the stuff that’s going to get them paid, which is the stuff that drives what the company wants, which is revenue. And it’s a great example of how you align your KPIs and your OKRs up to company OKRs.

Chris: You know, that then is so important because SDRs, everybody looks at them as an entry level role, and a lot of times they are. It’s some people. It’s their first roll out of school going into it, if you’re enabling them, if you’re giving them the right tools, if that process is clean, it’s amazing the work that people could do in that role, even if it’s not their first role and they’ve been the star role.

When you think about career progression, one of the best ways to have strong SDR retention in an organization is to show them that there’s a future. They don’t, you know, if you were in a role and it was, you know, I don’t wanna say hamster wheel, but like if you didn’t see progression as a possibility, you’d be less incentivized.

22:33
Gary: I agree with that, Chris. the company I was with, about four years ago, we had and the same thing. We hired entry level people and we had them on a progression on a quarterly progression. They hit their targets and we would increase their targets as they met them per quarter. But the idea was they should be, within a year, into their next progression at the business.

Maybe for some people that was too fast. But the point is, people always saw, here’s the opportunity. And we hired people who were aggressive, who did want to get to their next step in the company and realized they had to learn. It’s a great place to learn, right? and that worked out really well.

Chris: Yeah, it really does. I mean, by the time I get to account executive, if you have a good pathing program, your retention is up, your pipeline is up, your total number of opportunities should be up as well.

And you’re also bringing people in that have grown and learned with the company into the account executive role. Their their product knowledge is there. It’s a matter of learning the sales process at that point.

Gary: Absolutely. Well, this has been super, Chris. I mean, I tell you something I learned every time I talk to you. So it’s awesome, I appreciate that.

23:47
But now we’re at the point where I put you on the spot. And, what advice should our listeners, our viewers leave with from this conversation? What are three best practices that people should learn and incorporate into their business?

Chris: So first and foremost, put the work in up from if you’re on the marketing operations, sales operations, business development, leadership, if you’re in any of those roles, there is an intersection of all three of those on a daily basis.

Put the work in up front to build out a good process, one that you each as a department agree on. That’s documented, that’s clear, that doesn’t provide the pitfalls of bottlenecks and pointing fingers. Take the time to do that. It doesn’t take that long. It’s not easy, but it doesn’t take that long to put a basic set of definitions out, build that into your funnel.

It goes hand in hand with understanding what funnel metrics and KPIs and OKRs you’re looking at. Define things before you have SDRs pick up the phone. And every scenario I’ve done that, it’s been a better outcome because the role, the expectation, the conversion rates were better earlier and we were able to optimize faster by doing that work up front. That’s number one,

I think. Number two, make sure that you’re setting up the feedback loop because silos kill. I’ve been in organizations where we were siloed. I’ve been in organizations where we weren’t siloed. Every time we broke the silo and had the feedback loop, there was a core fundamental of why that happened. It’s because there was a good process built with all stakeholders of marketing, BD, and sales on the exact same page. A weekly call going over pipeline progress from not just leads, but into pipeline can be a very pleasant experience. It can be very team building and very business building in the right direction, if you’re all speaking the same language, it’s key.

So that’s really a way of avoiding finger pointing and just a second necessity. And the last really is be kind. Like be nice. Systems don’t work sometimes. Things break. People make mistakes. If you’ve set these other things up, you’re going to set up systems that are going to help get past the human element of not being perfect with certain things. And however you react to these things kind of goes a long way. So I would just say, keep that in the back of your mind as you’re building anything out.

Gary: That’s awesome. Chris. You totally exemplify the concept of what great looks like in this whole series. So thank you very much. I really appreciate the conversation.

For those of you watching, don’t forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel What Great Looks Like. And in the next episode, what we’re going to look at is how to create amazing proprietary content that drives qualified demand. So look out for that. And thanks for watching today. And Chris, thank you so much. It’s great to see you and great to have this conversation with you.

Chris: Pleasure, Gary. Thank you for having me today.