In this exclusive interview with Thibaut Souyris, Founder & CEO of SalesLabs, he shares sales training tips that address the #1 mistake he sees SDRs make in their cold outreach (& how it can be avoided), one tip that can easily improve cold email reply rates, how AI in sales prospecting can be leveraged, the top 3 qualities he thinks successful SDRs possess and why they're important, and a particularly memorable success story from his training work where he helped an SDR overcome obstacles and significantly improve their results.
Interview highlights & key takeaways
#1 mistake SDRs make (and how to avoid it)
Too often, SDRs don't have a system in place when they work. They batch their work, and what ends up happening is they have certain days that are no fun at all, and other days that are more enjoyable.
This creates an inconsistent input.
To avoid this, you should create an "outreach system" where you have a prospecting routine—following up every day, finding new prospects every day, and contacting them every day.
This is one of the key sales training tips Thibaut swears by.
Easy tip to increase cold email reply rates
What's really important is to focus on problems, not features or pitching. Don't share examples of your product. Find symptoms of the problems they have (like a doctor would) and talk about those specific symptoms.
Once you mention the symptoms, it's time to create the "Netflix effect," which is essentially creating a cliffhanger that entices your prospect to respond to find out more (just like in the show Love is Blind).
This is an effective way to improve your cold email reply rates.
How to use AI for prospecting
AI in sales prospecting can make a huge difference.
ChatGPT can be used for prospect research. For example, if you are selling to a CRO, you can prompt ChatGPT to act like a CRO of a specific company and brainstorm/list their top 3 challenges of 2023.
You can also use ChatGPT for building cold emails or creating email subject lines. The way to get it right is to train the AI by feeding it examples of really good cold emails and subject lines and asking it to use those as a framework to build your new email or sequences.
✨ Fun fact: Mixmax will be releasing a new AI assistant that is built into Gmail and can help you draft emails & subject lines that will hook your prospects.
Top 3 qualities successful SDRs possess
Curiosity (about other people's problems and how to solve them), creativity (to come up with/experiment new ways to get replies), and persistence (prospecting every day, even if it's cumbersome).
Most memorable success story when training reps
A sales rep was experimenting with video prospecting which consumed a lot of time and didn't produce results. Thibaut helped her refine her video prospecting strategy, and she was able to achieve a 35% email reply rate and a 10.4% meeting rate. The key was being authentic and natural and treating the video as a voice note with a picture.
Watch the full interview up here.
